By Night Under the Stone Bridge Read online

  Now, the Great Rabbi reflected, if the curse is so effective that it is intolerable even to an animal into whose dark soul no gleam of the knowledge of God enters, how can it be possible for this adulteress to go on living under the burden of it without appearing before me and confessing her sin before the day is over?

  But the hours passed, night came and went, and the Great Rabbi waited in vain. So he called his silent servant, the work of his hands, who carried the name of God on his lips, and sent him to look for Koppel-the-bear and Jäckele-the-fool in the streets of the ghetto, for he needed them. And when they came he said to them:

  “When daylight has faded and the shadows have fled, you will go once more to the cemetery, and you, Jäckele-the-fool, will play on your fiddle one of the songs that children sing on the feast of Tabernacles. And the spirits of the dead will hear you, because for seven days they remain bound to this world by terrestrial tunes. Then you will both come back, and you, Jäckele-the-fool, will go on playing without stopping until you enter this room. Then you will leave it immediately, and you must be careful not to look back, for what I want to do is the prerogative of the Flaming Ones, who are also called the Thrones, the Wheels, the Powers and the Hosts, and your eyes must not see them.”

  The two men did as he bade them. Jäckele-the-fool played on his fiddle the cheerful tunes of the feast of Tabernacles and Koppel-the-bear performed his leaps, and so they made their way between the graves in the cemetery and back again through the lonely streets, and behind them there was a bright light that followed them up the steps and into the Great Rabbi’s room.

  And, as soon as they left, the Great Rabbi spoke the forbidden word that is written in the Book of Darkness, the word that shakes the earth, uproots rocks, and calls the dead back to life.

  And the child was standing before him in human form and was of flesh and blood and its light was extinguished. And it flung itself to the ground and wept and complained that it wanted to go back to the garden of the dead.

  But the Great Rabbi said: “I shall not let you go back to Truth and Eternity, and you will have to begin life on earth all over again unless you answer my question. In the name of the One and Only One, in the name of Him who was and will be, I call on you to speak and reveal who is guilty of the sin because of which the great pestilence has afflicted the town and carried off its children.”

  The child dropped its eyes and shook its head.

  “I don’t know who the sinner was because of whom God summoned us to Himself, and the servant of the Lord who is set over us does not know either. Apart from God, there is only one who knows, and that is you.”

  A groan came from the Great Rabbi’s breast, and he spoke the word that undid the spell, and the child fled back to the home of souls.

  And the Great Rabbi left his house and made his way alone through the dark streets of the ghetto and along the river bank past the fishermen’s huts until he came to the stone bridge.

  Below it was a rose bush with a single red rose, and next to it a rosemary was growing, and they were so closely intertwined that the rose leaves touched the white rosemary flowers.

  The Great Rabbi bent down and pulled the rosemary out of the ground. Then he lifted the spell from the adulteress’s head.

  Black clouds chased each other across the sky, and the pale light of the moon clung to the piers and arches of the stone bridge. The Great Rabbi walked to the water’s edge and dropped the rosemary into the river, and it was carried away in the waves and sank into the murmuring depths.

  That night the pestilence in the ghetto streets came to an end.

  That night the beautiful Esther, wife of the Jew Meisl, died in their house on the Dreibrunnenplatz.

  That night Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in his Castle in Prague, awoke from a dream with a shriek.

  THE EMPEROR’S TABLE

  On an early summer day in 1598 two young Bohemian noblemen were walking arm in arm through the streets of the Old Town of Prague. One of them was Peter Zaruba of Zdar, a student of law in Prague University, a young man of restless and enterprising spirit who busied himself with plans to help the Utraquist Church to establish its rights, to diminish the Emperor’s powers in Bohemia, to increase those of the Estates, and perhaps even to put a Protestant king on the Bohemian throne. Peter Zaruba was deeply interested in such ideas. His slightly older companion was George Kapliř of Sulavice, who lived on his estate in the Berau district. He did not take much interest in political or religious matters, his chief preoccupation being the lard, poultry, butter and eggs he delivered to the Master of the Imperial Household for the imperial kitchen, and the Jews, whom he regarded as responsible for the evils of the age. He had come to Prague to see about the money due to him, for the Master of the Imperial Household was many months in arrears with the settlement of his accounts. He and Peter Zaruba had become kinsmen a year previously, when a member of the Kapliř family had taken a Zaruba bride.

