On a gloomy afternoon Christoffel and Robbin started off for Leyden in a thick layer of mist that rolled up off the Zyl River and held them tightly in its cocoonlike embrace. It dampened their noses and lips and entered their throats with every breath.
“I love to walk in mist,” Robbin announced, reaching out his hands to feel the moisture and his tongue to lap it up.
Christoffel looked at him askance. “Well, I don’t like it,” he said, wiping at his nose. “So why don’t you run this errand, and I’ll go home?”
“Nay!” he protested. “Your moeder sent you, and I just came along because walking is more fun with a friend.”
Robbin thought they were friends? Christoffel had to admit that they came closer to it than they had on his first visit here. Maybe it was because Christoffel had given up painting and didn’t have to listen to Robbin try to compose rambling poems to go with the pictures. He hated those poems.
Once or twice in the beginning, Robbin had asked Christoffel about his paintings, but he just told him he wasn’t doing that anymore since his vader left. Anyway, they were both busy taking care of the animals and running errands for Moeder. She could find more things for them to do.
“Nothing more than your vader does when he’s home,” she reminded them every time they complained.
Christoffel wondered how there could be so much work when they had so few guests stopping at the inn these days. Even the Beggars had not been back to The Clever Fox Inn. They were fighting Alva’s men, and Alva wasn’t in Leyden. For the past week Robbin and his moeder were their only guests. Though he wasn’t sure, Christoffel thought that was probably the reason he’d heard his own moeder crying in her bed a few times recently—that and the fact that Vader had been gone so long. He shook his head vigorously. Mustn’t let his mind wander off in that direction.
“Race you to the Rhine,” he challenged his companion, “if you dare!”
Instantly Robbin began to run, and Christoffel regretted having suggested it. In his impetuousness he’d forgotten how good a runner the boy was—and about the mist. The way was both slippery and hard to see. But he couldn’t back down now. Fortunately the corner came quickly, and he reached there only a step or two behind Robbin.
From here the outline of the city began to loom up through the shadowy mists that grew abruptly thinner. By the time they’d reached the bridge, only a few wisps wrapped themselves around their feet, and the sun was actually shining. They rattled across the wooden planks into the city and headed for the first corner that would lead them up and down short little streets to the shop where they’d buy the loaves of fresh bread from the baker at the sign of The Pretzel.
At the corner a group of boys a year or two older than Christoffel and Robbin were milling about under a spreading oak tree with crimson leaves. The moment they spotted them, they spread out to block their way. Pointing at Christoffel, they began to laugh.
“Marrano,” they shouted. “There goes the marrano with his doper friend!”
“I am not a marrano!” Christoffel protested. “And he’s no doper!”
Christoffel had no idea what either word meant. He’d heard the first one only once in church on that Sunday when the priest scolded the people because they were supporting Prince Willem and the revolt. He meant to ask his vader later what it meant, but that was the day that Vader was too angry to talk to anybody. When he asked his moeder, she had gasped and grabbed him by both shoulders.
“Never utter that word again!” she had ordered him with daggers in her eyes.
As for doper, he’d only heard the name used in scandalous whispers, and again, his moeder simply told him it was a word no decent boy would ever mouth.
The boys that stood before them now, using such bad language, were not decent boys. That he already knew. He’d heard many stories about their rowdy ways and how they’d beaten up on younger, smaller boys. In fact, he’d often seen them roaming the streets of Leyden, but they’d never paid him so much as an eyeblink of a mind before.
Robbin spoke up now. “We have an errand to run down that street.”
The whole parcel of boys broke out into uproarious mocking laughter. “You think we’ll let you go down our streets? Ha! Ha!” they snarled and puffed. “We are sent here to guard our beautiful city from all such lepers as you two—both of you as filthy as a herd of marranos!”
From the mob came a loud cry that echoed up and down the street. “Joris the Innkeeper ran away because he is a marrano, a Christ killer. And you’d best run, too, or we’ll tie you to a stake and turn you into a raging torch!”
“Just like we’ll do to Joris if he ever comes back!” shouted another, echoed by more laughter.
