The forbidden book, p.3
The Forbidden Book, page 3
“Where is it?” he repeated his nonsensical question from before.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sorel said.
“Of course you don’t, you damned snake,” said the guard. He shifted his stance, uncomfortable, and Sorel saw that he too was bleeding, a dark stain spreading on the calf of his trousers. If she could only get free to run, she thought, she could run faster.
The man was still talking. “You’re a fine liar, Isser, and you’ve led us on a fine goose hunt, but I’m tired of chasing you. You can tell us now, or we can ask your little Jewess—what’s her name? Adela Pinsker? I know where she lives, Isser. I found her letters in your room. So sweet! A girl with real thoughts in her head. Wouldn’t you be sorry if I had to talk to Adela? Wouldn’t you rather we finish it here, now?”
Sorel blinked at him. Isser, that was her name, the name she’d given—had he overheard her talking to Rukhele, or to Sam? He must have heard her give the name and mistaken her for another Isser. Maybe all Jews looked the same to him.
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t know anyone called Adela, but the words died on her tongue at the sound of a deep, rumbling growl—a growl that raised all the hairs on the back of her neck. She saw the same fear reflected in the men’s eyes as they turned, looking for the source of the sound.
A great black dog crouched in the mouth of the alley, shoulders low to the ground, teeth bared. Its eyes were light, almost wolf-gold. It could have been mistaken for a wolf, if not for its dropped ears.
“What the hell—” the guardsman began to say, but the words were lost in a shout of alarm as the dog sprang from its position and hit him with the full force of its leap, knocking him over. The man holding Sorel staggered back. His grip loosened, and she tore out of his grasp and threw herself down the alley, looking for the knife. Instinct told her she shouldn’t turn her back on the dog, but she couldn’t make herself look. The guardsman was screaming. The third man, the fair-haired one, ran past Sorel as she picked up the knife. His eyes were wide with panic. Sorel glanced back and saw the dog with its jaws around the ankle of the man who’d been holding her, knocking him off his feet and dragging him. The guardsman lay on his back, staring with wide, blank eyes at the sky, blood pooling around his head.
She moved backward, step by step, the knife clutched tightly in front of her chest. She did not think she could outrun the dog. She watched it plant a great, heavy paw on the back of the second man and shut her eyes as its jaws closed on the back of his neck. The cobbles were uneven under her feet as she took another step backward, then another, eyes shut, the sound of her own breath loud in her ears.
There was no thud of paws chasing after her. She did not feel the hot breath of the wolf on her face. The growling had ceased.
She stumbled backward out of the alley into the startling heat of the sunlight. She felt as if she had just stepped out from underwater—suddenly, human voices were loud around her, people going about their ordinary business.
When she opened her eyes, she saw no dog in the alley. There were two men lying still on the stones, and there was Sorel, with the knife in her hand.
A woman passing by with a basket of leeks gave her an odd look and Sorel fumbled the knife back into its sheath and wiped her hands on her coat, though she saw no trace of blood on them, only dirt and sweat. What had she just seen? What had she just done?
“Isserke!” a voice called a cheerful greeting. “I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.”
It was Sam, grinning, his peddler’s pack slung casually over one shoulder. Despite herself, Sorel was glad to see him. He seemed solid and real, his warm golden skin belonging firmly to the world of sun and human voices.
“I was looking for a coach,” she said, her voice hoarse. She moved toward him, forcing herself not to look back into the alleyway. “I got turned around.”
* * *
ISSER JACOBS came home to his room from the print shop one day in the spring to find Kalman Senderovich’s gentile stable-boy, Ostap, waiting for him with a message.
“He wants to talk to you. He’s at the Great Synagogue.”
The boy was Isser’s own age, illiterate, and incurious, but all his own shortcomings only made him happier when he got to order Isser around, wielding the authority of Kalman Senderovich like the tsar’s scepter.
“Talk to me about what?” said Isser. Kalman did not usually bother meeting with him. It was beneath the dignity of Esrog’s single most important Jew to speak face-to-face with a poor orphan and—let it not be spoken aloud—a criminal. Usually, the gentile boy just brought him messages written in stiff Yiddish and stood around looking impatient while Isser read them.
