Raisins and Almonds

leave, and they let us take some goods, too, only the one big box, and the children's clothes, but we made the frame of the trunk out of gold, and stitched heavy cowhide over it, and then we sat with our hearts in our mouths, oy in case the customs men dropped it and it split and showed the gold ...' She rocked herself as she spoke, and her son Phillip took her hand. 'We came down into Germany where they did not want us either but let us pass, and they stole my mother's silver spoons as we passed the border and took a ship for Australia. It was so funny, we had only what we stood up in and our papers and the children and I was pregnant with Fanny, and in the hold we had a treasure which we couldn't get at.'

'I remember the ship,' said Phillip quietly. 'I was seasick for days and we met bad weather and Papa prayed. I remember his voice and thought that as long as he kept praying we wouldn't sink.' He gave a half-apologetic smile and his mother cried, 'Well, did the ship sink? So, we heard at some places that they were killing the Jews in Russia, that we had escaped in time because they had closed the borders, that our old village was burned and gone. My dear Yossel alav ha-sholom, he told me that the revolution would treat us no better than the Czar had. Then we came here—I remember, we saw this Australia first from Fremantle, a terrible dry dead flat place, and my little Philo said, 'This is the Goldene Medina, Mama?' and I was so disappointed I could have cried, but when we got to Melbourne there were people waiting, it was so strange, we were standing on the deck looking at the quay and I took Yossel's hand, I was suddenly so afraid, what had we done, leaving our own place and coming to this new country, and then someone yelled from the shore, 'Shalom aleicheml' out loud, like that, so that anyone could hear and know it was a Jew speaking, and I was so relieved that I cried anyway, nu, where was I? Please, Mr Abrahams and lady, have some more tea.'

'What happened then?' asked Phryne, sipping more hot, thin, refreshing tea.

'We were safe then. Yossel spoke to Mr Abrahams, and he took charge of the trunk and paid us the full gold price for it, and we bought this house, and then just when we were settled and we all had jobs and we were happy, my Yossel he took tuberculosis and died, ai, ai, he lasted long enough to see his son, and then he was gone. My Yosselah, alav ha-sholom. God rest his soul, he was a good man.' Mrs Grossman wiped her eyes with her apron. 'But we are doing well. I keep a boarding house and Mrs Hallenstein sends me some of the new ones from the boats, so I have a household to feed and they have a good kosher home. My daughter Helen makes buttons and my daughter Fanny works in an office and my son Philo—who would have thought he would grow so tall?—he has his own shop in the Eastern Market, a picture frame maker. And my Saul is a son of the Book. And we are all happy except that Yossi brings me distinguished visitors without any warning.'

Phryne took Mrs Grossman's hand and said, 'We are very glad to be here and your house could not be any tidier or cleaner if you had ten years' notice. I like this tea. Do you buy it locally?'

'King and Godfreys,' said Mrs Grossman promptly. 'But maybe you can come again, and we will make you perhaps some French coffee, and my seed cake which I make better than any woman in Faraday Street though I say it myself, it was my mother's recipe. Now I will not intrude any more on this business of the death, a terrible thing, such a young man.'

She collected her daughters and bustled away Yossi Liebermann and Phillip sat down at the table, pushing aside the plate of biscuits, and Simon laid out the Hebrew notes and the strange pictures on vellum. They looked at them for some time in silence. Phryne saw a white bird rising out of a black cage, a red-robed woman crowning herself with gold and a face perhaps of the moon with the subscription 'Luna'. In the middle of the flames, brilliantly red and gold, a small pale couple lay, crowned, limbs entwined, clearly making love. Phryne looked at the tiny female face blank with ecstasy and fought down a pang of lust.

'This is alchemy,' said Yossi. He touched the picture of the copulating couple with one hardened forefinger. 'This is the mating of the Golden King and the Silver Queen, which is sun and moon. You see, there are their names.' He pointed out 'Sol et Luna' in the margin of the brightly coloured painting. 'I don't know what this is about.' He laid aside a list, in Latin, and a block of dark Elizabethan printing. 'But this relates to the Kabala.'

