Herschel’s feet were wet, and because they were wet, they were cold. The piles of snow, perfectly white when they first fell, were stained with horseshit and grey-black soot from the factories. Herschel wished he could afford to buy a ticket for the last boat of the day and head to America. They said its streets were paved with gold and you wiped your ass with silk, although Herschel suspected that his feet would be just as wet in the new promised land as in Odesa.
Thoughts bitter and tangled as dandelion roots, Herschel kicked off his hole-ridden boots and lay on his rooming-house bed. He was still pondering the unfairness of the world and the ingratitude of its denizens when there was a loud knock on his door.
“Go away!” he yelled. His landlady knew he wasn’t to be disturbed, even if the rats didn’t care. Then again, he was months behind on his rent, so maybe she was here to throw him out. Being a penny-ante fool didn’t bring in many rubles.
Another three raps on the well-worn wood.
“I said go away!”
There was a pause. “Please, we need your help,” a voice said. It was muffled by the door, but melodic like a singer’s. Herschel could at least tell the idiot to find another schmuck to fix their problems, he thought, as he got up and unlatched the door.
Behind it stood a young woman, dressed in an expensive coat and a modest dress of grey wool, fashionable heeled boots on her feet. Her brown eyes were wide at the sight of him, emphasizing the curves of her cheeks and generous nose. Herschel glanced down. Her nose wasn’t the only thing about her that was generous. Probably observant, but no tichel, which meant she wasn’t married. She couldn’t be older than twenty.
Oy vey ist mir.
“Are you Herschele Ostropolyer, court jester to Rebbe Boruch of Medzhybizh, magician, trickster, hero of the Jewish people?” she asked breathlessly.
“Not for a long time,” Herschel said, positioning himself to block any view of the soiled clothes and empty vodka bottles behind him. “Now, I’m just Herschel. Who are you?”
“My name is Frumah Perlstein,” she said. “My town, Rouchus, needs your help.”
This was always how the road got him. A calamity, and you were their salvation. The feeling was as much a compulsion as vodka for a shikher. Herschel wasn’t that man anymore. Adventure was bad for him, bad for everyone. It’s why he’d shut himself away, even though anonymity meant penury.
“I’m not in the business anymore, kid,” Herschel said. “I can’t help you.”
Frumah’s face fell. “We don’t know what else to do. We don’t even have a rabbi now.”
“I’m no rabbi,” Herschel said. And a good thing too. Rabbis were smart, but with books, not with people. Rebbe Boruch had been like that, with a wicked temper even before his mind started to go. Herschel had faked dying to get out of that gig.
Frumah’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “My father’s a rich man. We’ll pay you well,” she said.
Herschel smiled warily. “Whatever you’re offering, it wouldn’t be enough.”
As he started to close the door, Frumah lifted her toe and stuck the heel of her boot in the gap. She pulled out a satin coin purse. “A down payment. Please?”
Herschel looked inside and whistled. The purse alone was enough to cover everything he owed and then some. Then there was the girl. In all his years as a chasid’s fool, adventurer, and magician, Herschel could never resist a pair of big brown eyes.
The taste of adventure limned his tongue. He weighed his fear, his lust for life, his pride.
For money like this? One job. He could do one job.
“Give me a few minutes,” Herschel said, and shut the door. You’re a damned fool, Herschele Ostropolyer, he thought to himself.
He started to pack.
“Nu? What do you think of our community?”
Still a little queasy from the coach ride, Herschel looked around Rouchus’ main street and felt the mud seeping through the seams of his boots. Like every pigsty in this wretched country, he thought.
“It’s lovely,” Herschel said. “Can’t beat the country air.”
Zelig Perlstein puffed up with pride, belly straining against the velvet of his vest as he launched into a sales pitch. Frumah’s father had a fast voice and appraising eyes that gleamed like an alleycat’s. In another life, Herschel might have played a prank on the rich man to knock him down a peg.
If the rich could hire the poor to die for them, the poor would make a very nice living.
Letting Zelig’s monologue wash over him, it took Frumah’s exclamation of delight for Herschel to distract him from the thought of warming his toes by a fire.
