HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  Suddenly, a warning shot rang out.

  Silence fell like a blanket on the street. It was smouldering, hate-filled, menacing. One shout, one object thrown on either side of the gate, and the militia would shoot to kill.

  ‘They want Jewish blood,’ Lavedrine murmured. ‘We must enter, or fight our way back. Tell the guardsmen to hold the gate.’

  Some signal might have passed. Lavedrine pushed, the old man pulled. We ran in, the soldiers ran in behind us, and the heavy gate crashed closed.

  ‘It was meant to keep them in,’ Lavedrine muttered. ‘Now, it will keep their enemies out. What strange times we live in!’

  Beyond the gate, the mob began to howl again. I felt as though we had run away from jackals, only to step inside a lion’s cage. But the way the Jews retreated before us, we might have been the lions.

  ‘Hold your guard here,’ I shouted to the corporal.

  I looked around, wondering whether this alien place could rightly be called Prussia. The panic we had caused outside the gate was mirrored inside the ghetto. There was a wild babble of voices, a sudden scattering as people ran away. But that old man did not flinch. He might have been turned to basalt.

  ‘We are looking for a man named Aaron Jacob,’ I whispered, leaning closer to his ear. ‘It is not our intention to arrest him, or to harm anyone else. We are here to protect you all from false accusations.’

  The Jewish elder stared at me intently. He must have wondered whether I represented salvation, as I promised, or the levelling arm of Caesar.

  ‘I will take you to him,’ he said to me in refined German, slipping his hand protectively under my arm, as if I were a child. ‘If you carry Aaron off, it will mean death for the children of our community. Bear that in mind. He is Baal Shem. The only man who knows how to cure them.’

  Ten or twelve men—each one wearing a skullcap or striped mantle on his head—formed around us like a protective phalanx. We turned as a mass and began to walk down Judenstrasse. The place seemed to grow darker, more forbidding, as if we were entering the tunnel of a mine. I raised my eyes from the damp, muddy cobbles, and looked up. The roofs of the houses, three or four floors high, let in light, but not very much. On the upper floors, grey faces stared down at us, only to pull back quickly as they caught my eye. Not a word was heard, not a shout, or a whisper. Those houses might have been inhabited by ghosts.

  ‘Is Aaron Jacob a médecin?’ Lavedrine asked.

  The leader nodded, turning into a side-street that was narrower than the one we had just left. This cul-de-sac ended in a dark walled-in courtyard. In the centre stood a large rusty anvil, like a forgotten image of the Golden Calf. It was impossible to guess what went on in that place.

  We stopped before a worm-eaten door. Our leader raised his hand and knocked. A moment later, he spoke to a woman who opened the door a crack.

  ‘Aaron is waiting for you,’ he said. He waved his hand, as if inviting us to enter, but neither he, nor any of the other men, made to follow us.

  ‘After you,’ Lavedrine quipped.

  I stepped inside the dwelling.

  The room was larger than I expected. On one side stood a vast chimneypiece, where two or three logs were smouldering. A large black pot hung from a fire-iron. It was covered with a stiff sheet of grease-stained canvas. Above the fire, on the mantle-shelf were three red-clay jars of a sort we use in Prussia for convenient evacuation of the bladder during the night, more commonly known as piss-pots. Each jar was covered with a lid, but what surprised me more was the fact that each one had been scrupulously marked with a written note in Jewish script, indicating the contents at which I had guessed.

  The woman seemed to melt away, leaving us alone with the acrid smell of excrement and urine.

  ‘Why would any man keep piss-pots in his living room?’ I murmured.

  The labels protruding from the stopper of each jar suggested an attention to detail that was at odds with the notion of slovenliness. I was trying to make some sense of the foreign squiggles when I heard a voice behind me.

  ‘Herr Magistrate, I will not invite you to enter, since you have already done so,’ he said. ‘My name is Aaron Jacob.’

  I had to narrow my eyes in the penumbra to make out the dark face against the dirty plaster. As he moved closer to the candlelight, I judged him to be no taller than my shoulder. He held himself straight and proud beneath a grey shawl that he wore upon his head and shoulders. His nose was large, his black eyes glistened brightly, his cheeks hung like heavy folds on either side of a large mouth with fleshy lips.

