The Alchemist's Door

by Lisa Goldstein

  Was this the owner? He looked disappointingly ordinary, short enough so that the low roof did not bother him, with dark brown hair and a face you could pass in the street and never notice.

  The tavern was crowded; several people vied for the man’s attention. “Jan!” someone called.

  Loew’s heart beat faster. This was him, then. He no longer noticed the man’s ordinary appearance; he thought only that here, in front of him, might be the thirty-sixth, the man on whom the existence of the world depended.

  Loew took a seat out of the light of the candles and watched the tavern-keeper. Soon after he sat down, one of the men in the tavern told Jan that he had no money to pay for his meal. Jan shrugged, holding his arms out to the side as if to say, Never mind, there is money here for everyone. A few minutes later he did the same to another man.

  The third time this happened a woman walked out from the kitchen and began to berate him, softly at first and then louder and louder. “Are you letting him go without paying again?” she said. “We have no money to feed ourselves—what in God’s name do you think you are doing?”

  Jan shrugged again. Several of the men grinned and joked among themselves, as if this was a common occurrence. And Loew had to admit it looked a little comical: Jan’s wife was thin and even shorter than he was, but her voice boomed out as if it came from a much larger woman.

  The woman sighed loudly, a sigh meant to be heard in every corner of the room. Suddenly she noticed Loew and began to head toward him, but stopped when she saw the yellow circle sewn to his jacket.

  “And what are you doing here?” she said. “Aren’t there taverns in the Jewish Quarter? I suppose you’re going to eat and not pay as well—I know you Jews.”

  “I’d like—I’d like a beer,” Loew said.

  “Let me see your money first.”

  Loew began to search through his purse. Just then a man came into the room, and the woman turned away from Loew abruptly. The man’s face and hands were a mottled, unhealthy red, as if he had lived out-of-doors for years. He was dressed in rags and had no shoes; his feet were as thick as horn.

  “You!” Jan’s wife said. “I want you out! Right now!”

  “Let him stay, dearest,” Jan said. The endearment made the customers snicker again.

  “Are you going to give him money again?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “No! No, I forbid it!”

  Jan opened his purse. The beggar stood calmly, ignoring the woman, his hand outstretched. “Here you are,” Jan said. “Here’s thirty pennies, and—wait—here’s six more.”

  Jan’s wife seemed to have given up in disgust. She turned back to Loew. “A beer, did you say?”

  “Just a minute,” Loew said. He looked at Jan. “Why did you give that man thirty-six pennies?”

  “Because he’s hungry,” Jan said.

  “What difference does it make?” the wife asked Loew. “Are you here to drink or ask questions?”

  “No, I mean, why specifically that number? Why thirty-six?”

  Jan looked puzzled. “Because he doesn’t care that his wife and children are starving,” the wife said.

  “I don’t know,” the tavern-keeper said finally. “It’s an important number, I know that much. Every beggar has to get thirty-six pennies. Do you know why?”

  Loew shook his head. The wife set down a glass of beer and waited until he paid for it. He drank thoughtfully and then left the tavern.

  He hurried home, worried about missing evening prayers. His thoughts swirled like leaves in the wind. Was this a righteous man? He seemed a good man, someone doing the best he could in turbulent times, but was he the one they were looking for?

  Perhaps, Loew thought, I don’t want to think so. I expected a man filled with wisdom and learning, and he is far too simple. But is it necessary that a righteous man also be a learned one?

  A few days later he ventured out to find Jaroslav the stable-owner. Jaroslav proved far easier to locate; the second person he asked gave him directions to the stableyard, and then added, “He’s a wonderful man—gives a great deal of money to charity.”

  Good, Loew thought. He made his way to the stable and went inside. It was a cool dimly-lit place, smelling of animals and leather, hay and sweat and dung. A man came out of the darkness, calling something to someone over his shoulder.

  “Are you Jaroslav?” Loew asked.

  “Yes,” the man said. A small boy ran into the stable and Jaroslav motioned to Loew to wait a moment. The boy was probably his son; with his square face and lantern jaw he looked like a younger copy of the man.