Intending to disregard them and skirt the mob of hecklers, Christoffel stepped forward. But they stood immovable, a solid mass of bodies rooted to the cobblestones. “Go back to your Clever Fox Inn!” taunted the tallest of them. He had a long nose, bushy eyebrows, and hands so large they frightened Christoffel.
“Stinky, mucky, squealing pigsty!” came another shout.
“Marranos! Dopers!” shouted the others in cacophonous confusion.
Then as one long body with interlocking arms and many legs and monstrous heads, they advanced, pushing Robbin and Christoffel back the way they’d come.
Steadily they pushed on, moving to the rhythm of their bloodcurdling shouts. “Go home, marranos, go home! Go home to your pigsty, go home!”
Irresistibly they forced them onto the bridge. Christoffel and Robbin had no choice but to retreat.
“Isn’t there another gate into the city?” Robbin asked.
“Ja, there’s a bunch of them, but what good will that do? There’s no secret passage to any of them, and by the time we get to one, the rowdies will be there waiting for us.”
“Your moeder needs the bread.”
“It’ll just have to wait!” Christoffel said with all the finality he could command.
By the time they had returned to the trekpath, the mist had lifted, though it still veiled the sun, turning it a watery pale yellow.
“Tell me,” Robbin asked, “why did they call your vader a marrano?”
Christoffel shrugged. “Who knows? Just needed something to do, I guess.”
“It’s not true, is it?”
“Of course not!” Christoffel said impatiently and hoped the boy would never ask him what the word meant.
The rest of the way home he engaged Robbin in a perpetual conversation about anything that happened to pop into his mind. At times he didn’t even know whether what he had to say made sense. All that mattered was that the dreaded subject of his vader and the marranos never came up again.
At home Christoffel sought out his moeder immediately and tugged her into the family’s sleeping room. She followed, protesting all the way, “I have no time for this, jongen!”
When he’d shut the door and stood facing her, she questioned, “Now, what is the meaning of this?”
“Moeder, what is a marrano?” he asked, his heart beating with frantic desperation in his doublet.
“Where did you hear that word?” she demanded.
“You know Cornelis and his mob of naughty boys?”
“You don’t listen to their language, son. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
“Moeder, listen! They blocked our way and would not let us pass into the city streets. They chased us back across the bridge, and all the time they jeered at us, calling us marranos. They said my vader is a marrano and that’s why he ran away, and if I ever go back to the city, they’ll tie me to a stake and turn me into a torch!”
“Nay!” Moeder clapped a hand over her mouth and gasped. For a long while she stood in silence, and Christoffel watched her chest rise and fall with heavy breathing.
“Tell me what the awful word means,” Christoffel persisted.
“You only need to know that it is a bad, bad word, and that what the boys said about your vader is a big, big lie.”
“They also said The Clever Fox Inn was a stinky pigsty and that Robbin is a doper!”
“More lies!” she said.
He saw a look of terror on her face. After a long pause she spoke, her manner detached, her eyes not looking at him. “I shall go for the bread myself.”
Christoffel grabbed her by the arm and pleaded, “Don’t go, Moeder. They’ll call you by that awful name, too, maybe even beat you!”
Calmly she extended her hand toward him and spoke with an urgency Christoffel could not ignore. “Now, give me the coins. I go!”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the battered pieces of silver he’d carried to Leyden and back. Hesitantly, feeling guilty for not somehow stopping her from going, he laid them in her hand and listened to the ominous sound of their clinking together. Without a word, she took them and fled through the door.
****
Hiltje walked fast all the way to Leyden. It helped to relieve the trembling she felt in every limb. Not that she, a grown woman, matron of a wayside inn, was afraid of a bunch of naughty boys. Mean-spirited little tyrants! What they needed were moeders who weren’t afraid to use long willow switches on them.
Why did they taunt her son? Of course, their accusations were lies, but where did they get names like those? In Brussels, where Joris had taken her to live when they were first married, there was a whole community of Jews, and it was not that uncommon to hear the ghastly word bantered around the streets. But Leyden had no Jews! And certainly not her husband!
Why did he run off so suddenly? To visit his brother, indeed! He had so steadfastly refused to give her a reason. But that was Joris—always keeping things to himself. If she’d had any idea what his running off would lead to, she would have tied him to his bed and never let him go.
