‘Reb, your daughter has agreed to give an answer by Rosh Hashana, isn’t that right, Tuvia?’ the old nursemaid interrupts enthusiastically.
‘Rosa, you have loose lips,’ Ruth observes wryly as the rabbi turns to the young man.
‘I am blessed with patience, Reb. I can wait for your daughter’s answer,’ Tuvia answers quickly before Rosa can embarrass him further.
‘Then you are a better man than I.’
Elazar turns to Ruth. ‘I am not getting any younger. I should like the honour of grandchildren before I die.’
‘All I ask is three more months,’ Ruth replies, trying to keep her ambivalence out of her voice.
Elazar raises his glass in a toast. ‘Then three more months it is.’
The other two awkwardly clink glasses while Rosa serves the main courses. Before them lies a feast of dishes, some of them sabbat offerings from the community to the rabbi: a pheasant caught and plucked by the butcher, a roast chicken dressed by the bailiff’s wife, beetroots and turnips from the undertaker’s garden and, of course, Rosa’s famous onions.
‘Look at this feast, my children.’ Elazar smiles broadly. ‘Are we not blessed? I am reminded of the belief of the ancient Sephardic doctor Israelicus: that food must be really delicious if both disposition and body are to benefit. Is that not right, daughter?’
Ruth cannot help but smile with him. ‘Indeed, you become what you eat. In which case I am an onion.’ She picks up one of Rosa’s delicacies. ‘Layered, slightly sour and guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes.’
Tuvia, laughing, raises his glass. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
Tuvia sits back, satiated. ‘I am to Maastricht Monday, I have a circumcision to attend.’
‘Is there not plague in Maastricht?’
‘The family lives outside the city walls, I shall be safe.’ He smiles at Ruth, happy to interpret her concern as an indication of a more intimate emotion.
Ruth watches him: his long white fingers drumming the wooden table, his narrow shoulders hunched over in his black robe, the thin lips and huge mournful eyes seemingly devoid of sensuality. There is nothing about him that moves her. But knowing the obvious affection Tuvia has for her father, she wonders whether she should not surrender the notion of romantic passion and give herself up to a loveless arrangement, if only to grant some last happiness to the dying old man.
Detlef stands in front of the small curved looking glass he normally keeps hidden in a chest. It is testimony to an earlier youthful vanity from his soldiering days. It is late, well after vespers. He can hear the fading rustles of the other monks as one by one they prepare for the short night’s rest. The canon does not realise how long he has been standing there. He only knows it has been time enough to feel his resolve solidify into a heart-pounding reality.
The reflection staring back from the surface of the polished metal is unfamiliar. Dressed in a filthy short cloak, torn breeches and a grease-stained waistcoat bought from a journeyman who thought the cleric must be delirious to pay three Reichstaler for the clothes upon his back, Detlef is completely unrecognisable.
The hat, in chevalier style, has a ridiculous battered peacock’s feather strung through its band but serves Detlef’s purpose well, as he is able to pull it low over his brow. Beneath it sits an old wig he hasn’t worn for years, a shoulder-length brown pigtail around which is wrapped an ancient velvet ribbon. His face is smeared with soot in an effort to look unwashed and world-weary like any other journeyman. He has succeeded.
Outside all is quiet as the last of the monks settles down in his austere cell. Detlef touches his heart with his left hand then places the same hand over the reflected heart in the mirror. He cannot pray. He cannot think. The act he is about to commit will bear no scrutiny for it is too primal, too instinctive, to either deny or examine. All he knows is that he will not survive another day without acting.
He opens the heavy wooden door slowly, making sure it does not creak. Along the stone walls of the corridor he sees the last of the reflected candlelight flicker and die. Now is the time to leave.
The ferryman says nothing as Detlef hands him a bribe for crossing the Rhine in the dark. The ancient sailor assumes from the way the man is dressed that he is an impoverished traveller from the north, just another homeless itinerant. The only thing that surprises him is the softness and whiteness of the traveller’s hands, they are not the hands of a poor working man. The sailor glances up at the face smudged with dirt, the lanky unwashed strands of hair falling out of the battered hat and believes he is mistaken. But as the stranger settles himself into the corner of the barge and stares back at Cologne, a shadowy skyline punctuated only by the occasional burning torch, the bent crane of the half-built cathedral silhouetted like a witch’s long finger with the low moon impaled on its tip, the ferryman wonders about the heaviness of the journeyman’s silence. It is not the stillness of an ordinary man but the ponderous silence of the suffering. The horrifying thought that he might be a secret leper crosses the sailor’s mind for a moment, but the traveller seems too robust, his limbs intact. No, most likely some nobleman having to flee in disgrace, the old sailor decides, then curses himself for not demanding more money.
They reach the first barge moored a third of the way across the river. As the traveller steps over to the next barge bobbing gently in the water, the ferryman sees that he is wearing good hide boots below the torn breeches.
‘I will pay you heavily for your future assistance…and your discretion,’ the traveller, noticing his inquisitiveness, announces in a guttural accent which confuses the man further. Out on the river a swan breaks out in a series of cries that echo back across the water.
‘In that case both my service and my silence are yours,’ the
sailor replies, deliberately employing a formal German to indicate that he is conscious of the real station of his passenger. It is then that Detlef realises he has crossed a boundary he never thought he would have the courage or desire to challenge.
It seems an eternity before he is aware of walking along her streets. The tall narrow houses could belong to any town in the Rhineland, the only thing that marks them as other are
the wooden mezuzahs nailed over the front doors. It is now past twelve and the town is sleeping.
A town crier appears at the far end of the road. Detlef ducks into a doorway to avoid being seen. The only other time he has been in these streets was for Ruth’s arrest. Then he rode. Then he was indifferent to the fate of this foreign community. Now he is on foot, trying desperately to remember the route the patrol took to reach the small cottage he recalls as being on the bank of a stream at the edge of a field. As he follows the one main road that seems to lead out of the village, the sound of frogs looms up. Water. Stream. Ruth.
Detlef crosses a small bridge and instantly the rattle of the horses’ hooves pounding the wooden slats floods his memory. The sweet smell of cut hay and apple blossom drifts across the rushing water. The thatched cottage is there, set against the backdrop of a forest, with its cultivated garden and orchard. A light burns behind the misted window.
Detlef stands transfixed. He is at the border of dream and reality as he stares at the building. Something rushes past at the periphery of his vision. Startled he looks around; a fox gazes back, its rusty head cocked around a tree. The animal appears complicit in its silence. The whole garden seems to be holding its breath as the intruder walks soundlessly towards the door of the dwelling.