The Fifth Servant (58 page)

           
But in what world would that happen? Perhaps in a dream world, but not in ours.

           
Our world was a shimmering bubble falling inexorably to earth. Would it bounce, as bubbles sometimes do, or would it burst apart in a spray of rainbow-colored droplets?

           
Ibn Ezra says that a short life with wisdom is better than a long life without it, and if he were here with us on this sleepless night, I could just picture him shutting himself up in his room to write poetry undisturbed while awaiting his final hour upon this earth.

           
But for us, the seconds were ticking by, and we still had to figure out how to bluff our way past noon tomorrow.

           
The last of my curls spiraled to the ground. Anya brushed the tufts of hair from my shoulders with a kerchief as if I were a shedding animal, then she wiped her hand along the back of my neck to remove the itchy hairs that had been tormenting me by getting under my collar.

           
Her hands were warm despite the cold.

           
She wet a comb and dragged it across my head, yanking my close-cropped hair in directions that God had never intended it to go, trying to create the illusion that my hair was naturally straight. After taming my shaggy mane with enough water to mop the kitchen floor, she held up a hand mirror so I could see what I looked like with short straight hair plastered to the top of my head.

           
I looked half-Christian. The crown of my head felt strangely cold, while the bottom half bristled with a rabbinic beard that was strangely out of place.

           
“Time for the beard, isn’t it?” she said. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Or does it violate some kind of precept?”

           
“The great ReMo of Kraków—
olev ha-sholem
—always taught us to deviate from the law under exceptional conditions, or when considerable personal loss is at stake.”

           
“Like right now.”

           
“Yes.”

           
“And what other deviations are you prepared to commit?”

           
“What ever the need of the hour requires.”

           
“Rabbi Isserles said that?”

           
“He did.”

           
She studied my beard from various angles, then started clipping away at it.

           
“This Rabbi Isserles sounds like a very practical and wise man. A real…uh…what’s the word? A
hasid
?”

           
“You probably mean a
tsadek
.”

           
“What’s the difference?”

           
“A
hasid
is a pious man who always keeps to the letter of the law, and a
tsadek
is a righteous man who finds meaning in the gaps
between
the letters of the law.”

           
She pursed her lips and pondered that for a moment. “Well, I guess that means I’d rather be righteous than pious.”

           
“Then it sounds to me like you belong in the same room with the
tsadek
s.”

           
“Tell me—” she said.

           
I waited.

           
“Why is it that our senses can fool us into believing that we want something very much, but once we hold it in our hand, it doesn’t turn out to be what we expected?”

           
Before I could answer, she changed course like a ship turning hard to lee. “I mean, for example, why do so many things smell better than they taste?”

           
If we had actually been aboard a ship, I would have hit the deck to avoid the swinging boom.

           
So I said, “You know, I’ve never thought about that before. But it is an excellent question. It opens the door to many possibilities, which is the sign of an active and vigorous intellect.”

           
She was trimming the hair at my jawline, and she paused. I thought perhaps it was because she was so pleased by my compliment, but she had only stopped so that I could answer her question.

           
I considered the problem, and said, “The most logical explanation would be that our sense of smell is more refined than our sense of taste.”

           
Her eyes flashed. “Of course. That makes perfect sense. It’s remarkable.”

           
“It’s not so remarkable.”

           
“Yankev didn’t know the answer.”

           
“Well, he’s still young—”

           
“Don’t—”

           
She stopped my mouth with her hand.

           
“You’re very kind to say so, but…I’d say that you’re the only
tsadek
around here,” she said.

           
“I’m no
tsadek
,” I said, as she resumed the delicate procedure of clipping the wiry hair around my lips and chin. “If I were, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

           
“We’re all in this mess together,” she said.

           
“I don’t mean
that
mess.”

           
“Then what particular mess are you talking about?” she asked, straightening up. She had finished with the scissors and comb, so she laid them aside and wiped her hands on her apron. Then she picked up the bowl of shaving soap and started stirring it with a shorthaired brush.

           
She dabbed my face with lather, leaning close enough for me to catch her scent.

           
I told her about Reyzl, how at first it was an adventure with her, roughing it on the road east and setting up our own little place together. I was very attentive to her, and the easy revelation of conjugal joys was a blessing as well. But then she started missing her family, and the big fairs and market days, and the traveling players coming through with the latest gory English dramas—just the kind of entertainment that a great city like Prague offers. And it didn’t help any that her stepsisters married up while she was stuck in near-poverty.

