The Library Paradox (7 page)

Although there was perhaps something shocking about it, I did not dislike her forthrightness; she spoke only what was uppermost in my own mind. I had been wondering if we should have to avoid the subject of the murder and make small talk throughout the evening, and finally, I found this preferable to that. After only the briefest of hesitations, I decided to ignore my embarrassment and a certain natural reluctance to share the progress (as yet near zero) of my investigation, and accept the proffered help for what it might be worth.

‘All right, let it be so,’ I said. ‘If you are willing to help me, then let me begin by asking you some questions. I need some information, and one never knows who may turn out helpful. However, if this is a war council, we must start off on an equal footing. I hope you will call me Vanessa.’

‘And Amy and Jonathan, then,’ she replied, continuing very naturally in her position as leader of her little committee.
Emily poured out tea, and we all settled together in front of the fire. I felt a sense of warmth, comfort and friendship quite incongruous with the task I had come to London to perform. It was all I could do not to feel guilty.

‘I have two questions to start with,’ I began. ‘The first one is this: do any of you know anything about a certain French gentleman called Bernard Lazare, who, as far as I know, is a journalist?’

Emily looked blank, but Amy and Jonathan appeared to be familiar with the name.

‘Why yes, I know who he is,’ said Jonathan. ‘He was the big name in the Dreyfus affair a year or so ago; a Jewish journalist who stuck up for Dreyfus after he was condemned for high treason. Our parents follow his writings and mention him now and again, don’t they, Amy?’

‘Yes, they do,’ she confirmed. ‘I’ve read him too. He’s a journalist and a writer as well. Before Dreyfus, he actually wrote some rather irritating things about Jews and assimilation into contemporary society. But what on earth is his connection with Professor Ralston’s murder?’

‘Perhaps none,’ I admitted. ‘But Professor Ralston corresponded with him, and may have been actually in the process of writing to him when he was killed. At any rate, an unfinished letter to him remained on his desk. That does not prove a connection, obviously, any more than if he had been correcting papers when he met his death. Still, there is something special: Lazare had sent him a piece of news about the Dreyfus case, which seemed to have annoyed him seriously just a day or two before his death.’

‘Really? What kind of news?’

‘The letter from Mr Lazare is not very detailed, but apparently a telegram appeared somewhere which would seem to indicate that somebody else was the traitor.’

‘Ah, if only Dreyfus were to be proved innocent – it would save us!’ exclaimed Amy dramatically. Her words surprised me.

‘Save you? What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘His condemnation has been a disaster, an immeasurable international disaster for us, for our community,’ she replied impatiently. ‘Surely you realise that we are Jews, Jonathan and I?’

‘Well, no, in fact. How could I have?’ I answered, taken aback by the edge in her tone.

‘How could she have, indeed? Don’t be so sharp, Amy,’ said Jonathan soothingly. ‘Do you know, Vanessa – we encounter so much anti-Semitism in our lives, in school, at university, and in a polite, underhanded way, even in society, that we are sometimes unconsciously led to believe that an Englishman cannot see a Jew without thinking: “Ah, a Jew”. Our name, Sachs, is such a typical one that we never manage to pass unperceived. To meet someone like you is actually very refreshing. We were going to talk about it anyway, as it has something to do with the help we want to offer you. But ask us your other questions first, as I don’t think there is much more we can tell you about Bernard Lazare.’

‘I hope to learn more by meeting him,’ I told him. ‘Professor Taylor has kindly suggested inviting him down for a lecture.’

Amy’s eyes shone with pleasure at this news, but she said nothing. I saw that the peculiar interest she took in the death of a man she had very probably never met, which I had at first put down to curiosity for the sensational, was in fact nothing of the kind. Observing her more closely, it seemed clear that it stemmed rather from a desire to defend the community she felt she belonged to from the accusation of murder. My sympathy for her increased greatly forthwith.

‘My other question concerns someone called James Wilson, and an event that took place in the year 1886,’ I said. ‘Have any of you heard anything about this? Of course you were all rather young at the time.’

I felt something like an electric shock pass through the air, or a sudden peak of tension. But three blank faces stared back at me, and three heads slowly and rather sadly shook from side to side.

