All I could think of to say was, “I am an old man, but never in my life have I been so arrogant as to feel called upon to sit in judgment on my fellow men.”
“I thank you, Herr Pernath”, was her warm but simple reply. “But now I must ask you to listen patiently, to see if you can help me in my desperate situation, or at least advise me.” I could feel she was in the grip of some terrible fear, her voice trembled. “That night, in the studio, that was when, to my horror, I suddenly realised that hideous monster was deliberately spying on me. For months already I had noticed that wherever I went – whether alone, or with my husband or … with … with Dr. Savioli – the villainous face of that junk-dealer would always appear somewhere in the vicinity. Awake or asleep, those squinting eyes haunted me. There is still no sign of what his intentions are, but that only increases the fear that torments me at night: when is he going to slip the noose round my neck?
At first Dr. Savioli tried to reassure me. What could a poor wretch like this Aaron Wassertrum do? At worst it would be some petty blackmail or something of the kind. But his lips went white, every time the name of Wassertrum was mentioned, and I began to suspect that, to reassure me, Dr. Savioli was concealing something from me, something dreadful that might cost him his life – or me mine!
And then I learnt what it was that he was carefully trying to conceal from me: this Wassertrum has been to see him several times, at night, in his apartment! I know something is going on, I can sense with every fibre of my body that something is gradually tightening round us like a snake crushing its prey. What does that murderer think he’s doing? Why can’t Dr. Savioli shake him off? No, no, I won’t put up with it any longer, I must do something – anything – before it drives me mad.”
I tried to put in a few words of comfort, but she interrupted me. “And in the last few days the nightmare that is threatening to choke me has taken on more and more tangible form. Dr. Savioli has suddenly fallen ill; I cannot contact him, cannot visit him without the constant fear of my love for him being discovered. He is delirious, and all that I could find out is that in his fever he imagines he is being pursued by some monster with a hare-lip: Aaron Wassertrum!
I know how brave Dr. Savioli is, so you can imagine how much it terrifies me to know that he has collapsed, paralysed by a fear which to me just seems like the dark presence of the Angel of Death.
You will say that I am a coward. If my love for him is so great, why do I not openly admit it, why do I not give up everything for him, wealth, honour, reputation and so on? But” – she screamed out the words so that they echoed round the galleries – “I cannot! I have my child, my dear little girl! I can’t give up my girl! Do you think my husband would let me keep her? Here, Herr Pernath, take this” – frantically she tore open a bag that was stuffed full of strings of pearls and jewels – “and give it to this Wassertrum. I know how rapacious he is, he can have everything I possess, but he must leave me my child. That will keep him quiet, won’t it? Please say something, please, for the love of God, even if it’s only one word! Say you will help me!”
She was almost beside herself, but with great difficulty I managed to calm her sufficiently to get her to sit down in one of the pews. I said whatever came into my head, a tangle of disjointed phrases. All the while thoughts were whizzing round my brain, fantastic bubbles that burst scarcely had they seen the light of day, so that I hardly knew myself what my lips were saying.
Unconsciously, my gaze was fixed on the painted statue of a monk standing in a niche in the wall. As I talked and talked, the statue gradually became transformed, the monk’s habit turning into a threadbare overcoat with a turned-up collar out of which appeared a youthful face with emaciated cheeks and unhealthy red blotches. Before I could comprehend my vision, the monk had returned. The throb of blood in my veins was too loud.
The unfortunate woman was bent over my hand, sobbing gently. I gave her some of the energy which had come to me when I had read her letter and which I could feel again now, coursing powerfully through my limbs. Slowly she seemed to recover.
After a long silence she started to speak softly, “I will tell you why it is you I have turned to, Herr Pernath. It is because of a few words you once said to me, and which I have never forgotten, even though it was all those years ago.”
All those years ago? My blood froze.
“You were saying goodbye to me – I can’t remember why, I was still a child – and you said in a friendly, but oh, so sad voice, ‘I presume it will never happen, but if there should come a time in your life when you don’t know where to turn, then remember me. Perhaps the good Lord will allow me to be the one to help you.’ I turned away quickly and dropped my ball into the fountain so that you would not see my tears. What I would really have liked to do would have been to give you the heart of red coral that I wore on a silk ribbon round my neck, but I was too embarrassed, it would have seemed so silly.”
Memory
The invisible, choking fingers were feeling their way towards my tongue again. Without warning an image appeared before my mind’s eye, like the pale reflected shimmer of a long-lost, yearned-for land: a little girl in a white dress, and all around her the parkland of a country estate surrounded by old elm-trees. I could see it quite clearly.
I must have changed colour, I could tell by the hurried way she went on. “I know that what you said then was just prompted by the mood of farewell, but they have often been a comfort to me, and … and I thank you for that.”
I clenched my teeth and called up all my strength to bury the raging pain deep in my breast which was threatening to tear me apart.
I realised that the hand which had bolted the door to my memories had performed an act of mercy. That brief shimmer from the old days had etched its message on my mind: for years a love that was too strong for my heart had gnawed at my mind until insanity had spread the soothing balm of oblivion over my wounded spirit.