“Yankl!” Frumah shouted at the figure trudging towards them, who revealed themselves to be a thin young man with hollow cheeks and thick-lensed spectacles. He looked three missed meals short of starvation, meaning he didn’t have a woman—wife or mother—taking care of him.
“Hiya, Frumah,” Yankl said, blushing through his patchy beard. Zelig’s lips pursed at the sight of him, while Frumah’s cheeks reddened to match Yankl’s.
“Herschel, Yankl was the Rebbe’s shamash,” Frumah said.
Herschel shook his hand. The rabbi’s secretary’s grip was surprisingly strong for such a pipsqueak.
“So, what’s the problem here?” Herschel asked.
“I brought Rebbe Itsik breakfast every morning. He was always up there first; sometimes, he’d even sleep in his study. But two weeks ago, when I arrived, the doors to the synagogue were chained shut. No sign of the Rebbe. And there’s been strange noises and lights coming from the attic since,” Yankl said.
“Any idea where he’d be?” Herschel said.
“Sometimes he’d go to Kyiv or Odesa to buy books, but he’d always take me along to help him get around. But he didn’t say a word,” Yankl said. He looked miserable.
“Either your rebbe is alive, and he needs our help, or he’s dead, and it’s somebody else in there,” Herschel said. Someone, he thought, or wished. Not something. “Either way, you need your shul back, nu?”
All of them nodded, and Herschel approached the synagogue. It had been a long time since Herschel had done this, and he felt oddly wobbly, like he was back on land after months at sea. He remembered the last time he and Rebbe Boruch had traveled the road, the way the mud of the mustering ground had sucked at their boots and the timber barracks had creaked warnings. Rebbe Boruch—his wits beginning to wither on the vine, but still sharper than Herschel ever would be—had had no fear as he leaned in his walking stick and prayed.
At the steps of the shul now, Herschel touched the colder-than-cold iron of the chain. He let his senses fade as he reached for the ladder of the sefirot, the ten emanations of Adonai that mystics and magicians could access for the power of the divine. Amidst the rippling colors, Herschel felt a presence, and reached out.
Something reeking of burning paper slapped back, and Herschel found himself flat on his tuchus in the muddy snow.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Herschel said, wincing as Zelig and Yankl pulled him up. He made a show of brushing himself off. “There’s a curse on the chain. Powerful one.”
“A curse? Khas ve’shalom. What about the Rebbe?” Frumah said. “He needs our help.”
“Who do you think cursed it, the milkman?” Herschel said. He’d dealt with many curses over the years, but this one was strong.
Zelig scoffed. “Reb Itsik wouldn’t mess about with curses. Right, Yankl?”
Yankl looked at his feet, nodding and mumbling. Herschel would have bet everything he owned—and everything Zelig owned too, which might be worth something—that Rebbe Itsik was in it up to his bald patch. But why would the Rebbe curse his own shul? And if he did, why would he be lying around the attic like a schlump?
Herschel chewed his fingernails. His kishkes told him this was bad trouble, and his kishkes were rarely wrong. He considered making his excuses and sneaking off, adventure be damned. But then he looked at Frumah, biting her lip, and remembered who he’d been. Herschel might want to leave, but Herschele Ostropolyer was no coward.
One job. He could do one job. He straightened up and turned to Zelig.
“So, where am I sleeping?”
“Where” turned out to be a feather bed in Zelig’s spacious home. He collapsed onto it, sighing as his back popped. The blankets smelled like flowers and springtime, and a steaming basin of water awaited him in the adjoining dressing room.
As he bathed, Herschel marveled at Zelig’s wealth. The money he was paying Herschel to fix Rouchus’ problem was nothing to him. Herschel wouldn’t pinch the silver—he didn’t steal from other Jews, well, not usually—but Zelig wouldn’t miss a kopek if he did. Or maybe he would; being a miser was a bad way to get rich but a good way to stay rich.
And, Jew or goy, everyone wanted to be rich.
Even Herschel. He’d told himself the job was for a good cause, but Herschel knew that wasn’t the truth. It was always for himself. He cursed. He’d do this job and get back to his rented room, before he got a taste for the road again. The road brought him nothing but trouble.
