Raisins and Almonds (8 page)

'Then what happened?' asked Phryne, agog.

'Oh, then we carried it together—
such
a journey, we were terrified that something would happen to tear the miracle from us—into the lie de Cite to the Sotheby's man, and the relief when we laid it on his table and Bennie gave him the receipts for the provenance, they had to check of course that the dead count's family had such a thing in their possession, but it was clear title, inventory entries right back to the day they bought it from Michelangelo's estate. The dead man had no heirs, so we weren't taking anything away from anyone, such a great thing the Lord did for us. And we didn't have any money for a celebration so we had to walk back in the snow, you remember?' she asked fondly, and Benjamin Abrahams chuckled.

'I could smell trouble in France—there were synagogues desecrated and much anti-Semitic
dreck
in the newspapers. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
Jehl
Even when everyone knows that it is a Russian forgery, they were reprinting it. So when the chalk drawing was sold, we came out here to join my brother Chaim, he was not doing well in business and wanted a position, and he's family, of course, and a great help Chaim is, my right-hand man, eh Chaim?'

'A
mitzvah
,' said Chaim. A blessing.'

'No, no, Chaim, don't say that. You're too modest. I couldn't have managed without you,' said his brother.

Chaim shook his head, smiled, and took some more sherry. It was evidently an old argument. Mr Abrahams continued, 'So I came here and bought a house and a little property, we are very lucky. And you, Miss Fisher?'

'Phryne, please. I was born here and I was very poor until a lot of young men were killed in the Great War, and then I was suddenly rich and hauled off to England. After I left school there wasn't anything for me to do but Good Works or flower arranging, so I ran away to Paris, and then I came here because a man hired me to find out if his daughter was being poisoned by her husband. I like it here. I bought a house in St Kilda, I have a maid and a staff and two adopted daughters, a cat called Ember and just yesterday my household was increased by a new puppy. I've been very lucky, too,' said Phryne, who was always willing to count her blessings.

Mrs Abrahams beamed upon Phryne. This wealthy young woman was content in her independence and would not give it up to snare a rich boy, even one so beautiful and attractive as her son Simon.

'Tell me, do all the Jews in Melbourne speak with one voice about policy?' asked Phryne. 'There seem to be a number of views on immigration. And Palestine.'

'No, no,
one
voice? Ten thousand voices. There is a divide in the Jewish community,' responded Mr Abrahams. 'Those across the river, the "gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion" as they call themselves, Carlton thinks that they are compromising their Jewishness away, so that they forget that they are Jews, marry Christians, and cease to have an identity. People who do well move from Carlton now to East Kew, staying on this side of the city. The Jews who have been here longest live in Caulfield and Camberwell. They think that Carlton is running the risk of pogroms because they are so different, speaking Yiddish in the street, even wearing sidelocks and gabardine like the Hasidim in St Kilda. Carlton thinks that Caulfield has no guts and that they are all imitation Christians; Caulfield thinks that Carlton is obstinately different and foreign and, well, Jewish, and is going to get us all killed.'

'Who is right?' asked Phryne, allowing the butler to seat her at a snowily draped dinner table.

'Both, of course,' said Benjamin Abrahams. 'There is something to be said for keeping a low profile and possibly even for restricting immigration. It has worked in some places.'

'But not forever,' said Simon, alert, from next to Phryne.

'No, nothing works forever,' agreed Mr Abrahams.

'The only solution is Palestine,' said Simon.

'No, no, no,' said his father. 'What is there of the Holy Land now but mud and swamps and deserts and Turks? And Arabs? It is not ours any more. We were dispersed. We are exiles.'

'Then it is time we went home,' said Simon. 'Two thousand years wandering, it is enough. Already we have bought land there. Now that Zionism is established and we have a clear goal, we must go forward, purchase the land from the Arabs, and build a Promised Land again.'

'Palestine does not flow with milk and honey any more,' argued his father. 'It flows with dirty water and diseases. It is a dead land, and dead land cannot be resurrected. Besides, are we farmers? Can I milk a cow, turn a harrow, reap corn?'

'When they let us be farmers, we were,' protested Simon. 'There is the fruit-growing colony at Shepparton. And the settlers at Berwick have even their own Torah.'

