The Fifth Servant (50 page)

           
“How can anyone fight such a creature?”

           
“That’s what most men would say. And yet these same men, who can’t find the courage to challenge one of God’s own creatures, presume to challenge the ways of God Himself. But you are different from them, Ben-Akiva. You have the strength to face such an adversary.”

           
“But God will listen to a rational argument. A sea monster doesn’t respond to such—”

           
“There is something that you are not seeing, Ben-Akiva. It has been suggested that the Livyoson represents man’s aggressive nature. It could therefore be said to represent the Evil Impulse itself. Why, then, did God make him?”

           
The
Tehillim
say,
livyoson zeh yotsarto l’sakhek boy
. There is the Leviathan You formed to play with.

           
“The Psalms of David say that God made Livyoson to be His companion. So the most fearsome creature on earth is a mere plaything for Him. But if we pursue your line of reasoning, it also could mean that God created the Evil Impulse for his own amusement.”

           
“And what could possibly account for that?”

           
“My guess would be that things were getting pretty boring up in Heaven.”

           
“Angels don’t get bored,” said Rabbi Gans.

           
“How would you know?”

           
Rabbi Loew kept up the inquiry. “What does Rabbi Samuel ben Nakhman say about the Evil Impulse?”

           
I quoted Rabbi Samuel: “
If it weren’t for the Evil Impulse, no man would build a house, marry a wife, beget children, or engage in trade
.”

           
“Exactly. You can’t slay this beast because it lives inside your own breast. Livyoson is the anger raging within you, with no mind or soul directing it, not some sea monster to be frightened of. But unless you learn to conquer it, this inner serpent will eventually rise up and destroy you. So what you need to do is absorb the best part of it while leaving its irrational and destructive part behind. You must harness its strength, its determination, its perseverance, and use them to your benefit, because the difference between raw power and controlled power is like the difference between a wildfire that destroys a whole neighborhood and the metallurgist’s smelting fire that purifies the finest gold. Once you have learned to channel this power, you shall find great strength within yourself and be like Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, about whom they say,
Woe unto the man who meets up with a venomous lizard, and woe unto the venomous lizard who meets up with Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa
.”

           
I found it hard to believe that Federn intended to send me such a profound and detailed message. His wife said he was no great scholar, but then, who am I to say? When the Angel of Death comes and takes away your only cow, who can say that he didn’t originally come for
you
?

           
“There is one other phrase in the
Seyfer Iyov
that does not recur in Scripture,” said Rabbi Loew, returning to the document on the table before him. “
At this my heart trembles, leaping from its place
. The absence of this expression from our list is most curious, and forces us to ask why it was not included with the others to form a complete list of the unique words in the
seyfer
. Clearly it deserves special attention.”

           
There it was again, that unmistakable mystical logic, which Rabbi Loew used to pull all the disparate elements of the message together into this spiritually uplifting summary of its contents:
He who gathers the strength to strangle the opposition and defeat the enemy within will live to a ripe old age, even to eternity. The heart leaps at the thought, but first, you must harness the iron pillars of Behemoth and the fiery sparks of Livyoson, and then, like them, you will fear nothing, not even the most dreadful machines of war
.

           
Rabbi Loew’s explanation of the deeper meaning of this message was interrupted by the frantic, Sabbath-breaking clanging of the bell in the Jewish Town Hall only a block away—the only such “Jewish” bell in all of Europe.

           
We dropped everything and ran out into the street. Markas Kral, the shammes from the Pinkas Shul, came running up the Narrow Lane and told us that a fracas had broken out at the South Gate. The city guards had shown up with arrest warrants bearing the names of several prominent rabbis and were demanding to be allowed entry. A mob of
Judenschläger
had gathered under a homemade battle flag, and were threatening to storm the ghetto if the guards weren’t allowed in.

           
By the South Gate. Near Reyzl’s house.

           
I reached inside the doorway and grabbed the big wooden
kleperl
, then I set off in the direction of the Narrow Lane. Others followed.

           
“Whose names were on the warrants?” asked Rabbi Gans.

           
“You’re on the list yourself,” Kral answered. “Right after Rabbi Horowitz, Rabbi Loew, and Rabbi Sheftels.”

           
I slowed down. “Rabbi
Abraham
Sheftels is here in Prague?” I said. He, too, had studied with Isserles.

           
“You know who else is here?” said Gans. “Rabbi Jaffe.”

           
“He’s on the list, too,” said Kral.

           
Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe, former President of the Council of the Four Lands, had also studied with the great ReMo.

           
“They’re arresting all the Freethinkers,” said Rabbi Gans, like a prophet announcing a dark epiphany.

           
“And anyone else who has been a thorn in the side of the town leadership,” said Rabbi Loew, since he was not a Freethinker, but was on the list as well.

           
“All except the newcomer.”

           
“Right,” I said. “Who knew that being ignored could be such a blessing?”

           
“There appears to be a pattern to all this,” said Rabbi Loew. “And we must ask ourselves who would benefit from denouncing all their major political opponents to the Christian authorities?”

