He, She and It (45 page)

“You have trifled with the kabbalah all the years I’ve known you,” Avram said to Malkah. “Why do you bother? You’re a scientist, not a mystic.”

“I find different kinds of truth valuable. I fly like an angel in the Base. In turning all statements into numbers, isn’t gematria doing what a computer does? In fascination with the power of the word and a belief that the word is primary over matter, you may be talking nonsense about physics, but you’re telling the truth about people.”

“A person is as subject to physical laws as a stone is.”

“But a person reacts and decides what’s good or bad. For us the word is primary and paramount. We can curse each other to death or cure with words. With words we court each other, with words we punish each other. We construct the world out of words. The mind can kill or heal because it is the body.”

“Malkah, politicians almost did in the human race by confusing saying with doing. Acid rain killed the forests. They appointed a committee to discuss it. The ozone layer was disappearing. They said it was a minor problem to be dealt with in time. They confused the power of words over people with the power of words over matter—which is nonexistent.”

“You’re making dichotomies, but in Hebrew the word
davar
, as André Neher pointed out, means word
and
thing, no distinction. A word, an idea, is a thing. We see and hear the world with our minds, with words, in categories, not in raw sensory data. That was one of the improvements in Yod.”

“You’re becoming a Platonist, Malkah. Is the idea of god inborn?”

“I believe in holiness because I experience it. I don’t view it as a personal presence, but holiness is as vivid as sexual pleasure or hunger. Why do you go to services, Avram, if you find religious impulses bizarre and archaic?”

“Because it’s polite, Malkah. It’s social glue. It’s fulfilling my place in my family, my society, as my father did before me, with no more mysticism than he would have felt taking out a policy with an insurance agent. In those days there were large multis that bet people disasters would not occur—but of course there came a time when the skies fell,” he added as an aside to the younger folk. “These bets were called insurance policies.”

“Avram, I’m not betting. I don’t believe in an afterlife. And I’m dealing with experiences as real as eating this soup.”

“Why do they always argue?” Yod asked Shira.

“They have a lot of mutual history. And they enjoy arguing.”

“A man as arrogant as Avram, it’s my duty to shake him up,” Malkah said.

“A woman like Malkah, she comes to believe her own rhetoric,” Avram said. “She needs the rigor of a more disciplined mind to hold her fancies in check.”

“The two of you should sell tickets,” Zipporah said. “We could put you on as a comedy team. How about doling me out some more soup, Avram, if you aren’t too busy? I love this soup. I could go swimming in it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nili was saying. “Why would I want to pretend things in front of a camera with electrodes and transmitters implanted? Why should I live for other people’s excitement?”

“You don’t understand how highly stimmie stars are paid.” Gadi shook his head in bemusement, appealing with his eyes to the rest of the table. “They’re gods all over the world. Everybody wants to be a star or to imitate a star they adore.”

“I always wonder,” Yod said, his controlled voice pitched just loud enough for Shira to hear, “if you wish you were with him instead.”

“If I were, we’d be fighting—not for fun, like Malkah and Avram, but bitterly. Savagely. You and I work well together.”

“Inside their Base, we’ll find all the records on your son.”

“Will you help me?” Under the table she took his hand, dry, warm, finely made like the precision tool it was. He had beautiful hands, what Malkah had always called on men or women, artistic hands.

“I know we must get him back for you.”

“But how can you understand my need?”

“I understand that I cannot give you a baby and that you must have your child back or you’ll want another.” He regarded her gravely.

“I want Ari. No other.”

“But that won’t last unless we can recover him for you.”

“Good. Then help me.”

“I have that intention.” His hand closed around hers, gently but with a grip she doubted anything could break.

THIRTY

The Robber’s Mistake

The next day, the Maharal sends Joseph into Malá Strana on the far bank, to the house of Prince Bertier. Once there, Joseph is to deliver personally a boxed present. The Maharal insists that Joseph must place it in the prince’s hand, and only then to give him a note kept hidden until that moment.

The Maharal opens the box, showing Joseph how to spring the lock. Inside is a ring with a big green stone. “That’s an emerald, Joseph, and you are to give it to no one except to Prince Bertier himself. Mordecai Maisl has sacrificed it to this purpose. It is from New Spain, and no doubt, as with most such stones men consider precious, it has cost many lives. After the prince has accepted the ring, only then give him this letter from me, asking him to intercede with the emperor. Do not be turned away. Do not hand over the gift to any servant or assistant, or to his wife or his son. To the prince only. Then you may return to me, but not before.”

“Rabbi, I go. But you talk to me differently than you talk to anyone else. You say precisely what I have to do and not do. Am I more foolish than your other messengers and servants?”

The Maharal looks Joseph in the eyes. “In dealing with angels and demons, the kabbalah teaches us to be precise. To say exactly and no more. To say what is wanted and what is not wanted. You are a creature of magic, Joseph, and whether you are angel or demon or new life is only for ha-Shem to say. It is prudent to follow the precepts of ritual carefully.”

“I don’t think I’m an angel or a demon,” Joseph says. “I have no memories of life before the life you gave me. Like you, I am created of dust and water, as the Torah says.”

“There are angels of memory who can make us remember or take memories from us and drown us in forgetfulness, as there are angels and demons who give us dreams. Go now, Joseph, and do only as I have told you.”

“I obey.”

We are, remember, in the Renaissance, when the same man, Tycho Brahe, precisely observes the stars and casts the emperor’s horoscope; when alchemy and chemistry are conflated; when medicine deals with herbs like digitalis, which we use yet, while bleeding victims regularly into anemia; when humors of the human body are linked to emotions, planets, elements. Judah embraces the foremost science of his time and a passionate belief in demons. Perhaps only such a man could then create life or its simulacrum, as we do now in our laboratories. In every age, Yod, there are prevailing universal superstitions.

