Raisins and Almonds

They came into the lobby of a block of apartments, and he knocked on the second door.

The staircase smelt of urine; poverty reeked from the dilapidated building.

'Coming, coming,' yelled someone behind the blistered door. 'Oh, it's you, Rabbi, what can I do for you? Did you like the latkes I left for you last night?'

Mrs Rabinowitz was small and would have been stout if she had been properly fed. She was wiping her wet hands on her skirt as she came to the door. When she saw Phryne she stared in astonishment. The Rabbi waved a hand at her.

'This is Miss ... Miss ... it is of no importance. She has a translation task for me, can you come and sit with her? I must consult my books.'

Mrs Rabinowitz tugged off her apron, put her door key in her pocket, and picked up a covered plate. She accompanied the scholar and Phryne on a long climb. The old man was short of breath, and stopped to pant at every landing. Phryne, trying not to shame him with her own health and strength, fell behind with Mrs Rabinowitz.

'There isn't any trouble, is there, Miss?' asked the older woman in a whisper. 'He's a holy man, no one to care for him, if it wasn't for his students he'd have nothing but his books, he'd be a great teacher if he would take more than a few pupils, but he won't. And he forgets to eat, so I bring him a little something when I can. You're not looking for ... magic, are you Miss? Fortune telling, is it?'

'No, I need him to read some mysterious papers for me. Does he tell fortunes?'

'Everyone knows he can see the future. But telling fortunes, that's against the law. He never tells fortunes,' emphasized Mrs Rabinowitz, making Phryne certain that occasionally the Rabbi did tell fortunes. 'He's studied all his life, never eats meat or drinks wine. But here he is, no one to care for him since his wife died last year, she was an angel, that woman.'

Eventually they reached the Rabbi's door, and then had to wait while he searched all of his pockets for his keys. Phryne heard babies crying and smelt old boiled cabbage and ancient ghosts of long dead fried suppers. Her miserable childhood came back with a rush. Young Phryne had played up and down steps like these, cold dirty cement. She had lived in a flat like this, so old and grimy that it could never be made clean. Her scalp itched as she remembered filth and headlice, and she was glad when the rabbi finally managed to open his door and she could go in.

It was bare and poor and dusty, but it smelt of old books. On a kitchen table stained with ink was piled a treasury of leather-bound ancient volumes, and there were more on the floor, stacked up, open at illustrations of dragons and lions. She saw the Tree of the Kabala again in a folio tome on which a scatter of pages lay. 'Please sit down,' said Rabbi Elijah, in a rusty social manner. There didn't seem to be anywhere to sit, so Phryne stood and watched as the old man sorted the leaves and laid them out in piles. His hands were long and fine, with pale knob-knuckles which spoke of arthritis. His skin seemed untouched by any sun. His fingernails were clean and cut slightly long.

'These,' he said, pushing one stack over, 'are illuminations from a medieval textbook on alchemy, and I cannot decipher them, except to say that they show various stages in the composition of the philosopher's stone. The ancients believed that it rendered all things perfect.'

'I thought it turned base metal into gold,' commented Phryne.

'Certainly. Gold is the perfect metal. Therefore the lapis philosophorum would make lead into gold. It was also believed,' Phryne noted with glee that Rabbi Elijah, a teacher, could not refrain from teaching, even though his auditor was a shiksa and probably unclean, 'that it could cure all diseases and make men immortal.'

'By raising them to their perfect state.'

'Good.' He raised his eyes, saw Phryne, and blinked when he realized to whom he was talking. But it was too late for him to slip back into his shell, so he continued. 'They described it as being as fine as oil and solid as glass, and no one has ever managed to make it. A dream, but men must have dreams.'

Phryne wondered what dreams the old man had dreamed, to bring him to Australia, and how they coincided with this poor drab place.

'Alchemy has always been connected with the study of the Holy Kabala, and these writings use a system of numbers which is derived from a reading of the Torah, the scriptures. If I can only find ... here is Zorah, Sepher Yetzirah, Akiba's Alphabet, yes, and Shuir Komah, which states that the measurement of the body of man is the measure of being and of the nature of God. Hmm, surely I didn't lend it to Shimeon?' He lifted books with difficulty, singing his litany of titles, searching for a particular text. Phryne did not offer to help. Who knew if her gentile touch might make his most precious books unclean? 'If you will excuse me, I must find the Book of Razael,' said the Rabbi, and dived back into the volumes.

Mrs Rabinowitz was in the kitchen, clattering crockery. Phryne went that way, as the old man did not require her presence.

The kitchen contained one tray, one teapot, two cups and saucers and plates. It was dusty and unused. Clearly the Rabbi didn't do any cooking.

'Look at this!' exclaimed the older woman. 'Not one of my good pancakes eaten. It was different when Sarah was here, Sarah was his wife. But the boys are coming tonight and they'll bring food, they always do, the ones who can't afford to pay him. And that's all of them.'

'Will he let me give him money for this translation?' asked Phryne. Mrs Rabinowitz's workworn countenance seemed to shrink.

'If he could give me a little towards the rent, that collector has no manners, he shouts at the old man, but if I could catch him in the stairway, he doesn't like climbing all them stairs ...'

Phryne handed over a note, which vanished at the speed of light.

'Miss ... Miss ... er ... I have it,' called the scholar, and Phryne swapped a grin with Mrs Rabinowitz. She saw the old scholar on his feet, his white locks flying, a book open over one hand, reminding Phryne of the denouncing God over the church door in Ravenna. She hoped that he wasn't overstraining his heart.

'Yes, Rabbi?'

'It is a number code, using the most obscure system,' said Rabbi Elijah, looking as though he might combust with some emotion—rage? fear?

'Indeed?'

'He has based it on the name of Adam Kadmon. That such learning should be used for such a purpose— shameful. Shameful! I had not thought it of Shimeon.'

He was waving the papers around and Phryne recaptured them before they flew from his trembling grasp.

'Shimeon is dead,' she reminded him. 'Is this the translation?'

'It is. What it means—' he waved a hand. 'But that such a thing should be!'

'Was Shimeon one of your students?'

'He was.'

'A good student?'

'Very good, a devoted young man. I cannot believe that he would have used this holy text for some mundane purpose. It must have been very important to Shimeon. We must sit shivah for him, say Kaddish. We were his only friends. I will speak to the others.'

'Who was his particular friend?'

'Kaplan, the oldest Kaplan boy.' The Rabbi was calming down.

'And Yossi Liebermann?'

'He is. What is Yossi to you, a ...' He could not find a term which would not be insulting, so he left the end of the sentence to droop under its own weight.

'He lives at the house of my friend Mrs Grossman,' said Phryne, and the old man almost smiled. 'Such a woman,' he said approvingly. 'She feeds the hungry. Her price is above rubies. Her husband was a good man.'