The Library Paradox (14 page)

‘Ah, I shall eat out of this with pleasure!’ he said, lifting down an item certainly astonishing to behold in the modest, dark little apartment: a splendid, heavy soup tureen of silver, with handles richly decorated with entwined bunches of silver grapes and leaves.

‘What a noble tureen you have there,’ I remarked.

‘It was our wedding gift from Jonathan and Amy’s parents,’ he smiled, handing it into the kitchen where it was received with eager hands. ‘It is so impressive that we do
not use it as often as we might. It certainly is Aunt Judith all over, isn’t it,’ he added, turning to Jonathan.

‘You mean ostentatious and bourgeois?’ said Jonathan, with a hint of coldness.

‘Maybe a little taste of that, but above all something solidly worthy, no cheating with appearances, and actually rather regal,’ answered David, whose good humour was truly invincible.

Emerging from the kitchen, Amy and Rivka now cleared away the objects of the Havdalah ceremony from the table and, pulling it a little away from the wall, they redecked it with a gay embroidered cloth and set the tureen in the centre of it. David helped them lay the table with chipped and bent oddments from the dresser whose modesty made the table resemble a crowd of beggars besieging the Queen’s carriage, and we settled around it, Rivka holding her older son upon her lap, while the baby crawled about at our feet with a crust of bread tightly clutched in his little fist.

Uncovered, the tureen revealed a meal of lentils, upon which swam a few lonely pieces of mutton. It was, however, comfortably warm and fragrant, and as hunger is the best sauce, we were soon regaling ourselves in communal pleasure. I knew that Amy was longing to introduce the subject which had brought us to her cousin’s home, but she waited patiently until the meal had been consumed, the dishes carried away and a dense almond cake had appeared, accompanied by a pot of tea.

‘Let us tell them now, shall we?’ she said, when everyone was sitting around the table in a state of replete
peacefulness. ‘David, Rivka, now is the time to discuss the details of why we want to ask for your help. We hope that when you know exactly what is going on, you will feel as we do about what must be done.’

She described Professor Ralston and his murder in a few strong sentences, laying emphasis on the factual murder, and on the strange contradictory evidence about the timing, and stressing the anti-Semitic activities of the man, and the important role played by the mysterious rabbi. Rivka and David listened intently. Rivka made no comment, but pressed her lips together nervously and glanced at her husband. David, however, was extremely surprised by our tale.

‘You don’t think the man you saw was a rebbe from
here
?’ he said, turning to Jonathan.

‘I think it almost certain,’ was the reply. ‘From where else could he be? We absolutely need to find him.’

‘Hmm,’ said David slowly. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be best to leave the whole thing alone? What could a rebbe from here have to do with a murder? Why bring trouble on him?’

There was a moment’s silence, then Amy, Jonathan and I all spoke simultaneously.

‘I for one am duty bound to look for him as best I can, with or without help,’ I said. ‘It is my job.’

‘The police are looking for him too,’ said Jonathan. ‘We need to find him first!’

‘No, but David – don’t you see?’ burst out Amy. ‘If he is being hunted for by detectives and by police, he will be
found, sooner or later, and then he will certainly be arrested, and if he cannot tell the police who the real murderer is and convince them that he has nothing to do with it, he will be accused and brought to trial himself!’

‘That mustn’t happen!’
cried Rivka, with a sudden look of pain.

‘Vanessa has to do her best to find out what really happened,’ said Jonathan, more calmly. ‘And I think we must help her to go as far as possible while avoiding the police. Surely you do not want them invading the East End, searching houses, questioning people and making arrests, as is certain to happen soon enough if no progress is made – if it is not already beginning, without our knowing it?’

David threw himself back in his chair. Clouds passed in front of the sunshine.

‘Even if you are right,’ he said reluctantly, ‘what do you think I could do? There are dozens, if not hundreds of rebbes in this part of town.’

‘What we were thinking, though,’ said Amy gently, ‘is that most of the rebbes from here, the real Hassidim, I mean, are not likely to leave and go into town very often, are they? They scarcely ever do leave their homes or their
shul
– they could hardly do it without being noticed, could they?’

David writhed in his chair and grew a little hot, as the idea of actually participating in an investigation to locate an errant rabbi gathered reality.

‘What is
shul
?’ I asked, in order to distract him.

