The Forbidden Book, page 12
“He doesn’t mix with ordinary people,” said Sorel bitterly. They were taking a body back to the estate, to bury next to her mother. A body that she couldn’t even blame her father for thinking was hers. She’d thought the same.
“Half the city thinks it’s Tisheb’ov,” said Sam, who evidently didn’t agree, as he was stealing another piece of Sorel’s bagel. “As if this girl were the Messiah, pardon the comparison.”
Sorel made a face. She certainly hadn’t felt like a messiah. More like a doll, like the cold waxen figure she’d touched in the mikveh.
It occurred to her, suddenly, that if Soreh Kalmans was dead and buried, Sorel herself was no longer missing. No one would be looking for her. They had found her.
Her heart skipped in her chest. A strange feeling, incongruous against the memory of her own placid, drowned face in the candlelight. The feeling of freedom.
Sorel Kalmans was dead. She could be whoever she wanted. Now no one would be looking at her face and measuring it against the description of a missing girl.
She tried to swallow the feeling, to keep it from showing on her face. She grabbed the plate of bagels and yanked it back to her side of the table, away from Sam. “Are you paying for those?”
He gave her a crooked grin and dug in his pocket. “You’re a strict one, Isser-Alter.”
“You’re superstitious,” Sorel said thoughtfully.
“And?” said Sam.
“What I mean is, you know the sorts of things a rational Jew would call bobe-mayses.”
He laughed. “I suppose.”
“Is there a way to speak to a ghost? Say, if you found a body and you didn’t know whose it was—could you ask the soul, somehow?”
She expected mockery, but Sam gave it some serious thought. “Did you get a message from someone’s ghost when you slept in the graveyard?”
“No. I’m just wondering. Is that how you’d do it?”
“The rabbis disagree,” said Sam. “On whether a ghost can tell you anything at all. But isn’t the cemetery where you’d go, in that situation?”
“Ugh!” Sorel looked away dismissively. “Just answer with an answer or tell me you don’t know it.”
“You didn’t need to speak to Kalman’s daughter, did you?” Sam asked. “Don’t tell me you planned to elope with her.”
“Why assume she drowned because she was trying to elope?” Sorel snapped. “Even Adela considered it! Why not assume she was running away alone? Maybe she had a life to go to.”
Sam shrugged. “I heard a rumor that she was going to the nuns. They can’t make you marry a Jew if you’ve converted—some girls do it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You did know her, then.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry.”
Sorel frowned, hunching her shoulders, and shredded the bagel in her hands. “Not that well. Her father didn’t really let her know anyone.”
There was silence for a minute, Sam letting her feel her false grief for the lost bride. His consideration annoyed her. She wished he would have said something irritating, so she could snap at him again.
“If I did need to speak to her,” she said at last, “you’d say to go to her grave?”
“I suppose so,” said Sam. “Or there are charms for dreams, if you can’t go to the grave. If you’re searching for someone whose gravesite you don’t know.”
He slid his pack off his back as he spoke.
“You sell those charms, don’t you?” said Sorel.
“Of course I do. But for you, there’s no charge.” He dug in the pack and slid a little pouch across the table to her. “It’s kosher. Only the names of angels. No kind of goyish magic.”
“I don’t care,” said Sorel frankly. “And I can pay for it. How do I use it?”
“Put it under your pillow when you sleep. Simple enough.”
She put the charm in her pocket. She wasn’t sure she’d use it—she wasn’t even sure what use she thought it would be, if it was even real. But she liked having it, just in case. Maybe she could find Isser with it.
“What happened to Adela?” Sam asked, breaking her concentration. Glad of the change of subject, she explained Adela’s plan to search Isser’s room again, without mentioning Shulem-Yontif specifically. She was getting used to the idea of secrets.
“And we learned that he had a book,” she said. “Something called Sefer Dumah. Speaking of angels.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Where did you learn that?”
