The Fifth Servant (20 page)

           
Well, thank God for Rabbi Menakhem Ha-Meiri.

           
“Even if the person hasn’t been baptized?”

           
“What difference does that make?” he said.

           
“Then how do you remove original sin?”

           
“We don’t believe in original sin.”

           
“You don’t?”

           
“We believe that man’s true sin is his inability to bring peace and justice to the world, a failure that occurs in every generation. Yes, Adam sinned, but why should the whole world be condemned to death for one man’s sins? In any case, the stigma of Adam’s sin was erased when we received and accepted the Torah.”

           
“And what about Eve’s sin?”

           
“The same.”

           
“But the priests say—”

           
“The priests say that it was Eve who led Adam to sin, and that she is inferior because she was made after him, blah blah blah—”

           
“Wasn’t she?”

           
“Some say they were made side-by-side.”

           
“Oh. Well, which is it?”

           
“You’re full of questions today.”

           
“I don’t mean to be such a
kvic
?, but—”

           
“What’s a
kvitch
?”

           
“A whiner.”

           
“Oh, a
kvetch
.” It was practically the same word.

           
“They always say that God made Adam from the soil, but didn’t He make Adam from a mixture of soil and water that He molded into a man?”

           
“A mist, really,” said Yankev.

           
“So God needed both elements. Why is that?”

           
“Actually, He needed three elements.”

           
She stared at him a moment, drawing a blank. Why didn’t he tell her? Did he expect her to know this? She looked aside, searching for an answer among the fat-bellied sacks of dried lentils and peas lining the wall beneath the shelves.

           
“The breath of God,” he explained.

           
“Oh.”

           
The smell of
gefilte
fish and matzoh ball soup was making her mouth water.

           
Yankev said, “The mist rose from the earth to unite with heaven, just as a woman opens herself to a man, and together they bring completion to the One above.”

           
“Wait a minute. You’re saying God needs
us
to be complete?”

           
“Yes.”

           
“And that it’s up to the woman to make the first move?”

           
“Well, this is an allegorical interpretation—”

           
She drew close and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the cheek. Now it was his turn to stare blankly at her.

           
“Well? What do you think of that?” she said.

           
No sound came from him.

           
Her arm floated around him like a nocturnal creature slinking along the forest floor searching for a companion, ready to draw back at the slightest hint of trouble. But he didn’t pull away. He didn’t move at all. His cloak was still damp from the rain. Her fingers dug in as if they were working the primordial soil, releasing that earthy mist and letting it rise toward heaven.

           
“You can’t go now,” she said.

           
It seemed like a long time before he spoke: “I shouldn’t have spent so much time with you, Anya.”

           
“What does that mean? Am I too
treyf
for you?”

           
“No, no, you’re not
treyf
.”

           
“Then what?”

           
“There’s no room in the world for people like us.”

           
“Then we’ll have to make room.”

           
“Such matches are forbidden everywhere.”

           
“So you admit we’re a match?”

           
For once, he had no answer.

           
“Isn’t it right to defy a prohibition that has outlived its usefulness?” she said.

           
“It is not our place to decide—”

           
She needed to sway him with an example from the Scriptures.

           
“What was the name of that woman who tramped through the wilderness all the way to Bethlehem just to make a match with some man she didn’t even know?”

           
“You must mean Ruth the Moabite and Boaz the Judean.”

           
“And her people were the sworn enemies of Israel at the time?”

           
“Yes.”

           
“And yet together they begat Obed, who begat Jesse, who begat King David, the father of our Messiah.”

           
“She was indeed a remarkable woman,” he said.

           
“Better than seven sons.”

           
He smiled. “You would have made a good wife for a Torah scholar, if only the world were a completely different place.”

           
My God, was he conceding the point? On her side of town, whenever couples disagreed, the result usually involved bruised limbs and broken crockery.

           
“You’re not like the other men I meet.”

           
“The novelty will wear off.”

           
“I don’t think so.”

           
She leaned in closer, hiding nothing from him. The heat rose off their bodies, her own flowery fragrance mixing with his earthy essence like a field after the rain. Her lips met his skin. She filled her nose with his musky scent. Then she opened her lips. His skin was sweet and salty.

           
“You’d better stop,” he said.

           
But it was too good to stop. She was astonished by the surge of sensations as her mouth crept up his neck, planting warm wet kisses higher and higher until she was kissing his cheek, his soft flesh, his mouth. She hadn’t ever thought a kiss could feel so good, so sweet, so much larger than the inch of flesh that held it.

