The Fifth Servant (30 page)

           
“I knew you were the brainy type,” said Trine. “You probably want to discuss the teachings with me before we lie down, since if we sit together and no words of Torah pass between us, then it is a seat of the scornful, but if we sit together and words of Torah do pass between us, then the Presence is with us.”

           
My God, the Pirkey Avos chapter of the Mishnah.

           
“What were you before? A rabbi’s daughter? Or sister? Or—”

           
“Or
what
?” She turned suddenly. “Keep talking like that and I’ll snuff this out in your eye.”

           
She pointed the candle at me, the flame close enough to singe my eyebrows. The creases around her eyes deepened, and I realized that with nowhere else to go, her sharp-wittedness had become dangerous.

           
“I’ll have you know that we’re doing the work of God,” she said, “by keeping all the filthy men in this town from ruining the well-brought-up women from the good, pious families.”

           
Candle wax was dripping on my cloak, and I could smell the bitter, minty herbs on her breath.

           
“I guess I never thought of it that way.”

           
“Yeah, I bet there’s a lot you never thought of.”

           
She withdrew the flame from in front of my eyes.

           
“Do you drip hot wax on all your customers?”

           
“Only the ones I like.”

           
“I’m flattered.”

           
“Don’t be.”

           
Two shapes approached from the shadows. One was another wayward daughter of Israel, who barely glanced at me as she slipped by, pulling along a fairly well-dressed man who touched his hat as he passed and thereby managed to cover most of his face with his hand.

           
I let Trine enjoy tormenting me for a while, then I said, “Can we go somewhere with a little more privacy?”

           
“Ooh, listen to you, talking about
privacy
. That’s a pretty rare commodity around here. Sometimes when all the best rooms are taken, I’ve got to make like a lovebird in the same room with two other people.”

           
“Hey, you’re talking to a man who sleeps in the same
bed
with two other people.”

           
She smiled wryly. Then she led me up some narrow stairs past the kitchen to a covered walkway that bordered a square courtyard. The rain was picking up again.

           
We passed through an archway into a dark hallway on the far side of the building. There were only three doors, with no light coming from any of them.

           
This was as private as it was going to get.

           
I was about to make my move when the room at the end of the corridor erupted with inarticulate howlings. I started, which made Trine laugh. It sounded like someone was tearing apart a sheep, until I realized that the sounds were rhythmic, repetitive, and distinctly
happy
.

           
“He must have heard us coming,” she said.

           
I was about to ask who “he” was, when she opened the door and a giant of a man in a dirty white shirt jumped all over her, flapping his arms and making those same happy
ahooo ahooo
sounds like a big baby.

           
“They call him Dumb Yosele,” she said. “Not dumb as in stupid, but dumb meaning he doesn’t speak very well. But I understand him, don’t I, Yosele?”

           
“
Yess
.” The big man spoke quickly. It turned out to be his clearest word, besides “cookie.”

           
“And I thought I told you not to scratch your flea bites,” she said, checking the scabs on his arms. “He won’t stop till he’s bleeding, unless we keep reminding him.”

           
“Ow-
sigh
.”

           
“You want to go outside?”

           
“Ow-
sigh
.”

           
“All right.”

           
“Ow-
sigh
.”

           
“Yes.”

           
She let him go skipping out in the rain. I’d never seen anyone over the age of five get so excited about running around with his mouth open to catch raindrops. He was getting soaked, and he loved every minute of it, laughing and letting out what for him was a joyful sound:
gaaa, gaaa, gaaaaah
.

           
Trine smiled just watching him.

           
“You should see him when he takes his weekly bath,” she said. “We have to tell him
everything
. ‘Wash under your arms, Yosele. Both sides. Now wash your face. Use the soap, Yosele.’”

           
“He bathes for Shabbes?”

           
“What are you, crazy?”

           
“Not yet, but I’ve been studying with a couple of real experts.”

           
She ignored that. “Every day he fetches water from the well and food from the market, sweeps out the rooms, and carries hundredweight sacks of grain up three flights of stairs. What do you think? He doesn’t get dirty like everybody else?”

           
So even Dumb Yosele bathed every week like a good Jew. I wondered if he could be included in a
minyen
.

           
I said, “You know, there are enemies of Israel who bathe only twice in their whole lives, on the day they’re born and the day their bodies are washed for burial, and yet they say that
we
are the ones who have a distinctly ‘Jewish’ smell.”

           
“Is that so? Well, we’ve got girls here who go to the
mikveh
every day and
still
don’t feel like they’ll ever be clean.”

           
Her face had grown stern, and I was very much aware of the sound of falling raindrops all around us.