“From someone who knew him.” She had after all promised not to tell anyone it was Shulem-Yontif who gave it to him. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Sam. “He stole it from the rebbe. The Esroger tzadik. And now it’s missing along with Isser.”
“God forbid the wrong person should have it,” said Sam. “That’s a very holy book, a secret book. And it’s dangerous. Do you know the story of the four who entered Paradise?”
Sorel shook her head.
“There were four Sages who entered Paradise. One died, one went mad, one became a heretic, and only Rabbi Akiva returned unharmed. There are certain kinds of knowledge it isn’t safe to seek.”
“Unless you’re Rabbi Akiva,” said Sorel.
“Yes, well, who would dare assume he’s Rabbi Akiva?”
Sorel thought about it. She didn’t have the impression that Isser was particularly learned in Hebrew, and she didn’t think he was particularly arrogant, either. But she did suspect he was enough like herself that he wouldn’t have believed a book could hold that kind of danger. Not from simply reading it. “Can a book be as powerful as entering Paradise? Surely not.”
“Paradise is a book,” said Sam. “It’s a place built of the same Hebrew letters that built the world. No book a human hand could write contains all of Paradise, but a book that captures even one chapter of it can change the world. And Sefer Dumah isn’t just any book; it was written by an angel, with its own hand.”
“Hm.” It sounded fanciful. But if other people believed it, they might kill over it. Isser may have died because he had it. In which case, whoever had the book was the person who’d killed him. “I don’t suppose you’ve got an amulet for finding lost books?”
“When a village housewife has a priceless Kabbalistic text, she keeps track of where she left it,” said Sam dryly.
CHAPTER
14
THEY FOUND ADELA sitting on the steps up to Isser’s room, reading one of the books in German that had been scattered by the searchers.
“His tfillin case is missing,” she said. “You two didn’t see it, did you? It’s embroidered with foxes, two foxes holding a scroll.”
Sorel shook her head and looked at Sam. He shrugged.
“I didn’t think to look for them,” he said. “He didn’t strike me as one who prays daily.”
“He’s not,” Adela agreed. “But they were his father’s, and his mother made the case—may their memories be a blessing. Did you speak to anyone at the print shop?”
Again, they shook their heads. Adela sighed, as if to say I have to do everything myself. “We should at least ask them if they know who broke in. Come on.”
The print shop was quiet, not closed but conducting business discreetly for the Christian sabbath. An older man with a beard and spectacles was checking over the presses while a couple of apprentices with short sidelocks cleaned type at a table under the window. The old man gave the three a suspicious look as they walked in the room. He came out from between the presses to greet them, but he had a piece of metal in his hand, some piece of the machines that he held casually, as if by chance, but kept in their sight. The apprentices paused with their cleaning rags in hand, staring.
“You need something?” the printer asked, eyeing each of them in turn. Sorel checked her pocket for her knife and then wondered if that made her look more suspicious.
“We’re looking for Isser Jacobs,” said Adela.
The old man tightened his grip on the metal rod. Adela and Sam both held up their hands immediately, Sorel following their example a second later.
“What do you want him for?” said the printer, glaring. He wasn’t a particularly big man, an older Jew who would look right at home behind a volume of Mishnah in the bet midrash, but his eyes were fierce. Sorel heard the apprentices shifting in their seats and glanced around to see them tensed, ready to leap up.
“We don’t want any trouble,” said Sam coolly.
“You’d better not,” said the old man. “We’ve had enough of it already. You with that apostate bastard Yoshke? I’ve nothing more to say to him.”
Yoshke again. “We’re not with him,” said Sorel. “We don’t like him either.”
At that the old man, and his apprentices, relaxed a little, but he didn’t put down his cudgel. “What, then?”
“We’re trying to figure out who’s been making trouble for Isser,” said Adela. “Someone trashed his rooms, and they’ve taken some things—a book.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the printer. “All we know is no one’s seen Isser since, what?”
