The Forbidden Book, page 15
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here if he comes back with those city guards, or whoever it is.” She was trying to remember all the men’s faces, check them against people she’d seen doing work for her father, but it was no good. Certainly her father had worked with city guards. He was a leader of the Jewish community. She felt foolish for ignoring what had been right in front of her face.
They stuffed their blankets into their bag and climbed the cemetery wall into the woods. Sorel thought she knew the directions and set out into the trees with confidence. If they just followed the road, while staying off it, they’d get to her father’s house. Adela didn’t question the direction, keeping silent until they were well away from the cemetery.
“Why are we going to Kalman’s estate?” she asked, after a while.
“I think he knows something after all. I’m sorry for doubting you before. It just seemed …” she trailed off. She didn’t quite know how to put it. “I just thought if Isser was involved with so many criminals, why would it be someone who spends his whole life upholding the law?”
Adela snorted. “Alter, what do you think a criminal is, exactly? Are you imagining only Yoshke and Pavlikov? Kalman Senderovich doesn’t uphold the law.” She said it in Russian, for emphasis. “He’s been one of Isser’s best customers for books that aren’t approved by the censors.”
“What, really?”
“Everyone only follows the law when it’s convenient,” said Adela. “And that applies to no one more than a man who can get away with it.”
Sorel chewed over this as they picked their way between the trees, keeping the moon behind them. She wondered if any of her own books—the ones her father gave her so that she’d have a European, sophisticated education—had been smuggled through Isser’s hands.
She rubbed her thumb over the amulet Sam had given her, the one that was supposed to let her talk to a ghost. She had talked to him, hadn’t she? She’d gone to Agrat’s mansion.
Did we know each other? she asked him silently. Did you pick me for a reason?
It took awhile, as if he’d had to wake from a deep sleep, but she felt him stirring, felt the strange doubling in her vision as he blinked himself awake behind her eyes.
Did my father do this to you? she asked. Is this some kind of revenge?
Is what some kind of revenge? said Isser. Where are we? What are you doing?
“We’re going to Kalman’s estate,” she said, under her breath but aloud, so Adela could hear. “We’re going to see if he’s got that book you were killed for, and if he does have it, we’re going to—we’re going to find out where your body is.”
Adela looked around, eyes wide. “What did you say?”
“I’m talking to Isser,” said Sorel. “Where have you been, by the way? I’ve been trying to talk to you, and there wasn’t even a whisper of you all day, and then you’re in a demon’s house, acting cryptic?”
It was less disconcerting when Isser spoke this time than it had been the first time, during the card game. “Hi, Adela.”
Sorel was about to protest this non-answer when Adela turned and threw her arms around them. She was warm, her arms firmly muscular, her hair soft against Sorel’s neck. Isser wrapped their arms around her in return, and for a minute they just stood, holding each other, Sorel feeling like an alien in her own skin.
“I’m sorry,” Isser whispered.
“You should have told me,” said Adela. “You knew you were in danger; you should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“So you put yourself in trouble? Alone? Stupid!” She pulled out of the hug, pinched their cheek, and turned away, wrapping her arms around herself and starting to walk again in the direction they’d been heading. Sorel felt suddenly very cold and lonely. “What’s this about demons?”
“Agrat bat Machlat,” said Isser. “It’s her book we’re looking for. She’s the Angel of Death from the title. And I didn’t want to say too much in her house, because if we do find it, we’re not giving it back to her. And I don’t want her to know that, because she’ll kill us.”
“Why?” Sorel asked. “What does it say?”
Adela glanced back at them and made a face. “It’s very creepy when you change like that.”
“I don’t like it either,” they said together, and Isser went on, “It’s a contract with the rebbe, or with his ancestors anyway. It’s an agreement that she’ll guard the city from certain types of disasters and never step foot within it, but it’s also … I don’t know, it’s not only disasters. It’s more complicated than that. She says she’s an angel of changes. And I don’t think she’s lying about that, because Kalman Senderovich thought so, too.”
