He, She and It (59 page)

“Bird,” Ari demanded the other day. He is always pointing at the birds. Shira’s response and mine varies from the sort of Oh, isn’t he cute, wanting the impossible, to explaining with deepening irritation, if the request gets too vehement, how irrational his desire is.

Yod plucked a goldfinch out of the air and held it to him, carefully, delicately, but so that Ari could pat its yellow head. Then Yod released it to fly off in a panic but unharmed. I think even Ari understood that something out of the ordinary had happened. He sat and chuckled to himself for five minutes afterward. Now of course he expects us to do the same, and we’re back where we were.

Shira doesn’t want to tell me, as we await the inevitable response of the multi, how Yod and she managed to steal Ari from Y-S. The sense of being under siege is sharp in all of us. Which brings me back to my story, back to Prague, Good Friday of 1600, the mob stirred up by Thaddeus attacking the ghetto. A more direct attack than I expect here and now, although lately what has been called the multinational corporate peace seems to be showing cracks. I go to the terminal, sit, call up my file and begin talking, my eyes closed, Yod’s dark benign visage in my mind. Dear Yod, our tale recommences.

Inside the ghetto the assembled Jews hear the crowd roar just outside the wall. Next, thrown objects strike the gates and arc over the top, both those aimed at harm—rocks, sharp objects, bottles—and those aimed at insult: offal, feces, rotting garbage, dead animals. All slam into the gates or fall for the most part harmlessly inside, although a couple of casualties need to wash afterward and one man is knocked senseless by a hurled brick. He is carried away to his family at the Pinkas synagogue, where he will die without regaining consciousness.

The women on the rooftops shout down reports. The few soldiers of the Emperor march bravely on the crowd, while the Jews wait silently, not daring even to cheer. Armed with arquebuses and pikes, the troops arrest some of the rock-throwers and march away with them, leaving the ghetto gates undefended against the larger remnant of attackers. Now the
mob, better organized than that word might suggest, falls back to permit a battering ram through. It is a makeshift ram, constructed from a stout oak tipped with iron. It is dragged on a cart by a team of draft horses. Then the young men Thaddeus has inspired position the ram on the cart, unharness the horses and set themselves to drive the ram full force into the gates.

The Jews inside the gates can hear laughter, loud cries, curses and great thumps as the ram is rolled into position. Outside the gates a carnival atmosphere rules. The grimness of hatred against the Christ-killers, carefully stirred up and worked into a frenzy, gives way to a mood of being free to do anything. Impulses usually denied or suppressed can dance and leap today and slake themselves with gross satisfaction.

I have experienced this mood in crowds. In my youth when there were major sporting events, when some hometown team won its division or pennant or trophy, the men would pour out and beat passersby and rape women they found on the streets. One of the sole benefits of the diseases that ran through the population was the end of such public events. Now all spectator sports are stimmies. They are presumably all staged, scripted, faked, so there is never a dull game or a game with too lopsided a score. People bet anyhow. They try to second-guess whose turn it is to win.

I remember the food riots too. I’ve been in mobs, and I’ve observed them from positions of semisafety. I’ve run before them, in the anti-Jewish riots after the Two Week War. All this is in your memory banks, Yod, and you can also access the history of the founding of Tikva, a direct response to the virulent anti-Semitism of that period we call the Troubles. Anyhow, I’ve helped carry the bodies away afterward. I can hear that crowd muttering, some worked up, some going along with the crowd, some loving the feel of being part of a giant organism, exalted, uplifted, one fierce hot galloping beast. Some are feeling righteous. Some are convinced they are holy warriors carrying out the will of some powerful angry god. But many are having fun. Imagine, you have been given a license to do all the things you think about doing to your family, your boss, your enemies, women you look at, people who push you around, everybody you feel like sticking it to in ordinary frustrating brutish life.

Inside, as the ram begins to crack on the gates, some are praying, some are wishing they were in Transylvania or just hiding under a bridge. The sound is intolerable, louder than thunder. The gates rock but do not yet give way. They are
solidly reinforced. The sound is like a bat cracking on each head. After ten minutes, some inside wish the gates would give way so the noise would stop, so their heads would stop pounding, so that the terrible hammering would release their knees and shoulders and spines from bludgeoning. They feel as if they are being battered with the gates. The ram is attacking every one of them.