He looked around at his apprentices, who exchanged looks.
“At least last Shabbat,” one of them said.
“He was going to meet Shulem-Yontif,” said the other. “He told me. You know Isser, only comes to minyan when he wants something. We were leaving after prayers and he said he’d see me in the morning, he was off to the river. But he never showed up.”
“What did he want at minyan?” Adela asked. “We’re trying to find out what happened. We think he’s tangled up in something bad.”
The apprentices and the printer all looked at each other again, a knowing look.
“Everyone knows Isser’s trouble, missy,” said the printer. “You’d do better to keep out of it, yourself.”
Adela crossed her arms over her chest, planting her feet in a stubborn posture as if she expected him to try to push her out of his shop. Sorel unconsciously mirrored her. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“What did he want at minyan?” said the apprentice who’d seen Isser last, while shrugging elaborately. “Talk, talk, talk. I don’t know. It was Shacharit, I was half asleep.”
“Well, who else goes to minyan to talk?” Sorel demanded. “Yoshke? You don’t look like you’d be with the Hasidim.”
The boy shook his head. “Nah. I think God would strike Yoshke down if he tried to touch a siddur. I don’t know, some old man.” He glanced at the printer and grinned. “Not as old as my father.”
“And who else was in the minyan?” said Sam. “Maybe they know who it was.”
“You’re thinking someone from the paper trades’ shul jumped Isser in an alley?” the printer said, and shook his head. “No. We work together.”
“There was someone last Shabbat,” said the other apprentice, who’d been quiet until now. “Some out-of-towner, wasn’t it?”
“Right.” The other apprentice’s eyes lit up. “Nice boots, he had.”
“Light hair,” said his companion. Sorel didn’t think they were brothers—they didn’t look alike—but they clearly worked well together. She felt a stab of jealousy at their easy friendship.
“Light hair with a beard,” said the talkative one, and both laughed. “Well, who doesn’t have a beard?”
Neither of them, and neither Sam nor Sorel—but it was a fair point.
“Someone might know what he was in town for,” said the printer reluctantly. He clearly didn’t like the idea of bringing Isser’s trouble to his brother artisans, but Sorel thought he also wanted the three of them out of his shop—and perhaps out of this conversation with his son. “We didn’t talk business on Shabbat, of course. But someone might have brought him because he was talking business with them when it wasn’t Shabbat. Try Shimen the papermaker. His shop’s two streets that way, on the river.”
He pointed with his improvised cudgel.
“Before we go,” said Adela, “you don’t have any of Isser’s books, do you? He didn’t leave any in the shop?”
The printer sighed and looked over at his son again.
“What kind of books?” said the son, with a credible lack of shiftiness.
“Any,” said Adela. “Can I see?”
“We’ve got a little library.” The boy got up, dropping his cleaning rag on top of his friend’s, and beckoned them to follow. The library was in a back room that also served as a kitchen, with a door that opened into the alley. It was just a single shelf, an odd collection of mostly battered secular texts in Russian, with a few Yiddish pamphlets.
“Are these all censor-approved?” Adela asked.
“Of course!” said the printer’s apprentice. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be legal to have them, would it?”
He winked at her.
“You’re the translator, aren’t you?” he added, before she could ask anything else. “Isser told me it was a girl. Secretly, of course. Here, I’ll show you.”
He went to the other side of the room and lifted the lid off the kindling bin by the stove. There was a box tucked into the kindling, which he opened to show them a stack of more Yiddish pamphlets—Sorel thought she recognized one of them as the one Sam had shown her to prove he was liable for the same criminal activities as Isser.
“Can I take a look?” Adela asked, already reaching for the box.
“It’s just politics in there,” said the apprentice, though he handed it to her anyway. “If you’re his translator I’m sure you’ve already seen them.”
