Jew.
“Do you need some help?”
“Yes,” said the old man. His breathing was labored, and he spoke with a pronounced Eastern accent. “I need a doctor…”
He coughed again and dropped his book to the ground. As he moved to pick it up, Liebermann stopped him.
“Please, allow me.”
Liebermann crouched down, sensed a sudden flurry of activity, and remained conscious just long enough to recognize the magnitude of his stupidity. Then everything turned black.
76
Rabbi Seligman shook his head. “Leave us? Why must you leave us?”
Kusiel shifted uncomfortably. “My sister’s ill.”
“I didn’t even know you had a sister.”
“Yes, a sister and two brothers.”
“Why can’t you go back home, attend to her, do whatever’s necessary, and then come back? I’m sure we could find someone to help maintain the synagogue in your absence.”
“Thank you, Rabbi. That’s very kind of you. But she’s very ill.”
“Couldn’t your brothers look after her?”
“They’ve moved away. She’s on her own.”
“In which case, why don’t you bring her back here? We could look after her. My wife would be only too pleased to-”
“She wouldn’t want to come. She’s like that, stuck in her ways.”
The rabbi shook his head. “But how will you survive?”
“I’ve saved a little. And I’ll get a job.”
“In rural Galicia? At your age?”
Kusiel replied with a shrug as if to say, Maybe. Why not?
The rabbi looked at the caretaker anxiously. “How much have you saved?”
“Enough.”
“Are you sure? Look…” The rabbi squeezed his shoulder. “If you need more…”
“No,” said Kusiel sharply. “I couldn’t.”
“All right,” Seligman continued. “But if you find yourself in difficulties?”
“I’ll write,” said Kusiel.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll sleep more soundly knowing that.”
The old man smiled sheepishly and lowered his gaze. There was something about his inability to hold Seligman’s look that made the gentle rabbi uncharacteristically suspicious.
“Kusiel,” he said, hesitantly, “you’re not leaving Alois Gasse because of that… business in the attic room?”
The caretaker sighed. “No, of course not.”
The rabbi nodded. “We’ll miss you.”
At midnight Kusiel was leaning over a bridge, looking into the murk of the Danube Canal. He found the old key in his pocket and dropped it into the water. It didn’t make a sound, and he did not see it disappear. When he put his hand back into his pocket, he closed his fingers around a roll of banknotes. It was more money than he had ever before seen in his life.
77
Liebermann opened his eyes, but he could not see clearly. His vision was blurred. Two strips of luminescence were separated by a vertical band of darkness, and everything expanded and contracted with the agonizing throb in his skull. The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that he could not think. He was no longer a person. He was a mute sensorium, receiving impressions but unable to reflect on them. Then there was nothing.
When he opened his eyes again, he was vaguely aware that time had passed. His vision was still blurred, but the detonations of pain were not so harrowing. He set about assessing his situation.
He could not move his legs.
He could not move his hands.
Liebermann could move his head from side to side, but it made him feel very nauseous. After some preliminary tests of this type he concluded that he was sitting on a chair and that his legs and hands were tied together. But when he rotated his wrists, he could not feel the bite of rough hemp. There was no chafing. Something, it seemed, had been placed between the bindings and his skin: something soft, like muslin. It struck him as odd.
He closed his eyes, rested them for a few seconds, and opened them again.
The vertical band of darkness directly in front of him began to resolve itself into a more precise form: a human figure-seated, legs crossed. On a workbench behind the figure were two paraffin lamps, one at each extremity. Liebermann strained to see more clearly. Outlines became more defined, and gradually details appeared-the man’s hat, coat, beard, and coiled sideburns.
A Hasid…
The same person, most probably, who had knocked him out.
“Where is Barash?” said Liebermann. His voice sounded glutinous, each syllable poorly articulated. His tongue felt enlarged, and he could taste blood in his mouth.
“Who?”
“Your rebbe. Where is he?”
The Hasid did not reply. Instead, his hands went to his right ear and he detached the hanging sideburn. He then repeated the action on the left side. Leaning back, he dropped the gray coils onto the workbench and removed his hat. A bald dome caught the light. Liebermann squinted and craned forward. It was Professor Priel.
Liebermann glanced around the room. There were no windows. The only pieces of furniture were the workbench, the two chairs on which they were sitting, and a potbellied stove. Some machines that would not have looked out of place in a factory were freestanding. There were also some sheets of metal, chains, and panels of wood scattered about the floor. Propped up against the wall was something that Liebermann was not very surprised to see, even though it appeared quite incongruous within its surroundings: a barrel organ.
“Yes,” said Priel, observing Liebermann closely. “You were correct. Mechanical advantage. Any technical- school student would be able to explain the principle and build a device to demonstrate it.”
“The Vienna golem,” said Liebermann, his eyes lingering on the lacquered box.
“Indeed.”
Portable and inconspicuous. It was an inspired piece of deception.
“So,” said Liebermann, “which plague column have you chosen for me? Lichtental? Dornach?”
“No, Herr Doctor,” said Priel. “Your body will not be found at the foot of a plague column. Your body will be found-whole-on the shores of the Danube. You are going to commit suicide.” On Priel’s lap was Liebermann’s journal. “She must be a remarkable person, this Englishwoman of yours, Miss Lydgate, your unattainable object of desire. However, anybody reading these lines would conclude, as I did, that your attachment to her has become quite unhealthy: joyless, obsessional, morbid. I cannot open a newspaper these days without reading of yet another young fellow who has exchanged unrequited anguish for oblivion. It appears to be the fashion. Love is everything, and to live without love is not to live at all. I blame Goethe.”