She pushed her way on into the city, doing all she could to give off confident airs. With her nose slightly lifted, her arm snugly hugging the shopping basket to her side, she headed straight for the bakery at the sign of The Pretzel, situated at the foot of the citadel hillock. From the corner of her eyes, she kept a wary lookout for the boys who had chased her son home.
She passed a few people on the way—not friends, just familiar faces rushing to and fro on their day’s business. No one spoke to her, and she spoke to no one.
When she opened the door into the bakery, fragrances of warm fresh bread greeted her and made her feel almost welcome. But the baker rushed up to fill the doorway, blocking her entry into the room.
“I’ve no more bread,” he said shortly, his manner cold, rude—not at all his way.
“No more?”
“Just sold the last loaf before you came,” he added, shoving her back out the door. “On my way to locking up for the day.”
Hiltje turned awkwardly and stumbled back out into the late afternoon street. He lies, her heart told her. Why else would he be so anxious to keep her from seeing his shelves? The aroma her nostrils had picked up just approaching the threshold told her they were filled with bread.
Yet why would this man lie to her? She’d been buying bread in this bakery since she was a young girl. The man’s vader was living back then, but she’d been buying from the son ever since she and Joris returned from Brussels. Never had he been rude to her.
She heard the door close behind her and the drawing of the bolt. What made her so dangerous that even the baker must lock her out of his shop? And what was she to do for bread to feed her family and guests? She had enough to last through the day, if they ate it sparingly and no new guests arrived. She could make waffles. But they weren’t bread!
Perhaps tomorrow he would sell her some. Why could she not quite believe it? For some reason that made no sense at all, she doubted that the baker would ever sell her bread again. At least not until she found out what was at the bottom of this scandalous matter and managed to straighten it out.
Blindly she started off down the street toward home. She was just turning the corner when she heard loud jeering laughter coming from beyond the bakery. Then above it all rang out a clear young voice. “The marrano’s vrouw!” followed by a volley of angry shouts. “Go home, Vrouw Marrano, go home!”
Hiltje looked back over her shoulder. The mob of naughty boys was facing her, punching the air above their heads with their fists. Her knees grew limp, and her heart pounded in her ears. Nay! It could not be! The whole city must know this lying rumor by now. Why else would the baker close his shop on her? But who would send such a vicious accusation flitting about the streets?
And what was there for her to do now? If she ran away, her actions would lend credence to the awful words. If she stayed and fought them, they would not believe her, and she had to admit that she had no intention of tangling with that nasty bunch of boys. She may be bigger and stronger than any one of them, but taken all together? And what if the baker and other merchants on the street joined in? Just once, in Brussels, she’d seen a mob beat up on a lone Jew. Merciless they were to him and left him bloody on the cobblestones. In spite of the best his family could do to restore him, before the sun had set on that day, he died.
She must simply walk on, pretending not to have heard, or having heard, not to have had the slightest suspicion that they spoke of her. So drawing herself up tightly once more, lifting her nose toward the heavens, she walked on, outwardly quiet while inside she trembled like the oak leaves being blown from their branches. The voices followed, always just the same distance behind as they had begun. When she clattered across the Zyl Poort Bridge, she could hear they were standing at the gate, still yelling at her, “Go home, Vrouw Marrano, go home!”
Safely out on the trekpath, she talked softly to herself. “I must find a new way to provide bread. There’s an old oven out behind the inn. Moeder used it on holidays. She loved to bake special breads for Sinterklaas feast and New Year’s, sometimes even hot cross rolls for Easter. Nobody’s touched it for years. Probably grown up with weeds and filled with spiders! And where can I find yeast and meal enough for such a venture? Besides, how to do it? I’ve never baked bread in an oven. Maybe Gretta will know.”
Hiltje walked on, listening to the water rushing by, the meadowlarks calling to her from the poplars that lined the bank of the Zyl. Here and there a butterfly flitted past, its wings glittering in the afternoon sunlight. She looked up and watched a flock of gulls circling above the thatch of the inn not far beyond. In her mind’s eyes she envisioned her husband standing on the doorstoop, his apron stretched tightly across his paunch, one hand on his hip, the other holding tightly to a broom, calling out to her as she walked.