'How do you know?' asked Phryne.

The stooped young man replied, 'These are verses which point to it. 'Immitens formas et influxus in Jacob sive subjectum Hominen', which means 'Letting forth shapes and influxes into Jacob or else the subjected man'. Jacob means Israel, and there is the tree. But this is Christianized, not the original Hebrew Tree of Knowledge. That is fortunate, because I would not have been able to talk to you about our own sacred mystery, but this is possibly medieval, no later than renaissance, and I think it is part of the angel magic practised by such as John Dee.'

He smoothed the delicate painting with his work-ruined fingers. There was a supine naked man at the bottom of the page. From his genitals grew a tree, and each branch carried a globed fruit in which Hebrew letters and a Latin or Greek word or phrase was written. Perched on each branch was a creature: a dove or a raven or a snake. Crowning the whole was a king on a throne wearing the most magnificent purple robes.

'What does it mean?' Phryne asked.

Yossi sighed. 'Lady, that is the study of a lifetime, of many lifetimes, and I have only one and also a living to earn. But since I am begged by my friend Simon, I will tell you this much. The alchemists sought for the philosopher's stone, which would transmute base metal into gold. They used the holy Kabala in their study. Indeed, some of them were not even interested in the stone for its wealthy properties, or because it was to make them live forever. They wanted knowledge—to know everything. Myself, I am content to know a little, I do not think men were meant to know everything, I think such knowledge would burn us as Semele was burned by Zeus' fire. However, they said that they would reach perfection; the stone would make base metal into gold because gold is a perfect metal. The Kabala, it describes the works of Creation. There are ten paths, ten branches. It is a way of describing the world which can be used to call an angel or a familiar spirit, to make a golem.'

'What is a golem?' Phryne was fascinated.

'A servant made of clay or brass. Rabbi Elijah of Chelm made one, and it caused him a lot of trouble. He set it to sweep out his house, and it didn't stop until he had no house. He sent it to catch fish and it caught a whole lake's worth but didn't bring them back because he hadn't told it to—a golem has no mind. He animated it by writing the word of life on its brow, and killed it by rubbing out one letter, which means 'death'. This is called the use of the divine names, it is found in the Sepher Yetzirah, and that is all I can tell you about it, lady, I have taken vows.' Yossi was apologetic but firm.

'I have not, and I don't believe that this is mystical, it's all in the book, and it's philosophy, Yossi, not religion,' argued Simon.

'The rabbi says it's all romance,' offered Saul. Both young men looked at him. Phryne was expecting them to squash him, as one does with little brothers, but both of them, instead, listened.

'What else does the rabbi say?' asked Yossi.

Without closing the book, Saul blinked, took a gulp of Simon's tea, and recited: 'It is called Sephirot because it states that there are ten palaces—that is the Hebrew word for ten,' he added kindly, for Phryne's sake. 'But the top three cannot be contemplated by men. The lower seven are populated by angels praising God always, and through the palaces, from the lowest to the highest, the soul rises until it is at last one with En Soph the mystical and transcendent.' At the mention of this name, Yossi drew in a sharp breath. 'Rabbi Moses de Leon in Spain wrote a lot about it, but my rabbi says that a life of contemplation is better spent on the Torah.'

'There go your secrets, Yossi,' said Simon. 'Truly the little brother is a master of learning, nu?'

'But ... please excuse me, Mr Abrahams,' said Saul, 'I have seen a diagram like this before, and I don't think it was Christian. The name was the same as on that picture.'

'What name, Saul?'

'Adam Kadmon,' said Saul, and returned to his text.

'Primeval man,' said Simon. But the effect on Yossi of this statement was notable: he paled to the colour of junket and snatched his hands away from the parchment as though it had been especially prepared by the Borgias for one of their favourite enemies.

Without a word, he ran down the hall and into the street. Simon Abrahams and Phryne watched the door clap to behind him with astonishment. Even Saul looked up in mild surprise, all the emotion of which this scholarly child seemed capable.

Mrs Grossman came back into the room, attended by her daughters, in time to hear the door slam. 'That