“Changes?” Adela repeated.
“Right. Like how a dead thing changes into fertile earth, I guess.”
“So Kalman,” said Sorel. “He does know about the book. You could have told me.”
I thought you’d be angry, said Isser silently.
“Well, I am angry!” She stamped her foot at him, and then felt singularly ridiculous when Adela glanced at them again. “What, did you think I’d run to him and turn you in? Turn myself in?”
If I thought that, I wouldn’t have come to you in the first place. His inner voice was sullen, and she could tell he didn’t like that Adela was watching them argue. I came to you because you were the right person. It’s not revenge. You were ready to run and you just didn’t know it.
Adela raised her eyebrows. Sorel deliberately looked the other way, holding up a hand for her to wait. “Did he kill you? Tell me. Did he kill you?”
I don’t know, I don’t know. His anguish flooded through her, her anger crumbling underneath it. I don’t want it to be him. But I lied to him, and he wouldn’t have liked it.
“Alter,” said Adela, reaching out and taking Sorel’s hand. “I need to ask you something.”
“What?” Sorel said, and was startled to find her voice was choked with tears. They were both crying—Sorel and Isser. Adela pulled them to a halt and made them sit on the cold ground, crouching beside them.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know the way to Kalman’s estate?”
It was not the question Sorel had expected.
Adela squeezed their hand, harder. “I’m trusting you because of Isser. But I need to know what you’re hiding. Before we go any further.”
Sorel remembered the corpse’s face—her own drowned face—looking back at her. Agrat bat Machlat had provided the perfect cover for her escape. Would she give that up now? She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go back.
But this was Adela. Did she really think Adela would share the secret?
The girl’s eyes were dark, intense, and unwavering. Her hand was strong, her grip just shy of too tight. She was following Sorel through the forest in the middle of the night, on their way to look for murder evidence.
“The truth,” said Sorel. “The truth is I’m—I was—I don’t know. I am or was Kalman’s daughter.”
Adela blinked. “The one who died?”
“It’s a trick. She had my face. The body in the mikveh. My own face! But it’s almost …”
She was about to say something incredible. Something she almost didn’t believe.
Isser nudged her, encouraging.
“It’s almost better,” Sorel said. “To think that no one will ever, ever guess that I’m still here.”
Adela was frowning, puzzled. “You’re Soreh bas Kalman?”
“I was. I don’t know if I still am. I don’t want to be.”
Adela relaxed her grip, sitting back on her haunches. She looked over Sorel’s face, a long, quiet inspection. Sorel wiped Isser’s tears from their face.
“I don’t want my father to be a murderer,” she said. “But I’m afraid that he is. And if he is, I have to know.”
CHAPTER
19
THEY REACHED KALMAN’S estate before dawn, Sorel limping on her tired feet. She meant to sneak into the house by the window in her father’s study, which faced the forest. Any servants working in the kitchen or stables wouldn’t be disturbed—she hoped—and Kalman himself should be asleep.
The house was dark. On the other hand, when they crept up to the back gate and Sorel boosted Adela up to look over the wall, Adela reported that there were a few carriages in the yard.
“Guests for my shiva,” said Sorel, feeling strangely giddy. Adela’s weight on her shoulder made her feel not burdened, but stronger in a way that would have been embarrassing to share with Isser, except he felt it too.
“Will it be a problem?” Adela asked. “I count three of them. I think one might be the rebbe.”
“I don’t think so. My father’s study isn’t in the same part of the house as the guests. He likes his quiet, though. He’ll be asleep on the floor above, so we will have to be careful. The rebbe sleeps like a rock. I’ve heard the servants complaining about it when he’s been here before.”
“And Shulem-Yontif?” Adela asked, dropping to the ground and shaking out her skirts. She’d tucked them into her belt, so they hung only to her knees, still wearing Isser’s trousers underneath.
Sorel hesitated. She didn’t know anything about Shulem-Yontif. She’d never bothered to be interested.