           
“You’re not suggesting that our fellow Jews would do such a thing?” said Rabbi Gans.

           
“It’s an awfully one-sided list.”

           
I took my leave and hurried along toward Reyzl’s neighborhood.

           
Halfway down the block, Jews were abandoning their homes and fleeing to the Meisel Shul, which the emperor had just designated as a sanctuary.

           
I broke into a run.

           
Acosta the watchman came charging all the way from the East Gate leading a small group of men carry ing hooked poles and oxhides. He intercepted me and told me to turn around and head to the Schächtergasse to alert the butchers.

           
“Send someone else,” I said, stepping around him.

           
But I stopped short when Rabbi Loew called my name quite sharply and told me to go and escort the orphans to safety. He had gotten word from a nun called Sister Marushka that she had convinced the Christian authorities to grant the orphans temporary asylum in the Agnes Convent, and it was my job to deliver them to her outside the South Gate. I admit that I had been hoping to rush in and heroically rescue my wife from an ugly situation and somehow win back her favor. But that childish fantasy had to yield to the call to save upwards of thirty innocent children from witnessing another human sacrifice on a mass scale.

           
I rushed up Belelesgasse to the orphanage, thinking about the endless litany of
Kaddish
prayers for absent parents that must emanate from that roomful of children. But when I walked in, they were having their matzoh and broth and listening to a lesson on what to do if they are ever confronted by a demon (one solution: always carry a coin or two to buy it off).

           
Even the mindless mob of idiots should allow a group of orphans to pass through unmolested, I thought. But the children knew that something was up. A strange man had interrupted their lesson, and their eyes grew wide with wonder. I wished I could do more for them. I would have given anything to take just
one
boy or girl away from here and give them a warm, loving home. But then I’d have to leave the rest behind, and I couldn’t do
that
either.

           
So I told the children I was taking them someplace special where they would be safer until things returned to normal. Then I herded them together like a flock of lambs and set off down the Narrow Lane toward the South Gate, holding the
kleperl
aloft like a shepherd’s crook and fending off the flood of refugees streaming in the opposite direction. I always seemed to be swimming against the tide in this place.

           
The runoff from yesterday’s rains had inundated the area, and the lower end of the street was a sea of mud. The small door to the gate was partway open, and a handful of defenders gathered around Rabbi Loew like the last remaining pieces in a chess game protecting their king as he stood with his foot on the threshold calling Sister Marushka’s name and demanding to know the charges against himself and his fellow rabbis.

           
The sergeant of the guard replied that all of the men on his list were wanted for illegal possession of the proscribed and heretical books of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides.

           
“Books you can’t even read,” Acosta said, and he spat in the mud.

           
Rabbi Loew lamented the shortsightedness of his accusers. Hadn’t they learned that wherever they burn the books of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, eventually they will burn the Talmud and even the Bible itself? Even the freedom-loving Parisians had been goaded into burning twenty-four cartloads of Talmudic writings in a single day.

           
Acosta saw me approaching with a swarm of children in tow.

           
“I ask for butchers and you bring me orphans,” he said, with his palms turned up like a merchant appraising a shipment of bruised cabbages.

           
“But at least you brought something,” he added, nodding toward the
kleperl
. “I brought these—”

           
He opened his cloak and showed me a pair of well-worn cutlasses tucked into his belt.

           
“I thought we weren’t allowed to carry swords,” I said, pointing to one of his weapons.

           
“That’s not a sword, it’s an exceptionally large dagger.”

           
A bystander with the closely cropped hair and beard of one of Rabbi Aaron’s disciples saw this display and reprimanded Acosta: “On Shabbes, a man should not go out with a sword, a bow, a shield, a lance, or a spear.”

           
“Only if they’re being used as tools or implements,” I said. “It’s acceptable if they’re ornaments.”

           
“So they’re ornaments, all right?” Acosta told the bystander, who frowned and turned away in disgust.

           
“Do me a favor,” Acosta said.

           
“Anything.”

           
“When I die, don’t bury me anywhere
near
that schmuck.”

           
“Sure, if that’s what you really want.”

           
“Swear it.”

           
“All right, I swear.”

           
“Good. You know, I’ve been working in Rabbi Loew’s house for a couple of years now, and I’ve never had a moment to study with him. Maybe I’ll get to study with him in the World-to-Come.”

           
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. The
Zohar
says that if we are to be destroyed, it will never be on Shabbes.”

           
But time was passing, and our shadows were growing longer by the minute. Shabbes would be ending within the hour.

           
Rabbi Loew appealed to the populace to show some compassion and let the orphans through, but the
Judenschläger
weren’t having any of it, buzzing and jeering at his concern for the sad-faced children of exile.

           
Acosta’s lips tightened and his face grew white, as he kept his fury just below the surface like an old world thunder god, waiting for the moment to strike. All he said was, “I once saw a crowd of Castilians torture a full-grown ox just for fun. They do things like that. That’s their idea of entertainment.”

           
He took several deep breaths while the sergeant of the guard tried to persuade the crowd to allow the orphans to leave the ghetto unharmed. Where on earth was Sister Marushka?