The Fifth Servant (66 page)

           
“Listen, Yosele. It is written that when a man performs a
mitsveh
, God sends an angel to protect him, and that when he performs two
mitsves
, God sends two angels. So if we’re trying to save a few thousand souls, that means God should be sending a whole legion of angels to protect us.”

           
“You’re not thinking of taking him out there by yourself, are you?” said Trine. “I’d better go with you.”

           
“No, it’s too dangerous for you out there.”

           
“If it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for him.”

           
“I’ll watch over him, I promise.”

           
“No, I’ll go with you,” said Zinger.

           
“You’re not scared?” said Trine.

           
“After the sheer terror of stage fright, my dear lady, nothing else even comes close.” Then he told me, “I am ready to die by your side defending the
Yidnshtot
.”

           
“Don’t be in such a rush,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of time for dying later.”

           
“You have a dry wit, shammes,” said Zinger.

           
Yosele grunted something that none of us could understand.

           
“What was that?” Trine asked.

           
“Ba-oo.”

           
“Bathroom?”

           
“Ba-oo.”

           
“Bedroom?”

           
“Ba-
oo
.”

           
Trine shook her head.

           
“Even I don’t understand everything he says,” she told me. “Just be careful with him. He’s such an innocent, you mustn’t let anything happen to him.”

           
Yosele grunted.

           
“He’s just saying what we’re all thinking,” said Zinger.

           
A little laughter brought us some relief, and we parted company with fading smiles on our lips. And for all I knew, they would be the last smiles I would ever see.

           
The hardest part of being a warrior is waiting for the moment to strike. I peered over the basement steps to see what was happening on the street. The north end of Hampasgasse was blocked by the fires, and a mob had gathered at the south end by the entrance to the Klaus Shul. A couple of looters trotted by carry ing a heavy log and enlisted the help of some of the other would-be thieves to batter down the shul’s heavy wooden door.

           
As the door gave way, the gang of looters started clawing at each other to get at the bucketfuls of treasure that they were convinced were buried beneath the stone floor, just waiting to be unearthed. That’s when I grabbed Yosele’s arm and we ran across the street to the cemetery, appealing for strength in the Name of God:
May Micha’el be at my right, Gabri’el at my left, Uri’el before me, and Rapha’el behind me
—

           
“A-puh.”

           
“Not now, Yosele.”

           
We ducked into the cemetery.

           
“A-
puh
,” said Yosele, pointing to a headstone that was carved with an image of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A trio of plump, ripe fruits weighed its branches down.

           
“Apple?” I said.

           
“
Yes
.”

           
“I don’t have any apples with me. You’ll have to wait till later.”

           
“A-
puh
.”

           
“Later. I promise.”

           
We cut through the cemetery to get to Rabbi Gans’s house, because we didn’t have a moment to lose. A thick column of smoke was already rising from the roof of the Pinkas Shul, and a gang of
Judenschläger
were kicking over the grave markers of several generations of mothers, wives, and daughters.

           
What kind of a person thinks it’s fun to knock over
gravestones
?

           
The same kind of person who burns books in a language he can’t even read because books are mysterious and frightening objects to him.

           
I told Yosele to get down low just as I was doing.

           
“A-
puh
.”

           
“No apples. Later apples.”

           
“G’ape.”

           
“No grapes either.”

           
He kneeled next to me, his mud-caked forehead reminding me that there was something I had forgotten to do.

           
“I’m not going to hurt you, Yosele,” I told him. “I just need to write something on your forehead. All right?”

           
He didn’t say no, then he let me scratch a word into the layer of mud smeared on his brow with the tip of my fingernail.

           
Emes.

           
Truth.

           
As in,
Defend the truth unto the death, for the truth will set you free
.

           
I can’t remember who said that. But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Jewish.

           
“All right, this is it, Yosele. I’m going to run ahead, and you’re going to follow me. Are you ready?”

           
“
Yes
.”

           
“Good. Let’s go!”

           
I leapt to my feet and ran toward my “fellow Christians” as if the Devil himself were after me, leaping over the slanting stones as if nothing else in the world mattered except getting out of that cemetery as fast as possible.

           
“Run! Run! Dear God, save yourselves!” I shouted.

           
They looked my way and saw one of their own kind frantically bounding over the fallen headstones and waving his arms at them like a crazy man. Then they saw the creature chasing me, and the color ran out of their faces. They dropped the chunks of marble they were using to shatter the gravestones and took off toward Little Pinkasgasse.