  The two young men had been to the Church of the Holy Spirit, and George Kapliř had been surprised at the large number of Jews they passed on the way. Peter Zaruba explained that this was a Jewish neighbourhood, for the church was surrounded on all sides by Jewish houses and Jewish streets. Kapliř said it was disgraceful not to be able to go to church without coming up against all those big Jewish beards, but Peter Zaruba replied that, so far as he was concerned, the Jews could wear beards as big and long as they liked, it was all the same to him.

  For a man like George Kapliř, who spent his time in the Berau district, there was plenty to see in the Old Town of Prague. The Spanish Minister went by in his state coach with an escort of bowmen and halbardiers on his way to the Archbishop’s Palace. In the Wacholdergässlein a comic beggar assured potential clients of his willingness to accept anything - ducats, doubloons, portugalosers or rosenobles - there was nothing he would turn up his nose at. The Tein church was filled to overflowing for the baptism of a Moor who had entered the service of Count Kinsky - the Bohemian aristocracy flocked to see the spectacle. The printers and the tent-makers were both holding their festival that day, and their beflagged processions clashed in the Plattnergasse. They nearly came to blows because neither was willing to give way to the other. In the Johannes- platz a Capuchin friar was addressing the Moldau fishermen, telling them that he too was a fisherman, the Miserere was his rod, the Our Father was suspended from it like a golden line, and the De profundis, the favourite nourishment of the dead, was the bait with which he pulled poor souls from the fires of purgatory like carp or white fish. And outside an inn on the Kreuzherrnplatz two master butchers were quarrelling, because one of them was selling pork at a heller a pound less than the other.

  But George Kapliř of Sulavice had no eyes or ears for any of this. All he saw was the Jews he met on his way. On the Altstädter Ring one of them was in the pillory with an iron ring round his neck because, as a notice on his chest explained, he had “repeatedly and blatantly infringed market regulations”. George Kapliř could not resist telling this Jew to his face what he thought of him. He called him Moses or Eisig, for those were the names of the two Berau Jews he knew.

  “Hey, you, Moses or Eisig,” he called out, “is it your Day of Atonement today? If your Messiah came and saw you like this, he wouldn’t be at all pleased.”

  As he got no answer and expected none, he walked on and caught up with Peter Zaruba on the Small Ring.

  Beyond the Moldau bridge, where the island was, they came across a whole party of Jews who were being taken, under strong guard to prevent any of them from escaping, to the church of Our Lady by the Lake to listen to a special sermon to the Jews to be delivered in Hebrew by a Jesuit in the hope of persuading them to accept baptism. They walked like drunks for, to avoid having to listen to the sermon, they had resorted to an ancient and well-tried expedient: they had not slept for two days and two nights, and were so exhausted that they were bound to fall asleep as soon as they sat down in church.

  “Jews here, Jews there, Jew
s everywhere,” Kapliř exclaimed indignantly. “They’re multiplying so fast that soon they’ll outnumber the Christians in the country.”

  “That’s in the hands of Almighty God,” said Zaruba, who was beginning to be bored by his new relative’s inability to talk about anything but his lard, his eggs, and the Jews.

  “I regard their numbers and their wealth as nothing but a bad sign that God has become angry with us Christians,” said Kapliř.

  Zaruba picked up and developed this idea.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “as they’re still unconverted, God has sent them to us as an example to follow for our enlightenment.”

  “Get away with you and your enlightenment, don’t make me laugh,” exclaimed Kapliř, half amused and half indignant. “They come to noblemen’s farms, not with enlightenment, but to buy up our lard, butter, cheese, eggs, linen, wool, skins, cattle, and poultry. True, they pay cash, for a stone of wool your Jew lays four gulden on the table, and if they don’t pay cash they give good security and guarantees. And then they offer estate owners cord and braid for their servants’ liveries, and cinnamon, ginger, and preserved nutmegs for the gentlemen’s kitchen, and silk fringes, crepe and veils for their wives and daughters.”

