Body of Glass (36 page)

She was trying to figure out whether anything of significance had happened between Gadi and Nili. Malkah and Avram were perched on chairs at the ends, which the head and which the foot conveniently vague. Yod sat beside Shira, Zipporah on her other side ― she was still careful to interpose herself whenever possible between Yod and anyone ignorant of his true nature — while Gadi, Nili and Sam sat opposite them. Yod was a dainty eater. He required less food than she did, since he combusted it thoroughly. Shira was not hungry, nervousness manifesting itself more as heightened gaiety than as anxiety.

Whenever Nili and Gadi touched, she could feel electricity snap between them. It was a gathering tension, a series of small shocks. No, she did not think they were yet lovers, but both were considering that option. Gadi remembered to throw her lingering glances from time to time, to flirt, but it was perfunctory. The twilight was a lake on which they were floating, mauve, pale grey, pearlescent colours, the scent of late auratum lilies, of stocks heady on the air of the courtyard but overwhelmed unless she leaned back by the strong savours of the meal.

“I still think this expedition is too dangerous,” Zipporah began, but Avram stopped her at once with upraised hand.

“No business chat at supper, we all promised,” he said smoothly. “Let us talk of what is truly interesting, beyond this pulse of anxiety.”

“In the Middle Ages,” Malkah was saying, “our ancestors believed that demons ate odours. They hovered everywhere but especially in what were considered waste places. Our attitude towards the land we aren’t using has changed drastically. Our idea of paradise is less a garden than a real forest we haven’t yet logged off, poisoned. Now some of us find our demons in the Glop, some of us in the multi enclaves, some in drugs or stimmies.”

“You have trifled with the kabbalah all the years I’ve known you,” Avram said to Malkah. Why do you bother? You’re a scientist, not a mystic.”

“I find different kinds of truth valuable. I fly like an angel in the Base. In turning all statements into numbers, isn’t gematria doing what a computer does? In fascination with the power of the word and a belief that the word is primary over matter, you may be talking nonsense about physics, but you’re telling the truth about people.”

“A person is as subject to physical laws as a stone is.”

“But a person reacts and decides what’s good or bad. For us the word is primary and paramount. We can curse each other to death or cure with words. With words we court each other, with words we punish each other. We construct the world out of words. The mind can kill or heal because it is the body.”

“Malkah, politicians almost did in the human race by confusing saying with doing. Acid rain killed the forests. They appointed a committee to discuss it. The ozone layer was disappearing. They said it was a minor problem to be dealt with in time. They confused the power of words over people with the power of words over matter ― which is nonexistent.”

“You’re making dichotomies, but in Hebrew the word
davar,
as Andre Neher pointed out, means word
and
thing, no distinction. A word, an idea, is a thing. We see and hear the world with our minds, with words, in categories, not in raw sensory data. That was one of the improvements in Yod.”

“You’re becoming a Platonist, Malkah. Is the idea of god inborn?”

“I believe in holiness because I experience it. I don’t view it as a personal presence, but holiness is as vivid as sexual pleasure or hunger. Why do you go to services, Avram, if you find religious impulses bizarre and archaic?”

“Because it’s polite, Malkah. It’s social glue. It’s fulfilling my place in my family, my society, as my father did before me, with no more mysticism than he would have felt taking out a policy with an insurance agent. In those days there were large multis that bet people disasters would not occur ― but of course there came a time when the skies fell,” he added as an aside to the younger folk. “These bets were called insurance policies.”

“Avram, I’m not betting. I don’t believe in an afterlife. And I’m dealing with experiences as real as eating this soup.”

“Why do they always argue?” Yod asked Shira.

“They have a lot of mutual history. And they enjoy arguing.”

“A man as arrogant as Avram, it’s my duty to shake him up,” Malkah said.

“A woman like Malkah, she comes to believe her own rhetoric,” Avram said. “She needs the rigour of a more disciplined mind to hold her fancies in check.”