But first, a performance. Clients and marks always expected one. When he finally descended the stairs to the dining room in his patched wool worker’s cap and clothes borrowed from Zelig, trousers belted within an inch of their life, Herschel was ready to be Herschele Ostropolyer for Rouchus’ conclave of makhers.
It was, as always, dull. The attending makhers’ names went in one ear and out the other without touching the wax. Frumah blessed the Shabbos candles in the place of her mother—six years in the grave, she’d said, in that quiet voice people used when their grief had scarred over without healing properly—and Zelig blessed the wine and bread, then sat to eat.
The goyisch servants brought a feast: borscht, kasha rich with schmaltz and onions, chicken and kotlety, potatoes and pickled vegetables, all served in silver dishes. Herschel dove in, disregarding the niceties of a rich man’s table. After all, being a schmuck was part of the act. He played along in conversation, telling tall tales and jokes that trampled the bounds of propriety. The table was rapt, but while the makhers listened, Herschel got the feeling one wasn’t so impressed.
“So, Herschel—may I call you Herschel?—how exactly are you going to break this curse?” the man asked.
“If I told you, what would you have to pay me for?” Herschel explained. “Havdalah will be an ideal time, though. As Shabbos’ warmth departs, the world is unsettled. The power of the sefirot grows strong amidst those cracks.”
The man shook his head. “I’ve never heard such nonsense before.”
Herschel opened his mouth to make a rude joke, but Frumah answered first. “Herschel is correct, Reb Moishe,” she said earnestly. “The Havdalah of Rav Akiba is the most famous mystical text to use Havdalah as such a leverage point, but it is far from unheard of.”
Moishe scoffed. “Rav Akiba? What would you know about him?”
Frumah turned red. “Rebbe Itsik has taught me well.”
“Taught Torah? Taught Kabbalah? Your father is a very forward-thinking man,” Moishe said, the words ‘forward-thinking’ shaped like an insult.
“Reb Moishe,” Yankl started. Herschel could hear a quaver in his voice, his courage bound together with threads thinner than tzitzit. “Fraylin Frumah’s studies have–”
Zelig smacked his hand on the table, and everything—people and dishes—jumped. He glowered at Moishe and his daughter in equal parts. “My daughter studies Torah with our renowned Rebbe, and that is my right.”
Frumah flushed red, and Yankl’s forehead beaded with sweat. Herschel hated men like Moishe, who loved their manners but respected no one. And Zelig the bully wasn’t much better. So, Herschel did what he knew best.
His belch sounded like the foghorn of a ship. Every head at the table swiveled towards him.
“Your wine is excellent, Reb Zelig. Even better when it gets a chance to breathe back at me,” Herschel said, grinning. He lifted his cup. “Another?”
The table tittered with scandalized laughter. Conversation resumed, but from the corner of his eye, Herschel kept watching Yankl and Frumah. They were quiet now, eyeing each other across the table.
The pipsqueak and the princess knew something.
With the synagogue still under infernal lock and key, Shabbos morning prayers meant Rouchus’ people scattered across a few private homes, wherever there was enough room to make a minyan—ten adult men. Even Herschel, who hadn’t voluntarily been inside a shul since he left Medzhybizh, could feel the gaping hole left by the Rebbe’s absence. He hummed along to the wail of Hebrew, but kept his eye on Yankl. The secretary knew the old guy better than anybody in Rouchus, and Herschel was sure Yankl wasn’t telling him everything.
Afterwards, Herschel cornered the kid outside, in the shadow of the house. He didn’t think Yankl could hold up to much pressure without time to retreat inside his shell, so he opened bluntly. “What aren’t you telling me about Rebbe Itsik?”
“I don’t–”
“Kid, what I forgot about lying is ten times more than you learned in your whole life,” Herschel said, putting a growl into his voice and flint into his eyes. “Don’t try me.”
Yankl swallowed hard, but stayed quiet.
“Should I ask Frumah? Seems like she spent a lot of time with the Rebbe.”
“No!” The young man’s face turned crimson. “Frumah can’t, I mean, Frumah doesn’t…”
“Frumah can’t say anything because Frumah was with you, not the Rebbe?” Herschel said, finishing the kid’s sentence. Yankl nodded, and his misery made sense. Herschel had seen this story a million times. Boy without a kopek in his pocket, girl with a rich and powerful father. Never ended well.