Adela flipped through the pamphlets without responding. Evidently she didn’t find anything. She looked up at Sam and Sorel and shook her head as she tucked them back in their box.
“Mottel!” the printer shouted from the front of the shop.
“That’s time for me to get back to work,” said the apprentice. He put the box back in amongst the kindling, scattered a few bits of bark over it, and shut the bin. “You remember where Shimen the papermaker is?”
“We’ll find him,” said Sam, although Sorel had in fact already forgotten the directions.
“Thank you,” said Adela.
Mottel gave her another wink. Was he flirting? Sorel sighed inwardly. Poor Adela, she couldn’t talk to anyone without them reminding her she was a woman. It must be such tedium to be pretty.
The printer stood in the door, cudgel still in hand, watching them until they turned off his street. Sorel could feel his eyes on the back of her neck.
“I think he knows something more than he told us,” she said after the third time she looked back to find him still glaring.
“He does,” Sam agreed. “But maybe Shimen the papermaker knows even more.”
“Or Shulem-Yontif,” said Adela. “Did you catch that, Alter? He said Isser went to see Shulem-Yontif and never came back.”
“Shulem-Yontif couldn’t kill somebody,” Sorel objected. It wasn’t that she wanted to defend her fiancé, so much. She just couldn’t imagine it. He’d been sobbing in pieces just because she—her double, whom he had scarcely spoken to—was dead. And Isser had been his friend. If Shulem-Yontif had been involved in Isser’s death, his soul would have fled his body.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Adela. “Maybe he was the bait in a trap.”
Sorel didn’t have any argument against that.
CHAPTER
15
MINYAN AT THE PAPERMAKERS’ SHUL was always crowded. Though the attendees were not worthy of praying in the Great Synagogue itself, they considered themselves second only to that honorable congregation, as the business of paper—in all stages of its life from pulp and rag to printed book—had long been Esrog’s most prosperous industry. The older men talked a lot about how things had been better before Isser was born, when the censors were less strict and the road that passed by Esrog better traveled, but Isser only halfway believed any of it. Their crown prince of a shul was made of wood and plaster, and its floors creaked and snapped like gunshots throughout the services, making it difficult to keep one’s place.
He was used to being accosted outside the shul by Kalman Senderovich’s messengers—Ostap, usually. He expected to see the other boy today, lurking outside, and was surprised when he didn’t.
Instead, he found the messenger waiting inside, head down over a siddur like all the others. It was Kalman himself, and Isser’s heart sank into his boots. He hadn’t expected Kalman to actually answer his summons. He didn’t feel ready to talk to him.
Reluctantly, he slid into the bench at Kalman’s elbow, mouthing the blessings while he searched for the right place in the prayer book. Kalman glanced sideways at him and gave a curt nod of acknowledgement. That was all. He was going to make Isser wait until the conclusion of the service. Isser felt himself sweating from more than the stuffy air of the crowded shul.
When services ended and the men gathered around the stove for gossip and snifters of vodka, Kalman stepped aside into the alcove that hid the women’s gallery stairs, and Isser tucked himself into the shadows beside him.
“Do you have the book?” Kalman said, without even a greeting.
“I have questions,” said Isser. “Before I turn that thing over to you and make an enemy of the rebbe for my life. Why is this worth risking your daughter’s engagement for? You can’t really believe it’s magic.”
His hands were clammy. He stuffed them in his pockets so as not to show his nerves. Kalman was giving him the slightly pitying look he always used when Isser talked back to him.
“I think you know the book is genuine,” Kalman said. “I would not waste my time for a bit of fakery. And for all his flaws, neither would Nachum-Eydl. I ask you again, have you brought it?”
“Why?” Isser repeated stubbornly. “I looked into it. The old women say the first rebbe used that book to keep the Angel of Death off our backs somehow. Can’t be so much protection, people die in Esrog all the time. But it’s got to do something, or you wouldn’t care if he had it. Right? So what is it doing, really?”
