“Listen, Reb Ployne, Mr. Whoever-You-Are, you’re in Prague now, and we use pfennigs, kreuzers, and dalers—”
A voice from the street called out, “Hey, Meyer, take it easy. He’s with us. He’s new to the job.”
My rescuer came toward us and greeted the little man with a slap on the shoulder. He had wavy reddish-brown hair, an easy smile, and a nose that had been flattened in a couple of close encounters with the flying fist of fate.
“He’s with you, huh?” said Meyer, appraising me from head to foot. “Where you from?”
“Slonim.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“East Poland.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well, it’s pretty far from here. It used to be part of Lithuania.”
“So you’re a Litvak! No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“A Litvak is so clever he repents before he sins,” said Meyer, repeating a bit of folk wisdom. “Fine, keep your groschen, smart boy.”
Before I could reply, Meyer skittered away on his spidery legs, drawn to prey with heavier pockets, rattling the tseduke box and chanting, “Charity saves from death, charity saves from death.”
I said, “Thanks for rescuing me from the valley of She’ol.”
“Who, Meyer? More like a bump in the road. Besides, we’ve got to stick together, right, brother?”
The red-haired man said his name was Markas Kral, shammes at the Pinkas Shul.
“I should know where that is,” I said.
“Kleine Pinkasgasse, on the other side of the cemetery from the Klaus Shul.”
I nodded. I had seen the Pinkas Shul’s peaked roof looming like the prow of a ship over a sea of crooked headstones.
“How’s the rabbi on your watch?”
“Rabbi Epstein? He’s all right. Maybe a little too by-the-book sometimes, but what do you want? That’s the job.”
“I know what you mean. Who are the three other shammeses besides us?”
“Well, there’s Avrom Khayim, who handles the Klaus Shul and splits the shift at the Old-New Shul with Abraham Ben-Zakhariah, and there’s Saul Ungar, who covers the High Shul.”
“How reliable are they in a crisis?”
“Vi a toytn bankes. Avrom Khayim’s too old to do any of the heavy work, Ben-Zakhariah acts like he’s too much of a scholar to get down on his knees and scrub the floor, and the Hungarian’s all mouth and no action. He’ll talk your ear off for a week before getting off his butt to help out. Looks like I’m your only hope, brother.”
“I’d say you’re right. It would really help me out if you could show me around. You know these streets better than I do, and if I have to learn it all from scratch we’re going to be completely farkakt—”
“Wait a minute, there’s my master,” said Kral, stepping away and greeting Rabbi Epstein with all due reverence.
Rabbi Epstein told Kral to stop gabbing and get busy responding to a woman’s complaint that her husband was being cruel to her.
“Oh, crap. I hate domestic quarrels,” Kral confided to me.
“Hang on a minute—”
“Sorry, I’ve got to go now. Don’t forget to tell everyone to burn their khumets. See you later,” said Kral, falling in line behind the rabbi as he turned toward the Pinkasgasse.
I watched them go, balling my fists for no reason except that I had finally met someone who could help me navigate the twisted streets of the ghetto, only to have him weave his way right back into the masses of men that made up the vast tapestry of the neighborhood.
The hell with my regular duties. I had to alert Rabbi Loew that the Jews were facing exile, annihilation, or both.
At the sign of the stone lion, I waited for one of the maids to sweep a pile of crumbs into the street, so that I wouldn’t track any forbidden khumets into the newly swept hallway. The Christian girls in the front hall swirled around me in a perfumy maelstrom, and for a moment it felt like my heavy boots were the only things anchoring me to the surface of the globe as I marched between them. If they only knew what was hanging over their heads, I thought—except it wasn’t their heads that would roll, was it? They were all shiksehs.
Just then a man stepped away from the shadows behind a row of long winter cloaks hanging on their pegs. I recognized him as one of the young mystics in Rabbi Loew’s inner circle. His name was Yankev ben Khayim, and he wore the plain black robes of a student.
“Aha, you enter without knocking,” he said. “That shows you are more interested in the World-to-Come than in this world.”