The Fifth Servant (15 page)

           
I planted myself with my legs apart and announced in my most authoritative call-to-prayer voice, “The man who left the girl’s body here was about six feet tall, and strong enough to lift ninety pounds with one arm. He wore eleven-inch-long boots with pointed metal toes, one of which was slightly dented at the left instep. His accomplice was about the same size and strength, but despite their well-developed muscles, they can’t hide the fact that they were both yellow-bellied cowards.”

           
I let that sink in a moment.

           
“Such big men going after a little girl,” I said, shaking my head disgustedly. “But their ignorance will be their undoing, because such appalling and unmanly behavior leaves unmistakable traces that will betray them just as surely as I am standing here.”

           
I took a pouch from my cloak and said, “All I have to do is gather some of the dust from this spot, which contains tiny traces of the murderers’ essences, bind it with a cloth and bury it in a shallow grave. And just as the dust cannot leave the place where it is buried, so will the assassins be unable to escape the confines of the city until the knot is untied and the dust is scattered once again by the winds.”

           
The Christians watched wide-eyed as I knelt next to the dried blood, gathered some dirt and grit from the floor, and sprinkled it into the pouch.

           
Rabbi Loew drew in a sharp breath, but I kept going, waving my hand back and forth over the pouch while reciting a litany of oaths in Hebrew and Yiddish. Then I slipped the pouch under my cloak and followed the great rabbi into the street.

           
“Where to now?”

           
“The offices of
keyser
Rudolf’s consulate in
Old Town Square
,” said the rabbi.

           
“Don’t get used to leading us around like this, Jew,” said Zizka.

           
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” I said.

           
The sheriff looked me in the eye. “Keep talking like that and I’ll lead you both straight to the gallows.”

           
“Really, Ben-Akiva,” cautioned the rabbi under his breath. “You have to be careful not to incite the
goyim
with that kind of
abracadabra
talk.”

           
“They’re the ones who made up the rules to this dirty game, Rabbi. I’m just bluffing my way through it. Maybe it’ll throw a scare into their thick hides. It worked all the time on Polish peasants.”

           
“Well, these are
not
Polish peasants. They’re sophisticated burghers.”

           
We marched down the Geistgasse, guarded in front and behind, looking every bit like prisoners being taken to the stock house. Tradesmen and house wives stopped and stared as we waded through a stream of lambs being driven to market to be slaughtered and roasted for Easter. A group of street kids started tagging along, pelting us with clods of dirt and laughing and chanting their nasal
nyah-nyah
s.

           
“Barook anooka hakh anakha laka haka shmaka!”

           
“What are they saying?”

           
The rabbi said, “I believe they are trying to make fun of the Holy Tongue.”

           
A wet clump of mud struck my shoulder and spattered on Zizka’s tunic.

           
Zizka said, “All right, knock it off, kids. You’re not helping me any.”

           
Some of the boys made crude farting noises with their mouths and ran off, the streets echoing with their laughter.

           
We turned onto
Dlouhá Street
and caught a strong whiff from a big pile of rotting vegetable and animal matter. It was much bigger than the small-town dunghills, but it didn’t smell any different.

           
Suddenly the street opened up into the big square and a bumpkinish “Oh my God” came out of my mouth.

           
The
Old
Town Hall
’s square bell tower was three or four times taller than the Old-New Shul. It must have been two hundred feet high. Bigger than anything had a right to be. Huge. Talk about having more power than you knew what to do with. It was an overwhelming display of Christian dominance. What chance did we have against such power?

           
The square was jammed with merchants and carpenters setting up for the Easter festivities, the men whistling springtime airs and nailing their display booths together while the women stirred steaming pots of vegetable dye and prepared colorful strips of cloth for Sunday’s decorations. A solemn procession snaked through the middle of the square to the entrance of Our Lady of Týn, bearing tall crosses draped with purple-and-black cloth. The pious processionists took little notice of the sheriff and his quartet of armed guards leading a pair of convicts to the imperial consulate.

           
Some of the whistling stopped as the craftsmen spied the yellow rings on our cloaks that clearly marked us as Jews. But they kept right on working.

           
On the far side of the dunghill stood the public pillories, overflowing with the sagging limbs of thieves, swindlers, and other petty criminals whose crimes did not approach the level of blasphemy. Two women stood off to the side of the raised platform with their hands shackled behind them and leather masks covering their mouths. I wondered what their crime was. Licentiousness? Infidelity? Cursing in public?

           
“Disobedience,” the sheriff explained. “They must wear the Mask of Shame for three days for talking back to their husbands.”

           
Imagine if we had that law
, I thought. My wife talked back to me three times a day. Or, she used to, when she was talking to me.

           
We kept walking. The streets were full of statues of Christian heroes. We passed a tall pedestal bearing a moss-covered statue of some bearded saint with a starry halo, a flowing robe, and two fat cherubs at his feet.
Where are the statues of our heroes?
I wondered. If the Christians were going to ignore the broad prohibition against making graven images of the holy ones, why couldn’t we? Where is the statue of Moses, who led the people out of slavery? Or Joshua, who made the sun stand still in Giveon? Or Samson, who brought the whole damn building down in
Gaza
?

