The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (14 page)

ZAYIN THE PROFANE

Zayin never asked to be the Messiah. Daughter of the village apothecary, a widower named Menashe, she already had plenty of responsibility for a thirteen-year-old girl. For example, she had to wake up every morning at dawn, to dust and sweep her father’s little shop. And in the afternoon, while he napped upstairs, she had to stand on tiptoe at the counter, taking orders.

Zayin was a good girl. She didn’t complain, even when her father sent her to houses where boys tormented her with unsolicited kisses, and taunted her for spurning their advances with accusations that she and her papa were too affectionate. She didn’t understand, quite, what they meant, but she knew that she loved him alone in the world, and would do anything at all for his sake, as he’d done everything for her. She intended to be his helpmeet forever, as young girls will, and her efforts played no small part in the prosperity of his shop: His prescriptions were as effective as could be expected, never deadly, yet it was her light step as she delivered those medications, her still voice and gentle smile, that nursed folks most. Nobody liked to pass a whole winter without a head cold. And, in summer, when she wore flowers in her hair, there was a veritable epidemic of hay fever. Illness lost its stigma in the village on account of young Zayin. People even looked forward to new ailments, as a gourmand longs for the pangs of hunger.

How else to explain the town’s attitude toward rumors of a great plague sweeping the countryside? At first the news came from shiftless old cadgers, flea-bitten beggars peddling rat-eaten clothes swindled from the dead. They swore that they’d seen whole cities extinguished in a breath, and had endured the crush, escaped the holocaust, only because death prefers to embrace fresh youth. Ordinarily, local rowdies would have ousted those filthy old men with sticks and stones, and the village aldermen would have taken the additional precaution of barring the town’s gates, but the reputation of Menashe the apothecary made folks confident that there was nothing to worry about—and perhaps a visit from Zayin to anticipate. Even the initial influx of refugee families from the east the following day merely made villagers wonder why every town couldn’t have a good druggist with a pretty daughter to assuage their cares.

Only Menashe was distraught. He cautioned that his medicines could not cure a plague, but folks were too keenly occupied, watching refugees arrive and die, to hear what he had to say. And then it was too late.

An eighteen-year-old peasant named Fayvel was the first villager to complain. He claimed that a devil sat on his chest while he slept, stealing his breath. His brothers wanted to know what the dybbuk looked like, but he didn’t know because the creature vanished the moment he awoke. After a few days, the demon came up with a cleverer idea: Instead of floating off at dawn—devils naturally lose their mortal weight in daylight—the beast climbed down inside Fayvel’s lungs. There it was always dark; the night never ended, and Fayvel, become but a second skin for the demon, always slept.

Unable to rouse him with pinpricks or lamp burns, his brothers visited the apothecary. Menashe’s shop was already crowded with relatives of folks who, while not yet as ill as poor Fayvel, already couldn’t breathe in their sleep. They begged the druggist for an elixir that would lift this evil. They reached out hands heavy with silver, but he simply stood behind his counter, arms in the air, hollering over the din that, medically speaking, there was nothing to be done.

Upstairs, Zayin listened to the commotion. She’d never heard such noise in the shop, but strangest to her of all sounds was the voice of her own father: In her thirteen years, she hadn’t once heard him shout, or turn someone down.

After several hours, Menashe cleared out his shop. He came up to take a nap. Zayin wished to ask him many questions, but her fear that he’d yell at her, as he’d shouted at his patients, made her quiet. She kept out of his way. From the corner, she watched him haul his body into bed. He called her over. Shutting his eyes, he murmured that she didn’t need to tend the shop, as he’d already locked it up. Then he folded his hands over his belly, and fell into a heavy sleep.

After a while, Zayin grew tired of being idle. Intending to sweep the floors, she wandered downstairs, where she saw some men at the door. She let them in. Fayvel’s three brothers crowded around her, all at once trying to explain what was the matter.

— Fayvel will die if the devil inside him isn’t doused.