           
Anya barely acknowledged what I was saying as she sharpened the razor on a leather strop like a priestess preparing to sacrifice a ram.

           
I told her that I gave up my position as a scholar in Slonim because I didn’t want to lose Reyzl. But I didn’t want to lose my status as a scholar, either.

           
“Well, you can’t have it both ways,” she said, as she brought the razor near my cheek.

           
She hesitated, the razor poised to strike. “So your skin has never been touched by a razor?” she asked.

           
“That’s right.”

           
“Amazing.”

           
I kept silent as she delicately cleared the underbrush from my cheeks like a young wife gathering herbs from her garden.

           
“Have you tried talking to her?” she asked.

           
“Of course I have.”

           
“And?”

           
“It didn’t go too well.”

           
“Then you’ll just have to try again.”

           
“What’s the use?”

           
“Now what kind of an attitude is that? When you’re studying a difficult question, mister scholar, does the answer always come to you right away?”

           
“Of course not.”

           
“Well, sometimes it’s the same with a woman.”

           
A surge of warmth spread through the middle of my chest as she wiped my face clean with a towel and held up the mirror.

           
“Well, what do you think of your new look?” she asked.

           
A bare face with bright pink cheeks stared back at me. I’d started growing the beard when I was a young teenager, and the line of my lips held a manly shape and definition that I had never seen before.

           
“It’s like looking at the face of a long-lost relative,” I said. “A distant cousin or something. Someone who’s not me, but I can definitely see the family resemblance.”

           
She ran her fingers along the smooth part of my cheek to test the quality of her work.

           
“Not bad,” she said.

           
Then: “Better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew,” she said, tweaking me. “Now we just have to get you out of those muddy clothes.”

           
“Right. And where am I supposed to find a change of clothes?”

           
Her lips spread wide, forming a lovely smile as she rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a rough tunic with a rope around the middle.

           
“Good Lord, woman. What else have you got in that bag?”

           
She practically winked at me as she handed me the set of Christian clothes that she had brought with her.

           
Her hands were
so
warm.

           
I wondered whose clothes they were, but I didn’t ask.

           
“There’s just one other thing,” she said.

           
Something about her voice made me stop and look right at her.

           
“You should definitely go and see your wife again. Go and tell her—” She swallowed, and I thought I saw wetness forming in her eyes. “Go and tell her your real feelings, before going out there and facing God-knows-what dangers.”

           
“Why not? If I’m going to hang, it might as well be from the highest tree.”

           
“I hope that wasn’t an attempt to sound heroic.”

           
I gave her a quick pat on the shoulder, but my hand lingered there, like a bridge connecting two people on opposite shores. I believe she felt it, too.

           
I told her what Rabbi Nathan says: “You know what a
real
hero is? Someone who turns an enemy into a friend.”

           
“WOULD YOU LIKE A
VAYNSHL?”

           
“No thank you, Mrs. Rozansky,” I replied, shuffling my feet like an awkward sixteen-year-old.

           
“
Nemt epes in moyl arayn
,” she said, offering me a bowl of sour cherries.

           
Ah. So
that’s
what a
vaynshl
was. We call them
vishnya
in Slonim.

           
“You don’t need to offer me anything, Mrs. Rozansky. I know it’s late. I just need to speak to Reyzl.”

           
“Reyzl’s not home,” said her father, his clay pipe clamped between his teeth. He was smoking that fancy New World tobacco which burns up a day’s wages with a few quick puffs.

           
They couldn’t stop staring at my newly shaven cheeks.

           
Finally, Mrs. Rozansky said, “She’s staying at a friend’s house at the bottom of Three Wells Lane.”

           
Reyzl had moved
closer
to the breach in the gate?

           
“Why?” I asked.

           
Zalman Rozansky blew some of that expensive smoke at me. “You’ll have to ask her.”

           
ONE MORE FLIGHT OF STAIRS, I thought. One more crooked flight of stairs leading to another narrow hallway.

           
My knocking had roused the landlady, which was a grievous error. She had looked me over, declared that she ran a respectable establishment, and insisted on coming with me, climbing the steps at the speed of honey flowing uphill. We finally got to the third landing and she knocked on the door.

           
“Reyzl! There’s someone here to see you.”

           
“Just a minute, Mrs. Leibstein.”

           
The floor creaked as feminine footsteps approached.

           
Reyzl’s eyes were laughing when she opened the door. They froze when she saw the strange man on her threshold, then her face went flat.

           
“Oh, it’s you. What do
you
want?”