The World That We Knew

by Alice Hoffman

  All Hanni knew was that someone among them must be saved.

  Then and there she decided to send her daughter away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MAGICIAN’S ASSISTANT

  BERLIN, SPRING 1941

  TANTE RUTH HAD LIVED FOR over a hundred years. She was so old that everyone she had ever loved had died. Now she wished to join them. Every day she set out a cup of tea for the Angel of Death, but Azriel never appeared, even though sooner or later he must walk through her door. She could not live forever, despite her talents as a seer and a healer. People believed her wisdom was inherited. Her father had been a rabbi in Russia who was so learned he was called The Magician, and her husband, also a rabbi, had been named The Magician’s Assistant. These men studied the Zohar, The Book of Splendour, which delved into the holy mysteries. Since the time of Solomon, sorcery had been attributed to the Jews, although the Torah condemned sorcery, except for a certain type of magic, permitted from the start, which used the mystical names of God and the angels. Access to such studies was denied to women, but Ruth had managed to learn quite a bit as she’d sewn the men’s garments, and cooked their dinners, and listened to their debates.

  Ruth covered her hair with a black scarf she had worn ever since she’d lost her husband. His ghost was beside her each night in her small bed, but every time she reached for him, he disappeared. This was how life was, tragic and unexplainable. When you were young you were afraid of ghosts, and when you were aged you called them to you. She knew it was impossible to completely understand the world God had created, but she had lived with two men who knew the seventy-two kinds of wisdom that were contained within God’s seventy-two names. Despite everything she had witnessed and all she had lost, she still believed in miracles.

  Her father, The Magician, and her husband, his Assistant, had access to books from Spain that revealed the inner workings of the known world through sacred geometry. The circle, for instance, was a perfect shape that possessed the power to ward off evil. In the first century B.C.E. a miracle worker named Honi Ha-Me’agel stood in a circle to call down rain upon the parched earth. Even now, on a couple’s wedding day, a bride must circle a groom, as mourners must circle the graves of the pious with thread. Numbers and shapes revealed the mysteries of the universe and the sacred name of God, which numerically represented the divine, and was present in all of His creations, including the mathematical equation of pi. Therefore it was through the purity of numbers that the rabbis attempted to understand God’s miracles. It was believed that all creation came from thought, language, and mathematics.

  When Hanni knocked on the door, Ruth drew her distraught neighbor into her tiny apartment and listened as Hanni wept, insisting she must send her daughter away. Ruth didn’t need magic to see the blood under her neighbor’s fingernails. It was indeed a terrible time.

  As Ruth made tea she thought over Hanni’s predicament. Ruth knew what evil could befall a young girl traveling alone, especially now, when there were demons dressed in army uniforms on every corner. Ruth knew of them as mazikin, terrible creatures whose work was the misery of humankind. They had accomplished their work in Berlin. Her neighbors hadn’t listened to Ruth when Nazi policy first began to separate Jews from the rest of the population. She had seen children and their mothers standing in the snow, begging for food, while the newspapers printed captions beneath photographs of Jewish businessmen and lawyers and professors. Here are the animals. Do you know this Beast?

  That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls. To fight what was wicked, magic and faith were needed. This was what one must turn to when there was no other option.

  “My father once told me of a creature.” Ruth lowered her voice as she poured the tea. “The golem.”

  She went on to explain that this monstrous entity was made of earth, but imbued with life by God’s allowance and man’s practice. A golem was created by use of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. First mentioned in the Book of Psalms, it had no soul, only ruach, the life and breath of animals. The Talmud stated that Adam himself was a golem until God gave him a soul, for a soul is said to be what divides us from all others.

  “What good would such a thing be to me?” Hanni wanted to know.