'Enough,' scolded Mrs Abrahams. 'We invite an accomplished lady to dinner and what do we give her? Arguments about Zionism. She does not wish to hear them. Neither do I. We talk of other things,' she declared, and the conversation, dragged by the neck, was diverted into a discussion of art which lasted through three courses.

The food was delicious if, as the driver said, foreign. The entree was extremely good chicken bouillon, clear and salty. The roast was a conventional baron of beef, surrounded with crisp vegetables including roasted pumpkin and rich, garlicky wine sauce. Dessert was a collation of sliced exotic fruit: pineapple, mango, banana, pawpaw. Phryne was looking about for cream when she remembered a laborious chapter in Mr Goldman's book on the concept of kosher and the separation of milk dishes and flesh dishes, and accepted black coffee without a flicker.

The butler set an ashtray in front of Miss Fisher and she lit a gasper, complimenting her hostess on an excellent dinner. She drew in the smoke with pleasure. A really good dinner always made Phryne feel virtuous and benevolent, prone to love the whole human race.

The effect, regrettably, wore off fairly quickly.

Mr Abrahams lit a cigar, leaned back, and asked, 'And what has happened with the unfortunate Miss Lee?'

'I've spoken to her and I'm convinced she didn't do it. However, I don't know who did or why, and until I do Jack Robinson isn't going to let his prime suspect go free.' Phryne ran through her investigations so far, which had yielded remarkably little, and said, 'I need to know what is in those papers, and I need to know quickly. No one can read the Hebrew letters. Can you recommend a learned man for me?'

Husband and wife exchanged glances.

'Yes, well, yes, we know who might be able to read them, but ... he's a difficult man,' said Mr Abrahams carefully, consulting his wife with a waggle of one eyebrow.

She nodded and said slowly, 'Difficult, yes, but it is possible that Phryne could handle him. I don't think he's met anyone like her before, Bennie. Neither have I, hmm?'

'His name is Rabbi Elijah,' said Benjamin. 'He lives near you, in St Kilda. He is a very holy man, very learned, but ...'

'Difficult?' finished Phryne.

Mr Abrahams nodded ponderously 'Difficult.'

'I'll go and see him tomorrow. Can you give me a letter of introduction?'

'I don't think that would help. He is ...'

'Difficult,' conceded Simon. 'I can take you to him, but the only one of us Godless almost-gentiles he would speak to is Yossi Liebermann, and you had such a startling effect on him, Phryne ...'

'What happened to Yossi?' asked his father, and Simon described Yossi's abrupt exit from Mrs Grossman's house.

'Too much study, it turns the brain in the end, especially studying the Kabala, that is not meant for humans to understand,' commented Benjamin. 'Also of course he would not be comfortable in the presence of so beautiful and stylish a gentile lady, lest his purity be smirched, I beg your pardon, Phryne.'

'Not at all—a compliment, to have such an effect.'

'Poor Yossi,' sighed Julia. 'His mother had such hopes for him. He's a good shoemaker, a craftsman. Then he started reading all the ancient writings, the old Rabbis and now—' She sighed again.

Mr Abrahams objected mildly. 'He is still a good shoemaker and he is working well, even though he stays up all night, Lily Grossman says, making experiments and stenches and burning her table. Did I tell you that young Saul is almost bar mitzvah? We will need to arrange the reception.'

'He is a good boy, Saul,' said Julia, brightening. 'The reception will be in the house in Faraday Street?'

'\es, if it can be managed,' said Mr Abrahams, smiling at his wife.

'Of course it can be managed,' she said sharply. Phryne saw a ghost of the same expression of slightly irritated efficiency which she had seen on Mrs Grossman's face as she chivvied her children to prepare for the visitors. 'I will talk to Lily about it, Ben. You want a good spread?'

'Yes. Everything as Yossel would have wanted. His father was a good friend, a real
mensch
,' he explained to Phryne. 'And the boy is a good boy.'

'Yossel would be proud,' agreed Julia. 'I will arrange it.'

'About Rabbi Elijah.' Phryne inserted a word into the conversation.

'Rabbi Elijah? Difficult,' said Julia, unconscious of the irony.

'How do I get to see him?'

'You go to his house—Simon will take you—but make sure that he doesn't see Simon. To him we are as bad as the unobservant, almost as bad as the
meshumad.'

'Meshumad?'

