Of Love and Evil (14 page)

The soft notes of the lute echoed off the walls. I grew a little bolder, playing faster, and with greater variation, and slowly taking the melody into a melancholy comment on itself. I began to hum with the lower notes, and then to sing under my breath in low monosyllables, na nah, na nah nah, na, letting my fingers and my voice take me where they would. The tears came to my eyes. I let them spill down my face. I began to sing under my breath the words of a psalm.

“ ‘Oh, Lord of my salvation, when I cry out in the darkness before you, let my prayers reach you.’ ” I struggled, unable to remember, paraphrasing, “ ‘I am near to the brink of Sheol. Bend your ear to my pain.’ ”

I went on singing, breaking into words when phrases came back to me, humming if no words came. My eyes moved over the shadowy room before me, and I realized that I was not alone.

There standing before the repository, and not very far away from me, was a small elderly man.

We looked at one another, and his face revealed a great astonishment, and it wasn’t difficult to figure why.
He was amazed that I could see him, just as I was myself.

I had stopped playing. I merely looked at him, determined
to show no fear, and indeed I felt no fear. I felt only a growing excitement and a wonder, and a desperation to know what to do.

“You are no dybbuk,” I whispered under my breath. He didn’t appear to hear the words. He was looking me over in detail. And I did the same now with him, memorizing all that I saw with the old training of an assassin, determined to miss nothing of what was being presented to me here.

He was smallish, a little bent and very ancient, with a bald pate and a rich mane of long white hair falling down to his shoulders. He had a white mustache and a white beard. His black velvet clothes, though once elegant, were now shabby and dusty and torn here and there. Blue tassels were sewn to the ends of his mantle and he wore the hated yellow badge over his heart, which marked him as a Jew. He stood collected, fiercely examining me through a pair of glittering spectacles, with small burning eyes.

Spectacles. I hadn’t known people in this era had such things. But he was definitely wearing spectacles and now and then the flames of my candles glittered in the lenses.

Malchiah, give me the grace to speak to him.

“You realize that I can see you,” I said. “I don’t come as an enemy. I come only to discover why it is that you haunt. What has left you so restless? What has left you unwilling to go on into the light?”

For a second he was silent, motionless and reflective. Then he started towards me.

I thought my heart would stop. He came on steadily until he stood directly in front of me. I held my breath. He was seemingly solid, human, breathing, as he looked at me from beneath his white brows.

It was no consolation to me that I myself was a spirit in this
realm, that he was no more of a miracle than I was myself. I was afraid, but determined to conceal it.

He walked past me and out into the passage.

At once I had the candelabrum, and forgetting the lute, I turned and went behind him. He went on towards the staircase and then began a rapid soundless descent.

I followed.

Not once did he look back. Hunched and small he moved rapidly, with the dexterity of a ghost perhaps, until he came to the bolted cellar door. He passed through this, and I hurriedly unbolted it to follow him, discovering him near the bottom of the stairs as I rushed after him, the candles slowly revealing the wreckage of the cellar all around us.

Broken tables and chairs lay everywhere on the flags. Dusty wine casks lined the walls. Bundles of old furniture, tied with rope, were stacked above the casks, with some broken open and spilling their shattered contents down to the floor. Hundreds of moldering books lay in heaps with spines broken 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 the door. And then stared at me with muted outrage.

“Why have you come here now?” he demanded. “I thought you’d fled for your life.”

“I’ve seen the ghost who haunts the other house,” I said. “I’ve seen him plainly and surely you know who he is.”

I came into the room, and offered my hands to help him to his feet. This he accepted, as it was very difficult for him at his age, and then he backed up and, turning, found his way to one of his many enormous heavily carved chairs. He sank down on the cushions and, rubbing his nose for a moment as though he was in pain, he looked up at me.

“I don’t believe in ghosts!” he said. “Dybbuks, yes, demons, yes, but ghosts, no.”

“Well, think again on it. This ghost is a small elderly man. He wears a black velvet tunic, long, like that of a scholar, but he has blue tassels sewn on the edges of his mantle. He wears the yellow ‘badge of shame’ on his tunic, and peers at the world through spectacles.” I made the gesture to describe them with my fingers before my eyes. “He has a bald head and long gray hair and beard.”

He was speechless.

“Is this the Hebrew scholar who lived in this house twenty years ago?” I asked. “Do you know this man’s name?”

