Raisins and Almonds

papers.'

'I can but try,' Phryne shrugged and got out of the car.

'He lives over there—and—what luck, Phryne!' exclaimed the young man. 'There he is, walking along there with all those children. Oh, no ...' he groaned, as Phryne saw what was happening and moved without thinking.

A ring of grubby children were dancing around an elderly man who was standing still, as though they had trapped him in a magic circle. They looked positively Pixie O'Harris if you could not hear what they were saying, thought Phryne, as she crossed the road at her fastest run and grabbed the biggest assailant by the ear.

'Yid, yid, yid.' The chant stopped abruptly.

'And just what are you doing?' she snarled at the largest child, suspending him painfully by the lobe.

'He's a yid,' he protested.

'Very clever. So he is. Is that a reason for tormenting him?'

'It's only what Dad says,' offered one child, biting her plait.

'What does Dad say?'

'That they're yids.'

'Then your dad is a bigoted idiot and you'll grow up the same.' Phryne was furious. The child she had by the ear began to cry.

'We didn't know it was wrong, Miss,' he pleaded.

'Well, you know now,' snapped Phryne. 'Now get home, you horrible little ratbags, and if I catch you doing such a thing again I shall take you all home to your mothers and order the biggest belting—you won't sit down for a month. Is that clear?' She thrust her face close to the terrified blubbering countenance, and he nodded.

'Go away right now,' said Phryne, dropping him and dusting her hands together. The children ran for their lives.

'You should not have done that, Miss,' said the old man softly.

'Why not?' Phryne was not noticeably softened.

'It will cause more trouble.'

'If people of goodwill do not act against evil, then they assent to evil,' said Phryne sententiously.

The quotation from Maimonides stopped the old man in his tracks. Phryne looked up into his face.

He was tall and painfully thin and he moved as though his bones hurt. The gaberdine was shiny black with age and inconspicuously patched, and his shoes were broken. His hat had seen better years and his hair was white. But his eyes were remarkable, bright, penetrating and deep.

'Who are you?' he asked abruptly.

'Phryne Fisher.' She did not offer her hand. 'I am trying to find a murderer. I need your help.'

'I cannot help you.' He turned and began to walk away.

'Shall I follow you down the street quoting Maimonides?' she asked, keeping pace with him. 'This is an evil thing, a young man dead, and I am responsible for getting a woman out of prison, which means I have to find the killer. Strychnine, it's a nasty death.'

'The dead are with God,' said Rabbi Elijah, not turning his head.

'But the concerns of the living are with the living.' She turned the quotation back on him. She had not spent three hours' hard reading for nothing. 'He who saves one man saves a nation. I cannot bring back Shimeon Mikhael, but I will save Miss Lee from the gallows. And I need your help.'

'How can I help?' At least he had stopped and was looking at her again. 'I go nowhere, see only my students.'

'I have some papers, found on the dead man.' She thrust them at him. 'No one can read them. It is thought that you might. They must contain a clue.'

He cast a glance over the red and gold parchments, shaking his head, then his attention was riveted by a line of Hebrew.

'This, maybe, I can read. Where did you find this?'

'In the pocket of a man called Simon Michaels, Shimeon Ben Mikhael.'

'Shimeon is dead?' murmured Rabbi Elijah.

'Shimeon is murdered, don't you read the papers?'

'The papers? No,' he said absently. 'We can sit in my study, Mrs Rabinowitz will come in. This way, Miss ...'

'Fisher. Phryne Fisher.'

Phryne walked beside Rabbi Elijah. He was looking at the Hebrew and speaking under his breath in an unknown tongue, a harsh and authoritative language, whatever it was. Phryne was amazed at the success of her tactic. But she wondered about the old man. He changed moods abruptly and his character seemed to flicker. He seemed close to the edge of sanity, perhaps senility. However, nothing to do but go on with the task.

They came into the lobby of a block of apartments, and he knocked on the second door.

The staircase smelt of urine; poverty reeked from the dilapidated building.

'Coming, coming,' yelled someone behind the blistered door. 'Oh, it's you, Rabbi, what can I do for you? Did you like the latkes I left for you last night?'

Mrs Rabinowitz was small and would have been stout if she had been properly fed. She was wiping her wet hands on her skirt as she came to the door. When she saw Phryne she stared in astonishment. The Rabbi waved a hand at her.

'This is Miss ... Miss ... it is of no importance. She has a translation task for me, can you come and sit with her? I must consult my books.'

Mrs Rabinowitz tugged off her apron, put her door key in her pocket, and picked up a covered plate. She accompanied the scholar and Phryne on a long climb. The old man was short of breath, and stopped to pant at every landing. Phryne, trying not to shame him with her own health and strength, fell behind with Mrs Rabinowitz.

'There isn't any trouble, is there, Miss?' asked the older woman in a whisper. 'He's a holy man, no one to care for him, if it wasn't for his students he'd have nothing but his books, he'd be a great teacher if he would take more than a few pupils, but he won't. And he forgets to eat, so I bring him a little something when I can. You're not looking for ... magic, are you Miss? Fortune telling, is it?'

'No, I need him to read some mysterious papers for me. Does he tell fortunes?'

'Everyone knows he can see the future. But telling fortunes, that's against the law. He never tells fortunes,' emphasized Mrs Rabinowitz, making Phryne certain that occasionally the Rabbi did tell fortunes. 'He's studied all his life, never eats meat or drinks wine. But here he is, no one to care for him since his wife died last year, she was an angel, that woman.'

Eventually they reached the Rabbi's door, and then had to wait while he searched all of his pockets for his keys. Phryne heard babies crying and smelt old boiled cabbage and ancient ghosts of long dead fried suppers. Her miserable childhood came back with a rush. Young Phryne had played up and down steps like these, cold dirty cement. She had lived in a flat like this, so old and grimy that it could never be made clean. Her scalp itched as she remembered filth and headlice, and she was glad when the rabbi finally managed to open his door and she could go in.

It was bare and poor and dusty, but it smelt of old books. On a kitchen table stained with ink was piled a treasury of leather-bound ancient volumes, and there were more on the floor, stacked up, open at illustrations of dragons and lions. She saw the Tree of the Kabala again in a folio tome on which a scatter of pages lay. 'Please sit down,' said Rabbi Elijah, in a rusty social manner. There didn't seem to be anywhere to sit, so Phryne stood and watched as the old man sorted the leaves and laid them out in piles. His hands were long and fine, with pale knob- knuckles which spoke of arthritis. His skin seemed untouched by any sun. His fingernails were clean and cut slightly long.

'These,' he said, pushing one stack over, 'are illuminations from a medieval textbook on alchemy, and I cannot decipher them, except to say that they show various stages in the composition of the philosopher's stone. The ancients believed that it rendered all things perfect.'

'I thought it turned base metal into gold,' commented Phryne.

'Certainly. Gold is the perfect metal. Therefore the lapis philosophorum would make lead into gold. It was also believed,' Phryne noted with glee that Rabbi Elijah, a teacher, could not refrain from