The Fifth Servant (61 page)

           
There was an awkward exchange of glances, before I stepped in to fill the silence.

           
“She probably knows more about what it takes to be a Jew than he knows about what it takes to be a Christian,” I suggested.

           
We all looked at Anya, but she had already made up her mind.

           
“Yes,” she said. “I think it would be easier for me to become a Jew than it would be for Yankev to become a Christian.”

           
Something changed in the room. We took a moment to meditate on this, in silent reverence for this Christian maiden’s willingness to sacrifice her freedom and safety for her husband’s sake.

           
Then I did my duty and posed the question: “Why do you want to become a Jew? Don’t you know that the Israelites are hated, oppressed, and despised wherever they go?”

           
“Yes, I know.”

           
“Yet you still want to become one of us?”

           
“Only if you will accept me. I mean
truly
accept me.”

           
Her broad brow and Slavic cheekbones were untouched by paint, or rouge, or the dyer’s brush, as the rabbis say, yet she was radiating a noble beauty from every angle of her face.

           
“We shall,” I said. “For if God can send an angel of the Lord to Sarah’s lowly handmaid, Hagar, when she was exiled in the wilderness, then surely we can find it within ourselves to welcome the newcomer with all our hearts. Indeed, God commands us to love the convert like a newborn child.”

           
Tears were forming in Anya’s eyes, reflecting her deepest gratitude. Or maybe she was weeping for the world she was leaving behind.

           
The cook returned with the glass of wine and handed it to me with a disapproving look. Then she set about foraging through her utensils with a great clattering of metal. I just hoped she wasn’t looking for the carving knife.

           
“Are you ready to go through with this?” I asked.

           
“I am,” said Anya.

           
“Not in
my
kitchen, you don’t,” said the cook, seizing a soup ladle. When I looked to her for explanation, she said, “The pope has forbidden such secret marriages.”

           
“Since when have we given a damn what the pope thinks?”

           
“Since he started burning Jewish books,” said Yankev, who suddenly looked like he was sorry he’d spoken.

           
“It is no matter, since I would rather obey Christ than the Church,” said Anya. “And doesn’t it say somewhere in the Talmud that deeds of kindness are equal in weight to all the commandments?”

           
“Yes, it does,” I said, admiring her
chutzpah
. “Your native wit just needs the right whetstone, Anya. And any teacher in the land would be happy to have a student with a mind as sharp as yours.”

           
I couldn’t resist touching her shoulder as a sign of our mutual feelings for each other.

           
“And I said not in my kitchen,” the cook repeated, swatting my hand off Anya’s shoulder with the back of her ladle.

           
“It’s all right,” said Anya. “I’m just—”

           
She didn’t finish, but I think the word she was looking for was “overwhelmed.”

           
I cocked my head in Meisel’s direction.

           
Reb Meisel was fiddling with the waist cord of his velvet dressing gown. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was actually growing uncomfortable with the idea of displaying his full generosity before his own servant and the increasingly narrow-minded community of elders that she spoke for.

           
He pinched the velvet cord till his thumbnail grew white, and he said, “Yes, perhaps it would be better if you did this outside my house.”

           
Yankev couldn’t bring himself to meet my gaze as we stepped into the alley.

           
The sky was growing dangerously bright. It was going to be a beautiful day for somebody, but at the moment the light was our enemy, as if we were demons of the night. And all I could think was that a short time from now, the Holy One,
borukh hu
, would be opening three books, and the names of the righteous would be written in the Book of Life, and the names of the wicked would be written in the Book of Death, and the people who fall between the two would be kept in suspense for ten full days, awaiting God’s final Judgment. Would God find us deserving of life or death? For if God can find fault with His own angels, as Rashi says, what more can we expect of a mere mortal?

           
I positioned the young couple for the ceremony, with nothing but sooty bricks for a bridal canopy.

           
“Wait a minute,” said Anya. “Don’t you have to be a rabbi to do this?”

           
“He’s as close as we’re going to get,” said Yankev, raising his eyes from the ground. His face was an elongated mask of contrition.

           
Anya’s face was more complex. There was joy in it, for any marriage is a joyful affair, but there was also anguish, like the face of a
kheyder
child who’s afraid to ask a question out of fear of getting slapped with the wooden ruler. Or maybe I was just seeing the sweet sadness of a young woman who knew that it was our fate to take divergent paths, and that we newfound friends would likely never see each other again.

           
Love can be painful at times, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got. So I took a step closer and raised her chin with my fingertips, and spoke to her softly like a father to a beloved daughter.

           
“Rabbi Loew says that the people of Israel are prone to great extremes—they are either outstandingly righteous or terrible sinners,” I said, doing my best to fit Yankev’s behavior somewhere onto the grand surveyor’s map delineating the borders of human experience.