“You think he tells me about what? Just hurry up. I’ve been waiting for ages.”
Isser hadn’t eaten, and he didn’t much relish the walk all the way across the Jewish Quarter to the Great Synagogue, but he wasn’t going to complain to Ostap. The boy seemed to think Isser was his competition somehow, and though Isser always told himself he wouldn’t rise to the aggravation, he still didn’t like to give Ostap the upper hand. So he turned on his heel and walked right back into the stable-yard, on his tired feet, so that Ostap had to jog after him.
Kalman Senderovich, of course, wasn’t simply waiting in idleness for someone as insignificant as Isser. Let there be no respect for the fact that Isser never told him no: Kalman the lumber merchant would never have considered it possible that someone should refuse him.
He was conducting business, not in the synagogue itself, God forbid, but in the inn next door at the great room in the back with the other members of Esrog’s Jewish governing council, the kahal. Isser was left to sit in the hall, waiting, while Ostap irritatingly refused to go back out to the stables. Instead he joined Isser on the bench and downed glass after glass of hot cider, as if he never had a chance to get drunk on Kalman’s estate and as if he didn’t have the horses to look after or even a carriage to drive. Isser couldn’t be bothered to keep track of which petty responsibilities fell to Ostap on what occasions, but he remembered at least once the other boy had tried to impress him by mentioning that Kalman had him drive.
“You heard his girl’s getting married?” Ostap asked, after they’d been sitting awhile and Isser had steadfastly refused to speak to him. “That’s real news, that is. No one in the city will know that yet.”
Isser had seen Kalman’s daughter once or twice. A tall girl, bony. He remembered thick eyebrows. Once, he’d been leaving Kalman’s study—on a rare occasion when he had actually been on the estate—and they’d passed each other in the hall and she’d twitched her skirt away from him as if she expected him to soil it. Another time, he’d sold her a chapter of a novel for a markup she didn’t notice.
He did not much care if Kalman’s daughter got married.
Ostap the stable-boy didn’t care if Isser was interested or not. The important thing was that spreading fresh gossip gave one power. He went on, “You’ll never believe who she’s marrying, either. The rebbe’s son.”
Isser turned his head and mentally kicked himself for showing a reaction. Ostap was smirking at him. But he had to know.
“Not Shulem-Yontif?”
“God knows,” said Ostap. “How many sons has he got?”
“Only one old enough to marry,” Isser conceded, though truth be told even Shulem-Yontif was a bit young—he was fifteen, the girl was seventeen or eighteen. Not the youngest anyone ever got engaged. But these were modern times, and Kalman was a modern Jew. Isser would have thought he’d marry the girl to some maskil or a rich merchant from Odessa. What did he want with a hasid for a son-in-law? “What kind of marriage is that?”
Ostap laughed. “What? Were you hoping he’d make you his son-in-law? You’re less than dirt to him.”
“It doesn’t seem the kind of match he would have made, that’s all,” said Isser.
The stable-boy let him sit for a minute wondering about it, just to flex his own superior knowledge. Isser swallowed his pride and prompted, “You’re such a trusted servant. I just thought he would have told you why.”
“Maybe,” said Ostap, glowing. “Maybe not. If he did, I wouldn’t be telling the world about it. That’s Reb Kalman’s own business, isn’t it.”
And Shulem-Yontif’s business, and the girl’s, Isser thought. What was her name? Soreh. The princess. God, she’d eat Shuli alive. “You can borrow my knife, if you like.”
The knife had been a source of contention between Isser and Ostap for nearly a year now, since Kalman Senderovich gave it to Isser with the warning to watch his back about the city and the order to never breathe a word to anyone about the lumber merchant’s business. Isser had taken this as a sort of threat, a tacit suggestion that he should cut his own throat before betraying Kalman’s confidence. Every time he touched the decorated leather sheath, it gave him a chill. But the print shop had been raided twice this year, and sometimes he had a sense of being followed as he walked through the city. And so, he kept it with him.