A great sadness, tinged with a kind of fear she was not familiar with, welled up inside of her. “Joris, my strange runaway husband with so many secrets locked up in your head,” she mumbled, “when will you return and put the sword to these mad rumors?”
****
Joris planned to stay in Ghendt only long enough to make a sketch or two and then return home. Frans had obliged him, and within a few days he had new faces for both Abraham and Isaac. Frans’ son was a boy about three years Christoffel’s senior and the ideal model for Isaac. While he was at it, he sketched Frans’ vrouw and daughters as well. Not that he had a picture in mind for them, but the process brought him more pleasure than he had expected. And his chest full of models back home needed some fresh portraits—Jewish faces for more Torah subjects? Indeed!
Three weeks later, he was still here. He missed Hiltje and the children, but he was enjoying being back in a big city, working with his brother in a shop not terribly unlike the one he used to work in when he lived in Brussels.
He had a deeper reason, though, for staying on. On that first night when he’d discovered it was Rosh Hashanah, he felt as if he belonged here in some special way. He knew the Jewish New Year was only the first of a whole season of Jewish holy days. So every night when the evening meal was over and he and Frans had visited about everything but religion and he had climbed the stairs to his attic room, he’d lay his ear on the floor and listen for the muffled sounds of celebration.
Sometimes he could make out chanting, sometimes laughing, occasionally even singing. As he listened, he kept track of the passage of days and decided they were attached to the ongoing celebrations of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the eight days of Sukkot—“Feast of Booths,” Moeder used to call it.
Though Joris dared not to take part in any of it without an invitation, yet deep down inside it felt good just being with Jews on their holy days. Tonight was the eve of the last day in the season—Simchat Torah, a day to celebrate the books of the Law from which their moeder had garnered all those fantastic stories she told them as boys. After this day he must go home. He longed to see his family again, and in some strange way, he even missed The Clever Fox Inn, if not the parade of Beggar troops that tramped through its shabby old rooms. And there were rumors of war and threats to tear down the buildings. Ja, he really must go home—tomorrow!
Joris savored the evening meal with its family orderliness—something the busyness of the inn never allowed for at home. On every other evening this was the signal for him and Frans to converse about their businesses over a mug of beer brewed by a friend two streets over and another street down from the linen shop. With no more exciting things to say to each other, they would slip off to bed.
Joris would climb the stairs and lie awake yearning to ask Frans how he’d managed to give up being the devout Christian he’d always known him to be. Tonight, though, he would not go to bed without some answers.
He stood slowly to his feet, lifting his beer mug as he arose. “Tomorrow I go to home,” he said.
“Why?” Frans laid a restraining hand on his forearm.
“Follow me, brother,” Joris begged and led the way up the two flights of winding stairs to his attic room with a still warm chimney and a murky little window looking out on the city.
They each pulled up a three-legged stool and sat at a table that matched the cramped size of the little room.
“Why must you go now?” Frans asked, his brow wrinkled and his eyes registering earnestness.
“Why not?” Joris questioned, searching his brother’s face for some evidence that he was ready to talk for once about things that mattered.
“It’s just that…” he began, looking down, “that I’ve begun to grow accustomed to our evening conversations.”
“Humph!” Joris puffed. “Conversations that go nowhere—bolts of linen, inn guests—we amble over the same tedious circuits every night. Nay! I’ve been away far too long already. ’Twas on the one hand selfish of me to come in the first place. With Leyden facing a siege and the burgemeester threatening to tear down The Clever Fox Inn…Ach!” Joris held his head in his hands, pressing fingers into his temples. “My poor dear vrouw and children!” he moaned.
Frans breathed deep and stared at the fingers of both hands intertwining each other on the table before him. Finally he looked up and asked, “Why did you come, little brother? I mean the deep reason, not what you told me about sketching Vader Abraham. Something else drew you here.”
For how many nights had Joris climbed into his bed in this room disappointed that he had not yet been asked this question? Yet now that he heard it, his heart beat a rhythm that would not be ignored, and his mouth felt sticky. He looked in Frans’ direction and saw earnestness in the dark eyes.
