if he could have a room with something he called “privacy,” Yankev came forward and said, “I don’t see why you need to question this girl. What could she possibly know about this matter?”
“It’s all right—” she began.
Meisel silenced them both and instructed Anya to take the shammes to the storage pantry, the same pantry that she had just warmed with the heat of her passion. She wondered if he could still smell their bodies in the closed room.
The shammes avoided looking directly into her eyes by fiddling with the tops of the porcelain spice jars. His hands were huge and paw-like, as if they were made to break things. She had known many men like that.
His first question was a surprise: “Do you follow the word of God in the Bible?”
Was this some kind of trick?
“Of course I do.”
“Every word of it?”
She would have said “yes” to a Christian interrogator immediately, or ended up dancing the hempen jig over their holy flames. But she had learned during her time with the Jews that they rarely expected simple answers to such questions.
She said, “I believe every word that the priests tell me. But I also know that the priests choose not to follow every word in the khumesh, like the commandment to celebrate Pesach after sundown on the fifteenth of Nisan.”
His eyebrows shot up. She might as well have chanted the Sh’ma in Hebrew.
“How long have you been working for the Meisels?”
“Long enough to know the khreyn from the kharoyses.”
He looked like a man who had found a priceless treasure at the bottom of a barrel of old rags, and he didn’t try to hide his astonishment the way a real interrogator would. His imposing stature softened before her eyes as he leaned against a sack of grain and massaged his forehead.
She said, “You look like you could use a drink.”
“I could,” he said. “That’s the hardest part of keeping the mitsves of Pesach. I can go without leavened bread for a week, but the prohibition against khumets includes anything made from fermented grain, with no exceptions for the restorative properties of your fine Bohemian beer.”
“How do you Jews keep track of all six hundred and thirteen commandments?”
He was impressed that she knew the precise number.
“It’s a matter of knowing which rules to break,” he said.
A smile passed imperceptibly across her lips, and she felt a warm flush of relief. Maybe this shammes would be different from all the other men. Maybe he would be able to help her.
“And how do you know which rules to break?”
“It takes practice. Don’t forget, you people have only been Christian for—what? Eight hundred years or so? And we’ve been Jews for more than four thousand. So we’ve got a big jump on you.”
It took her a moment to realize that he was joking.
“What do you expect me to do for you?” she asked.
His eyes showed hope. “I need to find out what’s been going on in the Janeks’ house, and I can’t do it myself. So I’m praying for a miracle and looking for a good Christian who’s willing to help us out by talking to Marie Janek about her husband’s business and also find out if any of the locks in their house have been damaged. Doors and windows, if possible. She won’t talk to me, of course. Would you consider doing it?”
“I’m supposed to ask a grieving mother a bunch of nosy questions about her husband’s business affairs?”
“No, of course not. You have to pay your respects first. Talk about other things. Ask how her husband is doing. Is the shock too strong? Will he be able to keep the shop in order? Is the business solid? That kind of thing. I can help you figure out what to say.”
“You’re going to tell me how to speak to a Christian woman.”
“No, no, I’ll have to trust your judgment, just like I’m asking you to trust mine. Look, I realize I’m just an outsider, even among the Jews of Prague. But I need you to—to—”
“To what?”
He let out a long sigh. “To do something that very few people have done for me in the last couple of weeks. To look past my crude mannerisms to the well-meaning soul within,” he said, tapping himself twice over the heart in exactly the same way that a Christian would do it.
She felt herself wavering, and he must have seen it.
He looked around the narrow confines of the pantry, his eye falling on a bunch of