Ostap saw it as a sign of unearned favor. To him, it was something beautiful that Isser did not appreciate. His eyes shined as Isser handed it to him, hilt first, and he slid it from its case to admire the glow of the lamplight on the blade.
“You don’t take care of her,” he said. “Look, the leather will crack if you don’t season it.”
“To hell with the leather,” said Isser. “Why’s Kalman’s daughter marrying the rebbe’s son?”
“Twisted his arm, didn’t they,” said Ostap. He picked a loose thread out of his trousers and tested the edge of the knife, looking pleased with the result. “The kahal’s about to mutiny. No one listens to Kalman anymore. All your lazy Jews here in the city with no jobs, looking for handouts. Well who gives them the handouts? Their rebbe, that’s who. Handouts, and promises that they can bring your Messiah.”
“What Messiah wants to visit Esrog?” Isser grumbled.
“Anyway, Reb Kalman knows what’s good for the city, but he can’t get any of those superstitious fools to listen. So what does he do? He says to the rebbe, here, you can have your miracles, feed your cripples, and whatever else you want. But you’ll do it as my daughter’s father-in-law, and it’s my name people will be repeating when they talk about how the wedding saved Esrog from ruin. Clever, isn’t he? Clever son of a bitch.”
Isser propped his chin in his hands, frowning at the opposite wall. He had a sinking feeling that Kalman’s business with him today had something to do with the wedding. It wouldn’t be get me a copy of this book, with a fake censor’s stamp on it so it looks legal. It would be something complicated and strange.
Before he could come up with a guess, the door of the back room opened and the men of the kahal filed out, sharing their own gossip as they went and paying the boys no heed. Ostap slid Isser’s knife into his pocket, put down his empty glass, and slunk after them, getting himself out of the way in case Kalman caught him idling.
Isser waited until the last of the elders was gone and went in to Kalman Senderovich. The lumber merchant was sitting alone at the table, making a note in his community ledger. There was a decimated platter of rugelach in front of him, so Isser took one without asking and sat down without being asked.
“Ah, Israel,” said Kalman, barely glancing up and entirely ignoring the rudeness. “Good. I need you to steal something.”
CHAPTER
3
SAM CHEERFULLY took on the task of guiding Sorel to a coaching inn. She followed him without really listening as he chattered about the wedding feast, the rebbe’s blessings, and the tzedakah that had been handed out. Her hands were cold as ice, and she found herself shaking. When she closed her eyes, she saw the blank gaze of the guardsman with his throat torn out. Where had the dog gone? How could she have imagined such a thing? But how could it have been real?
She stumbled, and Sam caught her by the elbow.
“You’re exhausted,” he said, steering her to the side of the street. “You left the feast in a hurry, didn’t you? You need to eat.”
Sorel, trembling, could say nothing. She felt she might pass out.
Sam guided her inside a coffeehouse with a card in the window that declared it to be kosher. There he sat her down in a corner and brought her a mug of a strong, bitter drink with a plate of kugel. She drank the coffee, wrapping her hands around it and trying to stop the tremors. The kugel she didn’t touch. Sam sat watching her, his gaze steady, quiet for once, until she’d drained the cup.
“I know who you are,” he said at last.
Sorel had been staring at the table, her eyes unfocused. Her gaze snapped now to Sam’s. She didn’t think she could run again. He was between her and the door in any case—it hadn’t occurred to her that she was trapped.
“You don’t,” she whispered, too tired to put much fight into it.
“I do.” He bent down and opened the peddler’s pack that lay by his feet. After a moment of searching he extracted a cheaply printed pamphlet with Hebrew letters and a woodblock illustration on the cover. Sam flipped it over and slid it across the table to her, tapping with one finger on a hand-written note on the blank back page. “You’re Isser the printer’s apprentice, aren’t you? I’ve been looking for you.”
Sorel’s head spun. The note was an address, here in Esrog—for Isser Jacobs.
Sam leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Those men who were following you, they wanted something from you? Do they know you’ve been printing these in secret?”
Sorel picked up the pamphlet, reading the note again. She felt dizzy, the letters swimming in front of her eyes.
