Horrified, Detlef watches, then slips towards an abandoned rowing boat.
Elazar, wrapped in his kittel, stands in the wooden pulpit in the centre of the small synagogue with the carving of the Lion of Judah watching overhead. Empty chairs line the walls and the enclosed women’s gallery is devoid of its usual chattering occupants. The temple is deserted but nevertheless the rabbi has opened the gilded gates of the ark to expose the large heavy scrolls of the Torah.
Elazar bows his head to an invisible congregation then holds out his hands. Before him he can see Tuvia welcoming the community with his usual awkward grace. To the right of the young mohel stands Sara, smiling mysteriously at Elazar from beneath her bridal veil. And there is his nephew Aaron, at the age Elazar loved him most, just before his bar mitzvah, his voice trembling on the edge of manhood, the soft down beginning to pepper the upper lip. Beside Aaron, his hand proudly on his son’s shoulder, stands his father and Elazar’s brother Samuel, aged twenty, as he was when Elazar and he first visited the matchmaker to arrange his marriage. Behind Samuel are Elazar’s parents, his father’s long white beard hanging down over his velvet robe, his mother’s face crinkling with pride as she gazes up at the rabbi. It is an assembly of ghosts. But the elder does not care. These are his people, and love and memory run like beads of glistening dew across the floor and up the walls of the temple, making the old man forget that his congregration are no longer living beings.
‘I shall read from the Torah, the passage recounting Joseph’s courage when he faced the Egyptian Pharaoh with his prophecies. “Behold, I have dreamt and God has spoken through me…”’
But as he recites, the old man becomes aware of a fiery light that has begun to burn a small hole in the second scroll which still sits within the gates of the opened ark. The radiance deepens, begins to etch out a golden word upon the silky parchment. Below him Elazar senses the rustle of clothes, a faint sigh, as the spirits turn to watch the miraculous light complete its message.
‘A’doni…’ Elazar reads out loud as he starts to name the unnameable: the sacred appellation of God. ‘A’doni,’ he repeats.
Just then a rock comes flying through the window sending shards of stained glass
across the floor.
Gravel squeezes up between her toes, clouds of white mud swirl around her naked shins. Determined, Ruth wades deeper into the river, her skirts hitched to her waist. Behind her Miriam follows tentatively, carefully placing one foot in front of the other on the slippery unseen rocks.
Ruth, water to her thighs, throws one end of the homemade net back towards the hesitant girl. Miriam grabs it, almost falling over. Pulling the net taut in the rushing river they move forward in unison. Feeling the mesh tighten Ruth peers down into the white water. But before she can see whether it is a fish or a reed the other end of the trap floats loose. Furious, she looks across to Miriam, only to find the girl staring in the direction of Deutz.
A thick column of smoke billows high above the forest that lies between them and the town. Without a word the two women drop their work and wade as fast as they can back towards the bank. Behind them the net, now a swirling eddy of mesh, twists itself around a pike that, curious, has ventured to the surface.
The sound of the rabble reaches Deutz before the mob itself. Like a foul wind from the east, the banging of drums, boots against cobbles, stick against stick, rumbles up from the docks and sends a collective shudder through all who hear it.
In the yeshiva the startled boys look up from their study, their teacher pauses mid-sentence. In the bakery, Schmul, alone since his beloved young wife Vida perished of the plague, thinks an army is approaching and in his terror allows the challah to burn. In the small cottages and crowded lodging rooms mothers and daughters drop their spinning and run for their sons and brothers.
‘Hep! Hep!’ they scream, the ancient cry that spans centuries.
By the time the shouting youths pour into the town square, most of the community has fled, except for one infant who crawls lost beside the town pond. Screaming with fear, he stares around wild-eyed until a yeshiva boy darts across the square in front of the marching boots and rescues the bewildered child. With the babe in his arms he rushes towards an open door behind which the terrified mother cowers. The door bangs shut just as the leader of the horde is hoisted high onto the shoulders of a massive blond youth.
‘Burn them!’ he screams. ‘Bolt them into their houses and burn them!’
Immediately a dozen students start tearing apart a discarded cart, throwing the planks of wood to their comrades who are armed with hammers and nails.
‘Stop! Stop!’ A huge voice booms across the square. The leader swings around.
Standing in front of the yeshiva is a group of elders. Hirz Überrhein, the leader of the community, an imposing man in his fifties, steps forward. ‘I am the bürgermeister of Deutz. State your grievances.’
For a moment the dignity of the man and the stern patriarchal faces of the old men behind him intimidate the rabble. Then someone yells out, ‘You have poisoned our wells, you have brought the Black Death to our city!’
‘We have our own dead too!’ Hirz shouts back, then has to duck to avoid the first stone. It is followed by another and then another. One old man falls to the ground bleeding; the others, driven by the rain of missiles, retreat. Panicked, they pour back into the school building. Hirz picks up the fallen man in his arms before running back towards the shelter.
Suddenly a small group of Jewish youths appears from behind carts, from around stone walls, clutching branches torn from trees and fence pickets wrenched from the ground. They walk towards the crowd. ‘Leave us alone,’ the oldest, fourteen at the most, shouts.
‘Where are your weapons!’ one of the rabble yells back, a taunting reference to the ban against Jewish men carrying arms.
‘Yes, Jew, show us your sword!’ another cries out.
The boy, still beardless with prayer locks tumbling down his cheeks, steps forward and swings a lump of wood blindly. The crowd laughs. Within seconds the boy is knocked to the ground, his arms wrapped over his head as fists and feet rain down. A brawl breaks out as his companions move forward to protect him.
It ends as quickly as it began. While the first youth lies senseless, the others are dragged semi-conscious into the yeshiva. As soon as the door is closed one of the mob begins to nail a plank across the frame; others join him in a frenzy. Soon the square rings with hammering as board after board is fastened over entrances while the terrified faces of the occupants stare out from the windows.
Holding a flaming torch high, the leader steps forward and throws it.
Detlef is running down the lane. His hood has fallen off and his face is streaked with dirt and sweat. His legs are pumping beneath him despite the exhaustion which tears at every muscle. In the distance he can hear the screams and shouts of the Schülergeleif.
‘Please let her be home, please,’ he prays to the God he fears has abandoned him, trying desperately to keep hold of his sanity and his faith, his sight blurring as the sweat pours into his stinging eyes. Over the bridge towards the cottage. But there is no smoke coming from the chimney. Detlef’s heart starts pounding with dread. He has not allowed himself to fully contemplate the possibility of her death. But now as he runs towards the dwelling, the thought of finding her body contorted by the Black Death, flung across the hearth or sprawled on the stone floor in the graceless posture of disease like so many others he has found, makes him ill to his stomach.
Down the garden path, stumbling over an abandoned milking pail and farming tools scattered across the moss, brambles scratching at his legs. To her door. Which is open. Wide open.