his forehead. “And you could be the White Lady!”
“You want me to play dress-up, it’ll cost you.”
“You’re joking, right?” said Zinger. “Nobody wants to screw the White Lady.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Who’s the White Lady?” I said.
Zinger told me that once upon a time, the White Lady was one of the Rožmberks, but after she died under circumstances that have been lost in the misty corridors of time, she took to haunting the family estate, and that ever since then, whenever she is seen wandering along the battlements or the banks of the river, wrapped in a flowing white veil, it is a sure sign that death will follow in her footsteps.
“And men pay for this…experience?”
Trine nodded.
“Well, I guess that’s one way to deny the fear of death,” said Zinger.
Lord, what a world.
I reached inside my cloak and tossed a few gold pieces on the bed.
“Will that cover it?”
Trine glanced at the shiny gold ducats. A knowing smile blossomed on her lips. “I heard you were working for Meisel.”
“I’m working for all of us,” I said. “And I need to use the secret passage to get out of the ghetto. To night. And I’m going to need a diversion that only he can provide.”
I waited.
I couldn’t force her to do this. And she’d made it clear that we wouldn’t get Yosele’s compliance without her help. So I lowered my eyes, and begged her to show some mercy.
“Please…” I said, clasping my hands before I could think about what I was doing.
Yosele was bouncing on the bed, flapping his hands, and letting out happy howls of contentment. Trine put her finger to her lips and shushed him. He imitated her, putting his finger to his lips and saying Shh, and he quieted down.
He really did do what ever she asked him to do.
She said, “You want to use the passage now?”
I started breathing again. It’s just nerves, I told myself. Just nerves.
“No, I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I need to take care of a few things first.”
Rabbi Loew says that deep inside our brains, we remember everything, all the way back to Moyshe Rabbeynu and before, all the way back to Adam and before, all the way back to the first moment of creation, because every atom of our being comes from God, and complete knowledge of God’s creation flows through us, if only we would pay attention to it.
I tried to concentrate on this profound cosmical reality, but as I walked past the cemetery, a dog howled in the distance, a clear sign that the Angel of Death was approaching the gates of the city, and that the hour of redemption was close at hand.
Would God forgive my actions? Or would He disapprove of all the compromises that I had to make?
Please God, I prayed, just grant me the wisdom and the time and space I need to finish what they started. Just give me a few more hours, Lord, before I start down the path of no return.
Even the sounds of hammering and sawing had faded as the spirits came out to play with Lilith and all her demons, who are at their most powerful on Saturday night. And I had to remind myself not to try to win them over with a joke, because demons don’t have a sense of humor. Only men who can feel and bleed know what real laughter is. It’s one of the things that make us human.
As I went sloshing through the puddles, my mind was flooded with visions of the days to come when study-houses will be turned into whore houses, youths will insult their elders, and God will cause it to rain on one city and not upon another, bringing famine to the land, and then pain, and then the Torah will be forgotten, and man will destroy his brothers in endless wars, until the Messiah comes. And I recited the Psalm that begins, He who dwells in the shelter of the Supreme One, because it contains the verse, loy siro mipakhad loyloh, meykheyts yo’uf yomom—You shall not fear the terror by night, nor the arrow that flies by day. And I tried to take comfort in the knowledge that my body was just a mortal shell for my eternal soul. But it really didn’t help much.
I POUNDED ON THE DOOR beneath the stone Lion of Judah until a sleepy-eyed servant girl let me in. I was creeping down the long hallway to meet Anya when Avrom Khayim reached out