'The Apostates. Those who embraced the Christian religion without threat of torture,' explained Simon. 'We are not Orthodox enough for the Hasidim, the Holy Ones. Perhaps he might prefer an honest
shiksa.'

'Simon!' reproved his father, but Phryne smiled.

'Perhaps he might at that,' she agreed, patting Simon's hand.

His mother smiled.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: But in the multitude of counsellors they are established.

The Holy Bible, Proverbs 15:22

I really can't remember anything about it,' protested Miss Lee. 'I already got the novels wrong, that was Wednesday.'

'Yes you can, Miss, you just have to close your eyes and put yourself back there and it's all in your head, just like a moving picture, that's what Miss Phryne says,' Dot instructed. 'Now, you're opening the shop and hanging up your coat and putting on your smock. Go on from there.'

'I unlocked the cash tin and just as I was taking out my stock book a young man came in and asked if I carried newspapers, and I told him I didn't.'

'What did he look like?'

'An ordinary young man,' said Miss Lee. 'Oh, dear, I can't do this. He had a serge suit and an umbrella—I would have said that he was a clerk. In any case he was only in the shop for less than a minute. I broke my pencil, then, and I was sharpening it when the bell tinkled and ...'

'Yes?' prompted Dot. Miss Lee's brow creased with effort. 'You're doing very well, you know.'

'The bell rang, I looked up from my pencil, and there was a delivery man with a big box. It was my auction books from Ballarat ... yes. I asked him to put it in the corner and I checked the invoice—there was something wrong with the invoice—what was it? Ah, yes, it had a blot over the list of contents, I couldn't read it. You have to be careful with dispatch notes, they fudge the orders sometimes, and if I was to sign it without checking what was in the box I couldn't complain if the one valuable book was missing and all the dross was there. Dross always is, somehow. I've never lost a set of Victorian sermons in my life ... I made the man wait until I checked the volumes, then I signed it and he went away. After that there was Mrs Johnson looking in for her cookery book, which I sold her, then this absurd woman and her atlas. Then the two young men and then Mr Michaels. Poor boy.'

'Tell me about the carter,' said Dot. Miss Lee ran her fingers through her short hair and groaned.

'He was just a carter, in gloves and boots and overalls and a greasy cloth cap—rather stout like they often are, dark, I thought, and gruff. But he did look at the books while I made him wait. I really didn't see his face, Miss Williams. Is it important?'

'Probably not,' conceded Dorothy. 'What about the woman with the atlas?'

'Oh, my dear, she was raddled and forty if she was a day, dressed in a rather tight dark blue suit and a perfectly absurd hat. It was a broad black straw with half a seagull on the side and shells all round the crown, I noticed it particularly because I really wanted to ... visit the convenience, and she was holding me up. She was asking me such silly questions and all I could see of her was this awful hat. She was small. About five foot.'

And common?' asked Dot, who had strong views on style.

'Oh, very. And foreign. Then two young men, friends, I gathered that they worked in the city. They had nice suits, a little loud perhaps. They were probably mechanics, or maybe something horsy.' Miss Lee's fine nose crinkled. 'They had a rather ... gamy smell. Then after that it was quiet and I could go to the convenience, and when I got back there was poor Mr Michaels and this all happened. Will this help?' she asked, and Dot patted her hand.

'Yes,' she said with perfect faith. 'Miss Phryne will find them.'

Phryne Fisher had dressed carefully for her encounter with Rabbi Elijah. She wore a black suit, the straight skirt reaching almost to her ankles, and a close-fitting black hat. Simon was impressed at how decorous she looked until she gave him a sensual smile which disturbed his equanimity.

'What do I call this rabbi?'

'He probably won't speak to you, don't be too offended, Phryne. He isn't supposed to talk to ... er ...'

'Shiksas?'

'Er ... yes. Call him Rabbi, if he speaks to you. Also, you must not touch him, in case you might be ritually unclean. Menstruating, you know,' blushed Simon. 'But you might catch his interest if you can show him the papers.'

'I can but try,' Phryne shrugged and got out of the car.

'He lives over there—and—what luck, Phryne!' exclaimed the young man. 'There he is, walking along there with all those children. Oh, no ...' he groaned, as Phryne saw what was happening and moved without thinking.

A ring of grubby children were dancing around an elderly man who was standing still, as though they had trapped him in a magic circle. They looked positively Pixie O'Harris if you could not hear what they were saying, thought Phryne, as she crossed the road at her fastest run and grabbed the biggest assailant by the ear.