‘Oh, well, then,’ I said. ‘I shall try to get information from the old newspapers at the British Library. It is a technique I have found remarkably successful in the past. I have to admit that these are my only leads for the present. Since I cannot follow them up this very instant, let me hear your ideas now.’

‘One thing we thought we could do is a reconstruction of the crime,’ said Jonathan with alacrity.

‘A reconstruction?’

‘Yes – you know,’ intervened Emily, ‘try to figure out how the old man could have come out so fast.’

‘Or how somebody else could have been there as well,’ corrected Jonathan. ‘Look, there are enough of us to play
all the roles: Ralston is not needed; the murderer and the three witnesses make four. Shall we try it, Vanessa? Could we actually use the library to do it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We can and should do it, but with discretion and in silence. Preferably in the evening.’

‘But the library is locked in the evening,’ said Amy.

‘I have the keys,’ I said. ‘Shall we do it tomorrow night?’

‘Yes – tomorrow night,’ said Amy. ‘Let us all meet here and go together.’ She looked around to check that everyone was in agreement, then took a deep breath. ‘Now, about the other thing. Jonathan – you tell her.’

He shifted about on his seat, unwound his long legs and knotted them differently, looking uncomfortable. After a moment’s silence, he looked at his sister. She looked back at him.

‘It is awkward,’ he said. ‘I hate doing it. I suppose I had better explain to you straight out, Vanessa, how bad I feel at the idea of pursuing the old man that I saw coming out of the library that day. I … I have to say that I don’t believe he is the murderer, yet I don’t understand how it could be anybody else. But not him – it just doesn’t seem possible. That kind of person does not, cannot …’ He stopped and again looked at his sister for help.

‘We feel that trying to hunt him down
as
the murderer would be wrong,’ said she. ‘We think we
must
hunt for him, but without prejudice. As a witness, as someone who certainly will be able to explain something about the mystery. About what he may have seen while he was there, I mean.’

‘I understand what you are saying,’ I said. ‘For reasons I am ignorant of, above and beyond the peculiar timing element, you are deeply convinced of his innocence. Perhaps you should begin by telling me why.’

‘He was a Hassid, Vanessa. Hassidim do not commit murder.’

‘Perhaps you had better explain to me more precisely exactly what a Hassid is,’ I said.

Jonathan and Amy looked at each other.

‘Hassidim are a group of Jews who practise their religion according to particular rites and rituals not shared by all Jews,’ began Jonathan sagely. ‘It isn’t easy to explain superficially. If I tell you that they are of Ashkenazi origin, meaning from the eastern and not the southern countries; that they respect articles of a dress code not of Biblical or Talmudic origin, but established down to the slightest details by last-century rabbis; that they form little groups, each around what they call a “rebbe” – this is not exactly the same as what you would probably know as a rabbi, but a tsaddik, a truly wise and righteous man, whom they treat as their link to God, and from whose lips pure wisdom falls; that while praying they lose themselves in rocking back and forth and wild singing and dancing, all this does not really begin to describe the soul of the movement. The word Hesed means “grace”; these Jews feel that they have been touched by the grace of God. They are not approved by certain other groups of Jews, who consider their practices backwards, obscurantist, medieval. I am not speaking only of Enlightenment Jews who have assimilated into European
societies for generations, but even of other Jews living in the very same remote Polish and Russian villages as these Hassidim, but who, however, are wary of the shade of fanaticism that accompanies their devotion.’

‘How could you be sure that you recognise a Hassid when you see one simply walking down the street?’ I asked.

‘They have that very particular code of dress,’ said Amy. ‘The black coat, the sidelocks, and either the black hat or the big
shtreimel
, the fur-bordered hat that this man was wearing.’

‘But perhaps the man you saw was wearing those clothes as a disguise,’ I proposed.

‘No!’ said Jonathan. ‘I wish I could believe that. Then we could assume that he
was
the murderer, and we would have only to hunt for him and solve the time puzzle. But it is impossible. The man was a real Hassid. There is no doubt about it.’

‘But how can you tell?’