Joseph slips from the ghetto, crosses the Karl Bridge. On the river, a man is casting a net. A servant is spreading out linens to dry on the bank. Joseph hastens through the Mala Strana and climbs a street of many palaces, high up but not as high as the castle itself. The royal palace of Hradcany looms over them, immense and long, composed of many buildings, bristling with towers: round and onion domes, steeples, square towers. The great cathedral of St. Vitus, still under construction, stands inside the walls, as do many houses. The prince, however, has built his house outside, with a view of the next green hill and a monastery nearby. The plum blossoms are just opening in the orchards. Below them, sheep graze. The steep roof has red tiles; the stone palace itself is simple and graceful. Many windows with modillioned cornices pierce the symmetrical facade, a great extravagance. Lion-headed doors stand wide. He is brought in through a courtyard surrounded by graceful arcades; in the center is a well, protected by gilded wrought-iron grillwork.

Once inside, Joseph is kept waiting by the well, kept waiting in a servants’ anteroom, kept waiting upstairs. Finally, after
supper, long after dark and after the legal time for a Jew to be abroad in the Christian town without danger of imprisonment, he is summoned up yet another flight to a small room, sumptuously furnished. Through the open door Joseph can glimpse a bedchamber, grander than he has ever seen. The small room contains a writing desk painted with a tracery of flowers, tall-backed chairs and a spinet. He is terrified for a moment that he might be expected to play it, but the footman who ushered him in simply tells him to stand in the corner and wait. The ceiling is divided by plaster into many sections, each painted with floating naked ladies.

After another hour a man he assumes is the prince strolls in. Stout and florid, he stands in the center of the room, being divested of his jewels and outer garments—not of the street but of splendor—as he speaks. He wears more rings than Tycho Brahe. “Now, what is this mysterious errand?”

“Pane, may I approach with a gift from the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel? He wishes you and your family and your establishment health and good fortune and long life and every end you desire, and wishes me to give you a very small token of his fondness, pane.” Joseph reiterates with no inflection the message he was taught. He kneels to present the box, causing it to spring open.

Prince Bertier leans forward and eyes it carefully. Then, smiling, he motions one of his valets to take the ring out and hand it to him. “My, my. What have we here?”

“As my lord sees, it is an emerald from New Spain, unworthy of you but the best we can offer to your greatness,” says Joseph, the unctuous words sticking like taffy to his mouth.

“Why, you must thank your master. I presume Maisl found this somewhere, but it’s a beauty.”

“And my master bade me give you this note from him. For you to read personally, pane,” he adds, as the prince begins to wave the note toward the nearest valet. “Personally,” he repeats, and the prince sighs.

“Very well.” The prince glances over it, the ring glinting on his finger. He has put it on his index finger, moving another ring over and bumping one to the valet, who takes it from him. “Hmm. I understand. Tell your master I’ll see what I can do.”

“Time is short,” Joseph ventures.

“And the hour is late.” With a snapping gesture, the prince dismisses him. He is ushered speedily from the room, downstairs and into the street. It has taken him six hours to work his
way from the street to the prince’s little reception room. It takes them less than six minutes to turn him into the street again.

As he slips out into the dark, he removes his yellow patch that identifies him as liable to arrest or attack. It has been a frustrating day. He was created to defend, not to act as a messenger boy to haughty nobles who love bright bits of compressed carbon better than wisdom or people or compassion. He wonders idly if he could digest the emerald, but he doubts it. He tried biting iron once and found he could not chew it. He has his limits. The thought makes him walk a little faster down the cobblestone street, past the taverns, still open, past the whores plying their trade and the straggling street musicians and the beggars still hoping for a last few coins. It is a crisp night, with a memory of frost although past the date for it.

Raising his head to the wind like a big dog, he smells fresh new leaves, horse dung, roasting meat, the sharp smell of human and horse urine, the pitchy smell of a torch, the sour reek of spilled beer, wood smoke, the stench of sewage, the invitation of baking yeasty dough and cinnamon, odors snaking about him as he descends toward the river. Scraps of music waft out to him from a grand dwelling, the sound of feet against floorboards, the swish of skirts, laughter. In another street, a woman screams. A donkey is braying hoarsely in protest against some injury. Sewage trickles by. A baby is crying in fierce short bursts as if worked by a bellows.

Then from an alley two men move out from the left side and two more from the right. “Hello, farm boy,” one of them calls. “Let’s see if you’ve got anything to give us so maybe we’ll let you live.”

“I’m not a farm boy. I’m a messenger returning empty-handed. If you don’t let me pass, you’ll get nothing but trouble. I have no money, nothing but these big fists.” He holds up his hands in mock imploring, watching them all carefully.

The man who spoke wears a battered but quite lethal sword. The tallest clutches a short knife in the left hand and a length of wood studded with nails in his right. The others are armed with truncheons, clubs, probably daggers in their belts. They look to be businesslike ruffians, for whom a murder or two is part of a night’s labor. At the end of the block a woman crouches, a lookout for them, watching down the winding street.

The man with the sword puts it to Joseph’s chest, dead center, pricking him through the cloth and leather. “What you’ve got, we’ll take. Now.”

Joseph seizes the man’s sword hand, breaks it upward, snapping the sword, and flings the man through the air into the heavyset ruffian. As they go down, the tall one charges him, swinging the nailed club, knife held slightly sideways and low to slash upward. Joseph smashes that hand with a kick that sends the man sprawling. Now the other two are up. The swordsman with one arm crippled hangs back shouting directions to the others.