“I wish on those occasions that I could restage every heinous instant of that night in July, replay it right here on the streets of my new home, for everyone to see and hear and smell, replay it until they could never forget what they had witnessed. No matter how hard they tried.”
For if you yourself, Doctor, yes, even so fine a man as yourself, of great strength and character and learning, if you were to look out that window there, if you were to turn your head and witness what took place in Maisel, in the Schiller Ghetto on the night of the July Sweep, it would never leave you, Doctor. It would change you permanently.
“The best I can do for you, however, is simply tell the story.”
Without any warning, Otto jerks the taxi into a U-turn and his passenger loses his balance and pitches into the door. Otto offers no explanation or apology.
“You must understand, Herr Doctor, what I need to tell you is that to this day, my homeland, the cursed city of my birth, is alive inside of me. This is how I feel day and night. This is what I live with. The waters of the Zevlika rushing through my veins. The portals of the hunger tower sitting behind my eyes. My brain is nothing but the street of my youth, the cul-de-sac of the Ezzenes.”
“Maisel is the most superstitious city on the earth, Doctor. You must know some of our legends — the water spirits of the River Z. The headless Templar. The alchemist Mladtus who was pulled through the floorboards of his house straight into hell. Yes, you have heard the tales? In your own youth, perhaps? Ghost stories told in the dark by overexcited children? Allow me now to tell you a new story, Doctor. One to put the old myths in perspective.”
I was not always a cabdriver, Inspector. Does this surprise you? Back in Maisel, I was a biloquist. A common street performer. What you would call a ventriloquist. For the most part, I was self-taught. In my early youth I had studied the ghetto clowns who worked in Old Loew Square. My father had died before my birth. We lived with my mother’s family in the Schiller Ghetto. Before coming to Quinsigamond, I lived all of my life in the Schiller. So it is as something of an expert that I tell you that of all the Jews in all of Old Bohemia, the Schiller Jews were, perhaps, the poorest. And the most despised. You have heard something, no doubt, about the decade of pogroms in Maisel? Most of those attacks were on the Schiller Ghetto.
My people could be called neither Orthodox nor Reformed. We were more of a sect set apart, looked upon suspiciously, at times, even by the larger Jewish community. Or is this just an old man’s paranoia? If so, Doctor, I feel I have earned it. We were called the Ezzenes. We were, by and large, all progeny of the Hasidim of Maccabean times. Perhaps the best way to explain, to define, our specific bond would be to say that we built our lives around a basic, unshakable cosmology which involved a complicated tradition of gnostic belief that one day God would speak to us directly. No more need for prophets nor dreams nor glossolalia. From God’s lips to our ears in a language we would both share. Over generations this dogma became mingled with an intense respect for the liberty and dignity and imagination of all peoples, a code of what you might call inalienable rights, as well as a strict, intractable adherence to a unilateral pacifism.
The Schiller was the heart, and, I am forced to add, the soul, of the entire Jewish Quarter of Maisel. It was simply a complex of adjoining tenements on a small spit of an alley — a dead end, you would say — off Namesti Avenue. There were thirteen rickety buildings in all and they formed a kind of horseshoe at the end of the alley, six buildings on either side of the street and one long, narrow, bridging unit at the far end. I had a friend, a very funny young man and, I will admit, something of a troublemaker. He called this building the pelvis. Do you understand? The way it was positioned, joining one side of the street to the other. Such a character. He lived in the bridging building. As did I. The entire complex backed up to the banks of the Zevlika River and each spring there was a dreadful problem with the water rats and other vermin. Understand that the buildings were quite old and of questionable construction. They were continually undergoing repair, but all of these measures were just temporary stopgaps in the general decay of the structures.
As you might imagine, each family within our community crammed as many people as possible into their small home. We slept five and six to a bed. And that was if you were fortunate enough to have drawn a bedroom. We slumbered in kitchens and lavatories, on couches and in chairs — I had a cousin, Jaromir was his name, famous for being able to find an uncrowded corner and slip into a restful doze while standing up. Like a horse, we would laugh. And, to be honest, some of the men did take to calling him pony-boy. But it was always used in an affectionate way. Never cruelly or without warmth.
There was often a shortage of food. This should not surprise you. You are familiar, I am sure, a man of your intelligence and curiosity could not help but be familiar, with the story of the Maisel blockades and the rationing. It is something you always come close to being accustomed to, the stomach always churning. The slow fatigue of the long-hungry.
But know that there were fine times as well. We were, in every regard, a community like any other and closer than most. I have always felt the cliché to be true — suffering binds people more tightly than joy. Even a righteous joy. We made our world within the Schiller. We had our own small customs and habits. As if we were, indeed, a larger family. A tenacious clan cleaving together in too small a space. We kept our own markets on Schiller. Our own butcher shop, of course. There was a small school for the young children. More of a nursery perhaps, but they were taught the old fables. When there was paper and ink, we even printed a small weekly news sheet. In our own tongue, of course. If you can believe me, there was even a library. It is true. I am in a position to know. Better than any other, I assure you. We were poor, but never ignorant. There was no illiteracy that I knew of. At least not among the men. We came to think of ourselves as separate even from the other Jews of the Quarter. And I have often wondered if this is not at least part of the sin we were punished for. For there must have been a sin. It is unthinkable to accept what happened without an impetus. Without a logic, however abstract, somewhere deep in the mind of God. Ah, I see your face. You seem surprised that I use the word. Surely, you’ve heard me use it before? My stories about the Independents’ Collective and our battle against the Red and the Black? No? I am sure I must have.
In any event, you are familiar with the July Sweep, Doctor? I am quite sure it was reported even here in Quinsigamond. The pogrom to end all pogroms, yes? Some dramatic phrase like this? They must have interrupted your soap operas and football games to mention the July Sweep? There must have been notice in the World Digest section of The Spy? A paragraph at least?
Even Hermann Kinsky lost family to the Sweep. Even one as connected and feared as Kinsky was vulnerable to this particular purge. Can you imagine, sir, if the shadow of the Sweep could penetrate into the armor of a mythical animal like Kinsky, what it could do to the people of the Schiller? I have heard it asked — never here, not in this city. Who beyond a refugee would give this much thought to the whole affair? — Was there no indication of what was coming? Yes, of course, there was indication. We talked for weeks of nothing else. The street attacks were increasing daily. And the brutality of those attacks likewise escalated. Our merchants had their shanties set ablaze, first in the middle of the night and later, as the spring progressed, in broad daylight, with customers in the midst of transaction, children around their feet. Our old men were pulled from the steps of the temple as they exited, knocked to the ground and dragged through the square, spit upon, kicked and whipped and cracked with the nightsticks. The attackers were young men like many of your associates, Doctor. I mean no insult. I simply mean to describe, you understand, their age, their bachelorhood. And many of them were known to be from the government police. They did not wear their uniforms. At first. For a time, the attempt was made to give the impression that these attacks were independent actions. Unsanctioned. Officially disapproved of.