Eric Flint: Ring of Fire III

“He makes the teams even. So, you wanna play with us?” The first boy smiled and that settled it.

Shabbethai couldn’t quite understand the words. He understood “you” meant him and “us” meant them. It didn’t look like they meant to kill him. Besides, there were three girls watching. Boys rarely, in his wide experience of eight years, were cruel around girls.

So Shabbethai nodded his head and hoped for the best. Already the thoughts of being the son of God and curiosity and books being translated from English to Greek by some girl who had looked at him with wide eyes were receding.

“I don’t think he understands English,” one of the children said.

Shabbethai understood “English” and the head shaking meant “no.”

“No English good.” Shabbethai smiled hopefully, stringing some English words together.

“That’s okay,” the boy with the welcoming smile said. “My name is Joseph Drahuta. Call me Joe, okay? Joe.” The boy pointed at himself and said “Joe” again.

“Shabbethai Zebi,” Shabbethai pointed at himself.

“ Sprecken she dutch? ” the boy named Joe asked in very bad German. Even his German was not that bad, Shabbethai thought, very much to himself. It would never do for a Jewish boy, lost in a non-Jewish part of town, to laugh at a non-Jew or criticize them, no matter how deserved it was.

“Your German is funny.” One of the younger girls laughed and clapped. Shabbethai understood the “your” and “German” part. The word “funny” was not one his father had taught him.

“He doesn’t look German,” stated the other boy; the one with the smile Shabbethai knew he didn’t want to see. “No German would wear hair like that.”

“What does it matter what he looks like, Gabriel,” one of the girls, the older one, snapped, her hands upon her hips. Shabbethai pretended he didn’t see her hips or even know what “hips” were. You had to be careful how you looked at girls, especially ones who weren’t Jewish.

“No Ger-man,” Shabbethai tried in English.

“Easy game,” Joseph said slowly, smiling at him. “Watch. I show you.”

Shabbethai watched very carefully, completely involved in the game.

The boy with the smile Shabbethai liked held a stick and looked determined to hit something or someone with it. Shabbethai was determined to make sure he was not that something or someone to be hit.

Deborah, 24th of Av, 5394

(T minus 4 hours 15 minutes)

“He’s the one who called me a boy when I asked him to teach me Hebrew. Rabbi Yaakov, him.” Jacqueline pointed, indicating the elderly man who was pretending not to see Julie’s car.

The fact that the good rabbi was doing a very thorough job of pretending that a car had not just appeared a few hours before the Sabbath with Officer Julie Drahuta inside told her a great deal. Maybe she would not need Jackie to identify the boy.

“Julie, where the hell are you?” the radio blared.

“Chief.” Julie sighed. “I’ve got Jacqueline in the car and I’m about to talk to Rabbi Yaakov. You might want to modulate your vocabulary, Chief.”

There was a long, tense pause in which Rabbi Yaakov finally looked over at Julie.

“What, Officer Drahuta, in the name of God, is your present location, if I might enquire?”

“Deborah, Chief. I’ll leave the mike open. You’ll probably want to hear this as it happens.” Julie set the microphone on the dash and looked out of the windshield. Rabbi Yaakov looked back at her with a large smile on his kind face.

The old rabbi shared at least one common trait with her; they both tended to smile while under stress.

“I believe, Jackie, that the word he used was goy. It’s Yiddish and it means a ‘non-Jew,’ ” Julie said. “I guess their language hasn’t changed as much as English has. Anyway, how you ask is as important as the question. Maybe if you talk to Chana first and show up at one of their Sunday schools, which are on Saturday, you might have better luck than just marching up to someone and telling them to teach you Hebrew.”

“Chana just glares at me,” Jackie said. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Your recitations of Barbara Cartland are rather graphic, Jackie. Chana wants to make sure you are serious. Hebrew is an important language to Jews. It was still being spoken four hundred years from now. The language has survived a lot. Ask her respectfully, Jackie. Now stay in the car.”

“Wow! I am told Jesus spoke in Hebrew. How many languages do Jews know, you think?” Jackie muttered. “The boy spoke Greek. I’ve never seen a Jew speak Greek.”

Julie shrugged, opened the door and climbed out of her patrol car. “Good Shabbos, Rabbi Yaakov.”

“Good Shabbos, Officer Drahuta.” The man bowed slightly. Rabbis didn’t bow easily to non-Jewish women in this century or in one almost four hundred years from now. This was looking more and more serious to her.

“Is there something special about this Sabbath, Rebbe?” Julie asked, smiling.

“All are special, Officer Drahuta.” Rabbi Yaakov smiled back.

Shit, Julie thought. His smile was as good as a red flag. “So special that you have groups of children hunting down by the stream and looking along the road? You haven’t lost something, have you?”

Rabbi Yaakov looked away from Julie for a moment.

“Or someone?” Julie continued. “Are you missing a Messiah, perhaps?”

Fire blazed for a brief moment in the elderly rabbi’s eyes. “Julie, this is time for joke?”

“Purim is over, Rabbi Yaakov, so I am not joking. I don’t smile when I am joking.”

“Officer Drahuta…this is a difficult problem.”

“Why didn’t you come to me? Have we not worked well together? Have we not solved problems together? Have I not introduced you to the other men of God in Grantville? Have there been problems with the consecration of the new place of worship in Grantville? Have the Sephardim not been accepted? Non-Jews gathered money and helped Rabbi Fonseca to move here. Why do I have to learn of your problems from an eight-year-old girl?”

“Yes, and I thank you, Julie, but this is difficult. Yes, you have been very helpful. We have tried to be helpful in turn. For your help we have thanked God, Julie Drahuta.”

“You wouldn’t teach me Hebrew,” Jacqueline interrupted. Like her brother, Jackie saw rules as something less “rule-like.” The girl was, in this case, standing on the edge of the doorframe of the patrol car so, technically, she was still “in” the car.

“Jackie! Zip it!” Julie turned back to Rabbi Yaakov. She noted a loose ring of Jewish residents of Deborah standing just within earshot. “Jacqueline here had a little conversation with a young boy. I can have her describe him to you. She speaks Greek quite well. She and the boy had a short little talk. The boy seems to think he is Sabbatai Sebi and that name appears in a book or two in the public library.”

Rabbi Yaakov closed his eyes for a moment.

“He’s from Smyrna. That’s in Turkey…or, well, Ottoman Turkey…or whatever. Doesn’t that make him Sephardic? Am I missing something here? Are the boy’s parents here or in Grantville? Your place of worship is Ashkenazi, I think, correct? Why would the boy be living here? You are looking for him, right?”

“Shabbethai Sebi’s father and Rabbi Fonseca did not come to agreement on what was to be done about the boy. The father and elder brother are looking for him now,” Rabbi Yaakov stated. “The boy was told not to go to Grantville, so the father and older brother look for the boy here.”

“Ah. So the boy Jackie saw wasn’t this Sabbatai person. Good, I will be going…”

“Julie Drahuta, please. This is a difficult matter,” the man almost whispered. “God does not have a son. We must, first, be clear on this.”