'Go, Devora. Open the door for our visitor,' he said, addressing his sixteen-year-old daughter.
She was not surprised, for each year at Passover her father had not so subtly knocked under the table and instructed her youngest brother to open the door and welcome the Prophet Elijah. Of course, there had never been anyone there, though her father said that Elijah's spirit entered.
Not so this time.
Standing at the door in the darkness was a robed stranger, a tall man whose handsome face spoke of unbearable weariness. Slightly behind him stood a second man whose appearance and bearing cast him in the role of manservant.
'Welcome to our home,' Meyer said, beckoning the strangers to the table and thinking that Rose would have to set yet another place. 'It may not be much, but it is one of the best in Mea Shearim.'
Gesturing first to his manservant in such a manner that it was apparent he would remain outside, the Stranger entered Meyer's house. He did not remove his robe, nor did he look into the eyes of his host.
'Will you pray with us over the wine?' Meyer asked, thinking that he must remember later to have Devora take food and wine outside to the manservant.
The man sat but did not speak, neither did he eat or drink, even after the prayers were done. He was dark and swarthy, but did not seem to be of Jerusalem.
'What road have you travelled, Stranger?' Meyer asked, wondering if the man had been sent to observe the blood rites of which the Jews were accused. If so, he would leave disappointed.
'I travel the Road of Humanitatis,' the man said.
Those were all the words he spoke.
When the meal was over, there was one more tradition to be observed before the final song could be sung. Earlier, Devora — the oldest and the youngest had hidden a piece of unleavened bread known as the Afikomen . Now she was sent to retrieve it.
'Let our daughter also take food and wine to the man who is outside in the moonlight,' Meyer said to Rose. 'She will be rewarded for returning the Afikomen to the table,' Meyer explained to his guests, 'for without it the Seder cannot be completed. It will not take long for her to find it. Rose and I watched her hide it in the garden.'
After a few moments, when Devora had not returned, the Stranger stood as if to leave. Meyer bade him Godspeed and glanced at the family of Hamid el Faisir, wishing they too would depart. Despite his best efforts it had been a strained night; he wanted it to be over.
When their daughter still did not return with the Afikomen , which fairly translated meant Aftermath, Rose said, 'I am worried about our daughter. It is that time of the month for her. She should not be outside alone and in the dark for so long.'
Meyer excused himself and went to find Devora.
He found her in the small arbour which stood permanently in the garden, ready to be decorated each autumn in thanks for God's bounty. She held the Afikomen in her hand. Silently, she gave it to her father.
Silently, he took it.
'We have been waiting for you,' Meyer said. 'All but the Stranger, who came out of the night and has returned to it.'
'I have been with him,' Devora responded. 'And I have fed his manservant.'
Devora, daughter of Rose and of Meyer ben Joseph, never spoke again of the two men or even of the child of the manservant, conceived that Passover during her time of bleeding and growing in her womb. More and more, she became morose. Each time she passed a mirror, it was spotted with droplets of blood and she was shamed before her father, the remaining man of her family. Soon she ceased to be obedient to him or to any man. As if she wished to die in childbirth, she baked challahs and deliberately neglected to take from the dough and give what she had taken to a priest in tithing.
Meyer did not like his daughter's behaviours but he accepted them as part of the changes wrought by childbearing, a process he did not pretend to understand. Rose was more frightened than angered. Though it was the word of God and of Allah that Their followers go forth and multiply, it was also His word that no child be conceived during niddah menstruation and for good reason.
She feared for the life of her daughter and trembled for her daughter's child, lest that child — conceived in blood — be claimed by the demon queen, Lilith.
The child, a girl, grew strong inside the womb of her mother, Devora. Like all embryos growing into the fullness of their heritage, this one saw the history of her people by the light of a candle which burned in the womb, a white glow which allowed her to see the beginning and the end of the universe.
Inside the womb, an angel kept watch over her, teaching her the Torah; outside the womb, Lilith — overpowered by the remembrance of her own childless and unhappy marriage — watched the angel and seethed with jealousy of Devora's motherhood. She bided her time, smiling evily as Rose constructed an amulet from the Sefer Raziel to protect the mother and child after birth and hung amulets aplenty around the walls and on the birth-bed to discourage the demonic queen from claiming the child.
Just before birth, when — as it was written — the angel readied itself to touch the child lightly on her top lip so that the cleavage on her upper lip could be formed and she could forget all she had learned, Lilith interfered. Dousing the light in the womb, she pushed the infant into the birth canal.
In that moment, Devora's soul took leave of its earthly body. In that moment, Marisa was born. She emerged from her mother's womb with a collective consciousness and with an arrogance which, in combination with her facial flaw, set her apart from the other children in Mea Shearim.
Of the 613 Laws of the Torah, Rekhilut — the first, though the least prohibitive, law against bad-of-mouth gossip — was the most frequently disobeyed in the quarter where Marisa was born. In the case of this girl-child, the gossip derived more from fear than from any intent to do harm. It was no secret that she had been conceived during niddah , nor could it be kept secret that the child had no cleavage on her upper lip. Since her mother had died in childbirth, it was logical to assume that she had been claimed as the daughter and servant of Lilith. But the