  ‘You have spoken to Biswanger, then,’ he said, and seemed perfectly at ease.

  ‘Who are you, sir?’ I asked. ‘Where are you from?’

  He replied at once, and spoke earnestly, as if he were willing to answer any question we might care to ask. He must have known that idle curiosity had not led us there. His full name was Aaron Abraham Jacob, he said. Five years earlier, he had been living in Vilnius, a town in Lithuanian Russia. After a disastrous harvest, many people drowned when the river flooded.

  ‘The population concluded, as the population usually does, that it was an act of God, and that the Jews were to blame for all their woes. Our people made the usual mistake of hiding in the synagogue,’ he told us with a sad smile. ‘And there was the usual massacre. That synagogue was burnt to the ground. Then, the Jewish quarter was set alight. But I had had the good sense to lead my family out of town, so we survived. Some months later, the result of wandering through the snow without adequate food and clothing, my wife was carried off by a fever of the lungs. A short time after that, my only son died . . .’

  He said all this with quiet dignity, as if Fate were an undeniable fact. Alone, he had wandered into Prussia, and settled for a short time in the city of Bromberg, but there the situation had been tense, especially before the French arrived. A friend invited him to come to Lotingen, a small town where nothing much ever seemed to happen. He had been living in Judenstrasse for going on three years without any problems. ‘Until this massacre,’ he murmured.

  ‘The man who brought us said that you’d been curing children. He claimed that only you could save them,’ said Lavedrine. ‘He used a particular expression . . .’

  ‘Baal Shem.’ Aaron Jacob smiled faintly.

  Perhaps it was the smile that triggered Lavedrine’s fiery reaction.

  ‘If this story of saving children is intended to protect you from accusations that may be made against you, regarding the murder of the Gottewald children, we will not be taken in,’ Lavedrine warned him. ‘Procurator Stiffeniis and I are interested only in the truth. Leon Biswanger spoke of houses, shrewd investments, business dealings. He made no mention of curing children.’

  I studied the face of Aaron Jacob. The man was intelligent. He realised that the only hope for himself and his people was to assist us. Until the murderer was caught, the crowd outside the gates in Judenstrasse would have no time for excuses or stratagems. As his black eyes followed Lavedrine’s, his pale face became even paler.

  ‘The man who brought you here was speaking of my most recent studies,’ Aaron Jacob said, breaking in upon my thoughts. He hesitated, then moved swiftly across the room. His hooded tunic reached down to his toes. Rather than walk, he seemed to float like a dark phantom.

  ‘Let me explain some facts,’ he said, reaching up and taking one of the covered pots from the shelf above the fireplace, ‘before I show you the cause of my—how shall I call it—success? A number of people have died in the ghetto, many children among them. The symptoms were, in all cases, similar. Sudden weight loss, accompanied by ravenous hunger. The more the patient ate, the hungrier he felt, and the thinner he became. There were also secondary symptoms: strong pains in the abdomen, stomach, and digestive tract; a nervous trembling; and faeces that were extremely nauseous. It was as if those people were being eaten from inside. Death by consumption followed on in every case. For quite some time, I was a helpless onlooker, but then I had a lucky
intuition. I found the culprit.’

  He unscrewed the metal cover from the jar.

  My hand rose instinctively to my nose and mouth, as the stench uncoiled like a venomous serpent.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Aaron Jacob laughed lightly. He bowed his head to us, then raised the chamber pot, and offered it, inviting us to look inside. ‘There’s no alternative, I’m afraid,’ he said, still smiling, ‘if you ever hope to put your curiosity to sleep. Science is a dirty business.’

  A dark soup of lumpy faeces slopped in the bottom of the pot. And from it, whitish skin made brighter by contrast with the dull brown slime, peered a worm as thick as a baby’s little finger, as long as the baby itself, its body twisting and turning upon itself. Again, my stomach lurched. For an instant, I thought I might be about to add a quantity of my own filth to that already gathered in the jar.