‘It is our study house,’ he answered me. ‘It isn’t exactly
like a synagogue, which would be closer, I suppose, to your church. Synagogue is where the Shabbat and festival services take place. The
shul
is often in the synagogue, or next to it if there are two rooms, but it is the place where we students congregate to study Talmud and Mishnah, the texts and the commentaries on the Torah – the Law.’

‘You are a student there? I thought you worked in the City,’ I said in surprise.

‘I do work in the City. But every Jew is a student,’ he answered. ‘I go to
shul
every free moment I have, though it is little compared to those who are fortunate enough to be able to study all day.’

‘It must leave little time for your home and family,’ I observed.

‘David’s home is always here, waiting for him. It is not going anywhere,’ said Rivka. Her eyes met those of her husband lovingly, and her fingertips brushed his.

‘I suppose it is not so very different from what my husband does,’ I mused. ‘After all, though he generally returns home after his day of work, often enough he goes racing out again if some idea for his mathematical research comes upon him. I suppose there are many ways of spending one’s life in study.’

‘Let us return to the rebbe,’ said Amy with her usual single-mindedness. ‘Listen, David. Suppose that your own rebbe suddenly upped and went off to transact some private business in the City? Wouldn’t you hear something about it? I’ll bet the students here gossip plenty, and discuss every little detail concerning their teachers, just like students everywhere else.’

‘They do gossip,’ said Rivka honestly. ‘Gossip in this community is more than you can imagine. And the strange thing is, that there is so very little to gossip about. The people live the most regular lives, and almost everybody has far too much work to get into any kind of trouble. Yet the least little dispute in the marketplace gives rise to infinite discussion and analysis! Perhaps the most serious of the young men try to avoid engaging in gossip, in order to respect the Hassidic prescription against
Loshen hara
– “the evil tongue”, meaning speaking ill of people. But everybody I know gossips anyway! I myself learn everything that goes on from your brothers, Dovidl,’ she added, smiling.

‘You have brothers?’ I asked.

‘I have two brothers, Yakov and Ephraim,’ he said. ‘They are fifteen and eleven; they are just schoolboys. My mother works very hard as a hand in a tailor’s shop, and my father has a stand in the Sunday market and also spends much time in the
shul
, so the boys visit here very often. They love to come after school and play with their little nephews.’

‘Your little brothers probably know just about everything that goes on around here,’ said Amy firmly. ‘If any rebbe disappeared for an afternoon, you could find out about it, or they could. You must imagine it,’ she added, turning to me. ‘A Hassidic rebbe is hardly a private person: he is entirely given over to his disciples and students, and his time belongs to them. Even his wife is lucky to spend any time alone with him. He is solicited all the time, by people asking learned questions, or needing help, or wanting his judgement on some problem. And when nobody is soliciting
him, he is likely to be surrounded by eager students drinking the words of wisdom from his lips.’ Turning to David, she added, ‘Have you yourself heard nothing at all about an unusual absence?’

‘No,’ began David. Then he stopped. ‘We-ell, not really. Funnily enough, there was something about a rebbe disappearing recently, but it’s just a funny coincidence. It has nothing to do with what you’re looking for. It’s just a story.’

‘What do you mean, just a story? Where did you hear it? Who was it about?’

‘I heard Yossele, our local storyteller, giving one of his recitations last week. It was a new tale by Yitzhok Peretz published in
Kol Mevasser
– that’s our newspaper – called “If not still higher”, or something like that. It was really good and I enjoyed it. I wanted to tell it to my brothers, but when I started, they told me they had just heard the same story in school. And then someone else, I don’t remember who, told me that they had just heard that wonderful story. Actually, I heard it mentioned several times last week.’ He stopped suddenly, struck by a thought. ‘I wonder why that particular story made the rounds?’

‘What is it about?’ said Amy.

‘It’s … well, that’s just it. It’s about a rebbe who disappears. He is absent mysteriously early every morning, and a foreigner – a Lithuanian – tries to find out where he goes.’

‘It would be good to find out exactly who began telling the story, and why,’ I said. ‘I mean, most people probably
heard it lately from someone who retold it because they themselves had heard it and liked it. The thing would be to work backwards up the chain to its source. It might be nothing more than the recent publication of the story—’

‘But it might be that everyone is talking about it because somebody noticed something like it really happening!’ cried Amy, picking up on the idea that David had half-expressed.