'Yid, yid, yid.' The chant stopped abruptly.

'And just what are you doing?' she snarled at the largest child, suspending him painfully by the lobe.

'He's a yid,' he protested.

'Very clever. So he is. Is that a reason for tormenting him?'

'It's only what Dad says,' offered one child, biting her plait.

'What does Dad say?'

'That they're yids.'

'Then your dad is a bigoted idiot and you'll grow up the same.' Phryne was furious. The child she had by the ear began to cry.

'We didn't know it was wrong, Miss,' he pleaded.

'Well, you know now,' snapped Phryne. 'Now get home, you horrible little ratbags, and if I catch you doing such a thing again I shall take you all home to your mothers and order the biggest belting—you won't sit down for a month. Is that clear?' She thrust her face close to the terrified blubbering countenance, and he nodded.

'Go away right now,' said Phryne, dropping him and dusting her hands together. The children ran for their lives.

'You should not have done that, Miss,' said the old man softly.

'Why not?' Phryne was not noticeably softened.

'It will cause more trouble.'

'If people of goodwill do not act against evil, then they assent to evil,' said Phryne sententiously.

The quotation from Maimonides stopped the old man in his tracks. Phryne looked up into his face.

He was tall and painfully thin and he moved as though his bones hurt. The gaberdine was shiny black with age and inconspicuously patched, and his shoes were broken. His hat had seen better years and his hair was white. But his eyes were remarkable, bright, penetrating and deep.

'Who
are
you?' he asked abruptly.

'Phryne Fisher.' She did not offer her hand. 'I am trying to find a murderer. I need your help.'

'I cannot help you.' He turned and began to walk away.

'Shall I follow you down the street quoting Maimonides?' she asked, keeping pace with him. 'This is an evil thing, a young man dead, and I am responsible for getting a woman out of prison, which means I have to find the killer. Strychnine, it's a nasty death.'

'The dead are with God,' said Rabbi Elijah, not turning his head.

'But the concerns of the living are with the living.' She turned the quotation back on him. She had not spent three hours' hard reading for nothing. 'He who saves one man saves a nation. I cannot bring back Shimeon Mikhael, but I will save Miss Lee from the gallows. And I need your help.'

'How can I help?' At least he had stopped and was looking at her again. 'I go nowhere, see only my students.'

'I have some papers, found on the dead man.' She thrust them at him. 'No one can read them. It is thought that you might. They must contain a clue.'

He cast a glance over the red and gold parchments, shaking his head, then his attention was riveted by a line of Hebrew.

'This, maybe, I can read. Where did you find this?'

'In the pocket of a man called Simon Michaels, Shimeon Ben Mikhael.'

'Shimeon is
dead?'
murmured Rabbi Elijah.

'Shimeon is murdered, don't you read the papers?'

'The papers? No,' he said absently. 'We can sit in my study, Mrs Rabinowitz will come in. This way, Miss ...'

'Fisher. Phryne Fisher.'

Phryne walked beside Rabbi Elijah. He was looking at the Hebrew and speaking under his breath in an unknown tongue, a harsh and authoritative language, whatever it was. Phryne was amazed at the success of her tactic. But she wondered about the old man. He changed moods abruptly and his character seemed to flicker. He seemed close to the edge of sanity, perhaps senility. However, nothing to do but go on with the task.

They came into the lobby of a block of apartments, and he knocked on the second door.

The staircase smelt of urine; poverty reeked from the dilapidated building.

'Coming, coming,' yelled someone behind the blistered door. 'Oh, it's you, Rabbi, what can I do for you? Did you like the latkes I left for you last night?'

Mrs Rabinowitz was small and would have been stout if she had been properly fed. She was wiping her wet hands on her skirt as she came to the door. When she saw Phryne she stared in astonishment. The Rabbi waved a hand at her.

'This is Miss ... Miss ... it is of no importance. She has a translation task for me, can you come and sit with her? I must consult my books.'

Mrs Rabinowitz tugged off her apron, put her door key in her pocket, and picked up a covered plate. She accompanied the scholar and Phryne on a long climb. The old man was short of breath, and stopped to pant at every landing. Phryne, trying not to shame him with her own health and strength, fell behind with Mrs Rabinowitz.