  “Did you deliver the horse?” Jaroslav asked.

  The boy nodded.

  “And it took you—what?—an hour to get there and back?”

  The boy nodded, not so certain this time.

  “An hour,” Jaroslav said. “For a fifteen minute errand. Didn’t I tell you to come right back and not dawdle? Didn’t I?”

  The boy said nothing. Jaroslav grabbed him by the arm and began to cuff him. “I’m sorry,” the boy said. “I had to stop and—”

  “No excuses!” Jaroslav said, hitting him harder. “When I tell you to come right back, you come right back, do you understand me? Did you get his money, at least?”

  The boy nodded. He tried to reach into his purse while his father continued to hit him. “Here it is,” the boy said. “Thirty-six pennies to hire the horse, like you said.”

  “Good,” Jaroslav said. “At least you can do one thing right.”

  He let go of the boy and turned to Loew. But Loew was already leaving the stable, having seen enough.

  DEE GOT A LETTER FROM LOEW DESCRIBING HIS SEARCH A few weeks later. After his account of his visit to Jan’s tavern Loew had written: “Even if we never find this man I have already learned something from our quest—I have begun to regard every man with respect, even the most common among them, because any one of them might be the one we seek.”

  Dee rummaged among the papers on his desk and took out his list, then crossed off Jaroslav the stable-owner and put a question mark by Jan’s name. He stretched, went to his door and looked into the corridor. A beautiful woman was coming out of Countess Erzsébet’s rooms.

  She was not Anna nor Marie nor any of the others he had seen. He watched her idly, wondering what Erzsébet needed with so many serving women and ladies-in-waiting. As she headed for the stairway her shoulders began to round. Her hair grew white from the roots outward, as though an invisible hand was painting it; it struggled loose from its bindings and fell in unruly wires to cover her face. By the time she reached the stairs she was as bent as a crescent moon, and Dee knew who she was. Magdalena.

  He left his room and followed her down the hallway. Her gait had become slow, uncertain. He caught up with her easily at the foot of the stairs. “Magdalena,” he said.

  She turned toward him. “Doctor Dee. I was just going to get your supper.”

  Her face was guileless. Had he truly seen her as a young beautiful woman? Her hair had been light brown, like polished wood, and her eyes blue as a calm sea. She had stood as straight as a new blade of grass. He strained to see the color of her eyes, but her straggled hair shadowed her face.

  “Who are you, really?” he asked.

  “What?” She seemed genuinely confused.

  “I saw you come out of Erzsébet’s rooms just now. You looked far younger, like a maid of twenty.”

  “I—I did?”

  Was she hiding something? An expression passed over her face—guilt? fear?—so quickly he could not be certain he had really seen it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said evenly. “That must have been someone else. I have to get your supper now.”

  He nodded. Then he went back to his room, sat at his desk, and began to shake.

  Was nothing as it seemed? Was Magdalena one of Erzsebet’s women? Did she bathe in virgins’ blood—Judit’s blood?—to make herself younger? She had said she wanted to learn magic; what
sort of magic was it that she wanted to learn? Kelley’s sort, the kind that summoned demons and other evil creatures? Women should not study magic, he thought; they were too weak, prey for evil spirits who used them for their own ends. He had even told her that once.

  Was she in league with Kelley, had she followed Dee to Hungary at Kelley’s request, to spy on him? Why had she turned up so conveniently in the castle, at precisely the time he needed a servant?

  And what about Al Salah? Perhaps they were all working together, perhaps Al Salah had sent him to Hungary for his own purposes. Which one of them had suggested Hungary as his destination? He couldn’t remember.

  His trembling grew worse. There was no one he could trust. He remembered again how Kelley betrayed him. What about Judah Loew? No, he was being ridiculous.

  Someone screamed from across the hall.

  Dee hurried outside. The screams were coming from Erzsébet’s rooms. He knocked on the door. Anna opened it slightly, not letting him see the room behind her.

  “What’s happening here?” he asked.

