— Linka was still enthralled by the clinic. She spent her time helping Mani and the midwife. Sometimes, lying in bed at night in Christ’s Church, she seemed as distant from me as if I were in Cracow and she in Jelleny-Szad.
— No. I did not spend Yom Kippur by myself. It began with their convincing me to join them for the meal before the fast. At the table, when we were done eating, Mani turned to me directly and demanded that we postpone our trip. At first I did not give a straight answer; finally, though, I said, “I must get back to my patients.” I could not for the life of me, however, think of who they were, except for little Antony, whom I play checkers with after each examination.
— Why, yes, there is Szimek too. How could I have forgotten Szimek? How is he?
— Really? Oh, my! Szimek…
— Yes.
— Tomorrow…
— My goodness, Szimek… But where was I? Ah, yes: at the meal before the fast. He kept pressing me to stay while I pleaded my patients and Linka kept silent. That was when he let the cat out of the bag. Why, he suggested, did I not return home by myself and let Linka stay on through the autumn, or even until spring, when he would bring her back to Europe — to Venice, or perhaps even all the way to Jelleny-Szad? You could have heard a pin drop. Linka turned red. The boy bit his lips. Mani’s old mother questioningly turned her blind, groping eyes toward us. I weighed my words carefully. “Linka,” I said, “is indeed no longer a child and is free to lead her own life. But I am obliged to bring her back to her father and mother. Once that is done, she can of course go anywhere she wishes.” I saw her start to protest and restrain herself. The old grandmother swiveled her head to divine the shadows at the table while Mani’s wife rose to clear the dishes, shifting her glance from her shamefacedly love-stricken husband to Linka, the overgrown girl brought home from Europe who had managed to become a young woman within the space of several days… Just then we heard a strange, harsh scream from below, followed by the frightened cry of the midwife. Mani jumped to his feet with Linka and I right behind him, for it was clear that this was no labor pain but something far worse. Quite firmly, however, he told us not to follow him; he would see to the matter himself; we should finish our meal, he said, and go to synagogue. And so he went below and we continued eating in silence until Linka turned to me furiously and said — in Polish rather than Yiddish — “What do you mean, you are obliged to bring me back?” “But I am,” I answered her quietly. “Not so much to Papa as to Mama, who is very ill. Now let us go pray for her.” I rose, thanked Mani’s wife for the meal, and asked the boy to take us to synagogue.
— Why did I do what?
— It was not to alarm her. It was to bring her to her senses.
— She would never have come back otherwise, Papa… never…
— Why alarm anyone? But the fact is… well, no matter…
— No.
— No matter.
— I said, no matter. We went to their synagogue. There were candles burning everywhere, and it looked like a mosque with all its carpets and cushioned benches along the walls. The boy led me to his father’s seat and I was given a prayer shawl and wrapped in it, because the Sephardic men wear prayer shawls even before they are married. And so I abandoned myself to their merry hymns, which trot along at a cheerful clip without any whining arpeggios, only to look up halfway through the service and see Mani at my side, in his prayer shawl with bloodstains on his fingernails. “The baby died and I don’t know why,” he whispered to me morosely. I felt I should say something; but before I could, he added, “It wasn’t the cord.” After that he was silent except for joining his voice to the cantor’s now and then in some hymn or tune. And so the prayer dragged on into the night.
— Nor can I.
— I could not get away. We returned together across the empty fields, walking slowly with the boy trailing as usual behind us like a catchword awaiting the next page. In front of the clinic two men in work clothes were waiting for us, Jewish farmhands from somewhere outside Jerusalem. Within, in the big room, which was lit only by faint moonlight, we saw the woman lying with her face toward the wall; her husband leaned over her, trying to get her to look at him. Mani walked by them without stopping; he handed his prayer shawl bag to the midwife and led me by the hand to see the dead child in the delivery room. It was lying on a small table in the corner, wrapped in a folded bath towel — a little blue baby girl, perfectly formed, her eyes shut as though fast asleep. Mani picked her up and shook her, slapping her back as if still expecting a cry, and laid her so carefully down on a bed that you might have thought he hoped there was another baby inside her that might yet be born alive. He asked if I remembered my pathology. I nodded. Well, then, he said, why don’t we do an autopsy to establish the cause of death? Although I tried to talk him out of it, he had already seized a scalpel — he was that frantic to find out — and begun looking for a place for the incision when a sound from behind a curtain made him stop. We went to have a look and found the boy hiding there — but before we could shoo him out the door, this was blocked by the father of the dead baby, who wanted the body, since his friends had come to take him and his wife back to their farm. Mani made an effort to dissuade him; thought better of it, wrapped the baby up again; and handed it, looking like a big, sleeping bird, reluctantly over… I hitched a ride with the farmhands on their wagon, grieving with them in silence; near the Lions’ Gate they let me off and I slipped through the wall not far from the big mosque. There was not a sound. The streets were deserted. I had to cross the entire walled city to the Tower of David, and I tried to bolster my spirits by singing one of those Sephardic prayers that resembled an army march. I could not get the melody right, though — and all this time I was haunted by a vision of that dead baby lying in the bed. Besides which, I had a new worry now… are you listening, Father?
— Linka.
— I was so anxious that I awoke early the next morning, quite unable to spend Yom Kippur holed up in Christ’s Church as I had planned. And so back I went to the Manis’, hungry and thirsty, forced to partake in a fast that had imposed itself on me against my will. The house was empty. There was not a soul there, not even the midwife, who had gone to synagogue too. The kitchen was cold and the fire was out in the cookstove. I hurried off to the synagogue — and what did I meet on my way but a carriage, out of which climbed Mani with his doctor’s bag, looking a wreck. He was returning, it seemed, from a vigil with a patient that had not gone well. We entered the synagogue together to find the congregation in the middle of the service, the military marches having yielded to heartbreakingly sad melodies. As we took our seats and joined the prayer, I made out Linka behind a white curtain in the woman’s gallery; she was sitting perfectly still beneath her black kerchief with Mani’s wife, his daughter, and the Swede, who was off in a corner beneath a large window ablaze with that Jerusalem light that had been an object of my contemplation since arriving in the city. It was only on that final day, however, during the Yom Kippur service, when there was nothing to do for long hours but look at it, that I began, I believe, to understand it…