Now Vitaly is weakening, too, after the fight for the woman he has lost to the man from Ashkhabad. The sores on his legs are open, bandaged with strips of cloth that he sometimes rips away with a shriek when they become melded with the flesh.
He knows the smell. He knows it all too well. He has smelled it in the cellars and the little rooms where junkies lay rotting away under coarse blankets. It is the odour of despair that had told him he could now ‘do business’. Most customers came to him; some, he visited himself — those who were so badly off that they could no longer get to the door. Hollow-eyed as the Häftlinge from the camps, they lay waiting for him. He could have started a pawnshop with all the things they offered him in return for a shot. Antiques made him uncomfortable — he didn’t know their value — and so he stuck to plain old cash and precious metals. His clientele’s mortality rate was high, but their ranks were always replenished. It was a good line of business to be in; no need to advertise, wheedle, or grovel.
The poacher leads the way more often now. His stamina is exceptional. Never has he become involved in the struggle for dominance; he is sufficient unto himself. Fanning out through the tall, plumed grass, the others follow. Vitaly scratches at the sore on his upper arm. He took his sweater off this morning and looked at the deep, leaking wound. It had come up suddenly, as though he’d been shot with a phosphor bullet. There is a bright red ring around it. At the spot where the sore is, that’s where the black man touched him a few days ago — atop the hill, when he pointed out something to them in the distance. Right there is where the sore came up, not anywhere else, not on his stomach or on his arse; no, right where the one body touched the other. With his finger, the black man had burned a festering crater in his arm. Vitaly stays far away from him now; the man’s eyes alone are enough to do harm. He doesn’t want the darkie to touch him again, or even look at him. He’s got the evil eye; his hands are charged with magic powers. He’s the one who brought disaster down on them — their misfortune is all his fault. Hadn’t their luck been rotten right from the start? From the start of the journey all the way up till now? They should have beaten him to death right away, crushed his head — but instead they had wandered further and further off course, until the steppes had almost killed them.
To the rhythm of his footsteps, Vitaly’s mind churns round and round: a dying machine that generates only fear and hatred.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. A new soul
‘The point,’ said the rabbi, ‘is whether or not you came from a Jewish womb. That’s what it all boils down to. The rest doesn’t matter. There is no other way, except that of the giyur, the process of converting to Judaism. But that’s not something I’d recommend. It is extremely hard. We would never encourage that. Better a good goy than a bad Jew, as Rabbi Stiefel said. The chance that he will obey the seven laws of Noah is greater than that he will subject himself to the six hundred and thirteen laws of Moses.’
Pontus Beg, feeling uneasy, said: ‘All I want to know is whether my mother … whether she was a Jewess.’
There it was — his barely noticeable hesitation in using that word, the way it rubbed up against the epithet, as though he’d cursed in front of the rabbi. The word dragged a world of suffering behind it. Mockery is a cover for a fundamental lack of understanding. For condescension. That’s how the word came to him. But here, in Rabbi Eder’s kitchen, it is washed of the world’s filth and goes back to what it means: a daughter of the people of Israel.
The rabbi shook his head impatiently. ‘You can’t just ask that about your mother! When you ask about her, you’re asking about yourself. I explained that to you already. If that’s what she is, then that’s what you are. Then you even have a right to an Israeli passport, whether you like it or not.’
Beg straightened up, as though trying to wriggle out from beneath the role of the slow learner. ‘And if you’re not much of a believer? Even then?’
‘Reason can bring one to God as well,’ the rabbi said. ‘Did you know that a child in the womb assumes a position like it’s reading the Torah?’
‘I read Eastern things. Books without God in them.’
‘A Jew is a Jew, even without the Eternal. We … we are a braided rope, individual threads woven to form a single cord. That’s how we’re linked. What ties us together is what we are.’ He raked his fingers through his beard.
Beg suddenly realised where his heavy-heartedness came from: there were no windows in this room. The only light came from bare bulbs on the ceiling. No ray of sunlight ever entered here; no breeze ever blew through the rooms. Here and there, the plaster formed bulges on the walls. Moisture made the building smell like a cadaver.
Beg was curious about the other rooms, about the floor plan of this labyrinth. The door facing the street opened onto the synagogue; the rabbi lived in the rooms beside it, which one reached from the alleyway. The building was as mysterious as an oriental bazaar. The old man had to have a bed somewhere, just as somewhere there had to be a door that led from the inside to the house of prayer.
‘Rabbi Eder, who cooks for you?’ Beg asked.
‘The neighbours,’ the rabbi said gloomily. ‘Chinese food, every night. It’s making my eyes go slanty. When my cook died, I stopped being a Jew. The kitchen is the cathedral of the Jews, my good man.’
Beg nodded.
‘It takes me three days to finish one helping,’ the rabbi said.
Could he still comply with the dietary laws, while eating Chinese food every night? Beg didn’t dare to ask. Maybe the whole thing was crumbling away, now that there were no successors, he thought. Maybe he doesn’t care much anymore, now that there’s no one breathing down his neck.
‘I can’t tell you whether or not your mother was Jewish,’ the rabbi said suddenly. ‘You’ll have to find out for yourself. Ask the people who are still alive. That’s where the answer lies. What made you think so, anyway?’
‘Her surname, Medved.’
‘All right.’
‘And that song.’
‘What song?’
‘The love song. About Rebekka.’
The rabbi shook his head. ‘I don’t know any song about Rebekka.’
‘I sang it for you!’
‘Sing it again, then I’m sure I’ll remember it.’
And so it happened for the second time that Pontus Beg sang a Yiddish love song for the old rabbi.
‘Very good,’ he said contentedly when Beg was finished. ‘Singing brings us closer to God.’ He rocked his head back and forth, lightheartedly, as though at a dance party. ‘So your mother used to sing that to you? When you were little? But that’s very unusual! Why would she sing a Yiddish song? Do you have any idea?’
Beg wiped his eyes with one hand. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said.
‘You really should have a little more than that to go on. Indications.’
‘Like the name,’ Beg said. ‘Her maiden name. Here …’ He pulled out Professor Urban’s book of names, found the right page, and slid it across the table.
‘What am I supposed to look at?’
Beg put his index finger beside his mother’s surname.
‘I can’t see anything without my glasses,’ the rabbi said grumpily. ‘Where did I put my glasses?’