           
At this point, I’d settle for Jonah
, I thought.

           
A gargoyle frozen in mid-scream greeted us over the double doors to the consulate’s office.

           
In the darkened vestibule, a bone-white ghost of a man in long black robes materialized and told us to wait. The man’s skin was pale to the point of translucency, and his face seemed to hang in the air above his body.

           
Rabbi Loew lowered himself onto a wooden bench and let out the long sigh of a tired old man. He had been full of fire when we left the community council chamber, but the flame was starting to wane. I took a seat next to him, and the guards leaned on their pikestaffs and waited.

           
I heard the tentative pitter-patter of rain on the roof, then it started coming down in sheets as it did every Good Friday. Of course, early springtime was the rainy season, so the odds of getting rain on any given Friday were pretty good. But it sure seemed like a pattern, a definite sign of the divine presence.

           
For a moment, I almost envied the Christians for their simple relationship with God. They were so assured, so certain that God in the form of a man called Jesus had walked among them, that he had stood at such-and-such a place and said all you have to do is believe in me and you’ll go straight to heaven, guaranteed. Then he broke the matzoh in pieces, passed around the wine cup, and said let’s drink to it. Meanwhile the Jews had to contend with a God who had withdrawn into Himself in order to create the world, dooming His creatures to eternal separation from His endlessness, leaving nothing but the faintest golden pathways of mysticism as the only way to bridge this great gap, even for a fleeting instant.

           
Rabbi Loew looked at the thick raindrops hitting the diamond-shaped panes of glass and said, “See how God always reminds us of the more powerful forces that exist outside of ourselves.”

           
“As if I needed reminding,” I said.

           
If Abraham, who had
direct
contact with God, couldn’t always fathom the ways of the Judge of all the Earth, what hope did we have? Every tractate of the Talmud began by skipping page
alef
and starting on page
beys
, the second page, just to remind us that our knowledge will
never
be complete.

           
“Let’s get back to business,” I said. “Maybe somebody owed Federn money. We should go talk to this Janek fellow. One of the witnesses saw them arguing a couple of days ago.”

           
“A Christian witness?
Vey iz mir
. Use your head. Why would anyone kill a child to get out of a debt to a Jew when it’s so easy to stir up hatred against us?”

           
“It’s been done before.”

           
“You need to ask yourself what larger benefit is gained by sealing off the whole ghetto.”

           
“You mean, aside from canceling all the debts, chasing the Jews out of town, seizing all their property, and dividing it up among themselves?”

           
“There are always larger forces at work,” said Rabbi Loew. “But you’re right. After we’re through here, I think it would be a good idea to speak to the girl’s father.”

           
The double doors opened soundlessly, and the ghostly apparition reappeared. Not a board had creaked. I checked to make sure that the man’s feet were touching the ground.

           
The spectral figure said, “Go home, Jews. The emperor remains secluded in his Hall of Wonders high up on the hill, and he won’t be able to see you until tomorrow, in his chambers in the castle.”

           
The Hapsburg courtier spoke High German, so I had no problem understanding this royal brush-off.

           
Rabbi Loew said, “Very well, but could you at least convey a message to the emperor, humbly asking His Majesty to consider authorizing the transfer of Jacob Federn to the imperial prison?”

           
“Is this a formal request from the community council?”

           
“It’s an exceptional case,” said the rabbi, avoiding an outright lie.

           
“What is so exceptional about it?”

           
“The emperor has always behaved like one of the righteous Gentiles toward my people. It is not pleasing to God for a wise and just ruler to stand aside and allow one man’s sins to lead to the destruction of an entire community.”

           
“Oh, I suppose we can look into it,” the man conceded.

           
Eloquent praise for the emperor and his consuls poured forth from Rabbi Loew’s lips.

           
Good thing one of us is skilled at this kind of carnival act
, I thought. Thank God for small victories.

           
Because that’s the only kind we ever get.

           
We were preparing to leave when the emperor’s representatives called Zizka into the inner chamber. Alone. The sheriff agreed, but his face was a tight mask as he disappeared through the double doors, which clicked shut behind him.

           
“What kind of man is the
meylekh
?” I said, using Hebrew words again so the guards wouldn’t follow our conversation.

           
“
Der meylekh
Rudolf is a better friend to the Jews than most German monarchs, but he carries in his veins some of the bilious humors of the Spanish Hapsburgs. His mother, the Empress María, went utterly
meshuge
at the end.”

           
I nodded. So even the emperor wasn’t at peace with himself.

           
INSIDE THE CHAMBER, AN ICY voice instructed Sheriff Zizka to step forward onto the silver-threaded carpet. One of the emperor’s councilors had come down from the castle on the hill to talk to the restless locals. The man had so much precious metal on his chest he might as well have been wearing a service for twelve of the emperor’s own silverware.

           
“The monarch has just welcomed the Holy Inquisitor to the imperial city,” said the councilor. “And we need to show Pope Clement’s emissary that the Bohemians are not a tribe of wild men who just learned to eat with a knife and spoon. Now what’s all this I hear about a bloodcrime charge? This isn’t the Dark Ages. We don’t want any riots, Zizka. It would look bad.
Rosumíte mi?
”