Gradually insensibility spread its peace over me, cooling the tears behind my eyelids. Solemnly, proudly, the bells echoed through the Cathedral, and I could look with a joyful smile into the eyes of the one who had come to seek help from me.
Once more I heard the dull thud of the carriage door and the clatter of the horses’ hooves.
Trudging through the glittering, midnight-blue snow, I made my way back down into the town. The street-lamps blinked at me in astonishment, and the piles of Christmas trees stacked up high whispered of tinsel and silver-painted nuts and the coming celebrations. Beside the column bearing the statue of the Mother of God, the old beggarwomen with their grey scarves over their heads were muttering a rosary of the Virgin by candlelight. The stalls of the Christmas market were crouched around the dark entrance to the old Ghetto. Right in the middle of them, covered with red canvas, illuminated by the harsh light of smoky torches, was the open stage of a puppet theatre. Zwakh’s Punchinello, dressed in crimson and magenta, his whip with a skull dangling from it in his hand, clattered across the boards on a wooden stallion.
Crowded together in rows and with their fur caps pulled tight down over their ears, the children were staring up open-mouthed and listening spellbound to the verses of the Prague poet, Oskar Wiener, that my friend Zwakh was declaiming from inside the booth:
What have we here? A jumping jack!
As skinny as a rhyming hack;
All dressed in rags of red and blue –
Watch the tricks that he gets up to.
I turned down the dark, twisting street that led to the square. A packed, silent crowd was standing shoulder to shoulder in the darkness in front of a notice. One man had struck a match and I managed to read odd words here and there which registered dully in my consciousness:
Void of interest in my surroundings, void of all desire, I slowly went on into the darkness between the rows of unlit houses, a living corpse. A handful of tiny stars glittered in the narrow strip of sky above the gables.
At peace now, my thoughts went back to the Cathedral, and t
he calm that encompassed my soul became more blissful, more profound. All at once, from the square came the voice of the puppeteer, crystal clear on the wintry air, as if it were close to my ear:
Where is the heart of coral red?
It hung upon a silken thread,
Gleaming in the blood-red dawn.
GHOSTS
Until deep into the night I paced restlessly up and down my room, tormenting my brain to find some way of helping ‘her’. Often I was on the point of going down to Shemaiah Hillel, to tell him everything that had been confided to me and to ask him for advice, but each time I rejected the idea.
I saw him towering so high above me in the spirit, that it seemed a desecration to bother him with practical matters. Then again, there were moments when I was racked with doubt as to whether I really had been through all those happenings which, although only a brief span of time separated them from the present, now seemed so strangely faded compared to the throbbing vitality of my experiences of the last few hours.
Was it not all a dream? How could I, a man who had suffered the outrageous misfortune of forgetting his past, accept as fact, even for a moment, something for which my memory was the only witness on which I could call? My glance fell on Hillel’s candle, which was still on the chair. Thank God! I had been in personal contact with him; that at least was one thing I could be sure of. Should I not abandon all this introspection and rush straight down to him, clasp his knees and pour out the excruciating anguish that was eating away at my heart?
I already had my hand on the latch, but then I let go of it. I could see what would happen: Hillel would gently pass his hand over my eyes and – no, no, not that! I had no right to ask for relief. ‘She’ had put her trust in me and in my help and if, at the moment, the danger she feared appeared small and insignificant to me, it certainly seemed enormous to her.
Tomorrow would be time enough to ask Hillel for advice. I forced myself to look at the matter coolly and objectively. Should I go and disturb him now, in the middle of the night? Impossible! It would be the act of a madman.
I was going to light the lamp, but then I let it be. The reflection of the moonlight from the roofs opposite shone into my room, making it brighter than I needed. I was afraid the night would pass even more slowly if I lit the lamp. There was a sense of hopelessness about lighting the lamp just to await the morning; a vague fear whispered that that would make the dawn recede until I should never see it.
I went over to the window. The rows of ornate gables were like a ghostly cemetery floating in the air, weatherworn tombstones with eroded dates erected above the dark vaults of decay, those ‘dwelling-places’ where the swarms of the living had gnawed out caverns and passageways.
For a long time I stood there, staring out into the night, until I gradually became aware of a feeling of surprise nibbling gently at my consciousness: why was I not trembling with fear when I could clearly hear the sound of cautious steps from the other side of the wall?
I listened. There was no doubt about it, someone was out there again. The brief groans from the boards betrayed each hesitant, creeping step. At once I was fully alert again. Every fibre in my body was so concentrated in my determination to hear that I literally grew smaller. All my sense of time was focused on the present.
A brief rustling that broke off short, as if startled at itself, then deadly silence, that agonising, watchful hush, fraught with its own betrayal, that stretched each minute to an excruciating eternity. I stood there, stock-still, my ear pressed against the wall, with the ominous certainty rising in my throat that someone else was standing on the other side, doing just the same.
I strained my ear – nothing.
The studio next door seemed utterly deserted.