‘I don’t know, though,’ he said. ‘People tell stories around here all the time, and Peretz’s latest can always be counted upon to get a lot of appreciation. Peretz is one of our great Yiddish authors,’ he added, turning to me. Reaching up to a shelf, which held a pile of papers and well-thumbed tomes, he took down some old newspapers and glanced through them. I looked eagerly over his shoulder, but found myself confronted with Hebrew characters, as illegible to me as if I were staring at a blank wall.

‘You won’t be able to read this,’ he said, smiling. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I have the story here, as it only just came out. Listen, I’ll find it and translate it for you, and send one of my brothers to bring it over to you tomorrow. I don’t know what conclusions you’ll be able to draw from it; probably none.’

‘I would very much like to read the story, nevertheless,’ I said.

‘But in the meantime, can’t you also try to find out the source of the storytelling, as Vanessa was asking?’ said Amy eagerly.

‘I can try, I suppose, though I hardly see how. I only wish it were clear that it is the right thing to do,’ he answered,
looking rather unhappy. Sensing the reason, Amy tried to reassure him.

‘David, not one of us here believes the rebbe Jonathan saw is the murderer. We proved to our satisfaction, from the evidence, that he can’t be. But don’t forget that the police are looking for him, too. And they may not accept our arguments. What we say depends on exactly what Jonathan remembers seeing, and when. We believe him, but the police may easily imagine that he is mistaken by a few seconds. Our finding the rebbe will help him, not hurt him, David, we are sure of it. You know it too, don’t you?’

He did not answer, but his gaze met mine.

‘Is what she says true for you, too, Vanessa?’ he asked me.

For a brief moment, I hesitated.
Was
I completely sure?
Could
the rabbi not be the murderer?
Could
Jonathan not be mistaken by a few seconds? But no – he was clearly telling the truth when he described exactly what he saw and did that fatal evening.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said finally.

Sundays are sadly unproductive with respect to collecting information from official sources. I rose this morning somewhat later than usual, and set immediately to considering how I might best spend the intervening hours before the evening’s dinner party at Professor Taylor’s home, to which he had promised to summon as many of Professor Ralston’s erstwhile colleagues as could be prevailed upon to attend.

It may have no apparent bearing on the investigation, yet I felt I must begin by going to church. The quietness of prayer, the respectful silence whose intensity is merely increased by the tiny rustles of quickly stilled movements, the echoing tones of the sermon, the abandonment of controlled thought to the familiar ways of hymn and prayer: all this is more conducive to concentration and insight than any other atmosphere I have ever encountered. Yet today, for the first time in my life, the collective yearning for God seemed too staid for me to be able to lose myself in it. The sermon was steady and noble, the listeners rapt, the singing inspired, and yet something was lacking: the joyful abandon, the radiant rapture, the sheer happiness of nearness to God that I had witnessed so recently … in another religion.

It occurred to me for the first time that I could not remember ever, for even one moment in my life, feeling myself to be personally and individually animated by the grace of God. I tried, as I stood and sat decorously upon my pew, to understand something of the deep hatred Christians manifest towards Jews (history having clearly proven that Catholics tend to sin more in this direction than Protestants). Brought up in ignorance, with nothing more than a kind of vague, undeveloped horror of the blasphemy of not worshipping our Lord, I had never actually asked myself what Jews worshipped instead. If I had, I could have easily discovered the answer, for they continue to worship, as they always have, the very same Deity of the Old Testament as we do. The denial of Jesus Christ as his
son and his Messiah, a gesture of love and pity for mankind that God sent to humanity, is sad for them, perhaps, for they are thus denied the hopes for eternal life offered to us by His sacrifice. One may consider them most unfortunate in this regard (although they in no way appear to share this conviction), but how can it be a cause of hate? Often they have been accused of being the murderers of Christ, yet this accusation seems more a consequence of hatred than its cause, for anyone who reads the Gospels, anyone with even a minimal knowledge of the reign of terror of the Romans in Jerusalem and the unlimited power and immense cruelty of Pontius Pilate, knows that only Romans, not Jews, had the power to execute. And from thence to accusations of ritually murdering children to drink their blood appears to denote a frenzy of hatred, which goes beyond any rational explanation. Perhaps one must seek within the psyche of each one of the individual Ralstons of this world, to understand what personal tragedy has provoked such bitterness.