  “So you see for yourself that thanks to the Jews trade flourishes,” Peter Zaruba remarked. “Why not admit it?”

  “My father of blessed memory told me that one should sell the Jews nothing,” George Kapliř went on. “Each to his own, he always insisted. Jew should deal with Jew and Christian with Christian. And I’ve stuck to that all my life. If only those up at the Castle weren’t such dilatory payers. Tell me, Peter, where does all the money go? What happens to all the revenue from the customs, the land taxes, the district taxes, the house tax, the poll tax, the town dues, the local rates, the excise charges, the beer duty, the road and bridge tolls? Where does all the Emperor’s money go?”

  They had reached the square in front of the Castle, where there was a great coming and going of footmen, chancery clerks, messengers, grooms and ostlers, persons of consequence, senior and junior clergy and officers on horseback and on foot. Crossbowmen of the Imperial Guards regiment were on duty at the gate.

  “You must ask Philipp Lang that question,” Zaruba said, pointing to the tall windows of the Castle. “He’s the Emperor’s valet and manservant, and he’s said to have his fingers in all affairs of state. Perhaps he knows where the Emperor’s money goes.”

  George Kapliř stopped.

  “Listen, Peter,” he said. “Won’t you come with me when I do my business up there? I’ll introduce you to Johann Osterstock, Second Secretary in the Master of the Household’s office, it’s he who pays me my money after the account has been checked and approved by the First Secretary. He’s a very friendly gentleman, and he’s a second cousin of mine on my father’s side, he always talks about our family connections, and he’ll end by inviting both of us to join him at the Emperor’s table.”

  “At the Emperor’s table?” Peter Zaruba interrupted. “Me at the Emperor’s table?”

  “Yes, Peter, if you’ll come with me,” Kapliř replied. “At the Emperor’s table, as they say. We shall dine with the officers of the Imperial Guard, Johann Osterstock has always done me that honour.”

  “Listen to me, George,” Peter Zaruba said after a brief silence. “How long is it since Anna Zaruba was married to your brother Heinrich?”

  “It was a year on the Friday after Invocavit Sunday,” Kapliř replied with surprise. “At the Chrudim church.”

  “And in all that time did no-one tell you that no Zaruba of Zdar has ever or will ever eat at the Emperor’s table?” Peter Zaruba went on. “And has no-one ever told you about Johannes Zischka’s prophecy?”

  George Kapliř shrugged his shoulders.

  “She may have told Heinrich, but she never told me,” he said. “You’re behaving as if my ignorance in the matter was wronging you in some way. What sort of prophecy was it?”

  “It was when Johannes Zischka was dying,” Peter Zaruba explained, “in the camp at Pribislau, as you will remember. He summoned his commanders and beckoned to one of them, Lischek Zaruba of Zdar, my ancestor, to come close to him, and said: ‘Yes, you’re Zaruba, you’re Lischek, I recognise you by your gait. ‘ And he also said: ‘I shan’t be able to finish my work, that has not been granted me, but a member of your family, a Zaruba of Zdar, he won’t be a fox like you, but a lion, he’ll finish it, he’ll restore the independence of Bohemia. But there’s one thing you must always remember, Lischek. He must not eat at the Emperor’s table, if he does, he’s not the right man, the cause is lost, and bloodshed and evil days for Bohemia will follow.’

  “And then he turned his face to the wall and died?” Kapliř inquired.

  “Yes, then he died.”

  “That’s what they always do when they have made their prophecies,” said Kapliř. “But look, Peter, every family in these parts has stories like that. The things my grandmother told me about the Kapliřs, for instance. How one of them spent three days and two nights drinking with King Wenceslas the Idle and drank him under the table; and another Kapliř killed the last dragon in Bohemia, the creature was said to have been living somewhere in the Saaz area, where they now grow hops. But even assuming that the story is gospel truth, what reason is there to suppose that Zischka was a great prophet? He was a great soldier and a hero of the struggle for independence, that I don’t deny, but I’ve never heard that he was a prophet as well.”