  “One of our ladies is ill,” Anna said. “We have called a doctor to attend her. I’ll have to ask you to leave—we don’t want the contagion to spread.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Dee asked. The scream came again from behind the door.

  “I’m sorry—you’ll have to go now,” Anna said. She began to close the door, and Dee, helpless, had no choice but to back away.

  9

  LOEW THOUGHT HE KNEW ALL THE PEOPLE IN the Jewish Quarter, but he could not remember anyone called Samuel son of Abraham. But one evening he mentioned the name to a friend, and the friend reminded him that there used to be a Samuel who made furniture, and that his father’s name had been Abraham.

  “Is he still alive?” Loew asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen him for five years, but I’m certain I would have heard if he died.”

  “I don’t know,” the friend said. “You might ask his sister Rachel. I heard something about him, though—that he never leaves his workshop, that he’s working on something, I can’t remember what. The person who told me this seemed to think that Samuel had gone quite mad.”

  The next day Loew set out for Rachel’s house, remembering what his friend had told him. Could a madman be righteous? Or was it simply that a righteous man would appear mad to other people?

  Rachel answered the door, careful not to look directly at Loew. “Yes, Samuel is still alive,” she said. “He lives in the workshop behind my house.”

  “Can I see him?”

  Rachel hesitated for a long time. Loew was about to repeat his question when she finally nodded and led him through the house and into the back.

  Light poured into the workshop from several windows and lit the single piece of furniture in the room. Loew stopped and stared.

  It was a chair, and yet like no chair Loew had ever seen. It was fashioned of cherrywood that had been polished until it nearly glowed. A green stone shone in the center of the back and a shimmering mass of white coruscated out from it; it looked like an emerald surrounded by diamonds, although Samuel couldn’t possibly have afforded so many precious stones. Gold and silver filigree twined around other jewels, glittering red and blue and yellow.

  Samuel had been polishing the chair as they came in. Suddenly he stepped back, sat on the floor, and began sketching frantically, ignoring his visitors. Rachel said, “Samuel, Rabbi Loew is here to see you.”

  Samuel looked up, making an effort to come back from wherever he had been. “Good day, Rabbi Loew,” Samuel said. “Is he here yet?”

  “Who?” Loew asked, taken aback.

  “You’ve come to tell me he’s returned, isn’t that right? That my task here is almost finished.”

  “I’m sorry—I don’t understand.”

  “Elijah the prophet. He’s coming. This time he will bring the Messiah, and all our suffering will be at an end. And this—this is his chair. The Messiah’s chair.”

  Rachel looked at Loew, an expression of hopelessness on her face. He saw what she had had to endure for the past five years, saw that her brother had quietly gone mad without anyone in the Quarter realizing. Now he noticed that her clothes and Samuel’s were very nearly rags, that they both had the gaunt look of someone on the verge of starvation, that their roof—which he could see from the open door of the workshop—needed fixing, and that several of their windows had been covered by wooden boards. But the roof of the workshop was sturdy and all its windows were glass.

  “Other people are preparing for him as well,” Samuel said, not noticing Loew’s horrified expression. “There is a man making his shoes, of the softest leather. And another who is making his cup out of solid emerald.”

  Loew had never believed that the Messiah would come in his own lifetime. Perhaps he had been wrong, though; after all, why would someone devote his life to such an improbable task if it wasn’t true?

  The chair blazed in the center of the room, a green and red and blue fire. Loew shook his head. No, the Messiah would not come; none of the signs pointed to it. Samuel was mad, as his friend had said. And it appeared that others in the Quarter had caught his madness as well. They should be found, and helped. Samuel should be helped. And his poor sister …

  “Who are these other people?” Loew asked.

  Samuel went back to his sketching and did not answer. “Can you give me money to continue my work?” he asked, not looking up. “Thirty-six pennies, perhaps?”

  DEE SAT IN HIS ROOM AND READ LOEW’S ACCOUNT OF HIS adventure. Spring had turned into summer but he could not get warm; he kept the furnace going at all times and wrapped himself in his fur while he worked.