“What men?” Her voice was barely a croak.
“Three men followed you when you left the feast,” said Sam. “Goyim.”
“I don’t know what they wanted,” she said. “They were looking for someone else. I didn’t know them.”
“But you are Isser Jacobs?”
“Not this Isser Jacobs!” She shoved the pamphlet back across the table to him. “It’s just a name! There can be more than one!”
Sam frowned and checked the note a second time, as if he expected it to clarify the situation.
Sorel, suddenly starving, grabbed the plate of kugel and shoved a bite in her mouth, chewing desperately. “I am not a printer’s apprentice, and whichever Isser printed that, he needs to take care of his own business, because I’m already tired of his people. I’m leaving Esrog, I’m going to Odessa, and I’m never coming back—I’ll go to France if I have to! I hate this place.”
“Lower your voice, please,” said Sam. “And don’t talk with your mouth full. I was supposed to meet Isser here, in the city. You don’t have to pretend with me. Just having the pamphlets is enough of a crime, but it would be easy enough to prove that I’ve been selling them, too. Any court would simply assume that I have! So you have nothing to hide from me.”
“I am not the person you’re looking for,” said Sorel. She swallowed the last of the kugel and picked up the pamphlet. She didn’t recognize the address, but she knew approximately where it ought to be in relation to the Great Synagogue. The look of the pamphlet jogged her memory—a boy who came to the estate sometimes. He’d been soaking wet from the rain when she ran into him in the kitchen, gossiping with the cooks. He’d sold her an installment of a Russian novel on the same paper, and at the time, she hadn’t bothered to remember him. Was that why the name “Israel Jacobs” had come to her? “Why don’t we go to his home and prove it? I want a word with him anyway. He owes me—he owes me.”
She didn’t know what Isser owed her. Perhaps she would just give him a slap in the face and curse his ancestors for naming him something so simple, so uncreative that she could mistake it for a name she hadn’t heard. She had no one else to direct her feelings toward, so he’d have to do. Sam left a few coins on the table and followed her out of the coffeehouse, uncomplaining, an infuriating tilt of amusement to his mouth as if he thought she was putting on a performance.
The Isser from the pamphlet lived in an alley off the Street of Bookmakers in the Jewish district, a neighborhood of crooked medieval streets behind the Great Synagogue. It was a building with a courtyard, the sort of place where each room was rented out to a family and every window hung with drying laundry. There was a print shop on the first floor in the front selling women’s prayer books. Isser Jacobs lived over the stables in the back, a room up a narrow exterior staircase to what had once been a hayloft. The stables themselves must now house the presses. The thumping of equipment shook the building with each step as Sam and Sorel climbed the stairs.
It was immediately clear that all was not well in Israel Jacobs’s rooms. At the top of the staircase, Sorel’s foot collided with something that clattered on the floor, and when Sam picked it up, cradling it in his hand like a small fragile animal, she saw that it was a cheap brass mezuzah case, twisted from being torn from the wall. The door was ajar, the lock broken and hanging loosely.
Sorel drew her knife and carefully pushed the door open. Sam was searching the floor for the mezuzah scroll and didn’t stop her. Inside, the room had been ransacked. It was a chaos of broken furniture covered in stove ash and loose feathers from the disemboweled bed. No one was there now, and she thought no one had been there for a while. The heavy air suggested that no one had moved through the space in some time.
Sam followed her inside, tucking the rescued scroll and its case into his vest pocket. “I wasn’t the only one looking for you, no?”
“Not for me.” Sorel nudged a pile of clothing with her foot and found a broken plate and a book in German, facedown. Reading German was impressive for a printer’s apprentice. Most boys she knew read only in Hebrew, and even then, not well. Surely he hadn’t been printing in German? As far as she knew, it was only legal to print religion. “For the real Isser.”
“Lucky you weren’t here,” said Sam, reaching past her to pick the book up. He gave it a gentle shake to dislodge the dirt and closed it with care, though it wasn’t a prayer book. It looked to Sorel like a novel. “Whoever it was, I don’t think they found what they wanted, but they could have just left things alone. Instead of breaking everything.”
