and pages crushed.
Lamp stands and candelabra had been overthrown, and baskets scattered. Old garments had been twisted and strewn about.
The small elderly man now stood in the middle of the floor staring at me.
“What is it you want me to know?” I asked. I wanted to make the Sign of the Cross, but this would be an affront to him. “In the name of the Lord in Heaven, what is it that I can do?”
He went into a rage.
He bellowed and roared at me, stamping his foot over and over against the cellar floor, and glaring down at it, and then he began to reach for those small things that already lay strewn about. He grabbed hold of a bottle and smashed it on the stones. He hurled books at the stones. He tore loose parchment pages and attempted vainly to fling them down, furious as they floated and swirled around him. He stamped and pointed, and bellowed as if he were a wild beast.
“Stop this, please, I beg you!” I cried out. “You are no dybbuk. I know this. I hear your cries. Tell me your heart.”
But I couldn’t tell whether or not he heard this over his own cries.
He began to hurl objects at me. Chair legs, bits of crockery, broken bottles—whatever he could snatch up, he threw at me.
It seemed the whole cellar was shaking; bundles of furniture were tumbling down off the kegs as if we were in an earthquake. A bottle of wine struck me hard on the side of my head and I felt the vinegary liquid pour down over my shoulder. I backed up, reeling, dizzy. But I held the lighted candelabrum firmly as if for my life.
I was tempted to condemn him for this and argue with him, to appeal to his gratitude that I had deigned to come here on his account, but I realized immediately that this was boastful and proud and stupid. He was miserable. What were my intentions to him?
I bowed my head and prayed softly. Lord, please do not let me fail as I did with Lodovico. Again, I chose a half-remembered psalm, and as I chanted the ancient words of appeal, he gradually stopped.
He stood still pointing to the floor. Yes, he was pointing.
Suddenly I heard Pico in the doorway at the top of the stairs.
“Master, for the love of Heaven, come out!” he cried.
No, not now, I thought desperately.
The ghost had vanished.
Every portable object in the room seemed suddenly to be flying through the air. The candles were blown out.
In hopeless darkness, I dropped the candelabrum, turned and ran towards the dim light at the top of the steps. I was certain I could feel hands pulling at me, fingers snatching at my hair, breath against my face.
In sheer panic, I kept going until I could grab ahold of Pico, and push him out of the way, and slam the cellar door. I threw the bolt.
I lay back catching my breath.
“Master, there’s blood on your face,” Pico cried.
From behind the door came the most piteous howling and then a thunderous noise as if the large wine casks were being rolled across the cellar floor.
“Never mind the blood,” I said. “Take me to Signore Antonio. I have to speak to him now.”
I headed out of the house.
“At this hour?” Pico protested, but I wouldn’t be deterred.
“He knows who this ghost is, he must know,” I said. I tried to remember what I’d been told. A Hebrew scholar had lived in the house, yes, twenty years ago. This Hebrew scholar had arranged the synagogue on the top floor. Had Signore Antonio never guessed that this man might be the ghost?
We pounded on the doors of Signore Antonio’s house until the night watchman appeared and, seeing who we were, sleepily let us in.
“I must see the master immediately,” I told the old man, but he only shook his head as if he were deaf. It was amazing, I thought, how many elderly and infirm servants this house included. It was Pico who took up a single candle and led the way upstairs.
Signore Antonio’s bedchamber was filled with lighted lamps. The doors were wide open and I could see him plainly, kneeling in his long wool robe on the bare floor at the foot of his bed. His head was bare and sweating in the light, and his hands were outstretched in the form of a cross. Surely he was praying for his son.
He started when I appeared in