‘I’ve grown up among them. It would be easy enough to put on the clothing, but I don’t think even the most extraordinary actor could learn to walk with that special gait, carry his books and papers just that way, sweep aside his prayer curls with that gesture, mumble in Yiddish as he passed through the gate. Not in just that very way. I’ve gone over it in my mind again and again. He was a real Hassid.’

‘You are absolutely certain?’

‘I only wish I weren’t!’ he replied. ‘But it’s just impossible. Believe me, their manner of holding themselves, speaking, moving, the look in their eyes is unmistakable, and I don’t
see how one could act it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to imitate one of the younger ones, who are sometimes a little forced in their efforts, but the man I saw was a true rebbe. He was old, and he had the authority. There is no question about it.’

‘He was himself a rabbi?’ I said, feeling a little awkward about using the unfamiliar term, although I had heeded his explanations.

‘In the Hassidic sense – I should say definitely,’ he replied.

‘Then that should make it easier to trace him,’ I observed. ‘How many of them can there be in London, I wonder?’

‘That is the point,’ he said. ‘That is exactly what we were going to talk to you about. You see, it would not be easy to count the rebbes who live in London’s East End, because it is not an official status, such as being a priest would be. One is not ordained officially as a rebbe, so there is no list. On the other hand, while there are a great many of them, probably several dozen if not hundreds, still, if one has a contact within the tightly knit community who lives in that area, it seems to us,’ he glanced at his sister, ‘that perhaps one could learn something. And that is what we believe we have.’

‘It is not that we believe it; we actually have it,’ intervened Amy. ‘We have a cousin who married a man from that area. It is a strange story. Rivka was brought up in London, exactly as we were. She knew no Yiddish and as a child, she went to synagogue only occasionally, on the holiest days. But later she and her mother became more religious. She met this young man, David Mendel, after the
services for the High Holy Days in September, three years ago. It was impossible to tell anything about his origins; his English was perfect. He is very handsome, and he and Rivka fell in love. Then came the surprise. David turned out to be from a Hassidic family living in the East End. They had emigrated from a
shtetl
– that is what they call their villages in the Yiddish dialect – in Poland some ten years earlier, when he was only a boy. An enormous number of immigrants started coming then – they’re still coming, in fact – because of the pogroms, vicious attacks on Jewish villages by the local population.’

I remembered seeing a mention of the wave of immigration on Professor Ralston’s list.

‘Some of the
shtetl
families who arrived in London tried to continue living according to their customs, bringing up their children as they did at home, sending them only to
heder
and
yeshiva
, the schools for Jewish studies, and not to state schools. However, most of the people, the non-Hassidic Jews and a few among the Hassidim also, were more broad-minded, and sent their children to the Jewish Free School in Bell Lane. That was the school that David attended, and he did so well there that he was awarded a scholarship to a grammar school to finish his studies. By the time he was sixteen or seventeen, you couldn’t tell his English from that of a native. I don’t think he ever told his schoolmates anything about his origins, or let them know that he spent his evenings in, as it were, a different world. When he finished school, he began an apprenticeship in a bank in the City, and eventually rose to
a position of responsibility there. Yet he still lived at home with his parents, and remained at heart a practising Hassid; why, he even wears his prayer shawl underneath his city suit, although he hides the fringes during the day.’

‘Such a double life must be wearying,’ I said.

‘It was before, for he could really say nothing about his life in the City at home, nor even use the language he spoke there, and even less the other way. The meeting with our cousin was a blessing. David was afraid that she would not agree to move to the East End and adopt the way of life of a Hassidic woman, but she said that she was ready to do it. And she did it. She has borne two children since their marriage three years ago. She almost never leaves the rickety little flat in Settles Street, and spends all of her energies in making a home for her family. On top of this, she has had to struggle to learn Yiddish, and the many religious rituals she is expected to know. She says she still feels like an outsider, but things have become progressively better for her thanks to motherhood, and to all of her efforts and good will. As for David, she is a godsend, since of course he is able to talk to her about the different aspects of his life, and she can help and advise him in what you may call the strictly British aspect as no
shtetl
woman ever could.’