Джеймс Миченер - The Source

When the terms of departure were agreed upon, the Duke of Podi signed the paper and in later years this fact would be remembered against him. The archbishop signed, too, and this was also recorded. Finally the Dominican thrust the document at the Jew, warning him, “If one item is transgressed, you may not depart.”

But Zaki had his permission, and in a kind of mysterious terror he fled the room where he had always been treated so justly by the duke and his brother, for he sensed the deepening of a tragedy whose outlines he only vaguely understood; but as he crossed the piazza on his way to talk with a ship captain about passage, he stopped at the marble statue of the condottiere and muttered a prayer, “May God, Who allowed you to conquer this city, allow you to keep it.”

Then, as he neared home, he began to sweat, for although he had convinced the duke, the archbishop, the friar and the ship captain, he still had to convince his wife, and this would prove most difficult of all. But on one point he felt not the slightest uncertainty: even though he knew that tragedy was about to engulf Podi, if his wife and daughters refused to flee with him he would have to remain with them. “Rachel is sometimes a trial,” he muttered to himself, “but no man can desert his wife. Besides, she’s given me three lovely daughters.” For her sake he prayed that he could persuade her to leave the city.

When he reached his shoemaker’s shop he tried to put on a look of firmness and he must have succeeded, for Rachel saw that a decision of moment was about to be announced.

“I’ve been to the duke’s,” he began.

“Yes?”

“And he has agreed to let us go.”

“Where?”

“I’ve also been to see the captain and he has agreed …”

“Where?”

“There’s no turning back, Rachel,” the fat rabbi pleaded. “Evil days are ahead in this city …”

“Where?” she screamed. “Salonica?”

“Yes,” he said bravely, raising his arms to fend off the attack that must take place.

To his surprise Rachel sat down. She breathed heavily, made no other sound and hid her face in her hands. After a while she gave a low sob and summoned her daughters from the other room. “We’re going to Salonica,” she announced softly, like the whisper of a volcano afraid to explode. The oldest girl, Sarah, gasped and her mother leaped from the chair. “Yes!” she shouted. “Your father’s taking us to Salonica!” The youngest child began to cry and Rachel slapped her. “We’re going to Salonica,” she shouted in a hysterical giggle. “You’re all going to marry Turks.” She collapsed in the chair; even the older girls began crying, whereupon she stormed about the room, shouting, “We’re going to Salonica, oh, my God!” Then she slapped each of the girls harshly and announced calmly, “We shall do as your father says. No one in this room will ever again argue about his decision.”

She kept her word. With demonic frenzy she applied herself to packing the family goods, but as she tied each parcel the Dominican friar would come to inspect it, reminding her that many of the things she wanted to take belonged, by agreement, to the Church. Once Zaki was afraid that Rachel would fly at the Dominican, but she patiently surrendered even the toys of her children. When the friar had completed his third scrutiny Rachel declared war, muttering, “Very well.” Digging up a secret hoard of forbidden gold pieces she sewed them adroitly into unlikely places, so that when the rabbi’s family was given its final searching she succeeded in smuggling so many coins that she could support the family for some years in its flight.

The Jews of Podi came to the pier to bid their frightened rabbi farewell, and to him they seemed like a necklace of beautiful pearls strung along the dock, causing tears to well up in his eyes as he listened to their farewells; fortunately he could not hear their whispers: “Look at our crazy rabbi. Lost his head because a whore pulled down his pants.” And then, like the shadow of death crossing the waves, a darkness came over Zaki’s vision and he saw his beloved congregation as it was to be. There stood fat Jacopo, who had been in the race, and he would be burned alive in 1556. Beside him stood thin Meir, a cherished friend who would be burned alive in 1555. There were the sisters Ruth and Zipporah; the elder would be burned alive in 1555, but the younger would die in prison almost torn apart by torture. There was also the gentle Josiah, who would die at the stake in 1556, but because he was dim-witted he would escape death by flame, because at the end he would say uncomprehendingly, “Of course I accept conversion,” and the executioner would mercifully strangle him before the fires began.

The cloud passed, and the doomed Jews stepped aside as the smiling Duke of Podi came onto the dock, crying, “Good-bye, Zaki. No one in Podi had bitterness against you. You’re being very stupid.” And one day this generous-hearted man would be humbled and hounded from his dominion because of the assistance he would give his Jews in their time of trial.

It would not be proper to claim that on this day in 1541 Zaki foresaw these precise events in the darkened faces of his friends, but he knew with a certainty that similar things were bound to happen. To no one could he confide, not even to his bewildered, faithful wife, the reasons for his insight: “If men repeat often enough their hatreds the evil comes to pass.” He looked at his dear friends, his lovely companions doomed in their goodness, and he wept.

His wife, ashamed of his latest display of cowardice, refused to weep. But as the ship started to move she cried hysterically, “We are going to Salonica.” During the first days of the tedious voyage she and her daughters kept to themselves, but when Muslim pirates threatened the ship she began to wail, “Is this what you are taking us to Salonica for?” And she made so much commotion that the captain bellowed “Rabbi, shut that woman up or I’ll let the pirates catch us.” Zaki went to his wife and pleaded, “Rachel, if we have escaped Italy, God will not abandon us to slavery now.” His wife looked at him with blank amazement and forgot the pirates: her husband was still talking gibberish, and she was so appalled to have married such a fool that she kept her mouth shut.

The pirates were outdistanced, but the ship was forced to land in

“Why do you worry about the Germans?”

“If we cause such hatred in Catholic hearts, then we should go,” Eliezer replied simply.

“Those people today?” Isaac countered. “If they didn’t hate us they’d find somebody else.”

“I no longer want to be the cause of Christians’ committing sin,” Eliezer said, and his wife noticed that in three sentences he had moved the argument upward from German to Catholic to Christian; and when the men argued further, he said firmly, “I will not live with my brother if I cause him to outrage God.” Leah thought: This great, good man, constantly he lifts matters up to where they truly rest.

There was a change in the discussion when Isaac, still hopeful that the Jew would find an honorable place in Germany, argued, “The dominance of the Church over us is limited, Eliezer. Before long Gretz may be a Lutheran city,” and spurred by these words the Jews in the crowded synagogue reopened the speculation begun twenty years earlier at the publication of Luther’s conciliatory letter on the Jews: Was there a possibility that a new kind of Christianity might replace the old?

“We must pray for the triumph of Luther,” one of the hopeful Jews reasoned. “In all parts of Germany he is humiliating the Church, and with his victory our freedom will come.”

A matter of real hope had been raised, a breath of fresh air sweeping down the centuries of persecution and entering even the crushed houses of the Gretz Judenstrasse. No Jew dared openly say that he prayed for the downfall of his ancient oppressor, for the Church had proved remorseless in its punishment of renegades, but it was agreed against Rabbi Eliezer’s advice to wait a little longer; and that night when the congregation had departed, even Leah whispered, “We should not go to Turkey, husband. Our children are happy here and we have a good life.” But Eliezer knew that she was not right. No life that involved the hatreds he had seen that day, even though no man had been killed or no house burned, could possibly be termed good.