“The Rebbe wasn’t keen on teaching Frumah, so I did. We just study. Nothing…forbidden,” Yankl said. “She’s brilliant. If she’d been born a man, she’d be a once-in-a-generation scholar, a tzadik.”
“But she doesn’t know about the Rebbe’s problems?” Herschel asked.
“Only me,” Yankl said. “Rebbe Itsik changed when the rebbetzin died last winter. He was angry, cursing Hashem’s name when he thought I couldn’t hear him. Then he started to forget. Little things at first—always his reading glasses. Then bigger things, like who I was. But never the Torah, and never Rebbetzin D’vorah.”
Herschel winced. He understood that well, from Rebbe Boruch. It was hard to care for someone while they shattered, hurling jagged-edged shards of themselves every which way.
“The last time we went to Kyiv, he bought some manuscripts that he forbade me to touch. They were heavy things, parchment instead of paper. He locked himself away when we returned. It took weeks for me to get into his study alone to see them, and only for a moment. But from what I saw, they were forbidden texts. Sorcery, necromancy…” Yankl trailed off, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Herschel rubbed his temples. He’d dealt with misery and monsters over the years, but this was something new. New, and big trouble. He knew he should have stayed his tuchus at home. Part of Herschel hadn’t felt this alive in a long time, but more of him missed his sagging mattress in Odesa like it was his mother.
“I’m afraid of what Rebbe Itsik might have done to get the rebbetzin back, Herschel,” Yankl said. “And of what’s still in the shul, and what it’s going to do to us.”
Herschel’s tongue was rich with the spice and stink of the road. He put his arm around Yankl.
“Boychik, here’s what I need you to do.”
They gathered that evening in the synagogue’s courtyard, a semicircle forming around Herschel, who stood with his back to the looming building. Many of Rouchus’ citizens were there, although a faction led by Reb Moishe had decided to stay away from the foolishness. Two Jews, three opinions, Herschel thought. He spotted Frumah and Zelig in the front row.
Yankl approached, holding a pitcher of wine, a pitcher of clean water from the well, and a braided candle. He looked sick and pale in the afterglow of the departed sun.
“Ready?” Herschel asked.
Yankl nodded. Herschel dug a flask out from his coat. “No, you aren’t. Have some of this. It’ll perk you up.”
The young man took a swig and coughed, but his cheeks brightened with a bit of color. “Shoyn, I’m ready,” Yankl said.
Herschel nodded, smiled, and stepped into character. “People of Rouchus!” he boomed. “I am Herschele Ostropolyer! I’ve tricked every boyar from Mukachevo to Minsk. I’ve battled goblins through the eight nights of Hanukkah and sheydim at a Purim ball, and once made a golem just to play a practical joke. And now I’m here, to help you.”
Murmurs spread through the crowd. Herschel turned to Yankl, who struck a match. His hands quivered with the cold and stress, but sheltered behind Herschel’s hands, he managed to light the candle. “Say the words with me, boychik. Two voices are better than one,” he whispered.
Herschel put out his hands, and Yankl poured the water over them, blessing Herschel. His voice when he sang was nothing like when he spoke. It was honey-rich and strong, carrying a fine tenor. Herschel spoke the response, and then Yankl handed him the cup of wine. He spoke the blessings, first those marking the transition from the holiness of Shabbos to the mundanity of the week, then to more esoteric blessings.
“O You who dwells in the secret place of Elyon, who abides in the shadow of Shaddai, I say to the Eternal, my refuge and stronghold, my God in whom I trust, that He will save you from the fowler’s trap, from the destructive plague,” Herschel chanted in Hebrew, sprinkling in the names of the angels, then closed his eyes and spoke the unsayable name of God.
As he continued the psalm, he felt his consciousness drift towards the ladder of sefirot. The people of Rouchus were pinpricks of light in a swirling darkness like river water. He felt the presence of the greater beings of the cosmos in the eddies far above him. Then he turned.