  Countess Erzsébet had not left after the month was up but had stayed on with her retinue. Magdalena said that the rumors about her were growing more and more lurid, and Dee noticed that the household staff tiptoed past her room, casting anxious glances over their shoulders as they went.

  “Should we cross Samuel off the list?” Loew had written. “Is he mad? It all depends, I suppose, on whether the Messiah comes or not. For myself, I have gone to the Chief Rabbi to ask if anything could be done for them—so, as you can see, I am not expecting any supernatural aid. The rabbi will make certain that they get alms—though I am afraid Samuel will simply use the money to continue his work.

  “I also found Anna, the wife of Václav the cobbler. Rather, I found out what has become of her—she died of a fever last winter. Everyone I talked to could not speak highly enough of her—she was a saint, a kind caring woman who helped everyone she could. Even I, who never knew her, have begun to think we have lost something very precious now that she is gone. But she cannot be the thirty-sixth, then, can she? The thirty-six are the pillars upholding the world, or so I understand it; if one of them topples the world falls, and Rudolf, or anyone, is free to remake it any way he wants.

  “There is one more interesting thing about Anna, though—she lived at 36 Karlova Street.

  “You ask me how I am. We have not been bothered by Rudolf since that last time. I think he fears my power, fears what I could do if he sends more men against me. Fortunately, he does not know how small my protection is, that it consists of one man.

  “I say ‘man,’ yet of course I know Yossel is not a man, that he lacks a soul, which can only come from God. But we have been talking, Yossel and I, and I have been amazed by his intelligence. Amazed and disturbed, sometimes, because he asks me questions I have not been able to answer. Why can’t he pray with the rest of the town? Why can’t he study with us?

  “But I was telling you about Rudolf. He has always been curious about my knowledge of Kabbalah, and now rumors are reaching him that I have managed to make a man of clay. He is not finished with us here—he will try again, and when he does I do not know what will happen. Sometimes I feel I should return to Poland, and yet I know I must stay here: I have been charged—by God?—to find the thirty-sixth and I must not leave until I do. Your friend, JL.”

 
Dee shook his head. The Messiah would not come, of course. He had already come, and the Jews had not recognized him. It was odd, Dee thought, that he had almost forgotten Loew’s false beliefs. Yet if Loew was in England he would be tortured or even burned if he expressed them aloud.

  He dipped his pen in the inkwell and crossed off Anna, and Samuel son of Abraham.

  A knock came at his door. He opened it to find Magdalena standing there, a tray of food in her hands. She looked, once again, like an old crone, and he wondered if he had imagined seeing her change from a young woman, if Magdalena had been right and he had simply confused her with someone else.

  “I must tell you something about Erzsébet,” she said, pushing past him into the room. She put the tray on his table and sat down without waiting to be asked. “I was right about that woman, that Marie. She’s a poisoner. They all are.”

  He sat opposite her. His heart was pounding loudly. How did she know so much about Erzsébet? He lifted a piece of bread, then realized he could not possibly eat it and set it back down. He watched her carefully. Would she change shape before his eyes?

  She did not seem to notice his discomfort. “I went back into Erzsébet’s rooms and started dusting,” she said. “Someone isn’t cleaning those rooms right—there’s an odd smell in there. I don’t know what all those women do all day. Anyway, I cleaned Anna’s room, and then went into Marie’s. She’d left her book, that book she said was a Bible. So I opened it, and the first thing I saw was the words ‘pain and poison’”

  “Pain and poison? That’s what the book said? Could you read anything else?”

  “No, unfortunately. Just as I was looking at it I heard someone come in. I closed the book and went out quickly, and there were Erzsébet and Anna and Marie. Erzsébet asked me what I was doing there. I said I’d been sent to clean the rooms. Erszébet said that I must be mistaken, that her own servants took care of that. She was smiling. I hate her smile. I curtseyed and said that I must have gotten confused and gone to the wrong rooms. And then I ran down to the kitchen and got your supper, and came back up when I was sure they’d all be back in their rooms.”