“Why do you burst in on me?” My Lord picked up his mask from a table near the bed and put it on as the guards averted their eyes.
Argeh stood speechless. At the foot of the bed, Tevach snored.
“I apologize… My Lord. I only wanted to… We had word that you were in danger.”
My Lord tilted his head back in the ironic Fiore style, the blankness of the mask giving it a crueler bent. “Your regard touches my heart, Argeh. Good Festival to you. Now leave.”
My Lord peered out at the streets anxiously as they approached the arena. His eyes fell on faces, on hands, searching for hints of rebellion. He saw one male Fiore signal another over the crowd. Followers of the heretic?
He leaned back in the seat of the carriage, sighing. The eyes of the Jew were on him.
“I was hoping you would come back to visit me,” Aharon said, “and we could talk some more.”
My Lord fluttered his fingers in a gesture of indifference. “There is nothing to be said.” The depth of that answer did not come through. He tried again. “It has been enough just to see you. Your presence has meant more than you know. It has been a long time since I’ve seen one of my own.”
Aharon inclined his head, accepting the compliment, but he looked a little guilty. “I—I have something to confess. Tevach took me to see the heretic at the prison.”
My Lord had already guessed. He had known it the night he had stood there and had heard teachings from The Book of Torment echoing through the House of Cleansing.
“You saw Wallick, too,” My Lord said tightly. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he was quite changed.”
Aharon’s eyes widened. Two spots of flame appeared on his cheeks. “No. I didn’t go into that room, Yosef. I didn’t even look. Because what’s yours is yours. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that I don’t judge you, no matter what. I don’t have the right.”
The hard places in Kobinski ground together as though in agony. It took a moment for My Lord to collect himself. “Thank you,” he said simply. He reached into his robe and brought forth a piece of parchment. “You will not be able to stay here after the Festival. I prepared this map for you. It shows the way to a small rural town called Chebia. Tevach’s family is there. It is a modest place, but the Fiori are decent. They will help you.”
“I thought maybe… the gateway. What you said before… “ Aharon looked embarrassed.
My Lord leaned his head back on the rough seat, studying the Jew’s face. It was strange how you could see chesed. Like water it softened the lines made by life’s bitterness, made the eyes wetter and more open as though they had been flooded. Fiori had done its work on Aharon in a way it had never done for My Lord, in a way he had never allowed it to do. It hurt My Lord to see it, the way hope hurts one who is hopeless, the way the sight of a newborn hurts one who is childless.
“You’ve changed, Aharon. Perhaps enough to trigger the gateway; I don’t know. It takes a significant difference between your own wave and that of the planet to trigger a gateway. But even if you did go through, there is no telling where you would end up. Even if you made it to the fifty-fifty universe, you have to understand that there are thousands of worlds there. The odds of your appearing on Earth are infinitesimal. I’m sorry. Still, I have marked the place on the map also. It is up to you whether you wish to try it someday or not.”
Aharon’s eyes were bright and somber as this news sank in. He sighed. “I see. I have felt… Your book has been a great help to me, Yosef, but I still have much work to do. Maybe you and I could work together? Maybe we could both go to Tevach’s family?”
“Time is not a river, Aharon; it’s a tapestry. All the threads we’ve woven over a lifetime create the present. I wish I could go back and change those threads, but I cannot.”
Aharon looked baffled.
“There is no time left for me,” My Lord clarified.
“Don’t say such a thing! You have so much to give. What about your mind, your work?”
My Lord closed his eyes, amazed at how quaint those words sounded. “Believe me when I say that the time for me to be Yosef Kobinski, the teacher and scholar, came and went long ago. Whatever I had to give to the world, it was given in that book. What is left—what is left is between me and God and no one else.”
“I can’t accept that.”
My Lord looked at Aharon and smiled. “If there is one thing you can do for me, it is to accept, accept that Kobinski died in Auschwitz. Because that is what truly happened, and that is what I want.”
“We have a choice,” Aharon insisted, in a soft rabbi’s voice. “At each and every moment. Nu? You taught me that.”
“I understand my choices at this moment very well, Aharon. And if I’m lucky, if God is merciful, I will make the right one.”
My Lord scanned the arena, trying to judge how much of the ominous atmosphere was coming from the crowd and how much from his own mind. The closing ceremonies were the highlight of the Festival, so the packed house was not abnormal. But the massed Fiore were agitated, literally on the edges of their seats. The Fiore were capable of ravenous violence, and the threat of it hung above the crowd like a mist. My Lord was leaning forward, upright in his seat, the better to see, and when he noticed Argeh in exactly the same posture an ironic smile came to his lips.
Argeh was sweating as well. Good. Let him sweat.
Behind Argeh, Sevace was outfitted for anything, heavy gloves on his hands, his curved stone blade sharp and ready at his side. When he felt My Lord’s gaze he glanced over with unmistakable fear and looked quickly away. My Lord smiled again. Sevace was thinking, perhaps, that he was sure he’d felt the knife go in, that he’d seen the blood…
“What is it? Why are there so many guards?” Aharon asked anxiously.
Down in the grisly arena, where the bodies of those who had been mounted on the hechkih earlier in the week still hung, Argeh had supplemented the decorative festival troops. Whole companies were arranged near the ground-floor entrances and spread along the walls. They were heavily armed.
“It’s the execution of the heretic. Argeh expects trouble,” My Lord said quietly. “If things get ugly, you must go immediately. My carriage is in back—take it and leave the city.”
“What are you talking? What will happen?”
My Lord held up his hand to stave off the questions. He wiped his face. He turned and pretended to look at the crowd behind them, but instead he looked at Tevach. The little mouse was on hyperalert, his nostrils wide, his eyes darting around the arena. He nodded at someone.
My Lord put his elbow on the arm of his chair, and rested his head in his hand. He was deeply frightened. I have no power, said a voice in his head. Another answered, But I do; I have the power of any man. Even a man who is bound and gagged has this power: to choose who he is. And that is the only power that really exists. Any other is illusionary.
The blare of the opening fanfare.
Kobinski prayed, Lord, Wallick had no mercy on me, on Isaac, and You did not stop him. I had no mercy on Wallick, and You did not stay my hand. If I have mercy now, will You have mercy on me?
But he knew the answer: His mercy on others was God’s mercy on him; by being merciful he became mercy. Like to like, like to like, like to like.
In the arena, the opening prayers of the priests were rumbling upward. My Lord forced himself to stand, telling his joints to bear his weight whether they would or no. He slowly made his way across the aisle, down a step. Sevace watched his approach with growing discomfort. He tugged on Argeh’s sleeve.
The pushed-in face that turned to him had haunted him for a long time. My Lord whispered in Argeh’s ear, “I have been informed of a rebellion.”