“The two of you should sell tickets,” Zipporah said. We could put you on as a comedy team. How about doling me out some more soup, Avram, if you aren’t too busy? I love this soup. I could go swimming in it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nili was saying. “Why would I want to pretend things in front of a camera with electrodes and transmitters implanted? Why should I live for other people’s excitement?”

“You don’t understand how highly stimmie stars are paid.” Gadi shook his head in bemusement, appealing with his eyes to the rest of the table. “They’re gods all over the world. Everybody wants to be a star or to imitate a star they adore.”

“I always wonder,” Yod said, his controlled voice pitched just loud enough for Shira to hear, “if you wish you were with him instead.”

“If I were, we’d be fighting ― not for fun, like Malkah and Avram, but bitterly. Savagely. You and I work well together.”

“Inside their Base, we’ll find all the records on your son.”

“Will you help me?” Under the table she took his hand, dry, warm, finely made like the precision tool it was. He had beautiful hands, what Malkah had always called on men or women, artistic hands.

“I know we must get him back for you.”

“But how can you understand my need?”

“I understand that I cannot give you a baby and that you must have your child back or you’ll want another.” He regarded her gravely.

“I want Ari. No other.”

“But that won’t last unless we can recover him for you.”

“Good. Then help me.”

“I have that intention.” His hand closed around hers, gently but with a grip she doubted anything could break.

thirty

Malkah

The Maharal opens the box, showing Joseph how to spring the lock. Inside is a ring with a big green stone. “That’s an emerald, Joseph, and you are to give it to no one except to Prince Bertier himself. Mordecai Maisl has sacrificed it to this purpose. It is from New Spain, and no doubt, as with most such stones men consider precious, it has cost many lives. After the prince has accepted the ring, only then give him this letter from me, asking him to intercede with the emperor. Do not be turned away. Do not hand over the gift to any servant or assistant, or to his wife or his son. To the prince only. Then you may return to me, but not before.”

“Rabbi, I go. But you talk to me differently than you talk to anyone else. You say precisely what I have to do and not do. Am I more foolish than your other messengers and servants?”

The Maharal looks Joseph in the eyes. “In dealing with angels and demons, the kabbalah teaches us to be precise. To say exactly and no more. To say what is wanted and what is not wanted. You are a creature of magic, Joseph, and whether you are angel or demon or new life is only for ha-Shem to say. It is prudent to follow the precepts of ritual carefully.”

“I don’t think I’m an angel or a demon,” Joseph says. “I have no memories of life before the life you gave me. Like you, I am created of dust and water, as the Torah says.”

“There are angels of memory who can make us remember or take memories from us and drown us in forgetfulness, as there are angels and demons who give us dreams. Go now, Joseph, and do only as I have told you.”

“I obey.”

We are, remember, in the Renaissance, when the same man, Tycho Brahe, precisely observes the stars and casts the emperor’s horoscope; when alchemy and chemistry are conflated; when medicine deals with herbs like digitalis, which we use yet, while bleeding victims regularly into anaemia; when humours of the human body are linked to emotions, planets, elements. Judah embraces the foremost science of his time and a passionate belief in demons. Perhaps only such a man could then create life or its simulacrum, as we do now in our laboratories. In every age, Yod, there are prevailing universal superstitions.

Joseph slips from the ghetto, crosses the Karl Bridge. On the river, a man is casting a net. A servant is spreading out linens to dry on the bank. Joseph hastens through the Mala Strana and climbs a street of many palaces, high up but not as high as the castle itself. The royal palace of Hradcany looms over them, immense and long, composed of many buildings, bristling with towers: round and onion domes, steeples, square towers. The great cathedral of St Vitus, still under construction, stands inside the walls, as do many houses. The prince, however, has built his house outside, with a view of the next green hill and a monastery nearby. The plum blossoms are just opening in the orchards. Below them, sheep graze. The steep roof has red tiles; the stone palace itself is simple and graceful. Many windows with modillioned cornices pierce the symmetrical facade, a great extravagance. Lion-headed doors stand wide. He is brought in through a courtyard surrounded by graceful arcades; in the centre is a well, protected by gilded wrought-iron grillwork.

