Free The Origin of Sorrow by Robert Mayer Page A

slaughterer for twenty years.
    Finally his hands and arms were clean enough. He dried them and pulled on a clean shirt and joined his family at the table, watching Ida light the five-pointed lamp, and from it the Sabbath candles. When she ratcheted the lamp back up to the ceiling, the overlapping shadows cast by the five copper points seemed to form blurred Hebrew letters she could not identify.
    Lifting a goblet of wine, Otto said the brief blessing — Baruch atau Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, bo-ray peree haguffin. He took a sip. The Sabbath meal could begin. The boys attacked their plates as if they had just spent forty years in the desert. Aaron was eighteen years old, Eli sixteen, Izzy fourteen. All seemed determined to grow three inches that very night.
    “Good chicken,” Otto said to his wife. She knew he was praising not her cooking but the quality of the bird he had brought home. “So tell me, Isidor, what is this news you have?”
    Isidor swallowed whole the piece of potato that was in his mouth. “I went to see the Rabbi today … ”
    “A very good chicken,” Otto said.
    Izzy fell silent, looking at his plate, pushing the roasted potatoes around with his fork.
    “So let him tell you,” Ida said.
    “I’m listening. So tell me already,” the butcher replied.
    Isidor took a breath and started again. He told of all that had transpired with Rabbi Simcha, and with the Chief Rabbi. When he finished, his pride was fighting a bout of nerves that was making his freckled hands tremble.
    “So that’s your news? You’re going to spend your life talking to people about what happened to the Jews since what’s-his-name came.” He wiped his greasy hands with the embroidered handkerchief on his lap. “For that I send you to yeshiva?”
    The butcher’s dark eyes peered across the table at his youngest son. The boy fought hard to hold his gaze, then looked away, into the flames of the candles. Otto shoved another forkful of food into his mouth. “Good chicken,” he murmured, with his mouth still full.
    He pointed with his empty fork at his other sons. “Look at Aaron and Eli,” he said. “No private conversations with Rabbis. But in a few weeks they’ll be starting their own business. Selling the feathers they gather at the slaughterhouse. And feather pillows and quilts sewn by your mother. That will bring in a nice few gulden. More than talking to old people about the suffering of the Jews.” He paused to drink some wine. “By the way, boys, I’ve been thinking about the name you picked. Kracauer Brothers, Feather Merchants . I have a better idea. We’re going to call it O. Kracauer and Sons .”
    Aaron and Eli, seated side by side, looked at one another, but said nothing. Their father chewed another mouthful of food, sipped again from his goblet. If he noticed how downcast Isidor had become, he didn’t show it as he spoke to the boy.
    “A banker, an importer, these would be good professions for a yeshiva boy. You could make some real gelt that way. But a scholar? Let me tell you something, Izzy the Wise. You want to know the history of the Jews? I can tell you in a sentence. The Talmud says we should eat only fresh-killed meat. Which I know you know. And they have to be killed a certain way, which you also know. They have to be stretched out, lying down, exposing their windpipe. I have to cut their throats in one stroke, with a sharp knife, so that it’s not torture. They die instantly. But the chickens are screaming as we stretch them on the block, and the others smell the blood of the ones I already killed. When one is screaming, they all start screaming. When the Gentiles hear the screaming, when they see the blood on our hands, they make up stories. They tell each other we kill Christian babies, to drain their blood. That we use Christian blood in secret ceremonies. So what do they do? What they do is obvious. They build stone walls around us. They lock us in every night. To protect their