Silently, on tiptoe, I stole over to the chair by my bed, picked up Hillel’s candle and lit it. Then I stood there, working out what I was going to do. The handle of the iron door in the corridor that led to Savioli’s studio was on the other side. I picked up the first suitable implement that came to hand, a wire hook that I found on the table among my engraving tools. That kind of lock was easy to open, all it needed was one touch on the spring.
And then what would happen?
I decided that it could only be Aaron Wassertrum next door, prying around, perhaps rummaging through cupboards and drawers to find more evidence, more weapons in his fight against Savioli. What good would my interrupting him at it do?
I did not waste much time in thought. Action, not reflection, was what was needed! Anything to put an end to this terrible wait for morning to come!
The next moment I was standing by the iron door. I pushed at it, then carefully inserted the hook into the lock, listening all the time. Yes! From inside the studio came the scraping sound of someone pulling out a drawer.
The next moment the bolt shot back.
Although it was dark and my candle only dazzled me, I had a view of the whole room. A man in a long black coat started up in panic from a desk, hesitated for a second, uncertain what to do, took one step forward, as if he were going to hurl himself at me, then snatched his hat from his head and swiftly covered his face with it. I was about to demand what he was doing here, but he forestalled me. “Pernath? Is it you?! For God’s sake, get rid of that light!” I seemed to recognise the voice; it certainly wasn’t Wassertrum’s.
Automatically I blew out the candle.
The room lay in semi-darkness, dimly lit, like my own, by the shimmering haze from the window, and I had to strain my eyes to the utmost before I could recognise in the emaciated face with the unhealthy red blotches that suddenly appeared above the coat, the features of the medical student, Charousek.
“The monk!” were the words that came to my lips, and all at once I comprehended the vision I had had yesterday evening in the Cathedral. Charousek! That was the man I should turn to! And I heard once again the words he had spoken while we were sheltering from the rain in the house entrance, “Aaron Wassertrum will soon find out that there are those who can pierce the vital artery with poisoned needles through solid walls. Soon, on the very day he thinks he has Dr. Savioli at his mercy!”
Had I an ally in Charousek? Did he know what had happened as well? The fact that I had found him here, and at such an odd hour, suggested as much, but I was loth to ask him straight out. He had rushed over to the window and was peering through the curtains down into the street. I guessed that he was afraid Wassertrum might have seen the light of my candle.
After a long silence he said, in an unsteady voice, “You probably think I’m a thief, Pernath, finding me here, at night, in someone else’s apartment, but I swear to you –”
I interrupted immediately to reassure him. To show that I did not distrust him at all but saw him, on the contrary, as an ally, I told him everything – with the few reservations I thought necessary – about the studio and that I was afraid that a lady who was a close friend of mine was in danger of falling victim, in some way or other, to blackmailing demands from the rapacious Wassertrum. From the polite way he heard me out, without putting any questions, I deduced that he already knew most of it, even if not the precise details.
“So it’s true”, he muttered to himself when I had finished. “I was right after all. The fellow intends to ruin Savioli, but hasn’t enough evidence yet. Why else would he spend all his time snooping round here? You see,” he explained, when he saw my puzzled expression, “yesterday I was walking – let’s say ‘by chance’ – along Hahnpassgasse when I happened to notice Wassertrum strolling up and down, with feigned nonchalance, outside the entrance to this house; the moment he thought no one was looking, he quickly slipped into the building. I immediately followed and pretended to be visiting you; that is, I knocked at your door, and as I did so I caught him trying a key on the iron door to the roof space. Of course, he stopped the moment he saw me and used the same pretence of knocking at your door. You don’t seem to have been in.
Cautious enquiries in the Ghetto revealed that someone �
�� and from the descriptions it could only be Dr. Savioli – had a secret love-nest here. As Savioli is seriously ill, I could work out the rest for myself. See, I’ve taken these from the drawer, to thwart Wassertrum”, he said, pointing to a packet of letters on the desk. “They’re the only papers I could find, let’s hope I haven’t missed any. At least I’ve had a good look through all the chests and cupboards, as far as it’s possible in this darkness.”
As he was speaking, my eyes searched the room and were caught by the sight of a trapdoor in the floor. I vaguely remembered Zwakh telling me some time or other that there was a secret entrance to the study from below. It was square and had a ring as a handle.
“Where shall we keep the letters?” asked Charousek. “I should imagine you and I, Herr Pernath, are probably the only people Wassertrum thinks are harmless, me because … well … there are … particular reasons for that” (his features were twisted in an expression of violent hatred as he spat out those last words) “and you he considers …” Charousek choked back the word ‘mad’ with a hurried and obviously feigned fit of coughing, but I guessed what he had been going to say. I was not hurt by it. I felt so happy at the idea of being able to help ‘her’ that my sensitivity to such suggestions had completely vanished. We decided to hide the packet in my room and went back there through the iron door.
Charousek had left a long time ago but I still could not make up my mind to go to bed. A sense of unease was gnawing at me, making rest impossible. I felt there was still something I had to do, but what was it? What?
Make a plan of our next moves for Charousek? No, that alone wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t let the junk-dealer out of his sight for one second anyway, of that there was no doubt. I shuddered at the memory of the hatred emanating from his every word. What on earth could it be Wassertrum had done to him?
The Golem Page 9