           
I looked behind me. Yosele was ambling through the torn-up graveyard. If he were moving any faster, his costume might have come apart or somehow revealed itself as a man-made creation. But his very
slowness
somehow embodied the fearsome sight of a giant, soulless homunculus that is inexorably moving forward, impervious to pleas or reason. And he looked as if no human force on earth could stop him.

           
Smoke was pouring out of the windows of the Pinkas Shul as Jews fled in all directions, but one man turned to face the danger, alone. It was Markas Kral. He plunged headfirst into the smoke, and after a few tense moments, my brother shammes came running out swathed in blue-gray smoke, gagging for breath and hugging the Torah scroll to his chest as if it were an injured child.

           
Then a familiar voice filled my ears: “It is the just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, and that His holy fires should cleanse the town of filth!”

           
Bad news sure travels quickly. My old friend Brother Volkmar was leading a group of true believers down the street past the burning houses to open the gate for the mob at the end of Pinkasgasse.

           
He warned the Jews fleeing the sound of his voice that someday a new king would arise in the west, who will be more warlike than all the others who came before him, and he will rule with an iron fist, and he will be surrounded by hard-hearted councilors who will make us all bow down to him and say that he is the Messiah.

           
He also predicted that the world would end sometime soon. He wasn’t quite sure when, but we were all supposed to watch out for years containing the magical numbers seven and nine.

           
A real
n’vie sheker
that one. A false prophet.

           
I dodged a couple of Christians carry ing armfuls of pewter and silverware, and made sure that Yosele wasn’t too far behind me as I fought against the tide of refugees running from the danger. I kept on pushing all the way to Rabbi Gans’s house, which was about to be engulfed by the flames from the house next door. I pounded on the front door.

           
A voice threatened me from behind the door: “Stand back or I’ll shoot!”

           
“Rabbi Dovid! It’s me! Reb Benyamin!”

           
There was a clanking of iron, and the door jerked open. Rabbi Gans pulled me inside and slammed and bolted the door. He wasn’t holding anything more dangerous than a candle.

           
“We can’t leave Yosele out there,” I said.

           
“That’s what you think,” he said, peering out the window.

           
I leaned over his shoulder and saw that the roving bands of Christians were pointing and gesturing wildly, their jaws dropping as Yosele the Golem plodded stiffly toward them. I think it was the most beautiful sight I had seen all morning.

           
“Too bad you don’t really have any gunpowder,” I said.

           
“But I do. Surely you remember that my kinsman Joachim is a mining engineer?”

           
“Of course I do, but why on earth didn't you tell me about this sooner? Oh, never mind, let’s get that whatchamacallit set up first.”

           
“Ah yes, the magic lantern. I first found it described in a freebooter’s copy of della Porta’s
Magia Naturalis
,” said Rabbi Gans, bringing the candle with us up the stairs to the second floor. “Of course I couldn’t afford to buy all twenty volumes, even at flea market prices.”

           
His manuscripts were spread across a table up here as well. A couple were unfinished works on mathematics, and another was a treatise on the Ten Tribes that I would have to look at more closely at another time.

           
“Are you still working on that chronicle of this week’s events?”

           
“Yes, but I had to stop in the middle, which is unfortunate, since such historical chronicles are usually written by the winners.”

           
“Well, maybe it’s time for the losers to write a chapter.”

           
The floor buckled slightly as Rabbi Gans led me to a table holding a black box the size of a child’s coffin with a brass tube projecting out of one end. He opened the box and ignited a slew of candles that were impaled on spikes in front of a series of mirrored reflectors, then he closed the lid, which also had a mirror embedded in it. A bright glow emanated from the tube, spreading a buttery circle of light on the wall.

           
“Help me carry this over to the window.”

           
The heavy lantern was fragile and unwieldy, and it cost us a good deal of sweat to balance it on the windowsill. From this high vantage point, I could just see over the ghetto wall as a fresh swath of Christians came marching up the street toward the Pinkas Gate, carry ing enough pikes and halberds to level a forest.

           
If only the Jews could assemble like that, there would be no limit to what we could accomplish.

           
I even heard the raspy
zing zing zing
of knife blades on sharpening stones come sailing over the rooftops.

           
“Hold the slide while I position the lenses,” said Gans, handing me a small pane of glass.