  ‘Here is the monster,’ Aaron Jacob said. He might have been showing us a pretty little kitten. ‘Tenia saginata, the “solitary worm”. This parasite is generally found in the stomachs of domestic animals. Cows, pigs, and sheep. If meat is not properly cooked, the larvae may be ingested by humans. We do not eat pork. Kashrut forbids the eating of the meat of unclean animals. But beef and mutton are not so innocent or clean as they seem.’ He pointed his finger at one rounded extremity with two pointed horns which wriggled blindly in the mess.

  ‘Those claws are sharp. They attach themselves to the walls of the beast’s intestine. But the digestive muscles of a cow are even stronger. Sometimes the worm is expelled in the faeces of the infected animal. Poor little worm! How does he survive all alone in the world?’ Aaron Jacob raised his finger and shook it rhetorically. ‘Like the Wandering Jew, sirs, he looks for a new home. Our children play in the dirt and mud. In Judenstrasse, there is no lack of filth. The tiny worm enters the human body, and it will not be so easily evicted a second time. It will grow and grow, and the host will eventually die. The smaller the child, the quicker the fatality. I have chosen to fight this parasite, and I seem to be winning. This is the evacuation of . . .’ He clapped the lid on the jar, held it up, and glanced at the label. ‘. . . Tobias Horowitz, five years of age. I keep the worm to see how long it can live without a source of nourishment. This one was expelled just yesterday.’ He tapped the side of the vase proudly. ‘The child’s mother will be pleased, no doubt.’

  Every woman fears the worm, and the mortal danger it represents for her children. Lotte had told Helena the most horrific stories, and would inevitably let out a frightful scream whenever she caught Manni playing in the dirt. What I had seen went further than the maid’s worst imagining.

  ‘How did you make it come out?’ I asked, curiosity overcoming disgust.

  ‘A pound of garlic boiled in vinegar. Little Tobias has been force-fed with a tube. That vile concoction, and nothing else for seven days. The child hates it, but the worm appears to hate it more.’ He replaced the jar on the shelf with the others.

  ‘Detached from the warm tissue of the stomach, deprived of blood, the worm begins to starve to death. Just as the sufferer would have done. It escapes by way of the bowels, and goes in search of a new home. If the Gentiles knew the habits of the worm, they would swear the Jews had created it. It sucks the blood of its victims, and drains them dry. Is that not what the Prussian people say of us, sir? And yet, it is a false analogy. Tenia saginata loves Jewish blood as much as any other.’

  He looked at me with a mild, amused expression on his face.

  ‘Baal Shem,’ he added. ‘The people here in the ghetto call me the Worker of Miracles. I know the man who brought you here. His granddaughter is being treated at the moment.’ He pointed to the jar at the end of the shelf. ‘Rachel Pfieffer . . .’

  ‘You have interests outside the ghetto,’ I cut him short. ‘Biswanger asserts that you possess properties in the town and rent them in his name. Is it true?’

  At the mention of Biswanger, the man’s face was shaken by a jolt.

  ‘Three of my houses are rented out by him,’ he admitted.

  ‘Including the cottage let to the Gottewalds,’ Lavedrine intervened. ‘Why did you allow it to go to them at such a miserable rent?’

  Aaron Jacob was not much older than myself, but there was a fragility about his figure that did not augur a long and healthy life. His head seemed too large and heavy for the slender neck that poked out of his robe. He was short of leg and large of chest, but neither legs nor chest gave any impression of strength.

  He turned to face me.

  ‘Do you wish me to tell you that I hired out that house because I wanted the blood of the children?’ He was frightened, but not cowed. ‘If that is what you believe, sir, you may as well throw me to the mob outside the gate. Let them tear me to pieces, if it suits your purposes. You could not torture such a falsehood from my lips, Herr Procurator.’

  Lavedrine came to my rescue.

  ‘It is a simple question. You will do us the justice of replying, Herr Jacob. We are not seeking a scapegoat. We want the truth. We came to Judenstrasse to placate the animosity of Lotingen. Those people are as frightened as the Jews. Tell us what you know about the Gottewalds, and we’ll be on our way. By helping us, you help yourself, and your people.’

  Aaron Jacob nodded once, then closed his eyes, as if to seal his determination.

