The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  Ritual murder? Christian blood in bread? Horrible! I thought. Could such a thing be true, such a horror really exist? It was difficult to believe – very difficult, indeed too difficult. And yet, the article unambiguously showed that twelve honest citizens could believe it. That such a thing as this can take place in London, England, at the end of the enlightened nineteenth century! Yet such a thing as what exactly? Ritual murder itself, or merely the belief in it? I remained stunned for some time, trying to collect my thoughts, unable to reconcile myself with the reality. What, I wondered, had Professor Ralston’s interest been in this affair? I felt that I hardly wanted to know the answer; I balked at the idea of penetrating further into this story of suffering. Yet I knew that it could not be avoided. Why was James Wilson’s name found in a strange list containing other names and dates from medieval times? Why was the folder marked ‘B.L.’? What possible connection could there be with a French journalist called Bernard Lazare?

  The very fact that the list, written by the professor himself, explicitly contained a reference to a murder struck me as significant. Certainly, Professor Ralston was an historian, and obviously one who gloried in tales, such as this one, which seemed to support his pet hatred. Yet this might also indicate something deeper. For one thing, Professor Ralston took the trouble to dispose of the papers in that file. What could they have been? He did not seem to be a person who habitually destroyed his old papers, which appeared for the most part to be classified in apple-pie order. Why were these removed?

  I forced myself to spend another hour searching for confirmatory articles in other newspapers, but discovered essentially nothing more than what I had learnt from the Illustrated London News. I then sat back, and began to reflect again on the professor’s list. I decided that the best thing for me to do next was to try to learn as much as I could about the other cases mentioned in it, and thought it should be possible to look them up in books, insofar as they represented historical rather than recent events. I glanced around, wondering where, in all of the enormous library, I should begin, when a voice spoke up within me, as clearly as the ringing of a little bell: Professor Ralston’s library. Why, of course – I should be much better off there! It was smaller, and largely devoted to medieval history; it seemed more than likely that I should find everything I wanted, and much faster.

  I left the British Library and made my way immediately to Adelphi Street. It was late in the afternoon, but not yet closing time. The door was unlocked, and Edmund Bryant was at his post, seated at his desk with his spectacles upon his nose, lost in piles of books and papers as was apparently his habit. I could not resist wondering, momentarily, if he were engaged in the stubborn development of wrong ideas, but dismissed the notion at once, as it appeared to me that if anyone’s ideas could be qualified as wrong, they were those of the author of that statement. I stood for a moment contemplating Edmund, while removing my gloves one finger at a time. Eventually, feeling my gaze, he raised his head.

  ‘Do you need something particular?’ he enquired politely.

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly. I thought that Edmund ought, with his knowledge of the library, to be able to direct me very quickly to the books that would best inform me of what I needed to know; I wanted to talk to Edmund in any case, and it seemed a perfect opportunity. Yet I hesitated, and for the following reason: I was embarrassed to take out the list that I had copied from the professor’s paper and show it to him. The terms of the list itself, together with what I had read about James Wilson, made me feel as though my notebook contained something violent, vile and shameful, and I loathed the idea that Edmund might think I was interested in such things of my own accord.

  ‘I – I need to learn about Saint Simon of Trent,’ I stammered, remembering a name from the list which I hoped would not immediately arouse any associations.

  ‘Saint Simon of Trent,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Do you know what period he is from? Early Christian? Medieval?’

  ‘Medieval,’ I said quickly, remembering the date of 1475.

  ‘Books about saints in the Middle Ages would be here,’ said Edmund, rising and directing me to a certain set of shelves in one corner of the large room.

  I set down my things on one of the tables scattered about, and began to browse among the books on the shelves in the area he had indicated to me. I soon found a passage, in a book called Lives of the Saints, concerning Saint Simon; I found it all the more easily as the book I was holding fell open naturally at that place. I marked the page with a bit of paper, set the book on my chosen desk, and laying my notebook next to it open at the page containing the copied list, I began to search for references concerning the other names it contained. Whenever I found something, I marked the place and added the book to the growing pile on the desk, to be examined once a sufficient number had been collected. It was only after I had managed to find references to the stories of Padre Tommaso and Anderl von Rinn that I took notice of what I had only half-consciously perceived before: many of the passages which interested me had been studied before; they were frequently underlined in pencil or marked out in the margin and, without even realising it, I had been searching rather for these pencil marks than for the relevant names as I flipped through the pages. When I had constituted a pile of some eight books, I stopped my search and began to study the case of Saint Simon.