Yakov raises his strong baritone, singing “Adom Alom.” Singing helps them bear the pounding. Almost it seems to keep time now with their singing, like an enormous drum. The gates still hold, and the ram stops. Outside, they can hear voices arguing about how to proceed. “They’re getting more men in line,” the rooftop women report. Once again the ram slams the gates.

Finally the metal shielding buckles, and the wood splinters. There is a breach in the gates’ integrity. Rapidly the ram widens the breach. Now the gates collapse inward and the crowd pours through, cheering, a harsh ragged cry for blood bellowing across and echoing off the walls of the nearest houses. Men carrying the ram pause when they see the barricade. They consult in shouts, and then they are charging the barricade nearest them with the ram. Joseph leaps over the top to seize the ram by its metal end. All of the men carrying it cannot wrest it from him. He jabs the ram sideways, knocking the men loose. Then he swings it, using it as a huge club. It is much larger than he is and by far the heaviest thing he has ever moved, so he cannot swing it fast or hard, but the weight topples those he hits. It is a slow and clumsy weapon, but it drives back the first attack. It is more the sight of a single man swinging the heavy ram that causes dismay and even panic than the actual numbers he can injure with the weapon, for only the press of the crowd keeps the attackers from escaping the ram’s slow-motion sweeps.

Both sides begin throwing rocks. Joseph is caught in the middle and retreats hastily, dropping the ram into the barricade so it becomes a piece of the defenses. Some of the attackers take shelter behind the fallen gates. But the crowd outside who cannot see what is going on inside push forward, spilling invaders into the range of the defenders’ rocks. Some go down, more retreat, some try to advance. The women on the building nearest the gates start spilling their caldrons of boiling water down on the attackers. One woman is shot. Another is hit by an arrow and falls into the street. The son of the woman whose body lies crushed on the pavement runs at the mob, swinging a chain. He
brings down three before he goes under and is beaten and kicked to death.

Some of the people who came in a picnic mood are milling around, changing their minds. The sight of bodies in the street, the wounded and the dead from both sides, causes second thoughts in those capable of entertaining them. The mob thins momentarily, but those outside the gates are still shoving in. Some are struggling to leave and others to enter. In the confusion, Joseph calls up to the women on the roofs to drop their loads again. By twos they go to the edge and topple over their heaps of stones and household refuse, broken furniture, crockery. A small group of men armed with muskets begins firing at them. They are not accurate but they keep firing, and two more women are hit and fall; another is wounded but pulled back into safety by her companions.

“We’re lucky they have only small arms,” Yakov remarks. “With artillery we’d be finished in short order.”

“We have to stop the musketeers,” Joseph says. He lobs a stone at them hard and fast and succeeds in beaning the nearest. They move to a more protected position, set up the props for their long-barreled weapons and fire again. In all the ghetto, there is not one firearm. If his side had even a couple of muskets, Joseph is convinced they could defend the ghetto until the mob gave up. Now he is sorry he sent the Maharal to safety, because he needs direction. He is not sure what to do. It stinks already, the reek of blood and gunpowder, the stench of loosened bowels and urine. Between the forces two men are loudly dying, calling for their mothers, one in Yiddish, one in Czech. Nobody on either side is singing any longer. A dog is howling and then yelps as someone kicks it. The many voices muttering, cursing, praying between the walls sound like a nest of disturbed hornets working themselves up to swarm.

Joseph keeps an eye out for Chava. She stood at the barricade during the first rush, but now she has put down the silly roasting spit and is treating the wounded in a makeshift hospital in the carriageway of Maisl’s house. She has built a little fire and is heating water. Bedding has been put down in the street and a rug for the wounded to lie on. Moshe Fuchs, a doctor and amulet maker, works beside her. They do what they can.