“I came with a longing once more to talk with our own people, to touch Jewish flesh and mind and heart.”
“A Jewish heart? What made you think to find such a one in this converso?”
“’Twas a chance I had to take,” Joris mumbled. “In the beginning I wondered. Then almost immediately I began to see what you have become—a public Christian on Sundays and a secret Jew on all the other days!”
Frans cringed. “You saw that in me?”
Joris laughed. “That I did, because the real water deep within your wells is Jewish, not Christian at all. What has caused my pain these days is the awful way you have refused to tell me from your lips, nor ask me about my heart.” He paused, questioning whether to go on. Then taking Frans by the arm and looking intently into his eyes, he pleaded, “Tell me, why did you refuse to respond when I urged you into conversation?”
“I…I feared you were lying in wait for me,” Frans stammered.
“Lying in wait for my own brother?”
“Forgive me, Joris, but I’ve seen so much betrayal, and neither had I good reason to believe for an instant that you were anything but true to your Christian profession—married to a Goyim, naming your son Christoffel. Besides, we have never talked about the religious beating of our hearts together—never!”
“Ah, ja! Moeder wouldn’t allow it.” Joris felt the fear go out of him like an expiring breath. “I guess you could not know any more about me than I about you.”
Frans hesitated. His eyes somber, almost wary, he began. “I have watched you and listened to you since you came. Each night when we gathered our children around us to celebrate, first Yom Kippur, then Sukkot, my vrouw urged me to call you in to celebrate with us. She has been convinced, almost from the beginning, that you were one of us. ‘A true Jew,’ she calls you.” He paused, swallowed hard, then added, “I feared too much to believe her. After all, I am the protector of this household.”
“That I understand.” Joris nodded and went on. “When your vrouw put the apple and honey by my bed that first night, I knew she at least could be trusted. I wondered about you.”
Frans’ face relaxed almost to a hint of a smile from behind the heavy beard. “When did you know you were not a Christian?”
“Truth is,” Joris said, nodding, “for all my life, I have tried with every sinew in my body to be Christian.”
Frans nodded. “I too. Vader insisted.”
“And Moeder could not say him nay.”
“But she taught us how to be Jews, Joris.”
“Think you that she knew the day would come when we could no longer lie to ourselves?”
“Not only did she know it,” Frans said with animation, “she prayed for it. In spite of all that Vader said and did to deny his Jewishness, every humor in her body remained Jewish. Some inner compulsion drove her.”
“But did she begin to know the pain her efforts would inflict on us?”
Frans pursed his lips for a long moment, then nodded. “She had to be no stranger to the pain, Joris. Think what she suffered.”
“Then why, Frans, did she not let us go on in the way Vader laid out for us? She could have saved us the agony of one day being forced to choose.”
Frans cupped his chin in both hands and pondered a moment before he answered. “She lived by Deuteronomy six, ‘You shall impress [Yahweh’s precepts] upon your sons…bind them as a sign on your hand…write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.’”
“I could never obey those words in my home.” Joris stared at his brother, not seeing his expression, only pleading for companionship in his agony.
“I thought I couldn’t, either, until the anguish in my soul grew too unbearably great. Then one day the local priest began circulating rumors that some of my friends were marranos. He sent inquisitors into their homes.”
“Were they actually practicing our religion in secret?”
“Some were, some weren’t. In either case, I know the church meant their threats to warn us to give up all such deceitful ways. With me it worked just the opposite.”
“Made you sympathize with our people and want to live like we were taught, right?”
Frans nodded and raised his hands with enthusiasm. “How did you know?”
“That’s what it did to me when our priest told us that all who insisted on supporting Prince Willem were marranos!”
Frans smiled. “Then you’ll understand when I say I began to swell with a great indignity. Christianity talks about love and kindness, but in the priest’s witch-hunting actions, I saw only cruelty. From that point on, I knew I was no Christian at heart.”
“Think you that Jesus intended Christianity to be so harsh?” Joris felt a trembling in his heart as he posed the question.