“He’s fine,” said Isser. “If he wakes up and finds us, all we have to do is explain. He’ll do what you say.”
“You know, some people would say that’s not the sort of husband you have to run away from,” Adela teased, jostling Sorel with her elbow.
“It wasn’t just him,” Sorel protested. “I told you, didn’t I? It was everything.”
“I’m teasing. I’d have done the same.”
Adela was to stand lookout while Sorel climbed into the study and searched for the book. She would know, more or less, what was out of place in Kalman’s study. Isser would know if there was anything that belonged to him.
With Adela, they’d agreed that if they found the book they would take it and run. Isser said he thought it was dangerous for it to be outside of the city, so they’d take it back there. Sorel envisioned, romantically, stealing a horse and riding it back along the moonlit road, but she knew they’d just be back in the forest walking through the mud.
Between them, secretly, she and Isser had agreed that they weren’t sure they would run. If they found a sign that Kalman was a murderer, neither of them could simply let that go. But Adela would tell them it was dangerous and stupid to do anything but retreat and regroup, so they hadn’t told her.
Kalman’s study had glass windows, with wooden shutters over them. The shutters were closed and locked, of course, but Sorel twisted Sam’s eagle-claw dagger behind the lock and snapped it off. Adela caught it before it could hit the ground and tucked it into her pocket. The glass windows were lead-framed, opening inward opposite of the shutters. There was a little latch on the inside, but it was set in soft lead that bent like putty when Sorel jammed the narrow tip of the eagle claw between the frames, and the window swung open with the smallest squeak of hinges, barely louder than a breath.
“Here,” Sorel whispered. She took the other knife from her pocket and offered it to Adela. “Take this, just in case.”
Adela nodded, her face set, and turned her back to watch the path and the riverbank. Sorel hoisted herself through the window and drew the shutters closed, locking herself and Isser away in the dark. She knew this room, but only by lamplight—she hadn’t exactly practiced sneaking around her father’s rooms at night. But there was a soft glow in the bottom of the fireplace, and there would be candles on the mantle. She crept across the rug, avoiding her father’s monumental desk by touch, and felt for the box of candles, barely breathing. There was a strange fear creeping up her back, the same feeling that had made her jump from her own window on the night of her wedding. Isser’s fear, she realized now.
“You really think he could have done it?” she whispered. Her fingers closed on a candlestick, and she lifted it from the box with care, as if the slightest jostling noise could have woken Kalman on the floor above.
I don’t know, said Isser. I told him I was getting him the book, but I didn’t want to give it to him. I don’t remember what happened on the day I died. The last thing I know is I was going to meet his messenger at my shul, the Papermakers’. It was what we usually did. An easy place to find me. I wanted to talk to him, your father. I wanted him to explain what he needed the book for, and then … I don’t know. I was hoping he’d say something I could agree with.
But he didn’t think Kalman would. He’d been expecting an answer he wouldn’t like.
“What would you have done if he said something else?” Sorel asked, crouching to touch the candlewick to the glow in the embers. It flared to life so suddenly that she almost dropped it, blinking away spots as Isser steadied her hand.
I can’t remember, said Isser. I think maybe I would have done something stupid.
Right. “Me too, I suppose. Like jump out a window, no?”
There was a lamp sitting at the other end of the mantle from the candle box. Sorel glanced around the room first, to dispel the creeping feeling that someone was behind her, then set the candle into the lamp so the wax wouldn’t drip on her hands. Kalman’s desk loomed in front of them like some great, crouching beast. She didn’t want to step closer to it—as if the light might show it to be covered in blood, or she might open a drawer and find Isser’s body, tucked away among the ledgers.
There was nothing on top of the desk but an inkwell, a pen set neatly beside it. Kalman was precise, organized. He wouldn’t leave a secret lying in plain view. Sorel laid the lamp on the floor, kneeling to open the drawers. They were locked, but when Sorel pried at the panels with the eagle-claw dagger, the locks snapped out of place. Her father would know at once that there had been an intruder, but Isser’s panic was infecting her, and she no longer cared about anything but finding answers as quickly as possible.
