Two hundred and forty-seven.
Two hundred and forty-seven is the gematria of moyreh.
Moyreh means fear.
‘Frau Meijer?’
If you don’t speak, your voice can’t fail. Chanele nodded. And went inside.
The room was high and bright. Over the windows were curtains of dirty tulle, which did little to keep out the harsh sunlight. The crossed bars of the grille appeared as dark lines on the pale fabric. Protruding from the ceiling was a big iron hook, from which a chandelier would once have hung, and on the walls the remains of stucco ornaments in the form of woven wreaths could be discerned. The floor was covered with roughly planed boards that creaked when someone walked over them. Hanging in the air was the smell of sweat and old clothes.
There were about fifteen or twenty men. Most of them sat at a long table with benches lined up beside it, the others stood around somewhere in the room, singly or in groups. One man had put a broom handle over his shoulder like a rifle, and was marching repeatedly from one wall to the other in a military goosestep, performing a ragged turn every time he got to the end. Without the disturbance of his movement, the atmosphere would not have been much different from men’s shul at the start of prayers.
None of the men were lying on the floor, and Chanele couldn’t see anyone in a white overall.
The patients weren’t dressed identically. A few of them wore quite proper suits, as if they had been invited to an official gathering, others, like poor relatives, only peasant trousers and coarse shirts. Some of the patients’ clothing had bizarre features, as with the marching man who had fastened several spoons as medals to his jacket. Another wore a tatty tailcoat over his bare chest.
Chanele had stopped in the doorway. A few of the men at the table had their heads turned towards her, but looked in such a way that any sign of perception glided over her, giving her the confusing sensation of being invisible. It was some time before anyone noticed her. Two men, both similarly tall and gaunt, like brothers, came towards, stopped close in front of her and looked at her with such harmless curiosity, such childish shamelessness, that Chanele couldn’t help smiling at them.
‘Hello,’ she said and then, when no reaction was forthcoming, she rummaged through her memory for one of the few French words she had picked up from Mimi: ‘Bonjour’.
The men looked at her with as much amazement as if she had performed a circus trick for them. A third man, the strange figure in the tailcoat, hurried over on tripping feet and tried to push the two others aside. They let him do so, but kept pushing their way over again as if attracted by a magnet.
‘You’re a woman,’ said the man in the tailcoat.
‘That’s true,’ said Chanele.
‘I thought so,’ said the man, as satisfied as a scientist whose experiment has proved a disputed theory. He turned to the two curious men and explained in the tone of a museum curator presenting the treasures of his collection to some visitors: ‘She’s a woman.’
The two men stood there wide-eyed. Some drool fell from the corner of one of the men’s mouths.
‘You don’t belong here,’ said the man in the tailcoat. ‘Women are on the other side.’
‘I’m visiting.’
With a reproachful shake of his head the man pushed the others a few steps back and explained to them, ‘She’s visiting.’
‘I’m looking for…’ Chanele began, but the man with the bare torso raised his hand majestically. Under the armpit of the tailcoat, where the seam had come apart, a big hole gaped.
‘I know who you’re looking for,’ said the man. ‘Of course I do. People often come here looking for me. But I’m here incognito.’ In an exaggerated pantomime he looked around just to be sure, and then winked at Chanele.
‘I’m not looking for you.’
The man nodded in agreement, as if she had said exactly the right thing, winked at her again and explained to the two importunate onlookers, ‘She isn’t looking for me.’ And he added with a triumphant giggle, ‘She didn’t recognise me.’
In the meantime they had been joined by a fourth man. He was poorly dressed, with a pair of trousers several sizes to big for him, which he had tied together with binding twine, and a jacket that was missing all its buttons. Before Chanele could dodge him, he had gripped her by the upper arms, pulled her to him and kissed her on the forehead. He smelled like old potatoes.
‘I have blessed you,’ the man said. ‘Now nothing more can happen to you.’ He wiped his hands thoroughly on his trousers for a long time and walked away again.
The two curious men pushed closer, and the man in the tailcoat pushed them away. ‘You’re a woman,’ he said to Chanele. ‘That’s what I thought.’
On either side of each window hung heavy, drawn night-blue curtains. From behind one of them a man who had been hiding there stepped forward.
A man in a once-white doctor’s overall.
He was old, at least as old as Salomon, and Chanele saw nothing familiar about him. His face had deep wrinkles like those that come from hunger or from many tears, and his cheeks were covered with stubble. He had covered the thin strands of his hair with a white linen cap, of the kind that men wore to service on high feast days. He was barefoot. Below the seam of his coat, thin calves could be seen.
The man was now standing right below the window, and the bright light delineated the outlines of a thin old man’s body.
He was ugly.
And he was a complete stranger to Chanele.
None the less, without thinking, and as if her legs had a will of their own, she walked up to him. She just pushed the two curious men aside. There was no sign now of the man in the tailcoat.
Walked up to him.
He saw her coming, and on his face, that lived-in, broken, old face, the emotions alternated as quickly as the light changes when a wind lashes scraps of cloud past the sun. Surprise. Amazement. Disbelief.
And love.
He stretched out his hand, not like an old man looking for support, but like a young man who can be a support to others, he stretched out his hand to her, a hand covered with brownish patches, so that she had no option but to hold out her own, and he gripped it, his skin like paper, like the pages of an old book that falls to bits when you read it, took her fingers between his own, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger to see if there was really something there, if there was really someone there, opened his mouth, moved his lips, soundless at first, the way one speaks a prayer or a magic spell, gulped and said in a voice full of tenderness and full of fear, said with an old, young voice, ‘Sarah, my darling, why are you not in bed? You should lie down.’
And then, startled by his own words, he let go of Chanele and darted back as if he had burned himself on her. He put his hands side by side, palms up and fingers bent, as if drawing water from a well, lifted them very slowly to his face and covered his eyes with them.