Travellers in Magic

by Lisa Goldstein

  “I think we’re done here,” her mother said. “Oh—Elijah’s cup. Could you reach it, Emily? It’s in the top cupboard there. Heather, go tell your grandfather we’re ready.”

  Emily would have wanted to be there when Heather met her father but she thought that her daughter could take care of herself. And maybe it would work out better this way; she knew she could hardly act neutral around him. Carefully she took down the goblet of cut crystal and filled it with wine.

  She had been fascinated by the cup as a child, that something so weighty could be fashioned into such airy beauty. She remembered how the candlelight would shine from its facets. And sometime during the evening the wine in the goblet would disappear. Her father would tell her and David that Elijah had come, that they had missed him again this year. She had been eight or nine when she realized that her father had been the one to drink the wine, and then she’d felt angry and embarrassed, as if she’d been taken in by a confidence trick.

  She took Elijah’s cup to the table and set it in front of Heather. If her daughter got bored by the service at least she would have something to look at. Everyone except her father was already sitting down at the table: the chair at the head was empty. Finally he came into the room. He had washed and changed, but Emily could see the dirt beneath his fingernails.

  Her father looked at the family with great satisfaction and made the blessing over the wine. “The youngest child reads the Four Questions,” he said when he had finished. “Bob read them last year and Mike the year before, and now it’s Heather’s turn.”

  Emily showed Heather the Four Questions in the Haggadah. She looked nervous but pleased by everyone’s attention. “Why is this night di—diff—”

  “Different,” Emily said.

  “Different. Different from all other nights.” Her voice, which had started out breathy, grew louder, more confident.

  “Very good,” Emily said when she had done.

  “You have asked me the four questions and now I will answer you,” her father said solemnly, exactly as he had said to her and her brother twenty and thirty years before. He began to read from the Haggadah in his sing-song old-fashioned Hebrew. “Avadim hayenu l’Paro b’Mizraim.” We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt.…

  She barely listened as her father told the story of Passover. The plagues God sent to Pharaoh. The flight of the Jews in the night. The parting of the Red Sea. Manna in the desert. Stories and miracles; no wonder her father enjoyed Passover so much. It was rooted in his blood and stretched back thousands of years. But no more; it would end here, with her and Heather. Heather would not be raised on this superstitious nonsense.

  She watched Heather and wondered what her daughter made of it all. She couldn’t be following it very well, even in the English translation printed alongside the Hebrew in the Haggadah. But Heather wasn’t even trying to understand. She was watching her father as he read, a look of wonder on her face.

  Damn! Emily thought. He’s doing it to her, just like he used to do it to all my friends. She’s fascinated by him, she’s under his spell. What on earth did he say to her outside? I’d better set her straight about him before it’s too late. It was Andy her grandfather had snubbed, after all. We’re only here because of the divorce—I’ll have to tell her that. And even then he didn’t even have the courage to invite me back—he had to get my mother to do it.

  She was so angry she didn’t notice her father had stopped reading. That was quick—they must have shortened the ceremony considerably during the years she’d missed. The shorter the better, as far as she was concerned. She had to get Heather home and tell her a few things, the difference between truth and lies, for one.

  Her mother and Janet got up and went into the kitchen for the food. Her father had embarked on one of his stories. She had missed the beginning; he was somewhere in Prague, arguing with someone. She would bet any amount of money he had never been to Prague. He had been too young for World War Two and too old for Korea; he had probably never left the country in his life.

  “So I said to the rabbi, I said, I know you have him there, up in your attic. And the rabbi says no, but he’s smiling, so I think, you know, he’s not telling me everything. I’ve heard the stories, I tell him, I know there’s a golem in the attic in this synagogue in Prague. You know what a golem is?”

  Bob and Mike and Heather watched him closely, as if he might turn into something magical and strange before their eyes. Their mouths were half-open. “A golem is a man made out of clay. A wise man had made this particular golem, the golem of Prague, and he put a verse from the Bible in its mouth, and the clay man got up and walked. And then the wise man put another verse in his own mouth, and he could fly.”

  “Which verse?” David asked.

  “How do I know which verse? If I knew that I’d do it myself.”

  “People can’t fly,” Heather said.

  Good for you, Emily thought.

  Her father looked at Heather. Emily remembered that look from her childhood; it was as if he’d chosen you for something special. It felt terrifying and exhilarating at once. To her credit Heather looked back at him, unblinking.

  “How do you know that, young lady?”

  “Well, they can’t. If you want to fly you have to get in a plane. I have to take a plane to visit my father.”

  “It’s just a story,” David said.

  “That’s the point,” Emily said. “When you’re a kid you don’t know that. I don’t want Heather growing up to believe all this mystical nonsense.”

  “But she knows what’s real and what isn’t. You heard her. She’s not stupid.”

  “She doesn’t know. That’s why she had to say something, to make sure. He’s confusing her.” And now I’m talking about my child in the third person, something I swore I’d never do, Emily thought.

  “Oh, come on, Emily. We knew, when we were kids.”