  “Have you no idea of what a golem can do? It can use the language of birds and of fish, tell time without a clock, and leap from a roof like a bat. It can see the future, commune with the dead, overcome demons. It can tell the day and hour of a person’s death. It can speak to angels and live among them. It cannot be stopped from any act unless it is held ten cubits above the ground, for at that height it is powerless. It continues to grow stronger each day, so much so that it can become too dangerous to keep. This creature has protected our people since the beginning of time. For one girl, it is likely this cannot be done. But one never knows what might be possible. With a golem beside her, your girl would be safe.”

  Ruth gave Hanni the address of a rabbi who was famous for his knowledge of spirits and magic.

  “The rabbi will refuse to talk to you,” Tante Ruth warned. “He will not even be in a room with a woman other than his wife. So you must go to her. Perhaps she will understand you, woman to woman. She brings babies into the world, so she may have a tender heart. But in case she doesn’t, bring something valuable with you. Perhaps, if she has knowledge, the wife can be bought. If you want a champion to protect your daughter, one who will follow her to the ends of the earth and never abandon her, a golem is the only answer. And only the most learned person can use the seventy-two names of God to bring forth the creature.”

  Hanni went to Bobeshi and sat beside her in bed. Whole families were disappearing every day. From her window, Bobeshi could see people using mirrors to communicate with their neighbors in code as they planned to flee.

  “We saved our treasure for a desperate time,” Hanni told her mother. “Now that time has come.”

  Bobeshi immediately gave her blessing.

  There was a small suitcase beneath the bed. In the lining was a slit no one could see, although Hanni knew where it was, even in the dark. She had made the cut, then sewn the seam closed with tiny, miraculous stitches that were nearly invisible. Her husband always said that if times had been different, she might have been a surgeon herself.

  She reached inside for the jewels they had brought with them from Russia. A poor man, Lea’s grandfather had come across a stranger in the woods who was being attacked by wolves. Lea’s grandfather shot each wolf, not knowing who it was he had saved. He cursed himself upon seeing it was the landowner and berated himself for the beautiful, wild lives he had taken; he had always felt they were his brothers. Still, he carried the master over his shoulder all the way home. In return for what he’d done the landowner’s wife had taken off her diamond ring and emerald earrings and placed them in his hand as he stood outside in the snow. Never sell these jewels for profit, he told his wife and his daughter. When the time comes, and you need them, know the wolves were the ones who saved us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE RABBI’S DAUGHTER

  BERLIN, SPRING 1941

  IT WAS PAST NINE AND therefore illegal to be in the street, but Hanni couldn’t think about what would happen if the authorities discovered her. She went quickly, wearing a cape Ruth had sprinkled with herbs that would make her invisible, if the night was dark enough, and the soldiers’ eyes were bad. Soon she had passed the community’s poorhouse, behind the synagogue on Pestalozzistrasse. The air was sweet with the scent of new leaves, despite the garbage that had been dumped on the streets. It was a soft March night filled with promise. Fortunately, there was no moon.

  The house was a squat stone structure that had once been a stable and appeared to have been abandoned. No lights burned. The rabbi and his family lived in small austere rooms, like mice in the dark, dependent on handouts from the
ir community. When it was time for prayers, dozens of somber men in black hats had come to pray and to look to the rabbi for guidance in all matters of scholarship. Jewish men were no longer allowed to shave, so that they would stand out as enemies of the Reich, and the young men appeared to be as old as grandfathers, and the grandfathers seemed so ancient they might have been entering the World to Come, Olam HaBa, and had already left the world that we walked through and knew so well.

  The men had once praised God three times a day in their long, black coats, but now, there was only one prayer meeting a day, held secretly at dawn, when the men of the community dared to leave their homes to assemble in the rabbi’s kitchen, which served as their shul. It would be a death sentence if they ever were found out.