The musketeers are shooting at the barricade, keeping the Jews down behind it. They are better dressed than most of the mob, wearing light chest armor over shirts with puffed sleeves, hats with enormous drooping plumes. Joseph recognizes Karel brandishing a sword and a stave. The oversized features in his
square-jawed face radiate conviction. His voice carries easily. He is haranguing his troops. Now Joseph sees more faces from the tavern up on Hradcany Hill. They are in the forefront now, getting ready to charge. Joseph’s lips draw back from his teeth. He points out the men he knows to Yakov. “If we can stop them, we’ll do a real service to the community.”

“To humanity, I think,” Yakov says. He grips his old sword tightly. Bad Yefes the Gambler is humming to himself as he checks his own sword and his fighting knife.

“When they charge, we don’t wait for them. We charge too. Spread the word,” Yakov says. “Everybody tell the next man. Every other one of us goes. The others hold the barricade so no one can get through. Wait for my signal. The musketeers can’t fire when those louts are charging. It’s our chance to rush them.”

Joseph slaps Yakov gently on the back and almost knocks him flat. He is grateful to Yakov for telling him what to do. He wants particularly to get his hands on Karel and to finish off the musketeers who are shooting the women. The ram can stay in the barricade. It is too slow and unwieldy. He will use his spiked club and a length of chain. He nods to himself. He can smell the fear in the line, but he is calm and almost happy. This is his proper work.

Now Karel gives the signal, and the line of attackers spills forward, running hard, screaming as if the harsh sound were forced out of them, brandishing knives and swords and clubs and an occasional pistol. Quickly Yakov says the Shema. The musketeers fire at the barricade defenders and then must stop. When the attackers are halfway across the space between the bashed-in gates and the barricade, Yakov cries out, “Now!”

They rise in a loose uncertain line and crawl up over their heap of paving stones, old furniture, lumber, street refuse. They run at the opposing force. Some of them scream too. Others shout insults: Traif! Scum! Pigs! Most of the Jews look frankly terrified. They are unused to violence, and they feel strange and awkward. They are overcoming deep inhibitions against fighting, against hurting anyone. But they see the bodies of their friends and neighbors already fallen, and all of them have family for whom they choose to die. Joseph says nothing. He does not understand the noisemaking. On his left, Yakov is charging with a wordless cry. On his right, Bad Yefes the Gambler is trotting along with his head lowered and a little crooked smile. He looks alert, foxy.

“You traitor,” Karel shouts, recognizing Joseph. “Jew bastard!”
That’s all Karel has time to say as Joseph crushes his skull with the first blow of his club. He hits Karel so hard that he requires a moment to extricate his club from the smashed shoulders. Someone is hitting Joseph about the back, knocking him off balance. He turns and swings the club, taking out another of the thugs from the tavern on the hill and knocking down a second. He pauses long enough to stomp that one’s chest, breaking the ribs into the heart. Then he charges on through the moil of fighting toward the musketeers. Bad Yefes extracts his knife from the ribs of a tall skinny man who was trying to throttle him and trots beside Joseph, keeping in his wake and to his left. They cut a swath through the mob toward the fallen gates. If the space were not as narrow and as jammed with brawling bodies, they would be killing less, for as many are trying to get out of Joseph’s way as are willing to fight him. But the press of bodies keeps the wiser ones from scrambling to safety. Joseph lunges through the crowd, using his club as a cutter goes through sugarcane, hacking with his machete. He scarcely veers, he scarcely looks aside. Yefes keeps in his wake, protecting his back, and then a group of Jews still on their feet follow after.

The musketeers are taking it easy, watching the skirmish as if it were a cockfight. Joseph counts only six. They have not anticipated Jews overrunning their position. Since the Jews have neither bows nor firearms, the musketeers have broken out a salami and beer and bread, having a snack while they wait. Off-duty soldiers? Soldiers now in the employ of some nobleman? They don’t take this fighting seriously. They haven’t posted a guard. One of them fans his face with a plumed hat in his left hand while he hefts a metal tankard in his right. They are caught by surprise as Joseph bounds over the fallen gate they are bivouacked behind. Bad Yefes and Yakov come close behind. Joseph crushes two of them with his club before the others can grab their muskets. He is chasing a third when something knocks him down. His shoulder hangs limp. There is pain, but as if far away. Black blood trickles out. He shifts the club into his left hand and pulls himself to his feet. The man who shot him is reloading. He never finishes.