The Fifth Servant (69 page)

           
Yosele didn’t like the loud noise. He lifted Big Klaus off his feet and hurled him screaming through the window.

           
I released the mercenary, who staggered sideways a bit and slumped over the table, his fingers reaching for the leather sack.

           
“I wonder what’s—”

           
The floor gave way in a shower of splinters and sparks.

           
We collapsed toward the center, then wood and earth slammed into me from below.

           
The next thing I knew, I was lying on some half-charred crossbeams, watching the flames slowly crawl up the front of my tunic. Actually, the fire was warm and kind of pleasant.

           
And it looked like the roof was getting closer. You might even say it was caving in. That was the term. Caving in.

           
Someone grabbed my shirt and hauled me to my knees and told me to get moving. It was Rabbi Gans, and somehow I snapped out of the daze I was in and followed him while swatting out the flames on my tunic.

           
Then a huge crossbeam came crashing down through the blackened timbers, and suddenly Yosele Golem was under it, stopping it at a sharp angle with his tremendously powerful arms.

           
As soon as Rabbi Gans pulled me through the narrow archway to safety, I turned around to help Yosele, but it was too late. Yosele had given us a few more seconds of life by holding the ceiling up, but now he was trapped, surrounded by flames. I tried to run back into the fire to save him, but Rabbi Gans held me back with all his strength.

           
I wanted to tell Yosele to let go and run, but he just stood there suspended between two worlds, since any move he made would lead to disaster.

           
Our eyes met. He was looking at me the way a startled deer stares at the hunter’s bow, not fully understanding his predicament, and showing such wide-eyed childlike incomprehension of the forces beyond his control that a piece of my soul departed from me forever when the heat and weight became too much for him and he let it all come tumbling down on him.

           
I stood there like a dreamer amazed, unable to feel anything but the power of my vital soul draining out of me. For it is written that the Lord gave us a soul that was pure, and that if we do not return it to Him in the same state of purity, He will destroy it before our eyes.

           
I was vaguely aware of the body of Big Klaus lying facedown in the middle of the street, and somehow my hands found the will to grab hold of my collar and tear my shirt open. Then my legs buckled and I kneeled in the sandy soil and let the ashes swirl around me. The smoke was stinging my eyes, then the wind shifted and I caught a glimpse of Yosele’s scarred, lifeless face amid the dying flames. The muddy
aleph
had been scraped off his forehead, leaving only the letters
.
Mes
. Dead.

           
You’re supposed to stay with the dying to hear their confession and say one last
Sh’ma
with them. Yosele had no sins on his head, so I said the
Sh’ma
for him. Perhaps his soul would transmigrate as Rabbi Loew teaches, and be born to a barren couple in the future.

           
From dust you came, and to dust you shall return
, I prayed.
Goodbye, Yosele. May your memory be a blessing
.

           
I stood up and dusted off my knees, and felt a thousand eyes on me. The mass of Christians were standing strangely still about half a block away. Then Sheriff Zizka came trotting toward me, whether to arrest me or slay me or do something else, I knew not.

           
Zizka reached for his sword and unsheathed it. I bowed my head and prayed that somehow my death would redeem all Israel and wash away the sins of the people, then I prepared to fight the sheriff with nothing more than the bloody knife I had pulled from the ashes.

           
The opposing clans of Jews and Christians held their positions and stood watch, as if we were a pair of champions chosen to do battle with bronze-tipped weapons in front of our respective armies. But Zizka stopped about ten paces in front of me as a wounded man emerged from the smoking door frame of what had been Rabbi Gans’s house. The mercenary was covered with soot, and his face was streaked with blood and sweat. He could barely stand, and he soon fell back against the charred wood, an oblong weight slipping from his hands.

           
The jar hit the ground and tipped over, and a couple of pints of thick red liquid slurped out into the hungry sands.

           
For a moment all was still, except for the faint gurgling. Zizka called for a doctor, but nobody moved. He repeated his call.

           
Finally, Rabbi Gans said, “All right, I’ll take a look at him.”

           
Big Klaus was still stunned from the fall. He had a few bruises and a broken collarbone, but he was in a lot better shape than he had a right to be. The other one was blackened and burnt, with a single chest wound where one of his ribs had stopped the blade from going through his heart. Rabbi Gans tended to them while Zizka shackled their hands behind their backs.

           
Only then did Zizka call for the victim’s father to be brought forward. While the sheriff’s men were combing the streets calling Janek’s name, Rabbi Gans looked up and said, “There’s something I need you to help me with.”

           
He asked me to apply pressure while he cleaned and dressed the mercenary’s wound, but I think he was just trying to keep me occupied and somehow bring me back into the land of the living.