  The first stars were sprinkled across the sky by the time Hanni reached the rabbi’s door. She shrank against the building as she knocked, softly at first, and then, when no one answered, with more urgency. It was late to be calling, a perilous hour, and she feared her presence would be ignored after the risks she’d taken to come here. But to her joy, the door opened at last and a bright-eyed young woman of seventeen stood on the threshold. She had pale red hair and a narrow face that was sparked with intelligence. She spoke in Yiddish, asking Hanni to come in without any questions. The stone hallway was dim, lit by a single candle on the wall. It was so cold in the house the girl wore a jacket and, underneath that, a hand-knit sweater. It was the time of year when one day was spring, and the next was winter, when birds in their nests often froze to death, and roses bloomed in the snow.

  “I need your mother’s help,” Hanni told the girl. By now she was so nervous her head was spinning. How she hoped that the rabbi’s wife would have compassion for her situation. “Please! I must speak to her.”

  “My mother has gone to bed.” The girl’s name was Ettie, and it was she, not her mother, who had the tender heart, although she was careful to hide it, for such things were bound to cause only grief. All the same, she was naturally curious, so she brought Hanni into the kitchen and gave her a drink of water. The kitchen was large and cold, with a fireplace in which to cook and a rusty iron sink. The place was a hovel, really, with no electricity. An old-fashioned lantern sputtered black smoke that singed the plaster ceiling.

  It was said that Ettie was too clever for her own good, and perhaps this was true. She was ambitious and often wished she had been born a boy and could do as she pleased. Her mother had taught her to keep her eyes downcast, unless someone addressed her directly. Then she could not stop herself from speaking bluntly and honestly. She had a heart-shaped face and a lovely body, but no one was bold enough to court her, although many considered doing so. Young men her age feared her contempt, which flared easily when she thought someone was a fool. She could always tell when a caller was desperate, as this visitor certainly was, for people in need often came to this house in search of help. Wanderers, widows, those without family or food, all begged for what they needed. Whenever possible and practical, Ettie’s mother did what she could to help, not out of the goodness of her heart, but because it was her duty. If she’d ever had a tender heart it had been locked away long ago. She had too many children and too many responsibilities to be tender, a quality that was weakness in her eyes.

  Now the rabbi’s wife had been awoken by the murmur of voices. She came into the kitchen in her nightgown, her shorn hair covered with a kerchief called a tichel, her face worried and drawn. There was danger everywhere, but it wasn’t her place to speak about such things. She had given birth to ten children and five of them had lived. Among the five, Ettie was her favorite, not that the rabbi’s wife let it show. What good did it do to have a favorite in a world that was so cruel?

  “What have you done?” she asked Ettie when she spied a stranger in her kitchen. She was not so foolish that she didn’t see that her favorite child had her flaws. The girl was too open and modern and much too smart, all qualities that led to nothing but trouble. “It’s too late to invite anyone in. The children are sleeping.” She gave Ettie a dark look that conveyed what was really meant: Your father cannot be disturbed.

  Ettie loved and respected her mother, and was wise enough to defer to her. They both had strong characters, but Ettie’s mother could be won over when she was convinced that God’s will was being upheld. “I thought the Almighty would want me to offer kindness to a neighbor,” Ettie said in a solemn voice.

  “She’s not my neighbor,” Ettie’s mother told her daughter. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “We are all neighbors in God’s eyes,” Ettie responded.

  Her mother nodded, a smile on her lips despite herself. Truly, she had never seen a more intelligent girl, one she loved beyond all reason.

  Mother and daughter were so focused on one another, they seemed to have forgotten Hanni entirely. Without waiting any longer, she went directly to the rabbi’s wife and sank to her knees. What she wanted, she must ask for now.

  “I have no one else to ask for help, so I am here. I beg of you, please don’t turn me away.”

  Embarrassed, the rabbi’s wife pulled Hanni to her feet. “I am nothing more than a woman. Get up!”