In the attic of the synagogue, there was a patch of darker-than-darkness. It pulsed like a suppurating wound, and smelled like one. He pushed his consciousness closer. I see you, he said without words.
The sheyd turned. He felt its gaze pierce his form.
Begone, bastard child of Lilith! Depart from here! Herschel commanded and invoked another six of the angels just to be sure.
The sheyd laughed. It was the sound of biting wasps, and an untuned fiddle, and a lonely child’s death rattle.
Gut in himmel, Herschel thought, and then the world shot back into focus. He smelled smoke. And he was sweating. His chest burned, like he was on fire.
He looked down at himself. He was on fire.
Herschel shouted and dropped to the ground, rolling in the snow as screams spread through the crowd. When the flames extinguished, Herschel looked up. The synagogue was untouched, and the crowd had retreated from his prone form, murmuring. They weren’t excited or apprehensive. They were afraid.
Herschel, flat on his backside, tried to reach the sefirot again, but his connection had broken. His face flushed. His body hurt like hell, but he could deal with that. His pride, though?
Oh Herschele. You look like the fool you are.
As the crowd melted away around them, Zelig stood in the snow, fists clenched. Yankl helped Herschel to his feet. As Zelig walked stiffly towards them, Yankl busied himself with gathering up the ritual items.
“What the hell was that?” Zelig barked.
“There’s a sheyd up there,” Herschel said. “Whether the Rebbe invited it, or it forced its way in, it’s up there.”
“Bullshit,” Zelig said. “Moishe was right about you. A charlatan, a heretic. You come out here all high and mighty and embarrass me? Don’t expect to be paid. Consider yourself lucky I don’t have you whipped for fraud.”
Herschel looked to Yankl, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. Herschel’s spirit fell. For all they knew, he’d just set himself on fire, with not a demon for a million miles. He was a fraud. A clown. A fool. Even Yankl didn’t believe him. Memories of Rebbe Boruch’s court itched at his ears, his sycophants laughing as the witless old man abused his fool like a medieval king. This is why he’d abandoned the road. A life of adventure always cost more than anyone bargained for, and few were willing to pay the bill.
Zelig, muttering to himself, looked around. “Where is Frumah? I told her to stay here. Frumah!”
There was no answer. Nor was there an answer at Zelig’s home. The servants had not seen her. Herschel, a pit in his stomach, tailed the two men as they looked, and looked. They circled back to the synagogue. Herschel almost missed it in the darkness. His stomach twisted into a knot when he did.
“There!” he pointed.
Zelig and Yankl looked, and their faces went pale. The footprint of a heeled boot. Then another. Leading to the door of the synagogue.
“Frumah…” Yankl said.
“Did you two study any spells, Yankl?” Herschel asked.
Yankl nodded, while Zelig snapped around.
“What does he mean, ‘you two’?” Zelig growled at Yankl, while Herschel approached the synagogue. He placed his hands on the building’s walls, and felt them pulse beneath him like an infected wound. There was something horrible inside. But beneath the infection, there was another presence inside the synagogue. His stomach clenched. A human one.
Herschel grabbed the wine goblet and hefted it. It was heavy, real silver. He turned, and hurled it at the synagogue window, which loudly shattered.
“What the hell are you doing!” Zelig rasped.
“We need a way in, schmendrick,” Herschel said.
“We could just break the window this whole time?” Yankl said.
Herschel, wrapping his hands in his coat, pushed the remains of the glass through the window’s void. “Of course. But better to avoid sacrilege if you can,” he said, then clambered up. “Nu? Are you coming, or is it just me rescuing your daughter and your beshert, respectively?”
He climbed in, and felt the two men behind him, hurrying to catch up. Herschel took a deep breath, and was swallowed by the darkness of the synagogue.
After a fumbling and fruitless search for Frumah in the main floor of the synagogue, they came to the narrow staircase to the Rebbe’s study. The door outside was locked. Herschel lit the havdalah candle, and saw the mezuzah on the doorpost. He touched it, and whispered the prayer held inside. Hear Oh Israel, Adonai is Our God, Adonai is One.
He needed all the help he could get. Adonai, if you could do me a favor, I’d appreciate it.
