Having not eaten all day, I was ravenous. Nothing save the coffee looked familiar on the menu, but it was in English at least. As my eyes bounced between the moussaka and the goulash, my employer seemed distracted, though I knew he hadn't had so much as a cup of his precious green tea all day.
Barker actually spoke English to the waiter this time and ordered coffee. The silken tassels which peeked out from under the waiters' waistcoats told me they were Romanian Jews. I remembered the note the old man at Bevis Marks had given Barker. This was to be a rendezvous, obviously.
'Should we dine, or is the cook expecting us at home?' I asked.
'We shall eat presently,' Barker responded, still holding his cards close. 'Have a bialy to tide you over.'
A bialy turned out to be a flat, yeasty roll, whose center was filled with onions and poppy seeds. The Jewish community often had them for breakfast, and while they weren't bad, I'd need a strong cup of coffee before facing one over the breakfast table. The coffee arrived in little glass cups with metal handles.
'Bialy!' an unfamiliar voice called in my ear, and a fellow out of a Tolstoy novel sat down beside us, helping himself to the rolls and my coffee. A long beard spilled down his coat front, and his greasy hair splayed out in all directions from beneath a disreputable fur cap. He wore a long and ancient green coat with an almost military stamp to it, and his boots had seen better decades. Barker shook his hand and made the introductions.
'Rebbe, this is Thomas Llewelyn, my assistant. Thomas, Reb Moishe Shlomo, Mr. Pokrzywa's rabbi.'
The rabbi held out a none-too-clean hand and pumped mine vigorously.
'Who should want to hurt poor Louis?' he asked. 'Such a waste, a waste of good life, I have never seen. A more promising Talmud scholar you couldn't find in all of London. I held great hopes for that boy.'
'Tell us more about him,' Barker prompted. 'We need to know what he was like.'
'He was born in Smyela, south of Kiev, and came here six years ago. His parents were killed in the pogrom there, and he fled the country with just what he could carry. He came overland on foot to Amsterdam, and then took the ferry to London because he heard a young fellow can get ahead here. He applied himself diligently. Had you met him, you would not have noticed the slightest trace of an accent. You'd have thought he'd been brought up in Whitechapel.'
'Did he have any close friends or a sweetheart?'
'Oh, he was well liked by everyone in the community. His special friends were the boys of his chevra and the other teachers at the Free School. As to sweethearts, he could take his pick. He was not an ugly fellow, and his earnestness was very charming. He had so many mothers throwing daughters at him, the air was thick with them. But Louis was a good Jew. He would choose no bride until he finished his studies and became a rabbi. Now some poor girl has lost herself a fine husband, and Zion a future leader.'
'Can you think of any way in which he could have brought danger upon himself?'
The rabbi bawled for more coffee and turned over the matter in his shaggy head.
'He hadЕ what do you call it? A warm heart? A soft heart! He wanted to solve everyone's problems. He gave away too much of his meager salary to the schnorrers. He could never keep a winter coat. He worried about the Jewish women in Whitechapel, that poverty might cause them to lose their virtue. He went about doing good works and listening to everybody's problems. He overtaxed himself, always trying to squeeze two days into one.'
'It is a hard life as a rabbinical student, I'm sure.'
'Oy, you have no idea! Such a life I wouldn't wish on a dog. The Board of Deputies has scheduled the funeral for the morning. The Jews' Free School cannot have so disreputable an old scholar as myself to perform the service, but I shall be there just the same, to see my boy is put into the ground properly. Of course, both of you shall come. I insist upon it.'
'Had Louis seemed in any way secretive in the past few weeks?'
'The chevra boys would know better than I, but he did cancel a lunch I was to have with him last week.'
'What is a chevra, if I may ask?' I put in.
'It is a burial society,' the rabbi said. 'They collect money for your funeral while you are alive.'
'But it is more than that,' Barker added. 'The members of your chevra are your brothers and closest friends. It is a fraternal organization.'
The waiter brought a new cup of coffee. It was strong and sweet in the Turkish manner. I rather liked the relaxed atmosphere of the outdoor cafй, as you sipped and let the world parade before you. Barker watched a drab woman in a shawl walk by.
'I know that very few Jewesses are harlots, but how many do you suppose there are?' he said.
The rabbi shrugged his shoulders. 'Who knows? A dozen or more at least, perhaps.'
'Could any of them have had a ponce, a man who looked after them and to whom they paid the money? Someone who might be angry if Louis urged a girl to quit?'
'Not in Whitechapel,' the rabbi said, smiling at the idea. 'This is not the West End. Rachel's sisters make little more than a few pints of ale and a roll per night. No one is willing to enter into any partnership with the women here. There is no money in it.'
'And there is no chance that LouisЕ' He left the sentence dangling.
'Nyet! Louis would not make use of a prostitute. Apart from it being forbidden to him, he feared, as all young Jewish men fear, the diseases. Any weakness or lapse on their part could be ultimately fatal.'
Barker gave up on the coffee after a few sips and began patting his pockets. His pipe helped him think. He was back to smoking the one with his own image, which I had come to think of as his traveling pipe. Reb Shlomo stopped chewing his roll to stare at the miniature version of the original. He tipped me a wink, as if to say, 'Your boss is some fellow!' Barker took no notice, being deep in thought. I liked the smell of the tobacco I had brought him on my first day. According to the tobacconist, it was a 'mostly aromatic blend, with a hint of sweetness and a mere touch of latakia for balance.' That was the kind of nonsense one hears when pipesmen get together. They are as bad as vintners.
'Would you say,' Barker asked the rabbi, as he twirled the vesta around the bowl, 'that Louis Pokrzywa spoke to strangers every day, that he went out of his way to be helpful to people?'
'Yes, of course.'
'Did he speak to Jew and Gentile?'
'He did.'
'Married and single Jewesses?'
'Yes.'
'Ashkenazi and Sephardi?'
'I sense you are hinting at something, Mr. Barker.'
'Louis was a good-looking fellow, Rabbi. Women fall in love, it is their nature. Some women have boyfriends, or even husbands. Some are very needy and attractive. Rabbinical students are often naive and romantic. Do you see what I'm getting at?'
'Of course I do, Mr. Barker, I'm not an idiot. But I think you are mistaken.'
Barker pushed his sealskin pouch toward the rabbi, almost as a peace offering. 'Shmek tabac?'
The rabbi shrugged, pulled an old and disreputable briar from his pocket, and charged it from the pouch. He borrowed a match as well. Our coffees were replenished and we were ready for another round of questions.
'Did Louis do any proselytizing?'
'Not consciously. He was a zealot, and his enthusiasm was infectious, but I don't think he was specifically out to convert Christians.'
'What about the so-called Messianic Jews?'
'Oh, they are fair game. There are Jews, and then there are Jews, you know. Some will welcome Messianics into their homes as brothers, and others will cut them dead in the street, figuratively speaking, of course. I think Louis believed that a Jew who turned Christian was still following most of the tenets of his faith, but he also enjoyed a good argument, and the splitting of hairs.'
'Have you noticed evidence of anti-Semitism in London lately?' Barker spoke plainly.
'I was knocked down this morning, if that is what you mean. They were a band of youths, perhaps in their early twenties, in cloth caps. By the time of day, I'd say they were out of work.'
'English?'
'English, Irish, Scottish. You all look the same.'
Barker and I both smiled at the remark. I bet the rabbi could have listed twenty differences between a