— I’m sure my father can fix a tonic. I’ll bring it tonight.

— There’s no money for anything fancy.

— I’ll tell Papa not to make you pay. He’ll understand. He’s good that way.

She sent them home and started to clean, pleased to be doing more than was expected of her. She dusted the sills, and was about to polish the countertop when her father came to her.

— Were those men’s voices I heard?

— Fayvel’s brothers were here. He needs a tonic to get the devil out of him.

— It isn’t a dybbuk, Zayin. It’s a plague.

— Whatever it is, Fayvel needs some medicine. I promised to bring a draft to him tonight.

— You don’t understand. I closed the shop for a reason. I haven’t got a remedy for Fayvel. I can’t make one.

— Because of his money?

— Stupid girl! Listen to me. A plague is deadly. I have a cure for nobody.

— Papa, you can do anything. You’re an apothecary. Why are you yelling at me?

He shook his head and led her up a ladder to the attic laboratory.

She had never been there before, amid his bottled secrets, shelved alphabetically according to arcane names pronounced by no one since the fall from Eden. Ancient roots and pollens smuggled from that model garden into the mortal world: Like every apothecary, Zayin’s father trafficked in sacred contraband, distillations of eternity that, administered in the right combination and quantity, were said to lend a body grace with which to clear the evils of disease, but that, drunken gratuitously, might disburden soul of flesh. Menashe watched his daughter peer into his stone crucible, tap on the copper basin of his still, lift the heavy bronze pestle from its mortar, and set it down again. When at last she’d satisfied her curiosity, and could appreciate what he did, he told her that nothing she saw there, neither equipment nor stock, made the least medicinal difference.

Naturally, the girl was perplexed. Was this not his only laboratory? Was there another ladder yet to climb? Were there attics and ladders stacked, invisible except from within, all the way to the heavens? She wondered if her father might be more than just a druggist, but before she could inquire, Menashe had uncorked one of the priceless powdered mysteries on his shelf, and held it out to her:
Confectioners’ sugar,
he said, and, when she didn’t believe him, he had her taste for herself. With the utmost care, she pointed a slender finger into the powder, and touched it to her tongue. The uncut sweetness burned.

Before she could pose a question, he let his daughter know the whole formula. He said that the antidote to an illness wasn’t the product of a laboratory, nor did it grow in a garden. It came from within the patient. The active ingredient, so to speak, was hope. If folks believed that his pills and tonics worked miracles, they sometimes indirectly did—more often than the harsh chemicals with which city doctors routinely massacred the sick. The city doctors claimed to practice science, but Menashe had studied enough to know what they didn’t, and to acknowledge what they wouldn’t. He said that, given a chance, the body was a finer apothecary than the most learned chemist, but that people placed their faith elsewhere, in elixirs. His nontoxic pills and tonics simply concentrated folks’ faith, the belief that they were entitled to another draft of life, and directed it back inside, where it belonged.

Zayin took in her father’s words, and knew that he was wise. Only one matter confused her.

— If it’s that simple, why can’t I just bring Fayvel a tincture of sugar water? If he thinks that it’s a remedy . . .

— The body is a good apothecary, Zayin, but a plague cannot be cured. Fayvel won’t survive. Everyone who catches it will die. If I waste my reputation on hopeless cases, my medicines won’t be as potent against lesser disease. Be practical, and don’t go outside, or let anyone in. The plague will pass in a few weeks, but for now there’s no knowing who’s sick.

Fayvel’s brothers were preparing for another all-night vigil, loading the hearth with coal, when the apothecary’s daughter arrived at their hovel. In her hushed voice, she asked if the patient was still alive. They pointed to his bed by the fire. She smiled. She asked to be left alone with him, and, because the estimable Menashe was her father, they went off to sleep in the hayloft.

The girl was gone before dawn. Fayvel’s brothers didn’t see her leave. They gathered around him. One of them leaned on his chest, to feel if he was breathing. He gasped. Sighed. He opened his eyes. He asked for Zayin. They didn’t know what to tell him.