  “No, we didn’t. We believed it. You don’t remember.”

  “Maybe you believed it. I didn’t.”

  She knew he was wrong. He had forgotten it all; he thought their childhood had been idyllic because he had been the pampered one, the son. Sometimes she wished she could talk to him about growing up, wished they could compare maps of the country of their childhood. She thought she might like getting to know him. But it was probably too late: he had had six years of hearing their father recreate their past just as he had fabricated his own. David was beyond knowing what had happened and what hadn’t. The gulf between them was too great for her to cross.

  Her mother and Janet came in with the last two plates, piled high with chicken and salad and potatoes, and the family started to eat. As always her mother waited until everyone else had started before she would begin. “Emily,” she said. “Please don’t argue.”

  “I—” Emily said.

  “You either, David,” her mother said. She had learned a few things over the years.

  Heather reached out in front of her to play with Elijah’s cup. “Uh uh, don’t touch that, young lady,” her grandfather said. “Do you know whose glass that is?”

  “No,” Heather said.

  “That’s Elijah’s glass. Do you know who Elijah is?”

  Heather shook her head.

  “A prophet,” Mike said.

  “That’s right, a prophet. But more than that. When the Messiah comes, Elijah will come before him, announcing him. And tonight he visits every Jewish house in the world, drinking from the glasses we set out for him. What do you think of that? He must get awfully drunk, don’t you think?”

  Bob and Mike laughed. Heather, more serious, said, “Have you ever seen Elijah, Grandfather?” Emily thought she might be trying to get at the truth of this story too.

  “Me? No. But my grandfather, your great-great-grandfather, he saw him once, when he was a small child.”

  Bob and Mike put down their forks, intrigued, hoping for another story. All around the table the rest of the family stopped eating and looked up expectantly. Satisfied
that he had everyone’s attention her father took a sip of his wine and began.

  “My grandfather lived in Russia, a long time ago. They didn’t treat the Jews very well in Russia, you know, they were very anti-Semitic. Do you know what that means?”

  Heather shook her head. Emily remembered her father explaining the word to her when she was young, remembered the same tinge of sadness in his voice, so that she knew that whatever the word meant it was bad, very bad.

  “It means they didn’t like the Jews. Every so often they would sweep though a Jewish village and beat people, and steal things, and smash everything that was left. And when we celebrated Passover they would tell each other that we drank the blood of Christian babies, and then they would break into our houses and even kill a few people.

  “This particular Passover, the father of the house came back from the synagogue with a stranger, an old man. ‘He’s travelling by himself and he doesn’t have anyone to celebrate with,’ he said to his wife. ‘I told him he was welcome at our house.’

  “ ‘Of course,’ the mother said, even though they were very poor and hardly had enough food for themselves.

  “So they put another chair at the table and sat down, and just as they’d started the service they heard a knock at the door. The father opened the door but there was no one there. The flames of the candles nearly blew out in a sudden gust of wind. The father looked down and saw a young boy slumped on the doorstep. He looked closer and saw that the boy was dead.

  “Sometimes, you see, the Russians would kill children, Christian children, and leave them on the doorsteps of Jewish homes. And then they would come by and look for this child, and the whole family would be blamed. They’d be arrested, or worse. So the father felt frightened, terribly frightened. He didn’t know what to do. There was no time to bury the boy, or take him away. The mother was saying, ‘Who is it?’ and he stepped in front of the body so she wouldn’t see it.

  “But the stranger had come up behind him, and he knew what to do. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘This boy is about the same size as your youngest.’ That was my grandfather. ‘Dress him in his clothes and seat him at the table. When they come looking we’ll say this boy is one of your children.’ ”

  Her father took another sip of wine. Emily looked at Heather and wondered what she would make of all this. Whenever her family got together they would tell stories of atrocities against the Jews. She felt they were showing her little training films, and the lesson she had to learn was that to be Jewish was to suffer. But she had never encountered any anti-Semitism in her life, though she knew her father had. Did she want Heather to grow up knowing this long and bloody history?

  Her father continued the story.

  “The father didn’t like that, but he could see he had no choice. So they carried the boy inside and dressed him in my grandfather’s clothes, and they sat him at the table, his head down. And no sooner had they done this then there was another knock on the door.

  “The father went to answer it, and another gust of wind came inside and shook the candle flames. Five or six soldiers stood outside on the doorstep. ‘A woman reported her boy missing,’ one of them said. ‘We’re checking all the houses in the area.’

  “Well, the father couldn’t say anything, but the stranger waved them in. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘Anything we can do to help.’ He showed them around the house, which was very small, only three or four rooms. ‘As you can see, the boy isn’t here. I hope you find him.’ And he led the soldiers back to the door.

  “But one of them stopped and looked at the dead child, sitting face down at the table. ‘He’s been ill,’ the stranger said. ‘We didn’t want to wake him for the service.’

  “ ‘He looks like the one reported missing,’ the soldier said.

  “The father watched as he moved toward the table. He couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. What would they do when they discovered the dead boy? His family, his children, would all be killed. He knew how the mother of this boy must feel. It’s a dreadful thing to lose a child, the worst thing in the world.”