Frans frowned and stared at his intertwining fingers for a time before he shook his head and said, “Nay. That much I can’t quite believe. Whatever else we have to say about Him, He was a good man.”
“Was He the Christ? The Messiah? The Lamb of God?”
Joris listened to the silence and probed his own soul for an answer. It did not come. Finally Frans spoke. “Must we answer those questions, Joris?”
“I think our vader has made it forever impossible to do so.”
“I fear I must struggle with those questions till my dying breath.”
“Is that why you still take your family to the St. Bavo’s Kerk?”
“Maybe. I only know for sure it’s the one thing Vader taught us about religion that I will continue to do. I must protect the family Yahweh has given to me. Deep down inside, though, I shall never again take a part with them. Nor shall I cease to lead my family at home in the ways our moeder taught us.”
“Ach! Ach! Ach!” Joris pounded on the table with his fist and felt the sweat beads oozing from the pores in his forehead. “Frans, think what would happen if I tried that under my thatch. My vrouw has not even the faintest glimmer of a reason to suspect that I am other than she. Never could I change her beliefs. Nor would Yahweh ask it of me!”
Frans sighed. “That is a great perplexity, Joris. But what of your children? They have as much Jewish blood running in their veins as they have Hiltje’s Goyim blood.”
Joris stirred uneasily, rearranging his rotund body on the wobbly little stool. “In the nights when I slip out and climb up into the loft and drape the prayer shawl over my head and recite my Sh’ma, I always ask Yahweh to forgive me. What more can I do?”
Frans shook his head and tapped a forefinger gently on the table between them. “I don’t know…unless…perhaps you can paint more of the stories Moeder told us from the Torah and teach your Christoffel to do the same.”
Joris felt a leap of hope. “You think so?”
“Why not? Even the Christians have our stories in their Bible, you know.”
“But the priests don’t let them read it. In fact, to own a copy of the Christian Bible is as great a sin in the eyes of a priest as to celebrate the Sabbath.”
Frans frowned and tugged at his long beard. “The Calvinists approve of Bible reading. Have they a church now in Leyden where you could go?”
Joris shuddered. “Indeed they do have use now of our Marekerk. But they offer no good answer, Frans. They will string up a man in an instant if he paints an image. They uphold the second commandment with more rigor than we.”
“I thought their objection was only to paintings in the churches.”
Joris shook his head. “So they say, but…nay, I cannot go in their direction. Perhaps the day will come when we shall no longer be allowed to make our way through the gates into Leyden anyway. Then no one can hold us to account that we go not to church at all.” He sighed, stood, and walked to the window. Looking out at the round fuzzy blob that was the moon, he said, “When I go to home tomorrow, I shall let my son watch me paint the new faces for Abraham and Isaac. What more, Yahweh only knows.”
Frans joined him at the window. “You shall talk of our ways ‘when you walk in the way’—or paint in the studio,” he said. “And I trust Yahweh will show you that way.”
The brothers embraced. “You have restored my shriveling soul, my brother,” Joris muttered into Frans’ broad shoulder.
“Now you must come with me to the cellar,” Frans said in a bright tone, laying a hand on Joris’ arm. “For all the other nights of the season of holy days, we have celebrated with our family alone in our living rooms. On this last night, several Jewish families from this part of the city will join together in the celebration of Simchat Torah. Remember what Moeder taught us about it—Rejoicing in the Torah?”
Joris gulped. “I do remember it well. Dancing around the room with the Torah, kissing it, reading the last verses of Deuteronomy to close out the old year and the first verses of Genesis to begin the new. But…”
“But what?”
“None of your friends know me. Will they not fear my presence?”
Frans laughed. “When I tell them you are a true Jew and my brother, they will not question.”
Already he was on his way down the stairs. Joris followed, his heart beating a rapid warning signal. What was he about to do? In his bosom he knew that to participate in a Simchat Torah was to admit to being a true Jew.
By the time they had finished their descent into the bowels of this tall deep building and passed through a series of locked rooms, his head was spinning almost out of control. They stopped in a squarish windowless room with a table in the center and crude benches all around the stone walls. The table held a candlestick with seven candles, and from the benches reflecting the undulating light, Joris could see many pairs of eyes fixed on them. Frans’ family was among them.