— I asked her to marry me. She wouldn’t do it.

— Because you’re dying, Fayvel.

— Not anymore. Do I seem sick still?

While Fayvel hardly looked prepared to plow a field, his brothers had to admit that even his ability to talk bespoke progress. They wanted to know which of Menashe’s drugs the girl had given him. He swore that she’d brought none, yet he couldn’t say what she’d done to bring about his unexpected recovery. He could recollect only that she’d been clutching his hands for a long time and talking to him, whispering, really, when the demon in his chest released him, or, perhaps, he released the demon.

— What was she saying? Was she praying? Did she cast a spell?

— I don’t know what she told me, but there was sense in her murmuring, and something more, a singing from elsewhere. I was scared to open my eyes, that she’d disappear forever. I held her hands tight. I looked at her. It was like staring into a sunrise. I asked her to marry me, but I knew she wouldn’t. She isn’t one of us.

His brothers weren’t sure exactly what he meant by that. But they knew that he was right, because her voice scarcely stirred the air when she spoke and her feet barely touched the earth where she walked. She had, almost, the substance of light.

Several days passed. As Fayvel convalesced, other folks got worse. The plague threatened to suffocate whole families. Given another week, the town itself might have ceased to breathe, had Fayvel’s brothers not confided to a grain merchant, whose wife lay ill, Zayin’s extraordinary visitation.

— But Menashe himself pronounced that there’s no earthly remedy. He’s closed up shop.

— It wasn’t one of his drugs that made Fayvel better. It’s Zayin herself. You see, she isn’t one of us.

On his way to fetch her, the grain merchant repeated what he’d heard to the miller, whose employees were too sick to work, and the miller mentioned it to the sawyer and the cooper’s wife and several journeyman carpenters, and soon the whole town shared the same secret. A crowd swelled around the apothecary’s door.

Menashe had spent the past couple of days securing his building against the incurable sickness and those who carried it. He’d boarded over the windows and doors of his shop with lumber, and had little Zayin climb up into the chimney flue, to pack it tight with rags. Then he’d sent her down to the basement, to see what provisions they had, and what she could make from them in days and weeks to come.

It was while she was down there that Menashe heard the clamor outdoors, louder than it had been in days, since the first tremor of the plague. For a moment he listened, but he didn’t hear people shouting his name. They were calling for Zayin.

Menashe peered through the one attic window he hadn’t yet boarded and sealed. He saw burghers and tradesmen and peasants, many of whom carried saws and axes in their hands. He opened the casement and leaned out over the sill.

— What do you want from me? I’ve told you this plague is deadly. I have no cure.

— We want your daughter.

— You want to kill her?

— We want her to save us, Menashe.

— Has the plague made you crazy? She’s just a little girl.

— She revived Fayvel.

— She didn’t. She couldn’t.

— Zayin isn’t of this world.

Menashe hurried down to the cellar. He grabbed his daughter, and demanded to know what she’d done. She told him that she’d tallied up all the carrots and beets, but not yet the onions.

— That’s not what I mean. There are people outside saying that you revived Fayvel.

— Is he really feeling better?

— Is Fayvel your lover? I ordered you not to go outdoors.

— I haven’t been out in days. Papa, I love only you. You taught me to care for others. How could I be true to you and let Fayvel suffer?

— You stole my medicines. You faked my prescriptions.

— I gave him no pills. I only stood by him awhile. I held his hands, in case he was in pain. I told him not to place such faith in demons. I said that I was there for him. I said that I had hope, and asked him if he’d believe in me. Then I was going to try to explain about the body being an apothecary, so he wouldn’t feel bad that I hadn’t brought him drugs, but he interrupted by proposing marriage to me.

— You accepted?

— Papa!

— Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Zayin? Can you even try to understand? Folks think you’re some kind of Messiah.