He didn’t answer but he was mightily impressed by what I’d described. He stared off, stunned and seemingly miserable.

“For the sake of Heaven, man, tell me if you know who this
man is,” I said. “Vitale is locked up under your roof. He’ll be tried by the Inquisition for having a—.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve been trying to stop all this,” he cried, raising his hand. He drew in his breath and, after a moment of silence, he seemed to surrender himself, with a long sigh, to what had to be done. “Yes, I know who this ghost is.”

“Do you know why he haunts? Do you know what he wants?”

He shook his head. Clearly all this was excruciating for him.

“The cellar, what has it to do with the cellar? He led me to the cellar. He pointed to the stone floor.”

He let out a long agonizing groan. He put his hands to his face, then stared forward over his own fingers.

“You really saw this?” he whispered.

“Yes. I saw this. He rages, he bellows, he cries in pain. And he points to the floor.”

“Oh, no, don’t say any more,” he pleaded. “Why was I fool enough to think it could not be?” He turned away from me, as if he couldn’t bear my scrutiny, or anyone’s for that matter, and he bowed his head.

“Can you not tell everyone what you know?” I asked. “Can you not testify that this thing has nothing to do with Vitale, or poor Lodovico, or Niccolò? Signore Antonio, you must tell what you know.”

“Pull the bell rope,” he said.

I did as he asked.

When his servant appeared, another ancient relic of a human being, he told the old man that at dawn he was to gather the entire household to the nearby house where the ghost raged. This gathering must include Fr. Piero, Niccolò and Vitale and that all were to be assembled around the table in the dining hall, which should be dusted and provided with
lamps and chairs. Bread, fruit, wine, all should be furnished, as he had a story to tell.

I took my leave of him.

Pico, who’d been hovering in the passage, took me to Vitale’s door. When I called Vitale’s name he answered, in a low dispirited voice. I told him not to be afraid. I had seen the ghost and its mystery would soon be explained.

Then I allowed myself to be led to a small bedchamber with painted walls, and curious as I was as to everything about it, I sank down on the coffered bed and went fast asleep.

I awoke with first morning light. I’d been dreaming of Ankanoc. We’d been sitting together, talking in some comfortable place, and he had said, with all his seeming charm, “Didn’t I tell you? There are millions of souls lost in systems of pain and grief and meaningless attachment. There is no justice, no mercy, no God. There is no witness to what we suffer, except our own.”
Spirits using you, feeding off your emotions, no god, no devil …

Quietly in the small bedchamber, I answered him, or I answered myself. “There is mercy,” I whispered. “And there is justice, and there is One who witnesses everything. And above all, there is love.”

T
HE FAMILY WAS GATHERED IN THE DINING ROOM OF
the unfortunate house when I arrived. The ghost was rampaging in the cellar and now and then sending great howls and roars through all the rooms.

I saw at once that there were four armed guards in attendance on Signore Antonio, hovering about his chair at the head of the table. He looked rested and resolved, and solemn in his black velvet, head bowed, and hands pressed together as if in prayer.

Niccolò looked marvelously improved, and this was the first time I’d seen him in regular clothes, if the clothes of this time could ever be called regular. He was clad in black like his father, and so was Vitale, who sat beside him, and looked up at me with timid eyes.

Fr. Piero was seated at the foot of the table, and beside him on his right were two other clerics, and someone with a stack of papers and an inkwell and quill pen who looked, of course, like a clerk. Abundant food lay on the immense carved sideboard, and a collection of frightened servants, including Pico, cleaved to the walls.

“Sit there,” said Signore Antonio, pointing me to his right. I obeyed.

“I say again I am opposed to this!” said Fr. Piero, “this communing with spirits or whatever it is reasoned to be! This house must be exorcised now. I am prepared to begin.”

“Enough of all that,” said Signore Antonio. “I know now who haunts this house and I will tell you who he is and why he haunts. And I charge you, not a word of this is ever to leave this chamber.”

Reluctantly the priests agreed, but I could see that they did not see themselves as being bound by this. Possibly it would not matter.

The noises from the cellar continued, and once again, I was convinced that the ghost was rolling the heavy casks of wine over the floor.

At Signore Antonio’s gesture the guards closed the door of the dining room, and we had a measure of quiet in which Signore Antonio began to speak.