The Library Paradox (15 page)
Read The Library Paradox Online
Authors: Catherine Shaw
I puzzled over this question for some time, and finally came to the conclusion that as I am not likely to be able to penetrate the complexities of the historical causes on my own, the most important thing to do is not to try, but rather to fight hatred as I find it, and to love my neighbour as best I can. This comforting thought brought me directly back to the task at hand, and emerging from the church, I felt my soul to be renewed and refreshed after all.
I greatly wished to continue the search for Britta Rubinstein, but could not see how to proceed, most particularly on a
Sunday, during which I could not even have recourse to calling upon Mr Upp, or upon my old friend Detective Inspector Reynolds. Returning home, I addressed a note to the latter, reminding him of the interesting occasion of the lost emerald, and proposing to visit him on Monday afternoon in order to ask him for some help and advice about a search for missing persons. I then wrote a lengthy letter to Dora, filled with anxious questions about the twins. I went out to drop these in the corner postbox, and had only just returned to the house when the doorbell rang. Upon opening it, I perceived a small boy of eleven or twelve, whose angel face was smudged with London dust and grime.
‘Are you Mrs Weatherburn?’ he asked, looking at me curiously. ‘I’m Ephraim, David Mendel’s brother. He told me to bring you this,’ and he handed me an envelope containing several pages.
‘Ah, thank you!’ I exclaimed, realising what the package must contain, and taking it from him. ‘It’s very nice of you to come all the way here,’ I added. He inspected me carefully, then burst out suddenly, in a half-whisper of awed respect,
‘Is it true you’re a
detective
?’
Was this a good thing, I wondered briefly? Yes, perhaps it was.
‘Yes, it is true,’ I replied seriously. ‘How did you know?’
‘I heard David talking with Rivka. He didn’t mean me to hear! But when I asked him, he wouldn’t tell me anything, except that I should bring you this.’ His black eyes focused upon me appealingly. ‘Won’t you tell me? What is it all
about? What’s the mystery? Can’t I know? I’d like to be a detective.’
‘You would?’ I looked him over carefully, pretending to size him up. He straightened himself and waited in eager silence. After a short moment, I nodded.
‘Listen, maybe I can tell you, maybe not. A good detective has to be able to keep a secret,’ I said importantly. It occurred to me briefly that David might object to my involving his little brother in a murder case, and I felt a quick pinch of anxiety. But the opportunity was golden, and there could be no possible danger in what I was going to ask him to do.
‘I can keep a secret,’ he said firmly. ‘I promise!’
‘All right then. It’s a case of
murder
,’ I whispered, leaning towards him with an expression of confidentiality which was rewarded by the size of his eyes very nearly doubling. ‘But not of anyone in your part of town, of course. This man you wouldn’t know.’
‘Then how can my brother be helping you?’ he asked, burning with curiosity. ‘Is it someone from the City? What does he know about it?’
‘He doesn’t know anything,’ I sighed. ‘He isn’t involved.’
‘Then what’s this?’
‘This envelope? It’s just a story he thought I would like, by an author called … Peretz, I think. Is that the name?’ Pulling open the envelope, I extracted the sheets and showed him the title: ‘If not still higher’, by Y.L. Peretz.
‘Oh, I know that story! I just heard it!’ he observed. ‘That’s funny; I wonder why David is sending you that?’
‘You heard it recently?’ I said. ‘That’s very interesting. Who did you hear it from?’
‘A boy in my class told it in the playground,’ he said easily.
‘All right. Now listen,’ I told him seriously. ‘You say you want to be a detective. So I’m going to give you a test. I’m going to give you something to detect. But you understand that you have to do this like a real detective. Everything has to be totally secret. Don’t let a soul know that you’re investigating. You can ask people questions, but you have to do it in such a way that they think you just happen to be curious, not that you’re actually investigating with any purpose. Yet you must be quick. You have to try and do it within a couple of days, if you can.’
‘What do I have to do?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Well, people all over your part of town have been hearing this story lately. Your job is to find out who started telling the story first. Start by asking where the boy who told you the story heard it, who told it to him. And then, find out where that person heard it, and see if you can work your way right back to the first person who told it. As quickly as you can manage it, mind. But make sure that you never, never let a soul suspect that you’re detecting, all right? Can you do that?’