           
I listened to the raindrops for a while.

           
Yosele started screaming so loudly that anyone who didn’t know better would think something horrible was happening to him:
ah-ha-haa
,
ah-ha-haa
,
ah-ha-haaah!

           
“He’s got to let it out somehow,” said Trine. “But if he’s happy, God’s happy.”

           
I had to agree. Watching him cavorting in the rain and loving every minute of it almost made me envy the big fool.

           
“We found him chained up in a stable, behaving no better than an unbroken horse,” she said. “But we cleaned him up. Taught him how to wipe his own butt, make his own bed, and wait his turn for the bath. And one of these days he’s going to learn how to chop wood with a sharp ax, because that’s a damn heavy job for us in the winter.”

           
Yosele finally came in out of the rain, dripping wet and leaving a trail of tiny puddles all the way back to his room, where Trine had him take off his shirt. Then she helped him dry himself with a towel. She had to keep prompting him to dry his chest, his arms, even his groin. He had no sense of shame, because instead of covering himself, Yosele found a loose piece of string and started wiggling it in front of his face and making more whooping noises.

           
Trine took the string away and told him to put on a clean shirt.

           
“He’s such a big baby in a man’s body. But what a body!” she said, laughing while she hung up the shirt and towel.

           
She lit his candle, and he promptly blew it out.

           
“Oh right, I forgot,” she said, handing him her candle. “He has to do it by himself or it’s not right somehow.”

           
Yosele lit his candle, then blew it out, then lit it and blew it out again. He did this a couple more times before Trine said, “That’s enough,” and tried to pry her candle away from him. But he was in a playful mood, and wouldn’t let her have it back.

           
“He doesn’t know how strong he is,” she said, struggling with his iron grip.

           
“Good thing.”

           
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about him. He never hurts anybody on purpose. He’s totally without the
yetzer horeh
.” The Evil Inclination.

           
She finally got the candle away from him in one piece.

           
“The worst is when he’s sick,” she said, “because he can’t tell us where it hurts, so we don’t know what remedy he needs, and it’s so hard to watch him suffer because he doesn’t understand why he feels bad.”

           
Yosele bounced on the bed, then took a box from the shelf and dumped out some broken draughtsmen on a wooden gaming board. He lined the pieces up with great precision.

           
“Check-
uh
.”

           
“You want to play checkers?” she said.

           
“Check-
uh
.”

           
“We’ll play checkers in an hour, all right? Now, why don’t you go say the
kidesh
with the girls upstairs?”

           
“Uh-
tay
.”

           
“Yes, upstairs now. Checkers later.”

           
“Uh-
tay
.”

           
“Yes.”

           
“Uh-
tay
.”

           
“Yes
, go ahead.”

           
“He says the
kidesh
?” I asked, after he left.

           
“In his own way.”

           
And as I watched Dumb Yosele tapping his fingers on the walls along the corridor, I saw that the
sh’khineh
dwelt in him. And I felt a distinct sensation that he was in some way a specially chosen one, a holy fool sent to us as a test of whether we would take good care of him and see to it that he didn’t suffer, and that God would judge us on how we treated this innocent soul.

           
“Most men don’t have the patience to deal with him,” Trine said, unlocking the door to a private room.

           
I followed her in.

           
“Now let’s get down to business,” she said, turning to me.

           
“Yes, let’s.” I shut the door and dropped the playfulness from my voice. “How did that Christian get in here?”

           
“What are you babbling about? We’ve always got Christians in here. How long do you think we’d stay in business if we didn’t?”

           
“I mean to night. How did that Englishman get in here when all the gates are sealed and guarded?”

           
“You know what they say. The
goy
may be
treyf
but his money is kosher.”

           
“I don’t give a damn about the money. Just tell me how he knew about this place.”

           
“What are you,
meshuge
? All those upright Christian soldiers march in here, take one look at me, and practically have to pour the drool out of their boots.”

           
“How do they get in?” I demanded.

           
“I knew there was something screwy about you. No normal man would let me spend all that time taking care of Yosele.”

           
I took a step closer. “There’s a secret passage, isn’t there? Where is it?”

           
She cursed me.

           
“How do they know about it?”

           
She spat in my eye.

           
“Wow. Good aim. Now, tell me where it is before I—”

           
“Before you
what
? I’ve hurt bigger men than you.”

           
I believed her.

           
Someone was pounding on the door.

           
“Who is it?” Trine said.

           
“Is everything all right in there, Trine?”

           
“Sure, I’m just trying to turn a big-boned ass into a man of understanding,” she said. Another mangled quotation from the Sages.