  But it was precisely because she was a woman that she took pity on Hanni. What would make a woman venture out when breaking the curfew could mean prison or death? There was only one cause. This woman was someone’s mother. The rabbi’s wife understood this. Her gaze lingered on her own daughter, who was watching her with shining eyes. For no reason other than her fierce love for her own child, she gave in and signaled Hanni to join her at an old table that was riddled with indentations left in the wood by cleavers and knives used for preparing meals. Women came here when it was time to give birth, and it was here that life came into the world. Countless children had been born on her table, while the rabbi slept or studied in his chambers. Afterward, the wood was always cleaned with salt and prayers were said. No child was safe during the eight days after birth, and circumcision and naming could not occur before that time. Birth was the ultimate gift and the ultimate sacrifice, the time when malevolent forces in the natural and supernatural worlds conspired to claim both the baby’s life and the mother’s. To suffer so for another, from the moment of existence, marked a person forever. In The Book of Light it had been written that true compassion and true love existed only among children and for children.

  “I want to send my daughter to France. I have a cousin there.”

  “France!” The rabbi’s wife was contemptuous. “The Nazis are eating France in one bite.”

  “When they do, she’ll move on to someplace safer.”

  “Are you a fool?” the rabbi’s wife said. “Those safe places won’t take in Jews.”

  Boats of refugees were being turned away, in New York and Cuba and England. Still, there were people who managed to forge papers, and those with relatives in another country had a better chance of finding asylum.

  “It’s a beginning,” Hanni insisted. “What would you have me do? Let my child stay here, where she will certainly perish?”

  The rabbi’s wife and daughter exchanged a look. When the rabbi left Russia, he had decided he would never run again. Their people were being arrested every day; still he had not changed his mind. Half of the Jews in their village in Russia had been murdered in a single day, and the survivors continued to dream of crimson-streaked snow and children who would never grow up to be men and women. The rabbi vowed never again to be chased from his home by tyrants. He refused to leave Berlin despite his wife’s pleas.

  “This is not a discussion for us to have,” the rabbi’s wife declared, though she herself had begged her husband to take them to Eretz Israel. Did he not see that soon there would be no escape other than to be raised up into the World to Come? Did she herself not have children whose lives were in danger?

  In another room the youngest son whimpered in his sleep. After that the women lowered their voices. Sound echoed here, and should the rabbi wake to see them he would be furi
ous. If their visitor called attention to them, the entire congregation would be in danger.

  “Be quick. What is it that you want?” The rabbi’s wife observed Hanni, carefully taking in her wide expressive mouth and black liquid eyes. Her clothes were plain and worn. A brown cotton dress, black stockings, a shawl that covered her hair. She had been beautiful, but she no longer cared about her appearance.

  “I need protection for my daughter when she travels.”

  “Go with her if you want to protect her,” the rabbi’s wife suggested.

  “My mother is too ill to go and I can’t leave her behind.” Surely, everyone understood the commandment to honor one’s parent. Hanni took the rabbi’s wife’s hand in her own, and for a moment the room seemed to float. “My daughter is too beautiful and innocent to be on her own. I need someone who will never leave her side and will fight every enemy on her behalf.” She took a breath so that she would have the courage to ask for what she wanted. “Someone that is created.”

  “Created?” The rabbi’s wife pulled her hand away. Her voice was brittle. Now she understood what the stranger wanted. Magic and darkness that could only lead to tragedy. “You’re a fool to think such things can be done easily, and to satisfy a mother’s whim! Do you think you’re the only one with a beautiful daughter? All over this city daughters are being murdered. What of my children? What of the children next door?”

  “I would do what I could for them, had I the means.”

  “What you want, you cannot have,” the rabbi’s wife said. “If it can be done at all, and I’m not saying it can be, educated scholars must do the deed, men of God who know the mysteries of life, not a woman who knows only how to bring babies into the world.” She stood, smacking her palms on the table. “This conversation is over. It is likely a sin to speak of these matters! You are asking for a creature that is little more than an animal, a beast one step above the world of demons and spirits. We have no business with such things!”