           
“He also says that someday, when the Messiah
ben Dovid
comes to establish his kingdom and usher in an era of two thousand years of peace, the world will know that he is descended from a non-Jewish mother on one side, just as King David was descended from a Moabite and King Solomon from an Ammonite. May your union be so blessed.”

           
Rabbi Loew also says that the Messiah’s predecessor, the Messiah
ben Yoseph
, will be slain during the final battle between the nations of the world to destroy Israel. But I didn’t mention that.

           
I stepped back and beheld them both.

           
I held up the glass of wine. It was made of fine crystal, more fitting for a rich man’s dining room than this dull gray alley, but its facets caught the light and transformed it, endlessly folding in on itself and illuminating some wondrous inner world like a chandelier in a hall of mirrors, before being trapped in the sharp-angled corridors from which no light can ever escape.

           
I went on: “Our masters say that whenever a man and a woman come together in the spirit of all that is pure and holy, the Divine presence is with them.”

           
Then I said the blessing over the wine. “
Borukh atoh Adinoy, eloheynu meylekh ha-oylem, boyrey pri hagofn
.”

           
“
Omeyn
.”

           
“Now repeat after me:
I will have thee as my wife
.”

           
“I will have thee as my wife,” said Yankev, his voice tight with emotion.

           
“And you echo his words.” I had to prompt her: “
I will have thee as my husband
.”

           
“I will have thee as my husband,” said Anya, like a woman who had just awakened from a pleasant dream, only to find the real world drab and cold by comparison.

           
“Now, I don’t know how they do it in this
meshigene
town, but where I come from the bride protects the groom from jealous demons by walking around him three times, although some do it seven times.”

           
“Then we better make it seven times,” said Anya.

           
Her feet traced seven circles around her bridegroom as the sky grew lighter and lighter.

           
“Is that all there is to it?” she asked when she was done.

           
“Almost.” I said the seven benedictions, then held the glass to the groom’s lips. He swallowed what little he could, then I held the glass to Anya’s lips. She took a sip, then I handed the glass back to Yankev. He took it from me, turned to the north and hurled the glass at the blackened bricks. It shattered into a hundred pieces, scattering the hordes of spiteful spirits and sending shards of wine-soaked glass flying toward their greenish eyes.

           
“
Mazl tov!
” I said.

           
They kissed. It was a hurried glancing peck with dry lips, but they would have plenty of time for deep and soulful kisses later.

           
“When you get where you’re going, you’ll have to go through the proper legal formalities and immerse in a
mikveh
,” I told Anya. Only then would she be a full-fledged Jew, and ritually cleansed.

           
She looked worried.

           
“He’ll show you what to do,” I said, which brought a smile of relief to her lips.

           
I guided the newlyweds to the secret passageway beneath the whore house, which snaked dimly through the sunken ghosts of ancient houses for half a block or more before connecting to a house on the other side of the high wall.

           
I started up the steps, but Yankev grabbed my sleeve.

           
“Don’t go,” he said. “I mean, it could be dangerous. You better let me go first.”

           
I let him go first. Anya watched him climb the steps, admiring his bravery.

           
Then she reached into her sack, brought forth a shiny golden ring with a clasp in the shape of a fishhook, and clipped it to my ear.

           
“Ow!”

           
“You’re going to the waterfront,” she said. “And every true sailor knows that a gold earring will keep a man safe from going down with the ship.”

           
“Good thinking,” I said, trying not to show any pain.

           
We started up the steps. Yankev lifted the latch and stuck his head out the door, then motioned for us to follow. We emerged through an unmarked door to the street, where the glowing skies in the east threatened to expose our activities.

           
It was time for us to separate. But Anya suddenly seemed to remember something, and said that she had one more thing to give me. She slid her fingers under her collar, undid the clasp, and removed the medallion and thin gold chain that she had been wearing around her neck.

           
“Come closer,” she said, and she slipped the chain over my head. “To complete your disguise.”

           
The chain was still warm from the touch of her body.

           
I looked at the medallion.

           
“It’s St. Jude,” she said. “The patron saint of lost causes.”

           
She threw her arms around me and gave me a parting hug, pressing so close that I caught a whiff of her sweet smell, which reminded me of an early spring flower, while Reyzl had always reminded me of a late summer rose.

           
She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before she broke away.

           
Yankev bowed his head, but he didn’t offer me his hand, saving me the trouble of having to refuse it.

           
I didn’t know what to say.

           
But when the words came, they came straight from the heart. “I wish you both happiness. You truly deserve it.”

           
And I watched them go, hugging the shadows as they headed east along the riverbank like a pair of beggars fleeing the city.

           
Part of me actually envied the young couple. For in spite of all their troubles, their life together was just starting. They had the skills and knowledge to make their way, hope for the future, and most of all, they had each other.

           
It’s not good to be alone.

           
And I couldn’t help succumbing to the sadness of something that would never be. A third child with my wife. One who lived.