Frans bowed, then spoke softly, “Shalom.” With a gesture in Joris’ direction, he added, “My brother, Joris, a true Jew.”
Joris felt his heart jump. A true Jew? Was he really that? Looking out at the little community prepared to accept him on his brother’s words, he mumbled, “Shalom.”
He felt clumsy, but the swimming of his head was subsiding.
A soft murmured response came from around the room, “Shalom.”
They took seats, and a warm vibrant sensation welled up inside of Joris. Was it a synagogue of sorts? He felt his eyes grow large with wonder. He’d heard whispers of how Anabaptists were forced to meet in hidden churches. Was this a hidden synagogue? Why not?
An older man with snowy white beard rose from his place. Must be a rabbi. Joris blinked and stared hard. He’d never seen one before. Together with Frans the old man went to a far corner of the room. Carefully they removed several stones until they pulled from a hole in the wall a large heavy object, looking much like a bolt of linen. They carried it to the table, where they peeled off its outer shell, and the rabbi lifted out a scroll.
A real Torah! Joris stared in wonder. Never had he thought his eyes would rest on such a treasure!
The services began with the rabbi invoking the favor of Yahweh upon their assembly. Joris sat as in a trance, listening to the prayers and chants and the reading of the assigned Scriptures for the day. Before he knew it, they were all on their feet, dancing and chanting, “Hosanna! Hosanna!”
In the midst of the jubilation, the rabbi began to circle the room, carrying the Torah scroll.
“Is he doing what Moeder used to call the hakafot?” Joris asked Frans.
“You remembered? Ah, Joris, ’tis in your heart indeed!”
As the rabbi passed the congregants, they leaned over and kissed the sacred book. When he’d completed his encirclement, he handed the scroll to another who carried it around. This was followed by another hakafot and yet another. Some carried it in pairs, some alone. On the seventh hakafot, the scroll was handed to Frans. He nudged Joris and said, “Help me, brother.”
No longer allowed to play the safe observer, Joris was torn between a strong impulse to carry the Torah and an equally strong impulse to run from the place. From some buried spot inside, a voice seemed to remind him that to carry the Torah was to shout to the whole world, “I am a Jew!”
Nay, he argued, he must always keep his Jewishness hidden away—his prayer shawl in the stable loft, Vader Abraham in the bottom of his painter’s chest. The whole world must never see him for who he really was.
In the deepest part of his being, where he knew what was true and what was not, he knew that if he carried the Torah, God would always hold him to his declaration. He could never again play Christian in the same way he had done all his life. Once back home, he must go to his stable every night without fail and wear the prayer shawl and recite the Sh’ma. And he must take Christoffel with him. Could he do it?
One end of the scroll was already in his hands, his feet were stumbling around the dirt floor next to Frans, and his lips were joining in the continuing cries of “Hosanna!”
They returned the Torah to its place on the table and joined in the dancing and singing, “Let us rejoice on Simchat Torah and honor the Torah!”
For the rest of a long and exciting evening, Joris celebrated and shuddered, both at the same time. ’Twas one thing to do the rituals here where his Jewishness was no secret. But back at home with Christoffel? And Hiltje? Yet he must do it, for to carry a scroll on a hakafot was a promise to be a Jew for all days and in all places.
Frans’ vrouw served drinks to the merrymakers, then took the children up to their beds. The celebration went on far into the night. Little by little members of the group slipped out. When the last had gone, Joris and Frans stood in the dim light, still clouded with dust from the trampled floor. They embraced once more.
“Can you imagine what Simchat Torah must be like in an open synagogue, where voices need not be muffled by layers of walls, and singing can be wholehearted?” Frans suggested.
“It could never be more glorious than it was tonight,” Joris said softly.
Together they made their way up out of the cellar, climbing the flights of narrow winding stairs. When they’d reached the floor where Frans would sleep, he took Joris by the arm and said just above a whisper, “Next year you must come back to celebrate all the feasts with us—and bring your Christoffel along. In the middle of Wine Month next year.”
“That shall I mostly gladly do!” Joris knew he’d found in his brother a rare comrade of the soul.