           
The crowd made room for the city guards returning with Viktor Janek. The Praguers even showed some respect for Rabbi Loew, and let him through as well, along with another Jew. My eyes were still watery from all the smoke, but it looked like Jacob Federn. His clothes were filthy, and he shuffled along like an old beggar who’s afraid they’ll set the dogs on him. But he was alive and in one piece despite all that had befallen him.

           
One of the city guards handed Janek a loaded pistol. Then Janek stood facing the men who had murdered his daughter.

           
The first mercenary, who told us his name was Gottschalk, said in his defense that the gun had gone off by accident, and that Big Klaus was the one who had slit the girl’s throat. He started to say something else, but Janek raised the pistol and convinced him to keep his mouth shut. It was too late for words, anyway.

           
The three of them faced each other for a long moment, then Janek uncocked the pistol and handed it back to Zizka. “I do not forgive you,” he told the men. “But I will let you live. And may the Good Lord judge you in His own time.”

           
Janek turned and walked away.

           
The mob started to break up. And like the inhabitants of an enchanted castle casting off a century of slumber, the Jews sprang into action, manning the hand pumps and breaking out the buckets. It’s a good thing there was plenty of water in the wells. A rabbi with a Volhynian accent ordered a group of dedicated young men to pull down the weakened buildings with axes and hooks to keep the fire from spreading. Then somebody rolled out a barrel of wine, and soon we were all freely passing the water buckets from hand to hand. I got a few stares, but after Rabbi Gans wrapped a rag around my blistered hand, they let me take a few turns at the water pump.

           
We fell into a steady rhythm, and it wasn’t long before a sound that seemed to come out of nowhere penetrated my senses. A lone voice was rising, and soon the others were joining in, taking up the lilting melody of the first of the
Hallel
Psalms, songs of praise that we feel in our bones, which we sing when a prisoner is set free, a sick man recovers from an illness, or the community is saved from disaster. And soon the words about the hills skipping like young sheep were carried on the breeze over the smoldering ruins.

           
“This is all my fault,” I heard Federn say.

           
“You share some of the blame,” Rabbi Loew agreed. “But you redeemed yourself by providing us with the clues we needed to bring an end to this grisly business.”

           
“What clues did I provide?”

           
“If only all such questions could be so easily answered. I’m talking about that coded message you sent us through that Christian servant girl. It gave our
khaver
Benyamin the confidence he needed to conquer his fears and save the ghetto.”

           
“What coded message?”

           
“The one based on the Book of Job.”

           
“That? Well, I’m afraid I owe you a bit of an explanation.”

           
After some prompting, Federn told the rabbi, “Janek didn’t trust me, so he made me put the terms of our agreement in writing. But I didn’t trust him either, so I just wrote down the first words that came into my head. I figured if he ever turned it over to the authorities, it would just be a bunch of meaningless nonsense.”

           
Rabbi Loew said, “That’s what you think, Reb Jacob, but the hand of God is evident even in this. You see, God was working through you in such a way that, although you believed you were selecting the words at random, they were in fact carefully chosen so that a close examination of their meaning would lead us directly to the solution we needed to protect the community.”

           
Rabbi Loew was truly a miracle worker, because I could almost see the burden lift from Federn’s shoulders.

           
The pump house men were singing about how the false idols of silver and gold have eyes but cannot see, and have ears but cannot hear, and as the buckets came round again, our verses were echoed by another group of singers approaching from the east.

           
“See?” said Rabbi Loew. “Look how even Rabbi Joseph and Rabbi Aaron are joining us in celebrating our delivery from danger.”

           
I looked up. Could it be? Were the leaders of the Rabbinical Council actually bringing their followers together as a sign of unity?

           
Rabbi Loew wished Federn well, and the merchant of feathers drifted away, his step somehow lighter.

           
Rabbi Aaron stopped directly in front of Rabbi Loew.

           
“You see?” he told Rabbi Loew.

           
“Indeed I do.”

           
“You see how no evil befell us thanks to our prayer and study?”

           
“I like to think our actions had something to do with it,” I said.

           
Rabbi Aaron looked at me.

           
“And who are you?”

           
Rabbi Loew said, “Don’t you recognize our
khaver
Benyamin?”

           
In all the confusion, I must have forgotten what I looked like to them, especially with the earring still stuck in my ear. But Rabbi Aaron made it quite clear what he thought.

           
“I see you’ve finally gone and joined forces with the Christians,” he said. “If this outsider wants to be like the
goyim
, there’s a whole wide world out there where he can do it.”

           
He turned and addressed his followers. “You have seen what happens when we open our doors to foreign ways—fornication, heresy, and death. And the lesson is clear. It is time to return to our traditions and shun the ways of the Freethinkers.”

           
His fellow rabbis agreed, their voices merging into one as they led their followers away. And all I wanted to do was disappear from this place and lose myself in the darkest reaches of Poland, the land of endless winter nights, where your spit freezes before it hits the ground.