The Fifth Servant (28 page)

           
He had me there.

           
But it was time for me to follow Acosta’s advice and hunt down this ratcatcher who purportedly knew about picklocks.

           
So I turned to Avrom Khayim and said, “So tell me, old man, where’s the whore house?”

CHAPTER 16

           
THE SHUTTERED WINDOWS TRIED TO hide the telltale glow of burning lamps, but slivers of pea-green light kept slipping out around the edges. Anyone could tell that it was a house of plea sure in the middle of Hampasgasse, right across the street from the
beys khayim,
where the earthly souls of the newly dead hid among the shadows, watching over their graves for twelve full months before joining their uppermost spirits in the World-to-Come.

           
Rainwater trickled down a flight of steps and collected at the bottom, where my face stared up at me out of a murky puddle. The front door was once at street level, but centuries of flooding had buried it under successive layers of silt from the river, until the street rose up to the second floor, and the first floor gradually became the basement.

           
The door swung easily on well-oiled hinges. The walls inside were cool and veined with dark streaks of moisture seeping down from the ceiling, but the fires were warm, and the lanterns brightened the place up pretty well for a subterranean cavern. Some of the candles must have been lit after sundown, in violation of the Sabbath, but I desperately needed to rid myself of the chill of the graveyard, so I didn’t bother to inspect the fires too closely.

           
It might have been a roadside inn anywhere in the kingdom, except for the per sis tent dampness. Men with an air of prosperity gathered around the tables near the bar, hoisting cups of wine and playing at dice, dominoes, checkers, and—off in a corner, even contemplating their next chess move. Men whose grimy faces and tattered clothing told a different story huddled in the shadows under the stairs, playing cards and keeping their voices low. I found a seat near them.

           
The rattle of dice and slapping of dominoes triggered the old, familiar urge to lose myself in the fleeting thrills of wagering. It overwhelmed my senses as surely as if a perfumer had cracked open a vial of Turkish jasmine under my nose. It would have been so easy to shut my eyes to everything else and dive headfirst into it, but I silenced the urge by thinking about how much greater the reward would be if I saved the ghetto from destruction and won back Reyzl’s love as the people carried me through the streets on their shoulders. Not an easy task, especially since one of the men at the next table would blink and swallow a few times whenever he got a good hand, telling signs that could be read from a half-mile away.

           
“What’ll it be, honey?”

           
The hostess was standing over me with a tray of empty mugs and glasses balanced on her hip.

           
I didn’t need any more wine to night, and beer was
farbotn
. She saw my hesitation, and asked if I was here for a bit of their other line of business.

           
I shook my head.

           
The two men at the next table drained their cups and demanded a refill of wine.

           
“I’ll get that,” I said. “And bring one for me, too.”

           
The hostess appraised me with a skeptical eye, and found me lacking. I can’t say I blamed her. So I dug into the folds of my cloak, produced the rabbi’s silver daler, and plunked it on the table. She didn’t do anything vulgar like try to bend it with her teeth. The weight and feel of it satisfied her practiced fingertips just fine.

           
“Three cups of wine coming up,” she said.

           
“Make it four cups,” said the crooked little man next to me. He had leathery skin and a nub of flesh-covered bone where his right thumb should have been.

           
“Why the fourth cup?” I asked.

           
“Isn’t it our duty to drink four cups of wine to night as a symbol of freedom?” he said.

           
“Yes, but not all at once. And you’re supposed to eat a full meal in between.”

           
“Are you going to talk or are you going to play?” said the man with the blink-and-swallow tick. His matted hair was stiff with dirt, but under all that grit I could see that he was younger than his companion.

           
Their names were Israel and Beynish, and they were in the middle of breaking several commandments, but since I had skipped the Shabbes bath myself, I was in no position to pass judgment.

           
“So you’re a scholar,” said Israel, scratching the area around his missing thumb. “Then let me ask you something. Are flying insects really kosher?”

           
I told him that even though it is not our practice, the Torah permits us to eat certain “flying creeping things” such as crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts.

           
“You mean God in His infinite wisdom allows us to eat locusts, but
shell-fish
are forbidden?” said Israel. “How is that possible?”

           
“Greater minds than ours have failed to find an answer to that question, my friend. Those laws belong to the
khukim
.” The class of laws that have no rational explanation.

           
“In that case I got a question for you, too, mister big-shot scholar,” said Beynish.

           
Oy vey
.
Here it comes
. They say that a fool can ask more questions in an hour than ten wise men can answer in a year.

           
“Maybe you could settle something between me and another fellow. Isn’t there someplace in the Gemore where they talk about women going wild and having sex with donkeys?”

           
I knew it.

           
I said, “You’re probably thinking of the passage in Kesives which says that one cup of wine makes a woman radiant and attractive, but two spoil her dignity, three make her shamelessly aroused, and four make her demand sex, even of an ass in the marketplace.”

