The Inquisitor's Apprentice

powers three times — only to rip it up and start over when their grandfather jostled her elbow and ruined her careful penmanship.

“I’ll say he’s special!” Grandpa Kessler snorted. the sound of arguing voices had woken him up, and he wasn’t about to miss out on an argument, even if it was one the family had already had many times in the last few weeks. “He’s the grandson and great-grandson of famous Kabbalists, and what do his magical talents amount to? Bubkes!”

“Unless being able to memorize the batting averages of the entire Yankees starting lineup counts as a magical talent,” Bekah quipped.

Sacha sighed. He would have liked to argue with Bekah, but she was completely right. If only he could have remembered his Torah lines as easily as he remembered baseball statistics, his bar Mitzvah wouldn’t have been a public humiliation.

“Never mind that.” Mrs. Kessler checked the bread and loaded a little more coal into the stove. As she bent over the stove, her little silver locket swung toward the fire, and she absentmindedly tucked it back into the collar of her worn-out dress. “The main point is that this apprenticeship is a great opportunity for Sacha. Isn’t it, Sacha?”

“Uh … yeah … sure,” Sacha mumbled.

But actually he wasn’t sure at all. On the one hand, there was the money. It was exciting to imagine himself all grown up and making enough money to move his family out of the tenements and into the wide-open green spaces of Brooklyn. It was nice to picture his mother and sister quitting their jobs at the Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory. Or his father studying all day like the learned man he was instead of wrecking his back hauling slimy barrels of fish at the East River Docks. But on the other hand … well … did Sacha really want to spend his life writing out Illegal Use of Magic citations and dragging people like Mrs. Lassky off to jail?

He still felt awful about Mrs. Lassky. He’d had no idea she’d get into so much trouble. After all, lots of people used magic — at least when the cops weren’t looking. New spells traveled up and down Hester Street as fast as gossip. There were spells to make bread rise and spells to make matzo not rise. Spells to catch husbands and spells to get rid of them. Spells to make your kids listen to your good advice and stay home and study instead of loitering on street corners like gangsters. Even Sacha’s mother used magic whenever she was sure her father-in-law wasn’t looking. So what had Mrs. Lassky done that was so terrible?

“Sacha?” his father asked. “Are you all right?”

He realized everyone was staring at him. “I… I feel kind of bad about Mrs. Lassky.”

“Don’t worry,” his mother said airily. “She just paid a fine.”

“And she should have paid a bigger one!” Grandpa Kessler said. “This back-alley witchery is a public disgrace — a shande far di goyim! And it’s against religion too. As the learned Rabbi Ovadia of Bertinoro said, ‘God weeps when women work magic.’”

“Well, maybe God wouldn’t have to weep if the men would let women into shul to study real Kabbalah,” Bekah said tartly.

“Don’t talk back to your grandfather, young lady!” Mrs. Kessler snapped.

“What? I’m only saying what you’ve said a hundred times before—”

“And don’t talk back to me either!”

Bekah waited until their mother had turned back to her soup and then looked at Sacha and rolled her eyes again.

“I see you rolling your eyes,” their mother told Bekah without even bothering to turn around. “I guess that means you don’t want any blintzes this Sunday morning?”

“No! no!” Bekah cried. “I take it back! I unroll my eyes!”

Everyone laughed. Whatever else people said about Ruthie Kessler — and they said plenty — no one could deny that she made the best blintzes west of Bialystok.

“That’s funny,” Mrs. Kessler said while everyone else was still laughing. “I thought I had enough water, but I don’t. Now where’s that bucket got to?”

Sacha sighed and got up to look for the water bucket. But his mother found it first. “I’ll go,” she told him. “You rest up. You have a big day tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t be out alone after dark,” Mr. Kessler objected. “If you don’t want Sacha to go, then I will.”

“You most certainly won’t! You’ve got no business being outside in the rain with that cough of yours!”

“What cough?” Sacha’s father snapped as if the mere suggestion that he was sick were a mortal insult. But then he promptly proved her point by coughing.

Mrs. Kessler snorted and stalked out the door, muttering that she’d made it all the way from Russia to the Lower East Side and wasn’t about to start being afraid of the dark now.

“Be careful, Ruthie!” Mrs. Lehrer called after her. “I saw someone down there the other night!”

No one listened. Mrs. Lehrer was nice — but crazy. Not that anyone ever actually came out and said she was crazy. They just shook their heads sadly and said things like “She came out of the pogroms, poor woman. What can you expect after what she’s been through?”

Sacha had worried about this when he was younger. After all, his own parents had survived the pogroms. Did that mean they might go crazy too? But finally he’d decided that Mrs. Lehrer’s craziness didn’t seem to be catching. Mostly it just amounted to pinching pennies so she could buy her sisters tickets to America and sewing all her savings into an old coat that she never took off because — as she told Sacha and Bekah at every possible opportunity—you never knew.

Mrs. Lehrer’s habit of seeing thieves in every shadow was understandable given the amount of cash she had sewn into her money coat. But everyone knew better than to pay any attention to it. So before the door had even closed behind Sacha’s mother, they’d all gone back to arguing about his apprenticeship.

“Don’t pay any attention to your Uncle Mordechai,” Mo told Sacha. “Being an Inquisitor is a good, honest profession. Why, Inquisitors have become mayors, senators … even president!”

“Right,” Bekah snorted. “And everyone knows how honest politicians are.”

Now it was Mr. Kessler’s turn to roll his eyes. “And you think Mordechai’s Wiccanist friends wouldn’t be just as bad the minute they got into power?”

“Well, they certainly couldn’t be any worse, could they?” Bekah crossed her arms defiantly. “Benjamin Franklin founded the Inquisitors to protect ordinary people from magical crime, and what do they do instead? Run around giving tickets to poor Mrs. Lassky while J. P. Morgaunt and the rest of those Wall Street Wizards get away with murder!”

“Bilking widows out of their life savings in the stock market might not be nice,” Mr. Kessler pointed out, “but it’s not exactly murder.”

“Besides,” Mo added, “the Inquisitors do catch rich men. They caught Meyer Minsky—”

“And he was out on parole six months later and running Magic, Inc., just like always. Besides, he’s a gangster. A Jewish gangster. When was the last time you saw an Astral or a Morgaunt or a Vanderbilk in prison?”

“Fine,” Sacha’s father teased. “Run upstairs and join the Wobblies. I’ve seen you talking to that skinny redhead up there. In my day if a boy and a girl liked each other, they did something about it, end of story. But if you’d rather run all over town making speeches about magic-workers’ rights, be my guest.”

Bekah tried to look outraged, but her face was so red that Sacha had to smother a laugh. He glanced at his father in amazement. Mr. Kessler worked such long hours that he was barely ever home except to eat and sleep — but judging by Bekah’s blushes, he’d spotted something that even their mother’s sharp eyes had missed. Sacha knew who the Wobblies were, of course: the Industrial Witches of the World, whose makeshift headquarters were located in a cheap rear flat on the top floor of the Kesslers’ own building. But obviously he was going to have to take a closer look at the idealistic young Wobblies who traipsed up and down the stairs past their apartment every day. Especially the redheads.

“I don’t even think about boys that way,” Bekah protested, still blushing furiously. “Especially not — I mean, I have no idea who you’re talking about!”

“Good,” their father said mildly. “Then I guess I don’t need to meet him.”