Herschel touched the lock, and, closing his eyes, reached for the sefirot. He was exhausted, but whispering for assistance, he felt the lock mechanism slide into place. He pushed the door open, stepped forward, and lifted the candle.
There was a figure slumped in the Rebbe’s chair, head laying on a book. His beard was ivory-white, although he still had a full head of hair under his embroidered kippah. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were stained with ink and sweat. His skin was the waxy color of a corpse, but there was no smell of death.
“Reb Itsik?” Zelig said. His voice was full of fear.
The Rebbe shot up. His head turned to look at them, eyes moving separately from one another and pupils stretched from eyelid to eyelid.
“Rebbe, it’s me,” Yankl said. “It’s Yankl.”
“I do not know a Yankl,” whispered the Rebbe—no, not the Rebbe, something else entirely, Herschel reminded himself. It tilted its head until its ear touched its shoulder, bones in its spine audibly cracking. “Only the one this body wanted. D’vorah, D’vorah, he called into the dark. And answered, did I.”
“Rebbe,” Yankl started, but the sheyd cut him off with that sick laughter.
“And now you call for your love—Frumah, Frumah,” it said, suddenly matching Zelig’s voice when it said the young woman’s name. “A tricky snare for the sheep, no? To leave her footprints in the snow?”
“Where is my daughter?” Zelig shouted.
“No daughter. No wife. Only teeth and blood,” the sheyd tittered.
Zelig stepped forward again, raising his fists, and the Rebbe’s arm shot out. Zelig was hurled against the bookcases, and volumes of Talmud tumbled onto his head. He groaned, trying to stand, but more books tumbled down, and he fell silent.
Well, if he’s still alive, that headache will be holy, Herschel thought idly, then dove into the sefirot. The world around him swirled with corruption. The Rebbe’s form was all but an empty husk, filling to the brim with an oily darkness that pulsed through the desiccated channels of his body. Herschel shaped his mind into a swordpoint and thrust it at the sheyd, which batted it aside like a child’s toy.
“Rebbe, I know you’re in there,” Yankl said. “I know what you have lost. But we need you. Please, fight.”
Herschel saw the barest fragments of light in the Rebbe’s form swell, and the darkness rush after them. There was a shockwave, and an impact. Herschel felt himself hit the wall, and the light in the Rebbe’s body winked out.
Oy, bashafer in himmel.
Yankl stood firm, facing the sheyd down. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Let him go,” he said. “Take me instead.”
Herschel groaned. The good-hearted fool. He barely needed to fade to see the darkness flow from the Rebbe’s form to Yankl’s, the boy’s bright light battling the tide of the sheyd’s power.
As Herschel tried to stand, the door swung open. From the floor, in the world of dust and flesh, Herschel saw familiar heeled boots.
“Yankl!” Frumah said, and rushed forward. “Back, sheyd!”
The Rebbe’s mouth stretched in a rictus grin, its nose twitching like a rabbit’s. Herschel mustered his strength to take another swing at the sheyd. He wouldn’t let both of these idiots sacrifice themselves.
“Gallû ben-Ashmedai, I said, get the fuck off him,” Frumah said, and grabbed Yankl’s hand. The whirling darkness slowed for a moment, as though in shock at hearing its true name.
“Gallû ben-Ashmedai, in the blessed memory of Rebbe Itsik of Rouchus, go back from whence you came,” she ordered.
Sweat beaded on Frumah’s brow as the temperature rose. Herschel swung his consciousness back towards the sefirot, and saw the darkness thrash and crackle at the golden light wreathing Frumah. She fought, but cracks began to appear in her aura, and Herschel felt in his guts that if he didn’t do something, the sheyd would overcome her.
He reached for the ladder of the sefirot, but his hand slipped on the first rung, slick with mental exhaustion. So, Herschele Ostropolyer, magician, trickster, hero of the Jewish people, did the first thing he could think of. He grabbed a volume from the Rebbe’s shelf and kissed it.
“Oy, schmuck! Catch!”
He threw the book, which smacked the sheyd in the head. It hissed and turned towards Herschel, and for a moment, the pressure of its darkness against Frumah eased.
“In the name of Hashem, Gallû ben-Ashmedai, you are banished!” she shouted.