'There isn't any trouble, is there, Miss?' asked the older woman in a whisper. 'He's a holy man, no one to care for him, if it wasn't for his students he'd have nothing but his books, he'd be a great teacher if he would take more than a few pupils, but he won't. And he forgets to eat, so I bring him a little something when I can. You're not looking for ... magic, are you Miss? Fortune telling, is it?'

'No, I need him to read some mysterious papers for me. Does he tell fortunes?'

'Everyone knows he can see the future. But telling fortunes, that's against the law. He never tells fortunes,' emphasized Mrs Rabinowitz, making Phryne certain that occasionally the Rabbi did tell fortunes. 'He's studied all his life, never eats meat or drinks wine. But here he is, no one to care for him since his wife died last year, she was an angel, that woman.'

Eventually they reached the Rabbi's door, and then had to wait while he searched all of his pockets for his keys. Phryne heard babies crying and smelt old boiled cabbage and ancient ghosts of long dead fried suppers. Her miserable childhood came back with a rush. Young Phryne had played up and down steps like these, cold dirty cement. She had lived in a flat like this, so old and grimy that it could never be made clean. Her scalp itched as she remembered filth and headlice, and she was glad when the rabbi finally managed to open his door and she could go in.

It was bare and poor and dusty, but it smelt of old books. On a kitchen table stained with ink was piled a treasury of leather-bound ancient volumes, and there were more on the floor, stacked up, open at illustrations of dragons and lions. She saw the Tree of the Kabala again in a folio tome on which a scatter of pages lay. 'Please sit down,' said Rabbi Elijah, in a rusty social manner. There didn't seem to be anywhere to sit, so Phryne stood and watched as the old man sorted the leaves and laid them out in piles. His hands were long and fine, with pale knob-knuckles which spoke of arthritis. His skin seemed untouched by any sun. His fingernails were clean and cut slightly long.

'These,' he said, pushing one stack over, 'are illuminations from a medieval textbook on alchemy, and I cannot decipher them, except to say that they show various stages in the composition of the philosopher's stone. The ancients believed that it rendered all things perfect.'

'I thought it turned base metal into gold,' commented Phryne.

'Certainly. Gold is the perfect metal. Therefore the
lapis philosophorum
would make lead into gold. It was also believed,' Phryne noted with glee that Rabbi Elijah, a teacher, could not refrain from teaching, even though his auditor was a
shiksa
and probably unclean, 'that it could cure all diseases and make men immortal.'

'By raising them to their perfect state.'

'Good.' He raised his eyes, saw Phryne, and blinked when he realized to whom he was talking. But it was too late for him to slip back into his shell, so he continued. 'They described it as being as fine as oil and solid as glass, and no one has ever managed to make it. A dream, but men must have dreams.'

Phryne wondered what dreams the old man had dreamed, to bring him to Australia, and how they coincided with this poor drab place.

'Alchemy has always been connected with the study of the Holy Kabala, and these writings use a system of numbers which is derived from a reading of the Torah, the scriptures. If I can only find ... here is
Zorah, Sepher Yetzirah, Akiba's Alphabet
, yes, and
Shuir Komah
, which states that the measurement of the body of man is the measure of being and of the nature of God. Hmm, surely I didn't lend it to Shimeon?' He lifted books with difficulty, singing his litany of titles, searching for a particular text. Phryne did not offer to help. Who knew if her gentile touch might make his most precious books unclean? 'If you will excuse me, I must find the
Book of Razael
,' said the Rabbi, and dived back into the volumes.

Mrs Rabinowitz was in the kitchen, clattering crockery. Phryne went that way, as the old man did not require her presence.

The kitchen contained one tray, one teapot, two cups and saucers and plates. It was dusty and unused. Clearly the Rabbi didn't do any cooking.

'Look at this!' exclaimed the older woman. 'Not one of my good pancakes eaten. It was different when Sarah was here, Sarah was his wife. But the boys are coming tonight and they'll bring food, they always do, the ones who can't afford to pay him. And that's all of them.'

'Will he let me give him money for this translation?' asked Phryne. Mrs Rabinowitz's workworn countenance seemed to shrink.

'If he could give me a little towards the rent, that collector has no manners, he shouts at the old man, but if I could catch him in the stairway, he doesn't like climbing all them stairs ...'