  Her father looked at Emily as he spoke. There it was again, that intense black gaze, the feeling of being singled out. He wanted her to understand something.

  “The stranger went to the table. ‘Rise, my child,’ the stranger said. ‘The time has come to say the Four Questions.’ ”

  No one at the table spoke. They had forgotten to breathe. And suddenly Emily knew what it was her father wanted her to understand, though it had taken her a lifetime to learn it. He had never told her how he felt because he couldn’t; the only way he knew was to tell stories. When he’d talked about losing a child he’d meant her. That was the only apology she would ever get for six years of silence, but it was enough. More than enough.

  “There was silence in the room,” her father said, finishing the story. “Some silences are terrible. Then the young boy stood, and in a clear voice he said, ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ ”

  Everyone at the table sighed at the same time, a pent-up breath of relief. “The traveller, the old man,” her father said. “That was Elijah.”

  “Was that a true story, Grandfather?” Heather asked.

  “True?” her father said, looking at Emily. She nodded to show she understood. Some silences are terrible. “That’s the way my grandfather told it to me, and I believed it. Not that I don’t believe it now, on the first night of Passover, when everything is possible.”

  —For Amy and Alex Galas

  AFTERWORD

  When Kristine Rusch asked me to write a story for the holiday issue of Pulphouse I misunderstood the assignment. Her letter asked for stories about holidays “from Halloween to Valentine’s Day.” She meant, of course, that she wanted stories that took place between October 31 and February 14, but I thought she wanted writers to deal with themes running the gamut of holidays, everything from Halloween to Valentine’s Day.

  So I wrote about Passover. I’ve never been very good at writing to editorial order.

  I’ve always felt that there’s a mystic quality to Passover. It seems to lend itself to fantasy more than any other Jewish holiday. It is, after all, a night of recounting of miracles.

  When I went to Los Angeles for Passover the year I wrote this story my uncle, without knowing it, gave me some of the best lines. It is to him and to my aunt that “A Traveller at Passover” is dedicated.

  INFINITE RICHES

  He heard the key turn in the lock: after so many years he could pick out that sound from a hundred other noises. He looked up from his books, heard the muffled conversation and laughter outside his cell. Then, suddenly, his small room filled with men.

  There seemed to be hundreds of them; he was not used to seeing so many people at once. He had to blink to allow his vision to accommodate them all.

  “Sir Walter,” one of them said. He spoke a little scornfully, as if Raleigh’s knighthood no longer meant anything.

  “Aye?” Walter said.

  “The king is considering granting you a pardon.”

  “Is he?” Walter heard the dry, sardonic tone in his words, but he could not bring himself to beg, not even now.

  “Aye. He wants to know the location of El Dorado.”

  “Ah,” he said, not allowing his expression to change. He had heard rumors of the King James’s financial problems and had seen immediately how he could use those problems to his advantage. He had written several people, bribed several more. His heart beat faster. Could it be that after twelve years he would finally be allowed his freedom?

  Now he noticed the fine clothes of the men who had come to deal with him, all of them the king’s courtiers and favorites. He stood; he topped the tallest by nearly a head. “Aye,” he said. “Tell the king I’ll find him El Dorado.”

  They exchanged courtesies and then the finely-dressed men—there were only half a dozen of them, after all—took their leave. He had not recognized any of them: a whole generation had come t
o power since he had been imprisoned. He wondered how much his lack of knowledge of court life would hurt his cause.

  He would have to be cautious now, very cautious. He would have to plan carefully, to call in favors from all the men he had helped over the years. But he was too excited to sit still. He began to pace his small cell, thinking of the strange history that had brought him to the Tower.

  It was true that he had served the old queen, Elizabeth, for so long that the accession of King James had caught him unprepared. And his first meeting with the new king had hardly been propitious: “On my soul, man, I have heard rawly of thee,” James had said. He knew then that while he had been mourning his queen his enemies had been busy with the old charges, the accusations of atheism, treason, Machiavellian policy. He was unready, his defenses down. In a very short time he had been sentenced to imprisonment.

  They were afraid of him, he understood that. “Damnably proud,” they had called him, even before his fall from favor. And all the men from the old reign had died, Leicester and Drake and Essex; he alone had survived into this drab, petty age. It was no wonder James hadn’t known what to do with him, that the king had taken the path of cowardice and sent him to prison.

  Not that his confinement had been as harsh as some. He had been allowed a small garden, and a shed filled with retorts and copper tubing in which to conduct chemical experiments. He had had leisure enough to begin to write a book called The History of the World; if he was not to be freed perhaps he would continue with it and take it beyond the year 168 B.C., where he had left it. Two years after he had come to the Tower of London his friend the Earl of Northumberland had been imprisoned as well, and together they had carried out experiments, talking long into the night. But he would not be sorry to leave—nay, he would not. If the king wanted him to find El Dorado he would be ready. Perhaps his entire life had been spent in preparation for this voyage.