‘Is that all?’ he said, looking faintly disappointed. ‘Well, I’m sure I can manage that. If I do, will you give me some real detecting to do?’
‘We’ll see!’ I said. ‘But you have to realise that there is no difference between this job and “real detecting”.
Most of detective work
is
just this kind of work; finding out details, or looking up paperwork. If you want to be a detective, you have to be prepared to do little tasks in secrecy. And remember this: the secrecy is more important than the task itself. Don’t make yourself look suspicious by insisting if it doesn’t seem natural. Remember, spies and detectives must never court danger or reveal themselves!’
‘What should I do if I find out the answer?’
‘I want to know about anything interesting you find out, anything at all. But you go to school, so it might not be so easy for you to come and see me – and you mustn’t write anything down, of course, ever! No, I think that if you want to let me know something, you should tell David. He’ll know how to find me. Don’t forget to be discreet. Promise?’
‘Of course I promise,’ he said, impressed in spite of himself. I was also impressed. His easy
I’m sure I can manage that
rang in my ears. Like a little mouse, he probably knows all the ins and outs of his maze-like little world. If anyone could find out where the story started – if David’s sudden suspicion was right, and had some relation to reality – why then, Ephraim, not David, was the most likely person to discover it for us.
With these thoughts in mind, I settled upon Emily’s comfortable little sofa to find out what the famous story was actually about. The handwritten sheets were accompanied by a short note from David.
Here is the tale I told you about, which I heard recently. It was written by Yitzhok Leib Peretz – if you knew what that name means to us! Our language is so humble that almost no one actually thinks of writing in it. I mean writing real literature, reflecting our beliefs and our lives. We call Peretz ‘the father of Yiddish literature’. His tales are like drops of our essential truth. I have put it in English as well as I can, but so much is necessarily lost. Every phrase, every expression might have been taken directly from the mouths of us Hassidim.
I must tell you that around here, people tell stories all the time. And a recent story by Peretz will make the rounds faster than anything. So I just don’t know if this can possibly have any significance. Yet it struck me as a coincidence, after our talk yesterday.
My very best to you,
David Mendel
Putting the note aside, I turned to the story itself with curiosity.
And every morning during the Days of Awe, at the time for the penitential prayers, the Nemirover rebbe would disappear; vanish! He was nowhere to be seen: not in the synagogue, not in either of the shuls, not at a prayer-gathering, and definitely not at home. The house stood open. Anyone who wanted to could go in or out;
nobody
stole from the rebbe.
But not a living soul was to be found in the house.
Where can the rebbe be?
Where could he be? In Heaven, of course. Do you think a rebbe doesn’t have a lot of affairs to attend to during the Days of Awe? Jews, G–d save them, need to earn a living; need peace, health, good marriages for their children; want to be good and G–d-fearing. But their sins are great, and Satan with his thousand eyes watches, and accuses, and informs … and – who is to help if not the rebbe?
That is what the people thought.
Once, though, a Litvak (Lithuanian) arrived in town, and he mocked! You know the Litvaks: they don’t have a high opinion of the books of ethics; instead they cram themselves full of Talmud and Mishnah. A Litvak will quote a whole text and leave you with your mouth hanging open. Even Moses wasn’t allowed to ascend to Heaven during his lifetime, but had to stop ten handbreadths below! Try to argue with a Litvak!
‘Where else does the rebbe go, then?’
‘How should I know?’ he answers with a shrug. And before the words are out of his mouth (what a Litvak is capable of!) he resolves to find out.
The very same evening, just after evening prayers, the Litvak steals into the rebbe’s bedroom, creeps under his bed, and lies there. He intends to wait all night and see where the rebbe goes; what he does during the time of penitential prayers.
Another person might doze off and miss the opportunity, but a Litvak will always find a way. He repeated from memory an entire tractate of the Talmud! I can’t remember whether it was
Profane Things
or
Vows
.
Before sunrise he hears the call to prayers.
The rebbe had already been awake for some time. He had heard him sighing for almost a whole hour.
Anyone who has ever heard the Nemirover rebbe sighing knows how much sorrow for the Jewish people, how much suffering there was in each sigh … Hearing the rebbe sigh would melt you with pity. But a Litvak has a heart of iron. He hears it and just keeps lying there. The rebbe lies there too: the rebbe, G–d bless him, on the bed, the Litvak under the bed.