           
“So the point of the lesson is for us to stop at three cups,” said Beynish. He turned to his friend. “And you keep telling me there’s no practical information in the Talmud.”

           
“Just how big are these cups?” said Israel.

           
I admitted that the Babylonian units of measurement were different from our own.

           
“No kidding? So how big am I in Babylonian units?” said Beynish, grabbing his crotch so there would be no mistaking his meaning.

           
“You? About three fingerbreadths,” said the hostess, slapping three cups of wine down in front of us. Drops of wine spilled onto the tabletop.

           
Beynish tried to look insulted while the hostess held the fourth cup in the air, unsure of where to put it.

           
“That one’s for Elijah,” said Israel.

           
She placed the cup in the middle of the table, and strutted away from us, her hips swinging like a ship’s lantern in a heavy sea.

           
“But if he doesn’t come for it in the next five minutes, we’ll have to drink it ourselves,” said Israel.

           
He raised his cup in his left hand.

           
“What do the Psalms say about not enjoying our enemy’s suffering?”

           
“You mean
rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall
,” I said, citing the Proverbs.

           
“That’s it. Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall—”

           
We raised our cups.

           
“But don’t rush to pick him up, either.”

           
They both drank deeply. I took a small sip. It didn’t compare very well to the full-bodied wine served at Rabbi Loew’s table.

           
“So how did your thumb go missing?” I said, pointing at the wiggling stump of flesh on Israel’s right hand.

           
“He sucked on it too much when he was a kid,” said Beynish.

           
“I lost it to a creature that was half-sewer rat and half-devil,” said Israel. “But don’t worry, I’ll see it again someday. God’s holding on to it for me until I come to claim it.”

           
“You’re Izzy the Ratcatcher?” I asked.

           
“Sure. Want to see my credentials?”

           
He reached into a leather bag and before I could stop him he pulled out a couple of dozen rat tails tied together with a bit of string and held them in front of my nose.

           
I leaned back, away from the smell. “What are you doing with all those? Do you have to pay the city council a thousand rat tails a year as tribute, like the Jews of Frankfurt?”

           
“Those days are long gone,” said Izzy, shaking his head. “And by the way, it was
five
thousand rat tails a year.”

           
“My God, how did you manage it?” I tried to sound impressed.

           
“This street used to be full of houses for fallen women, cast out from Christian society just like us, and every one of them had a rat problem. And also, every burgher in the city knew the way here, so there was always plenty of work to go around. Those were the days. Then they started cracking down, and now this is it. The last house of its kind in the whole
Yidnshtot
.”

           
He drained his cup and stared past me into the darkness. Bits of candlelight flickered like faded flames in his eyes.

           
I shook my head at this sad state of affairs, and refilled their glasses from Elijah’s cup. I wasn’t too worried about this transgression, since the Sages say that a sin done for the right reason is better than a
mitsveh
done for the wrong reason.

           
Izzy swallowed some more wine, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

           
Then he asked, “So why is the new shammes in here pushing drinks in front of Izzy the Ratcatcher and his apprentice?”

           
Never underestimate a man’s intelligence, no matter how raggedy his clothing. The masters of the Kabbalah even say that sometimes you can find a jewel in a poor man’s underwear, though I can’t say that I’ve tried to confirm that proposition.

           
“I’m here to learn about locks,” I said.

           
“Then you’re talking to the wrong man.”

           
“Of course I am. But the night watchman told me you’d know who I
should
be talking to.”

           
The chatter got kind of quiet on our side of the room, but there was movement beneath the stillness.

           
Izzy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting out of this?”

           
“I don’t know,” I said. Redemption? Atonement? Acceptance? “I’m just trying to do what is righteous.”

           
“Uh-huh. And what is this righteous thing you want from me?”

           
“I want you to take me to someone who knows about locks.”

           
“I already told you I don’t give a goat’s turd about locks. Rats are my trade.”

           
“Fine. Then let’s talk about rats.”

           
“What do you want to know about rats?”

           
“Oh, everything—their mating rituals, favorite foods, migration patterns—”

           
“Don’t jerk me around, newcomer.”

           
“Then give me something I can use.”

           
Izzy looked at me as if I were something lower than a leech, but sometimes a leech is just what the patient needs.

           
He started reshuffling the cards, but he was just keeping his hands busy while his brain adjusted to this shift in the conversation.

           
“All right, Mr. Shammes,” he said, his voice heavy with portent. “I might be able to help you identify any signs or omens involving rats.”

           
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ve got a charm against all rat-borne omens.”

           
Beynish spat on the floor to ward off the Evil Eye, and locked his hands together by grabbing each thumb with the opposite fist. He probably would have tried to cross himself a couple of times if he thought he could get away with it.