  It did not take me long to discover that this saint was no more than a tiny boy of two and a half, whose murdered little body was discovered floating in the river near the city of Trent, in Italy. I skipped hastily through loathsomely detailed descriptions of the tortures he was alleged to have undergone, and read on through accounts of the accusations levelled at the Jews of the community, their trial, the many appeals, protests and retrials, and at last, the final trial before Pope Sixtus IV himself, ending in the burning at the stake of the entire community. I read citations of contemporary accounts of the event, some of which were viciously hostile, others objective and even quite sceptical, still others levelling all manner of ferocious accusations, and plunging without regret into demonisation and fanaticism, all the while tearfully bemoaning and mourning over the tender age of the murdered innocent, the blacker to paint his presumed murderers.

  I read all manner of variations of the so-called ‘ritual murder’ accusation I had seen in the Illustrated London News, alleging that the Israelites use the blood of a Christian child in the baking of their Passover unleavened bread. I tried to imagine how Arthur would react if he heard of such a thing, and immediately visualised his faint smile of disgust at the very vulgarity, the loudness, the sensationalism of it. Indeed, I could not imagine a single sane person giving credence to the idea even for an instant. And yet, of course they do not – not most of them, anyway – not as individuals. The phenomenon is essentially a collective one. Only a crowd, I think, has the power to unleash such vicious madness in otherwise quite ordinary people. And who motivates these crowds? Just a very few people, with very special interests in mind – the ruin and annihilation of Jewish communities.

  The alleged victims of ritual murder (said one book) were invariably stabbed, in order to collect the blood which thus ran. The murders were made to coincide with the date, in early April, upon which the Israelites yearly celebrate their own archaic form of Easter, the Passover, which commemorates their escape from slavery in Egypt recounted in the Old Testament. The book went on to mention the ten plagues of Egypt of the Old Testament, which God caused to fall upon the Egyptians when Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews depart, and recalled in particular the death of the firstborn male in each Egyptian household, which finally broke his resistance. The author explained that on the Passover festival, the Jews eat unleavened bread to commemorate the suddenness of their flight from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, for which the bread they had prepared had no time to rise. He argued that the tradition of using blood originated in the fact that some of the blood of the firstborn children, during the tenth plague, ran into their unleavened bread before it was c
arried off, which surprised me as the Bible explicitly states that the children were smitten by the hand of God, without any mention of flowing blood. That those smitten firstborns, had they lived, would have been brought up in the worship of Anubis and Horus and Thoth, thus making it difficult to understand why Christian blood should be felt to be necessary today, was a further inconsistency which the author failed to address.

  I began to wonder who had marked the passages I was reading, and if it had been the professor himself. His name was inscribed on the flyleaf, and it seemed natural to suppose that none but the proprietor would mark a book. It made sense, since I assumed that he must have done research on the entries in his list, research that had perhaps been stored in the thick, now empty ‘B.L.’ folder. Putting down the Lives of the Saints and taking up a second book in which I had seen a mention of Saint Simon, I began searching directly for the marked passages. Alas, they were numerous and contained descriptions of the tortures inflicted on the child and the pain he had suffered before which the accounts in the preceding book paled.

  I felt myself growing flushed and faint with anguish, and the sweat dripped off my brow until I could bear it no longer, and dropping the book upon the desk, I leant back in my chair. I wished to reflect upon the meaning of what I had just learnt, but I could think of nothing but little Cedric’s tender body, his sweet limbs, his fat dimpled hands, and the blood circulating within him like the juice of a sweet fresh cherry. I wanted to hold him in my arms more desperately than I ever did when he was actually playing around my legs. I wanted him to be the happiest little boy that ever lived, so that he could perhaps make a little gift of some of the precious drops of his delight to the little dead boy in Heaven. The trial of the Jews in Trent obviously appeared to be no more significant or credible than any of those innumerable sickening farces played out during the Spanish Inquisition, which was initiated by the same Pope merely three years later. Yet it was an undoubted fact that the little boy himself had died, and a vision of his cherub’s face, superimposed upon little Cedric’s, would not leave my mind. How such a tiny creature, who had done nothing in this world apart from dying miserably, could be canonised was mysterious to me, until I read that visitors to his tomb claimed to have experienced hundreds of miracles.

  My mind wandered irresistibly to the house of my childhood, with its nooks and crannies and its wild garden. Dora and her husband are very happy there, and it is certainly a heavenly place for the twins … and yet … anything can happen.

  The air of the library suddenly seemed to have become unbearably thick and stuffy. I felt that if I could not get some air instantly, I would certainly faint. Leaping up, I rushed outside, ran to the gate, and running into the street, I began to walk rapidly, farther and farther from the hateful library, until I spotted a post office. Entering it quickly, I spent some money on a few words of tenderness and anxiety which I expedited to Dora with a demand for instant response; the act relieved me of some of my tension, and I turned to walk to Emily’s house in the quickly falling, still wintry dusk.

  She was home when I arrived, and the kettle was boiling over a merry fire. My spirits lifted slightly at the sight of her rosy face.

