Jacob cut him some slack. As it stood, he’d put the guy in a tight spot. “I get it. Thanks. And — any crime scene pictures you can text me? I need something to show these people.”
Jan cracked his knuckles, flicked his flimsy beard. Finally: “Yes, okay. This case is not mine. I am finished, but you... good luck, Jacob.”
They shook hands, and Jan left him watching the clock, time running backward.
Gilgul
Spirit of Vengeance who wanders like a pilgrim between the gates knocking for eternity be born of the Mothers Aleph-Shin-Mem descend and fill this imperfect vessel so that the will of the One Without End may be done on earth amen amen amen
Crushed by an unimaginable pressure, consciousness quilting together.
“Arise.”
The command is gentle and loving and irresistible.
She rises.
Sensations run together like children playing a game without rules. She grabs at their elbows, forces them apart. Behave.
A drippy canopy, scrawly claws, forlorn screech and howl. In dazzling firelight, darkness engraves shapes: a giant’s grave, a pile of mud, shovels, bootprints ringing a patch of forest floor baked bone-dry, crackling as it cools.
Before her stands a regal man, old and splendid, elongated like an iris, his shoulders broad beneath a sashed black robe, a tight round cap of black velvet on his polished scalp. Moonlight glazes kind brown eyes and shines a beard of filigreed silver. The awed set of his mouth cannot hide the delight pushing up at its corners.
“David,” he calls. “Isaac. You can come back.”
Long moments later, two younger men approach, stop a ways off, crouch in the foliage.
“He won’t hurt you. Will you...” The kind-eyed man gives in to his smile. “Yankele.”
That’s not my name.
“Yes,” he says. “I think that will be fine. Yankele.”
I have a name.
“You won’t hurt them, will you?”
She shakes her head.
The two men come timidly forth. Their beards are black, their garments humble and limp with rain. One of them has lost his hat. The other tremblingly clutches a shovel and mouths silent prayers.
The hatless man says, “Rebbe is all right?”
“Yes, yes,” the kind-eyed man says. “Come. We have much to do and far to go.”
The two men swarm over her, grunting as they stuff her, sausage-sleeved, into a blouse far too small. But the indignity of being dressed in doll’s clothing is as nothing compared to the wave of sick surprise that rises when she beholds herself.
Gnarled chair hands.
A cabinet for a chest.
Blood-starved flesh lumpily thumbed.
She is monstrous.
And the pinnacle of this comic insult, dangling between wine-cask thighs like a dead rodent, foreign and grotesque, a man’s organ.
She would shriek. She would tear it off.
She cannot. She remains dumb, pliant, deboned by confusion, tongue knotted, throat hollow, while the men force her misshapen feet into boots.
David squats, raises Isaac on his shoulders; Isaac pulls a hood over her face.
“Ah, yes,” Rebbe says. “I’m sure nobody’ll notice a thing, now.”
When they are done with her, they stand back, perspiring, to await a verdict.
Before Rebbe can speak, her left sleeve splits loudly.
He shrugs. “We’ll have something more suitable made.”
Out of the woods, they tramp across boggy fields. Chill mist hovers over the surface of waist-high grass, the tips of which kiss her knees. To avoid dirtying their robes, the men walk with their hems raised; Isaac the Hatless has drawn his own collar up over his bare head.
Farmhouses break the monotony of the countryside until they come to a muddy highway, hissing dung piles beneath dreary cloud pack.
Rebbe talks in a soothing voice. He speaks of the confusion Yankele is experiencing. It’s natural, he reassures her, a misalignment between body and soul. It will pass. Soon he will feel good as new. They have called him down to discharge an important duty.
Down from where? Up, she supposes. But really she hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about. Nor can she understand why he keeps referring to her as him, and she as he, or who is Yankele, or where this body has come from, or why it moves the way it does.
She cannot say where she was before; cannot speak to ask; cannot do anything but obey.
The road rises slightly and breaks open onto a valley. There, along the banks of a scaly river, lies a sleeping town, a black curtain embroidered with firelight.
Rebbe says, “Welcome to Prague.”
Her first night she spends standing in a box, silent, unmoving, wondering, wounded.
Dawn wedges raw fingers between the planks and the door swings open on a woman. A tight wimple frames a pure pale face, luminous green eyes that flash disbelief.
“Yudl,” she sighs.
Yudl?
Who’s Yudl?
What about Yankele?
What happened to him?
Make up your mind.
“Come on,” the woman says, beckoning her out. “Let me have a look at you.”
She stands in the center of a courtyard, while the woman walks around her, clucking her tongue. “What are these rags? Oy. Yudl. You’ve really done it this time, haven’t you? What were you thinking... Hang on, I’ll be back in a minute.”
She waits. She has, it seems, no choice.
The woman returns carrying a stool and a length of string, hitches up her skirts.
“Hold out your arm, please. The left one.”
She obeys automatically.
“No, to the side. Yes. Thank you. Other arm, please...”
The woman scurries around her, using the string to measure her, re-tucking coils of black hair that sneak free. “He certainly didn’t skimp on you, did he? He’s a saint, of course, my husband, but a head in Heaven pulls a man’s feet off the ground. He might’ve warned me. Stand up straight, please. You gave me quite a fright, you know. Although I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it... Oh look at this, look at what he’s done. Your legs don’t line up.”
I am a freak. I am an abomination.
“Something like this, I can’t tell if he’s done it on purpose or because he’s rushing, or... I don’t know. It doesn’t make it hard for you to walk, I hope.”
A crime. A pillar of disgrace.
“This is going to take me a few hours. Let’s get you covered properly. The rest we can worry about later. In the meantime you don’t have to go back in that terrible box. Is that all right? What am I saying, of course it’s all right. I’m Perel, by the way. Wait here, please.”
Hours later, sun high overhead, Perel returns with a blanket folded over her shoulder.
“What are you still doing there? I didn’t mean you had to stand in one spot all day... All right, never mind, let’s try this on.”
The cloak is coarse burlap, several dozen motley pieces hastily sewn together.
“I’m sorry. It’s the best I could manage on short notice. I’ll see if Gershom has something nicer in stock, a nice piece of wool. He gives a discount if he knows it’s for me. We’ll have to pick a color. Something dark, it’s slimming—”
A man’s voice: “Perel?”
“Back here.”
Rebbe appears at the back of the house.
Beholds the scene.
Pales.
“Eh. Perele. I can explain—”
“You’re going to explain why there’s a giant in my woodshed?”