“There’s no room in the world for people like us.”
“Then we’ll have to make room.”
“Such matches are forbidden everywhere.”
“So you admit we’re a match?”
For once, he had no answer.
“Isn’t it right to defy a prohibition that has outlived its usefulness?” she said.
“It is not our place to decide—”
She needed to sway him with an example from the Scriptures.
“What was the name of that woman who tramped through the wilderness all the way to Bethlehem just to make a match with some man she didn’t even know?”
“You must mean Ruth the Moabite and Boaz the Judean.”
“And her people were the sworn enemies of Israel at the time?”
“Yes.”
“And yet together they begat Obed, who begat Jesse, who begat King David, the father of our Messiah.”
“She was indeed a remarkable woman,” he said.
“Better than seven sons.”
He smiled. “You would have made a good wife for a Torah scholar, if only the world were a completely different place.”
My God, was he conceding the point? On her side of town, whenever couples disagreed, the result usually involved bruised limbs and broken crockery.
“You’re not like the other men I meet.”
“The novelty will wear off.”
“I don’t think so.”
She leaned in closer, hiding nothing from him. The heat rose off their bodies, her own flowery fragrance mixing with his earthy essence like a field after the rain. Her lips met his skin. She filled her nose with his musky scent. Then she opened her lips. His skin was sweet and salty.
“You’d better stop,” he said.
But it was too good to stop. She was astonished by the surge of sensations as her mouth crept up his neck, planting warm wet kisses higher and higher until she was kissing his cheek, his soft flesh, his mouth. She hadn’t ever thought a kiss could feel so good, so sweet, so much larger than the inch of flesh that held it.
She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. They both had crossed a line, but there was still time to jump back over it before they got caught. She should have walked away and forgotten that they ever met. But the attraction was too strong.
She put her lips close to his and said, “My momma always told me that if you’re going to eat an apple, you might as well pick a nice juicy one.” And she plunged in for another taste of that forbidden fruit.
Her master’s booming voice filled the air.
“Anya, come in here! I need you.” It came from the front room.
She broke away and discovered that she had hands for smoothing out damp hair and clothing, as she responded to this call from another world, heading back to a town called Prague, a place where physical relations between Christians and Jews was still punishable by death and dismemberment, depending on the mood of the judicial authorities on that particular day.
She wondered if she still smelled of the Jew.
Mordecai Meisel stood in the middle of the room, between two men in long dark cloaks. Meisel was in his mid-sixties, fattened with comforts but still robust, his silk shirt straining against the muscles he had built up hauling iron as a teenager.
She recognized one of the men as Rabbi Loew. The other was a tall Jew with a curly black beard and the same look of controlled desperation she had seen in Yankev’s eyes when he first came in from the street.
“Anya, these gentlemen need to ask you a few questions.”
Her heart fluttered. Did they know?
“Of course,” she said, her throat tight.
The tall Jew spoke first. “Reb Meisel tells me that you know Marie and Viktor Janek. Is that true?”
Anya felt Yankev’s presence as he came into the room behind her.
“Speak up, girl,” said Meisel.
“Yes, master.”
“Yes master, or yes, you know her?” said the tall Jew.
She was taking rapid, shallow breaths. She barely got the words out: “What do you want to know about the Janeks?”
Meisel said, “Anya, I told Rabbi Loew and his shammes that you’d cooperate, and I’d like to keep my word—”
The one he called the shammes held up his hand and politely advised Reb Meisel that anyone could see that the poor girl was nervous and that perhaps it would be better if he spoke to her alone. Meisel turned to Rabbi Loew, who signaled his approval of the newcomer’s suggestion.
She relaxed enough to let herself smile at the tall stranger.
The shammes smiled back. It wasn’t a bad smile, once he got the muscles working.