  ‘Biswanger told me of the Prussian officer,’ he replied. ‘He told me that the man was interested in that house, and wanted to settle the question quickly. I did not like the business, that’s the truth. I was frightened. If that officer discovers who truly owns the house, I thought, he’ll report me to the authorities. Or try to blackmail me. It wouldn’t be the first time. But if I charge him next to nothing, I calculated, I will have the upper hand. No man, not even a Prussian major, cuts off his sharp nose to spite his ugly face. That’s what I thought! He won’t stay long, he’ll find somewhere better. They’ll send him to another place. These, and a hundred other expedients, led me reluctantly to agree to the contract. In any case, sir, I knew that Biswanger would make the officer pay more. He always does.’

  What would it be like, I asked myself, to live in such a manner, forced to calculate every move and weigh every proposition, with nothing in mind but survival?

  ‘Did Gottewald tell you why he wanted that particular house?’ Lavedrine asked.

  ‘I never met the man, or his family,’ he said. ‘That is, not in person . . .’

  He hesitated again, fright evident in his darting, evasive eyes.

  ‘What mystery is this?’ I demanded. ‘Did you meet Gottewald, his wife, and children? Or did you not?’

  ‘I never saw them,’ he replied. ‘Not alive.’ He gulped noisily at the air, as if a hand had been laid upon his throat. ‘But I know what they were like. The children, anyway. I asked Biswanger to make casts of their heads after they were dead . . .’

  His voice sank away to a whisper.

  ‘Biswanger told us,’ I said gravely. ‘Why on earth were you interested in such macabre trophies?’

  When he spoke again, his voice was little more than a murmur.

  ‘I can tell you why those children were killed,’ he said.

  25

  LAVEDRINE WAS THE first to break the stunned silence.

  ‘You know why they were murdered?’

  The man answered as if a simple statement of the obvious were a sufficient explanation of the massacre. ‘Those children were victims, sir,’ he replied. ‘That is one of my classifications.’

  I glanced towards Lavedrine. He stared back, and held my gaze.

  ‘You doubt my sanity?’ Aaron Jacob observed with dignity. ‘I can explain to you how I reached this conclusion. I have no doubt that you are interested.’

  ‘More than interested,’ Lavedrine replied. ‘But I asked you a question earlier, and you did not answer it. Are you a qualified physician, sir?’

  Aaron Jacob seemed to shrink inside his voluminous robes. He stared at Lavedrine with what might have been distaste.


  ‘Put yourself in my place for a moment, monsieur. Do you believe that I could ever qualify as a doctor? In Prussia? I am a Jew. An outcast. I make no secret of my creed, or my origins. I can never be anything outside my own community.’

  I knew what he was speaking of. In many of our cities, Jews were allowed to enter the town by one gate only—the gate reserved for cattle and other beasts, and they were taxed at the same rate. Jews were not permitted to own a book published in the German language, and they could be expelled from the country for possession alone. Unless they were prepared to forswear their religion, they were banned from our schools and universities. In my own class at the Institute of Halle, a student known as Franz Schmidt had been unmasked as a secret Jew. The university authorities had whipped him through the town for trying to pass himself off as a Prussian in order to study Jurisprudence.

  ‘Even so, you work “miracles”,’ Lavedrine contended.

  ‘Inside these walls, I do what I can,’ the man replied. ‘I know more than common ignorance will allow, but everything that I know, I have learnt by private study.’

  ‘Forgive me if I ask, but which German books have you, a Jew, been able to consult?’ I queried.

  Aaron Jacob smiled at me. He pulled the coverlet from his head and let it fall on his shoulders. His hair was greasy black with tallow wax, parted in the centre, pulled tight behind his ears in a pigtail. On the crown of his head he wore a small white skullcap.

  ‘I was born in Lithuania,’ he said, ‘but I am not Lithuanian. I live in Prussia, but I am not Prussian. I am a Jew. We have no nation—no home—except for the one that we have lost. I have made my way among fellow travellers. I speak German, but I also know Latin and Italian. French is no mystery to me. I read and understand the language. Russian is my second tongue. I admit to owning no German books,’ he paused. ‘But not all books are German, Herr Procurator. Many of the best come from Scotland in the north, Italy in the south, and other places, too. I have read everything that is relevant to my studies. From the greatest of the Ancients, Paracelsus, to Professor John Brown, who is living in Edinburgh at this very moment. If you wish to know why those children died, I can show you.’