Once inside, Joseph is kept waiting by the well, kept waiting in a servants’ anteroom, kept waiting upstairs. Finally, after supper, long after dark and after the legal time for a Jew to be abroad in the Christian town without danger of imprisonment, he is summoned up yet another flight to a small room, sumptuously furnished. Through the open door Joseph can glimpse a bedchamber, grander than he has ever seen. The small room contains a writing desk painted with a tracery of flowers, tall-backed chairs and a spinet. He is terrified for a moment that he might be expected to play it, but the footman who ushered him in simply tells him to stand in the corner and wait. The ceiling is divided by plaster into many sections, each painted with floating naked ladies.

After another hour a man he assumes is the prince strolls in. Stout and florid, he stands in the centre of the room, being divested of his jewels and outer garments ― not of the street but of splendour ― as he speaks. He wears more rings than Tycho Brahe. “Now, what is this mysterious errand?”

“Pane, may I approach with a gift from the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel? He wishes you and your family and your establishment health and good fortune and long life and every end you desire, and wishes me to give you a very small token of his fondness, pane.” Joseph reiterates with no inflection the message he was taught. He kneels to present the box, causing it to spring open.

Prince Bertier leans forward and eyes it carefully. Then, smiling, he motions one of his valets to take the ring out and hand it to him. “My, my. What have we here?”

“As my lord sees, it is an emerald from New Spain, unworthy of you but the best we can offer to your greatness,” says Joseph, the unctuous words sticking like taffy to his mouth.

“Why, you must thank your master. I presume Maisl found this somewhere, but it’s a beauty.”

“And my master bade me give you this note from him. For you to read personally, pane,” he adds, as the prince begins to wave the note towards the nearest valet. “Personally,” he repeats, and the prince sighs.

“Very well.” The prince glances it over, the ring glinting on his finger. He has put it on his index finger, moving another ring over and bumping one to the valet, who takes it from him. “Hmm, I understand. Tell your master I’ll see what I can do.”

“Time is short,” Joseph ventures.

“And the hour is late.” With a snapping gesture, the prince dismisses him. He is ushered speedily from the room, downstairs and into the street. It has taken him six hours to work his way from the street to the prince’s little reception room. It takes them less than six minutes to turn him into the street again.

As he slips out into the dark, he removes his yellow patch that identifies him as liable to arrest or attack. It has been a frustrating day. He was created to defend, not to act as a messenger boy to haughty nobles who love bright bits of compressed carbon better than wisdom or people or compassion. He wonders idly if he could digest the emerald, but he doubts it. He tried biting iron once and found he could not chew it. He has his limits. The thought makes him walk a little faster down the cobblestone street, past the taverns, still open, past the whores plying their trade and the straggling street musicians and the beggars still hoping for a last few coins. It is a crisp night, with a memory of frost although past the date for it.

Raising his head to the wind like a big dog, he smells fresh new leaves, horse dung, roasting meat, the sharp smell of human and horse urine, the pitchy smell of a torch, the sour reek of spilled beer, wood smoke, the stench of sewage, the invitation of baking yeasty dough and cinnamon, odours snaking about him as he descends towards the river. Scraps of music waft out to him from a grand dwelling, the sound of feet against floorboards, the swish of skirts, laughter. In another street, a woman screams. A donkey is braying hoarsely in protest against some injury. Sewage trickles by. A baby is crying in fierce short bursts as if worked by a bellows.

Then from an alley two men move out from the left side and two more from the right. “Hello, farm boy,” one of them calls, “let’s see if you’ve got anything to give us so maybe we’ll let you live.”

“I’m not a farm boy. I’m a messenger returning empty-handed. If you don’t let me pass, you’ll get nothing but trouble. I have no money, nothing but these big fists.” He holds up his hands in mock imploring, watching them all carefully.

The man who spoke wears a battered but quite lethal sword. The tallest clutches a short knife in the left hand and a length of wood studded with nails in his right. The others are armed with truncheons, clubs, probably daggers in their belts. They look to be businesslike ruffians, for whom a murder or two is part of a night’s labour. At the end of the block a woman crouches, a lookout for them, watching down the winding street.