There were no blood-soaked daggers or gruesome trophies. The first drawer was packed neatly with pocket notebooks, each labeled on the spine with a date: Kalman’s personal records. The next held a much heavier ledger, labeled as records of the Jewish community. Sorel checked underneath and behind it and found nothing but a few specks of dust.
The last drawer wasn’t papers at all. There was a box and inside it were a few pieces of jewelry: Sorel’s mother’s rings, her headpiece decorated with pearls, and a few pairs of earrings. Sorel would have worn the headpiece if she’d married Shulem-Yontif. She held it for a moment, trying to imagine the person she would have been with pearls on her forehead. Her hands were dirty, already forming callouses from all the things she’d done in the last few days, her nail beds cracked. They didn’t look like a young bride’s hands.
She put the headpiece back in the box. She would not be that person again. Not for anyone.
As she closed the lid of the jewelry box, her hand brushed something soft, hidden in the very back of the drawer, in the shadows. When she drew it out, she knew that it didn’t belong there. She knew because her hands were suddenly not hers, because it was Isser who was looking out behind their eyes, who recognized what they were looking at, who knew every stitch of what they were holding.
A tfillin case, embroidered with a pair of foxes.
CHAPTER
20
ISSER DIDN’T WEAR his father’s tfillin. He hadn’t even kept them. They were in a trunk in Adela’s room, in the Pinskers’ attic, with everything else that had belonged to Isser’s parents. Safe, and half-forgotten.
He unbuttoned the embroidered case and spilled its contents onto the floor with shaking hands. The counterfeit censor’s stamp hit the carpet with a thump and Sorel picked it up, turning it over to inspect it. She’d never seen one before, but she knew the shape of it. This was the stamp that made her father’s political books look legitimate, if you didn’t know what you were seeing. It had never occurred to her that the stamp might be a fraud.
The other thing in the bag was a pamphlet, on cheap rag paper bound with three stitches. The strong medicinal scent of it made them sneeze. Sorel flipped this over too, eyes skipping over the lines of Hebrew that neither of them understood.
Sefer Dumah.
A dog barked outside, deep and loud, and suddenly the shutters were thrown open. Adela leapt through the window, landing awkwardly. The lamp flickered in the sudden breeze.
“What is it?” Sorel-Isser stuffed the pamphlet back in the tfillin case, rolling it up and tucking it into their coat pocket. Adela had fallen to the floor and the shutters were clattering as something outside scrabbled against them, something heavy and ungainly trying to get in by throwing its weight against the heavy wood. Sorel-Isser ran to shut the windows, trying to twist the broken latch back into place, but it was useless. A deep, low growl sounded from outside.
“A dog,” said Adela, breathless. “Your father has a guard dog?”
“No, he doesn’t.” They grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet, backing toward the door as the dog slammed itself against the shutters again and again. How long would it take for the dog to stop and try another way? The shutters weren’t locked. It was pure luck that Adela had managed to slam them closed behind her. If the dog wedged its snout under the edge, it could open them. “I would have told you if he had a guard dog. He does not have a dog.”
Their heel hit the door. They felt for the handle without taking their eyes off the window, pushed it open, and fled into the hallway, slamming the door behind them. There was no lock, but there was a cabinet in the hallway, a heavy, polished piece with a candelabra on it, its only purpose to show off Kalman’s wealth and good taste. Sorel-Isser grabbed one end of it and Adela grabbed the other, dragging it across to block the door just as they heard shattering glass inside the study.
“What the hell is that?” Adela gasped. They could hear it panting, sniffing around the room as if it were searching for something. The quiet scratching of its claws was worse than the thundering bark. The rest of the house was silent as a grave. Surely the barking would have woken someone. The servants, Kalman, the guests.