  ‘Oh, here you are! Have you discovered anything? Are our plans still good for tonight? Vanessa, what is the matter? How pale you look!’ she added, glancing up at me from the tea tray she was busily arranging.

  ‘I have been reading some frightful things,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to talk about them; they are too awful. And they are not exactly pertinent to the investigation; they are from the Middle Ages. But there is a link to the little boy called James Wilson. I cannot talk about it now; it is really too horrible and I do not know enough yet. I don’t even know why Professor Ralston was interested in all this, and if it has any connection with his murder. But he was certainly a strange man with a rather horrid mind. Ugh.’ I sat down gloomily, still feeling the frustrating emptiness in my arms where a plump toddler ought to be firmly wedged.

  I saw that Emily longed to ask questions, but my frowning brow discouraged the idea. We remained for some time in silence.

  ‘I told Amy to come home around now, if she could, and bring Jonathan with her,’ she said after a while, with an effort at brightness. ‘I expect them any minute. They are very keen on making a serious effort to understand and exactly explain the seeming contradiction in the timing. Jonathan says that an impossibility is itself an impossibility, and therefore a solution must exist. What do you think?’

  I smiled faintly, and shaking myself slightly, I gathered my spirits together.

  ‘I quite agree with Jonathan’s principle,’ I said. ‘Whether our modest capacities can actually discover the solution is another question. We shall certainly try our best. I wonder what will come of it? Perhaps we really shall see something; it is, after all, impossible to fully grasp a situation on the basis of a mere explanation, no matter how detailed. By the way, do you have a good watch or clock to do the timing with? We will need a second hand.’

  ‘My watch has a second hand,’ she said, showing me a dainty charm, which hung from her wrist on a thick chain of silver links. ‘I believe that Amy has one as well. I wonder where she is? She and Jonathan should be here already.’

  A ring at the door answered her words.

  ‘There you go,’ I said.

  ‘But why on earth doesn’t Amy use her key?’ wondered Emily, going to open the door.

  It was not Jonathan and Amy who stood waiting upon the mat, but a youth in blue with brass buttons.

  ‘I have a telegram here for Mrs Weatherburn,’ he said, holding out a paper. I rushed to the door, and snatching it from him, tore it open. Emily watched me breathlessly, and I saw the pleasure and relief in my own face matched in hers, as I read these comforting words: Delightful babies full bloom enjoying tremendously Dora.

  ‘Ah, I am coming back to life,’ I said with a sigh that arose from the depths of my lungs, as I fetched a coin for the boy.

  ‘Is that why you looked so preoccupied?’ said Emily. ‘I hadn’t realised it; were you worried about your babies?’

  ‘It is the first time I have ever left them,’ I admitted. ‘But it was all exacerbated by these things I read today. Oh, this does make me happy!’ and I folded up the precious paper and tucked it into my dress.

  Jonathan and Amy appeared shortly afterwards, and we fell to preparing a modest supper together.

  ‘Open this bottle of wine while we slice the vegetables,’ said Emily, handing it to Jonathan; ‘we purchased it especially for this evening. We thought that a little extra courage might not come amiss.’

  ‘Anything you wish,’ said Jonathan, gazing at her with a look which I suddenly realised could only be described as devotion. ‘Give me a corkscrew.’

  ‘A corkscrew? Oh!’ said Emily with a slight blush. ‘We didn’t think of that. Do we have one, Amy?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t believe so,’ said that young lady. ‘We never drink wine. Jonathan, do invent something, I’m sure you can. As long as you don’t let pieces of the cork fall into the wine! One always reads that that is disgusting.’

  ‘Well, give me your work basket,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll try it with this thing here, what do you call it,’ he added, turning over the things, and discovering a crochet hook. ‘I’ll pierce it with this big needle first.’

  He bent over the cork, and Amy, her hands covered with flour as she kneaded and rolled out a pie crust, turned to smile at Emily. But Emily, concentrating hard on her preparations, did not look up.

  Wherever I go, I seem to perceive currents of emotion under the surface. Something is certainly going on here, and perhaps even several unspoken things, but as of yet, I do not really understand them. Unless, of course, it is all in my imagination …

  While the girls prepared chicken pie and Jonathan made every effort to cause the broken bits of cork to move up and out rather than down into the bottle, I boiled up some milk and set it to simmer very slowly with ric
e for a pudding. Our cooking took some time, and by the time we sat down to dinner, a velvet darkness had fallen outside and we were very hungry. The meal together was light-hearted and lovely. I almost felt myself envying the enjoyable lives that students lead, with modest demands and few amenities except for the immeasurable one of independence and freedom.

  ‘Let us tell her all about it, Jonathan,’ said Amy, as we sat down around the table. ‘We have done what we promised; we shall be able to introduce you to our cousin Rivka and her family. Tomorrow would be possible. What are your plans for tomorrow?’