Herschel’s ears popped as the air pressure in the room plummeted. The darkness swirled to a single point in the air like a whirlpool, draining out of the Rebbe’s body like pus from a lanced boil. There was a loud screech, and a flash of ethereal light, and then the room was cold again.
Herschel dusted himself off. Every part of him hurt, including parts he barely knew he had. Wincing, he uncovered Zelig from the pile of fallen books and hauled him to his feet. From the corner of his eye, Herschel saw that the two kids were still holding hands.
“How’d you know the sheyd’s name, kid?” Herschel asked. He’d seen a lot, but he’d never seen that.
“I pay close attention,” Frumah said, brushing the mess out of her eyes. “The solution was simple!”
As she explained the obscure demonology and tangled sorcery she’d just practiced in the same way someone might explain the best way to cook a chicken, Herschel bit his tongue, while Yankl and Zelig stood with their mouths hanging open. “But where did you go, if not here?” the latter asked.
“I brought the widow Zimmermann home after Herschel’s mishegas, she was frightened half to death!” she said, her lips pursed, the very image of her father. “And then I come back, and what do I see? You three, with a chicken’s brain between you.”
She had them there, Herschel thought. Instead of an answer, Zelig looked down at her and Yankl’s hands. “Frumah, what do you think you’re doing?”
Frumah looked down, then at Yankl. “This,” she said, and kissed him hard on the lips. The young man, whose eyes were beginning to focus, promptly faded back into shock.
I’m sure that’s the first time that’s happened to him, Herschel thought.
“Frumah!” Zelig said. “He’s a nobody!”
“He saved your life!” Frumah retorted.
“Yankl?” Zelig said.
“I’m going to marry him, Tate. And you should be happy. He’s going to be a great rebbe,” Frumah said. “Right, Yankl?”
The young man coughed and straightened. “Yes, Reb Zelig. I would ask, humbly, for your daughter’s hand. I will do anything to make her happy.”
Zelig looked like he’d swallowed a live mouse, and Herschel took the opportunity to pipe up. “Mazal tov, kinderlach,” he said. “Now, can we get out of this verkakte building before it falls down around our heads?”
Herschel stayed for the wedding, which happened right after the end of Shloshim, the thirty days of mourning following Rebbe Itsik’s death. They called in a rabbi from a neighboring village, and with Zelig’s fortune, it was a simcha to remember. They kept what had happened in the shul to themselves, and if people noticed that the gloom had faded once the Rebbe’s body was removed and buried, they didn’t ask questions. Herschel drank wine and slivovitz and danced with the men, whirling and kicking until his legs gave out.
He rose early the next morning, his head ringing and his pockets full with Zelig’s money, and caught the next coach to Odesa. At first, Herschel did his best to sleep through its bounce and rattle, but his chest was buzzing with excitement. Instead, he told his fellow passengers stories. Nothing about what had happened in Rouchus, of course, but other stories, from his long career on the road. Some of them were true, and some of them weren’t, but that didn’t matter a whit when the road took your tongue.
He knew he was home when he could finally smell smoke and horseshit. He returned to his lodging house, but he didn’t lay back down on his mattress. Instead, he gathered his things into a battered suitcase, his nose still full of the smell of the road. He’d write letters to Yankl and Frumah on his journey, and to Rebbe Boruch’s widow too. There’d be plenty of time to reminisce on old stories and dream about the adventures to come.
He bid farewell to the rats, paid his arrears and left something extra for his landlady, and hauled his worldly possessions out into the street. His feet were cold and wet by the time he got to the port, but for once, he didn’t mind so much. They’d dry out eventually.
When he arrived, he could see a ship in the harbor. It sat low in the water, nearly full with people and possessions making their way for New York City. Herschel grinned. The new promised land might not be better than the old country, but who was to say? At least there’d be good stories, and new ones. And Herschel would be a part of it
Herschel bought a ticket, and as the horn sounded for the last boat of the day, he climbed aboard.
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Alex Langer is a Canadian Jewish writer and lawyer usually based in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Heartlines Spec, and On Spec Magazine, among other venues. You can find him at @alexlanger1993.bsky.social on BlueSky. |