           
She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. They both had crossed a line, but there was still time to jump back over it before they got caught. She should have walked away and forgotten that they ever met. But the attraction was too strong.

           
She put her lips close to his and said, “My momma always told me that if you’re going to eat an apple, you might as well pick a nice juicy one.” And she plunged in for another taste of that forbidden fruit.

           
Her master’s booming voice filled the air.

           
“Anya, come in here! I need you.” It came from the front room.

           
She broke away and discovered that she had hands for smoothing out damp hair and clothing, as she responded to this call from another world, heading back to a town called Prague, a place where physical relations between Christians and Jews was still punishable by death and dismemberment, depending on the mood of the judicial authorities on that particular day.

           
She wondered if she still smelled of the Jew.

           
Mordecai Meisel stood in the middle of the room, between two men in long dark cloaks. Meisel was in his mid-sixties, fattened with comforts but still robust, his silk shirt straining against the muscles he had built up hauling iron as a teenager.

           
She recognized one of the men as Rabbi Loew. The other was a tall Jew with a curly black beard and the same look of controlled desperation she had seen in Yankev’s eyes when he first came in from the street.

           
“Anya, these gentlemen need to ask you a few questions.”

           
Her heart fluttered. Did they know?

           
“Of course,” she said, her throat tight.

           
The tall Jew spoke first. “Reb Meisel tells me that you know Marie and Viktor Janek. Is that true?”

           
Anya felt Yankev’s presence as he came into the room behind her.

           
“Speak up, girl,” said Meisel.

           
“Yes, master.”

           
“Yes master, or yes, you know her?” said the tall Jew.

           
She was taking rapid, shallow breaths. She barely got the words out: “What do you want to know about the Janeks?”

           
Meisel said, “Anya, I told Rabbi Loew and his shammes that you’d cooperate, and I’d like to keep my word—”

           
The one he called the shammes held up his hand and politely advised Reb Meisel that anyone could see that the poor girl was nervous and that perhaps it would be better if he spoke to her alone. Meisel turned to Rabbi Loew, who signaled his approval of the newcomer’s suggestion.

           
She relaxed enough to let herself smile at the tall stranger.

           
The shammes smiled back. It wasn’t a bad smile, once he got the muscles working.

           
But when he asked if he could have a room with something he called “privacy,” Yankev came forward and said, “I don’t see why you need to question this girl. What could she possibly know about this matter?”

           
“It’s all right—” she began.

           
Meisel silenced them both and instructed Anya to take the shammes to the storage pantry, the same pantry that she had just warmed with the heat of her passion. She wondered if he could still smell their bodies in the closed room.

           
The shammes avoided looking directly into her eyes by fiddling with the tops of the porcelain spice jars. His hands were huge and paw-like, as if they were made to break things. She had known many men like that.

           
His first question was a surprise: “Do you follow the word of God in the Bible?”

           
Was this some kind of trick?

           
“Of course I do.”

           
“Every word of it?”

           
She would have said “yes” to a Christian interrogator immediately, or ended up dancing the hempen jig over their holy flames. But she had learned during her time with the Jews that they rarely expected simple answers to such questions.

           
She said, “I believe every word that the priests tell me. But I also know that the priests choose not to follow every word in the
khumesh
, like the commandment to celebrate Pesach after sundown on the fifteenth of Nisan.”

           
His eyebrows shot up. She might as well have chanted the
Sh’ma
in Hebrew.

           
“How long have you been working for the Meisels?”

           
“Long enough to know the
khreyn
from the
kharoyses
.”

           
He looked like a man who had found a priceless treasure at the bottom of a barrel of old rags, and he didn’t try to hide his astonishment the way a real interrogator would. His imposing stature softened before her eyes as he leaned against a sack of grain and massaged his forehead.

           
She said, “You look like you could use a drink.”

           
“I could,” he said. “That’s the hardest part of keeping the
mitsves
of Pesach. I can go without leavened bread for a week, but the prohibition against
khumets
includes anything made from fermented grain, with no exceptions for the restorative properties of your fine Bohemian beer.”

           
“How do you Jews keep track of all six hundred and thirteen commandments?”

           
He was impressed that she knew the precise number.

           
“It’s a matter of knowing which rules to break,” he said.

           
A smile passed imperceptibly across her lips, and she felt a warm flush of relief. Maybe this shammes would be different from all the other men. Maybe he would be able to help her.