The man with the sword puts it to Joseph’s chest, dead centre, pricking him through the cloth and leather. “What you’ve got, we’ll take. Now.”

Joseph seizes the man’s sword hand, breaks it upwards, snapping the sword, and flings the man through the air into the heavyset ruffian. As they go down, the tall one charges him, swinging the nailed club, knife held slightly sideways and low to slash upwards. Joseph smashes that hand with a kick that sends the man sprawling. Now the other two are up. The swordsman with one arm crippled hangs back shouting directions to the others.

Joseph pauses, his back to the building. “Get out of here while you can, or I’ll kill you all.”

He is half glad when three men come at him. The woman has abandoned her watch to run close, shouting encouragement to her men. “Take him from both sides at once, both sides,” she shouts. The ex-swordsman gestures for her to bind up his broken wrist. She tears off a piece of her muddy petticoat to oblige. The man whose left knife hand Joseph has broken advances swinging the nailed club, the pain not disabling him but putting him into a berserk fighting frenzy. The club sings in the air. Joseph ducks under it, seizes the man as the club hits him a gouging blow on his shoulder. Then Joseph swings him wildly through the air as the man had slung his club and dashes him against the building, smashing his skull like a rotten melon.

Now Joseph picks up the fallen club of nails and wields it, slashing the face of the first oncoming thief to blind meat, catching the second right in the chest and caving it in like an old barrel, staves of ribs cracking. He likes the heft of the weapon. It is well suited to his big hands. It sings in the air as if it likes to kill. It sings of the strength and power of Joseph, against whom none can stand. He keeps swinging it, advancing on the swordsman, who draws a dagger with his still usable hand. The woman slides a knife from her sleeve and flings it. It comes straight and true. The knife sticks into Joseph’s arm, but he scarcely feels it. He keeps striding forward, swinging the club that laughs in his hand. Down goes the man, and then the woman falls in a bloody heap. Joseph pauses, with the club silent and heavy in his hand and the five bodies crumpled and still on the pavement. His own black blood is oozing from the wounds on his shoulder and his arm. He pulls the knife free and the blood spurts out. He begins shambling down the street, the club dangling loose from this hand. He should not have killed the woman. But he could not help it. He had started and he could not stop.

Maybe there is a demon in the club itself. As he crosses the bridge, he tosses it high, arcing over the river, and then he hears a loud satisfying splash as it hits. Almost at once he regrets the loss of that fine weapon. He will make himself one like it.

The rabbi is waiting up for him, along with Perl and Chava. Perl exclaims as she sees the blood on his clothes. But his blood has long since coagulated, and his wounds are already healing. The Maharal insists that Perl leave them and go to bed. Chava tends his wounds. Then the rabbi sends her off also.

Joseph reports on his delivery of the emerald and the message. But the rabbi persists: “So how came you by these wounds? All your garments are covered with red blood as well as yours.”

Joseph cannot lie to the Maharal. He tells the entire story, one slow sentence at a time, not leaving out the death of the woman and the throwing of the nailed club into the Vltava.

The Maharal is silent a long time, his head buried in his hands. “I have much to answer for. But we still need you.”

The Maharal’s words frighten Joseph. “Master, I was outnumbered and they were professional killers. I did what I had to do.”

“And then you continued killing. You continued.”

He cannot endure the Maharal’s displeasure. It burns him. It is a torment like fire in his mind. “It was a mistake, Rabbi.”

“You’re too strong, too powerful, to make mistakes. No more mistakes, Joseph. No more.”

The Maharal paces to and fro, and as he paces he begins to pray. Joseph remains in the corner, quiet, but as the rabbi prays, so does he. He hardly ever thinks of ha-Shem when he prays; he thinks of the Maharal. He prays to be forgiven; he prays to be accepted. He prays to be loved just a little, as Judah might love his good cloak or a little dog.

The Maharal stops suddenly. “This is Thursday night before their Good Friday. Go, patrol! This is the time of maximum danger.”

Not knowing if he should be pleased to be put back to work or sad for being banished from the Maharal’s presence, Joseph runs to obey.

thirty-one

Shira