ready. I shoved my way through the crowd and raced off down the Schilesgasse.
Come on, God, I prayed. I’m down to my last pfennig here, and I need at least a daler to buy a break. You’re my last chance. If You’re ever planning on helping me, now’s the time. Send help. Send Elijah. Do something. At least send me strength if nothing else.
Rabbi Joshua says, One who walks in a place of danger prays a short prayer, but I chose a whole Psalm, the one that begins, Yosheyv b’seyser elyon, b’tseyl Shaddai yislonon, He who dwells in the shelter of the Supreme One, under the protection of Shaddai he will abide, because that Psalm is supposed to protect against weapons (especially daggers). But soon I had to switch to Latin, Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, in protectione Dei coeli commorabitur, which wasn’t the same at all, and the looters still looked at me askance as I ran past them mouthing the strange words.
I rounded the corner, and came upon a spectacle that must have spilled from the feverish brain of a madman. Three Christian boys were gleefully gathered around a sack dangling from a hook. They were taking turns beating it with sticks. Something was inside the sack that might have been alive. It might have been shaped like a baby.
I struck the boys about the face and neck and quickly drove them off. Then I lifted the sack off the hook, took a breath to steady myself, and peered inside. It was an orange cat, bloodied beyond recognition.
The sick taste of that abominable sausage climbed up the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, and stifled the urge to retch. I was miserable enough as it was.
A narrow shaft of light marked the path of the rising sun along the street. We are told that the sun has only stood still for three people—Moses, Joshua, and a folk hero named Nakdimon ben Gorion—each of whom needed more time to complete their divinely inspired tasks.
And it struck me that for the past three days, I’d been begging for more time, and now I couldn’t wait for the day to end. Bring on the blackness, O Lord, let the earth swallow me whole.
For it is written that He orders the sun—and it does not shine.
How I longed for such a thing to come to pass.
But they also say that a man must not lose hope, even when the sword is laid upon his neck.
THE FOOT PATROLS HAD CLEARED out every dwelling on the street but one. Somehow they had bypassed the bawdy house on Hampasgasse.
Maybe that was the miracle I’d been asking for.
I found my co-conspirators in the back room. They had blocked the passage with empty crates, making the short hallway look like a storage area.
“Where the hell have you been?” said Trine. “You said you’d be back in a couple of hours.”
“And what happened to all your hair?” said Zinger.
“Sorry,” I said. “If I could control the world—”
“There’d be fewer Hamans and more Purims,” said Trine. “Now, let’s get you out of those damp clothes. Come on, don’t be shy. You think you’ve got something I’ve never seen before? That’s better. Here you go.”
She handed me a set of clothes that a Christian water-carrier might wear.
“Don’t you have any Jewish clothes?” I asked.
“Jews don’t get drunk, pass out, and leave pieces of their clothing behind,” said Trine.
I had to agree with that.
“So where are your clothes, big boy?” asked Trine.
“I left them at Rabbi Loew’s house.”
She eyed me curiously, but I was cold and wet, and didn’t offer much in the way of interest.
When I was ready, they took me next door to Yosele’s room. There was a mound of fresh earth on the bed that turned out to be a living, breathing human being. Trine patted his face and said it was time to get up. Yosele’s face and arms were smeared with mud, and his matted hair was stiff with dirt. He truly looked like a creature made from the clay of the graveyard, and when he put on the elevated boots that Zinger had fashioned for him, he stood more than seven feet tall. And the floor shook so much when he took his first lumbering steps that dust fell from the rafters.
“You remember Reb Benyamin, don’t you?” Trine asked.
“Yes,” said Yosele, in that stiff way of his.
“You’re going to go with him and do what he says, all right?”
“Yes.”
Yosele grabbed my left hand and