nice. Too bad the ghetto’s going to go up in flames sometime in the next three days.”
“Oh, crap,” said Hrbeck. “Do you know how much money I’m going to lose if that happens?”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be doing business with the damn Jews,” said Tausendmark, a recent arrival from Bavaria.
“I was about to collect the Easter tribute, you dummer Esel. What am I supposed to tell my customers?”
“What are we going to do about this?” said Kunkel.
“What’s to do?” said a wine and beer merchant named Švec. “They’ll break a few windows, burn a few shops, then everything will go back to normal.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Hrbeck. “You don’t own any houses in the ghetto. Business will probably pick up for you. There’s nothing like a bunch of Judenschläger running riot for selling cartloads of booze.”
“Not this time,” said Kopecky. His wife was always telling him to go easy on the Jews, but this was serious business.
“Don’t be a woman, Janoš. The Jews will find a way to weasel out of it, like they always do.”
“Are they really being that clever?” said Johnson. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about how smart the Jews are, but I always thought they were a little exaggerated.”
“They’re not exaggerated, Englishman,” said Hrbeck. “The Jews are con-fined to the ghetto and forbidden from owning property, right? So that ought to make it easy for us to charge them what ever we want for rent, you’d figure.”
“I am expecting so.”
“Yes, but you don’t know the Jews. They’ve got second sight when it comes to money. The rabbis saw it coming a mile away, so they got together and prohibited their people from competing with each other for lodging. They’re not allowed to pay more than the established rent, or do anything to get another Jew evicted, no matter how crowded the Židovské Msto gets.”
“And if we try playing them off against each other, the whole community stands together and refuses to pay us anything,” said Masaryk.
“They’ll live twelve to a room if it means keeping a three-story building vacant until we meet their terms.”
“Can’t you be taking it up with the emperor?” asked Johnson.
“Right. And you know what he’ll do? Establish a commission to study the problem,” said Hrbeck.
“How can you continue to let the Jews live among you?” Tausendmark said.
“Because the Turks are less than a hundred miles from Vienna, and Meisel gives Emperor Rudolf all the gold he needs to run the war,” said Masaryk.
“Let me get this straight. You can’t get rid of them because one Jew is financing Emperor Rudolf’s army?”
“There are plenty of others, but Meisel’s the emperor’s favorite. He doesn’t even have to wear the Jew badge when he leaves the ghetto on business.”
“And yet somehow, we’ve managed to expel the Jews from almost every city in Germany,” Tausendmark said.
“I guess we’re just not as efficient at expulsion as you Germans are,” said Masaryk.
“And der Kaiser always lets them come back, anyway,” said Kopecky.
“Perhaps I should remind you that it is not proper to criticize one’s rulers when we are at war with infidels,” said Tausendmark.
Johnson was still curious. “With all their wealth, is there no Jewish gold left for you?”
“Each Jewish house hold pays the city fifty gulden a year to provide for their protection, but we don’t see a lousy pfennig of it,” said Hrbeck.
“Maybe you should be raising the protection fee to sixty gulden a year.”
“We tried that. The extra ten gulden went straight into the imperial coffers.”
Masaryk said, “We tax them every time they pass through the gates of the city or cross the border into Moravia. We tax them for crossing the stone bridge, for buying a loaf of bread, or for selling a second hand shirt in the tandlmarkt on Havelská Street. We tax them for taking a bath, getting married, and protecting the cemetery from vandals. What else is there?”
“You charge them for protecting the cemetery?” said Johnson. “Are you taxing each burial, as well?”
It struck them like a bolt from the heavens. Kopecky looked around the table. The others were equally thunderstruck.
“A tax on each death and burial,” said Masaryk. “How come we never thought of that?”
“Got any more where that came from?” said Kunkel.
Johnson said, “Well, I understand that King Philip of France was making the Jews pay a yearly fee for the privilege of wearing the yellow badges.”
“He charged them for the Jew badges?”
“Oh! Nice idea,” said Švec.
“That’ll teach them to undersell us,” said Hrbeck.