The Litvak hears the beds in the house begin to creak; hears the occupants get out of their beds, hears the murmur of a blessing, hands being washed, doors opening and closing. The people leave the house, and once again it is quiet and dark. Through the shutter a small gleam of moonlight barely penetrates …
The Litvak confessed that when he was left all alone with the rebbe he was seized with terror! His skin prickled with fear and the roots of his earlocks pierced his temples like needles.
There’s nothing to laugh about: alone in a room with the rebbe, before daylight in the Days of Awe! …
But a Litvak is stubborn; so he shivers like a fish in the water, but he continues to lie there.
Finally the rebbe, G–d bless him, gets out of bed.
First he does all the things a Jew is obliged to do, then he goes to the clothes chest and removes a bundle … Peasant clothes appear: linen trousers, great boots, a coat, a big fur cap, and a large leather belt studded with brass nails.
The rebbe puts them on. From the pocket of the coat a thick rope sticks out; the kind of rope peasants use!
The rebbe leaves; the Litvak follows.
On his way out the rebbe goes in to the kitchen, stoops, removes an axe from under a bed, thrusts it into his belt, and leaves the house.
The Litvak trembles, but he doesn’t falter.
A quiet autumnal sense of awe hovers over the dark streets. Often a cry can be heard from one of the prayer groups reciting the penitential prayers, or a sickly groan through a window … The rebbe keeps to the edges of the street, in the shadow of the houses … He glides from one house to the next with the Litvak behind him …
And the Litvak hears his own heartbeats mingle with the heavy footsteps of the rebbe: but he continues nevertheless, and together with the rebbe he arrives outside of the town.
Beyond the town there is a wood.
The rebbe, G–d bless him, enters the wood. He walks thirty or forty paces and stops beside a young tree. And the Litvak is amazed to see the rebbe take
the axe from his belt and begin to hack at the tree.
He watches the rebbe chop and hears the tree groan and snap. And the tree falls, and the rebbe splits it into logs and the logs into chunks of wood; and he makes a bundle of these chunks and ties it with the rope in his pocket. He throws the bundle over his shoulder, sticks the axe back in his belt, and walks out of the wood and back to town.
In a back street he stops before a half-collapsed house and knocks at a window.
‘Who is it?’ a startled voice calls from within. The Litvak recognises a woman’s voice; the voice of a very sick woman.
‘Me!’ the rebbe answers in peasant dialect.
‘Who “me”?’ the voice from inside asks again.
And the rebbe answers again in Ukrainian: ‘Vasil!’
‘Vasil who? And what do you want, Vasil?’
‘Wood,’ says the supposed Vasil; ‘I have firewood for sale. Very cheap. I’m practically giving it away!’
And without waiting for an answer, he walks into the house.
The Litvak steals in behind him and by the grey light of dawn he sees a bare room with rickety furniture … A sick woman lies in bed, covered with rags, and she says bitterly, ‘Buy wood? With what should I buy it? I’m a poor widow, what money do I have?’
‘You can have it on credit!’ answers the supposed Vasil. ‘It comes to sixpence altogether.’
‘How will I ever pay that?’ groans the poor woman.
‘Foolish woman,’ the rebbe lectures her, ‘here you are, a poor sick woman, and I trust you for this bit of wood; I have faith that you’ll pay me. And you have such a great and powerful G–d, and you don’t trust Him, and you don’t have faith in Him even for a silly sixpence-worth of wood!’
‘But who will lay the fire for me?’ the widow groans. ‘Do I have the strength to get out of bed? My son had to stay away at his work.’
‘I’ll lay the fire for you, too,’ says the rebbe.
And having placed the wood in the oven, the rebbe, with a groan, recited the first verse of the penitential prayers.
And when he had lit the fire and it was burning merrily, he recited the second verse, somewhat more cheerfully …
And he recited the third verse when the fire had subsided into a steady glow and he closed the oven door …
The Litvak who saw it all stayed and became a Nemirover Hassid.
And later, whenever a Hassid said that the Nemirover gets up every morning during the Days of Awe and flies up to Heaven, the Litvak would not laugh at all, but would add quietly,
‘If not still higher!’