  “But don’t forget that Zischka was blind,” Zaruba replied. “First he lost one eye in battle and then he lost the other. God sometimes gives the blind prophetic powers, enabling them to foresee the future with the eye of the spirit. And, like my father and my grandfather, I believe in Zischka’s prophecy. I believe that a Zaruba will restore Bohemia’s ancient independence, and perhaps . . . In short, I will not eat at the Emperor’s table.”

  “Believe whatever you like, and do as you think best,” said George Kapliř. “I don’t have to restore Bohemia’s independence, my attitude’s different. I dance where the band plays and do the job that’s in front of me. So goodbye for now, Peter, you’ll see me tonight at my inn.”

  And off he went, leaving Peter Zaruba sadly disappointed, for he had counted on being taken to lunch at his inn by the wealthy Kapliř, as was the custom with relatives. But now that was off. He, Zaruba, shared lodgings with two fellow-students, and a woman from the neighbourhood cooked for them. Their standard of living was far from luxurious. He knew that, if he went back now, minced steak loaf in brown sauce and small cakes or biscuits covered with plum puree and a sprinkling of white cheese awaited him. He was heartily sick of both these crude dishes, which reappeared with tiresome regularity on the same day each week.

  On his way down to the bridge over the Moldau he passed an inn garden. The landlord was standing at the entrance, and he bowed and scraped and smiled at him. Peter Zaruba was a thrifty individual, and took no pleasure in handing over his money to innkeepers. But this one looked so friendly and inspired such confidence that it suggested he had nothing in mind but the comfort and well-being of his guests. Zaruba said to himself that it wouldn’t cost him his head, after all, and he stopped and asked what was on the menu.

  “I don’t know yet what my French and Italian chefs have prepared today,” the man replied, “but I can assure you, sir, that there will be four main dishes and eight others, beside an extra course, which is to be served last, as a surprise. And all this will cost you only three Bohemian groschen, sir. But I’m afraid you will have to be patient for a while, sir, because we shall not be ready to serve for half an hour.”

  A Bohemian groschen was not small change, but a big and heavy silver coin. But for a lunch of four main and eight side dishes, followed by an extra, surprise dish, three groschen was cheap, so Peter Zaruba went into the garden and sat at one of the handsomely laid tables.

  Eight or nine other guests were already there. They all seemed to know one anoth
er, they talked from table to table and no-one showed any sign of impatience at the unseemly length of time they had to wait before the meal was served. For it was nearly an hour before the landlord appeared at Peter Zaruba’s table and asked for permission to serve the distinguished gentleman in person. At the same time he placed on the table the first of the promised twelve dishes, saying:

  “A fine game soup, or potage chasseur, if you please, sir.”

  He followed this with two kinds of omelette, one à la paysanne, and the other made with chives and chervil. Next came two more appetisers: carp’s roe with truffles and chicken en gelée. Then there was a brief interval before the first of the four main dishes arrived. This was smoked stuffed pike, ceremoniously served by mine host. Then came sliced kidneys roasted on the spit, asparagus in consommé sauce, petits pois, and a cold dish - calves’ tongues and stuffed pigs’ trotters.

  Peter Zaruba thought with a trace of sympathy of his two fellow-students who were having to make do with minced steak loaf and biscuit with plum sauce. He no longer regretted Kapliř’s failure to invite him to his inn, for he could not possibly have done better than he was doing now. He merely tasted the pheasant dish that the host offered him next. After this came the promised surprise: quails on toast spread with beef bone-marrow. The meal ended with small iced marzipan cakes, Italian grapes and sharp Hungarian buffalo cheese.

  By this time Peter Zaruba had become rather drowsy. He sat there dreamily, thinking that perhaps it was like this that the Abbot of Strahov dined on Feast Days. But, in spite of his desire to nod off to sleep, he could not fail to spot George Kapliř as he came down the hill, gesticulating and talking to himself, his face flushed with anger.

  He called him.

  “Hey, George, here I am, come in.”