Free The Origin of Sorrow by Robert Mayer Page B

Christian babies.” He set his empty goblet on the table, poured himself more wine from the decanter. “So there you have it, Izzy. The history of the Jews in a thimble. Now you can go learn something useful.”
    Isidor was staring at his plate. Half his food remained. His mother stood and began to collect the empty plates of the others. As she passed behind Izzy’s chair she wanted very much to rumple his hair. But she didn’t do so; her husband might get upset.
    “What I don’t understand, Papa,” Eli said, “is why can’t they tell the difference between a chicken and a baby?”
    “Because they’re Christians,” Izzy said. “They can’t even tell the difference between a man and God.”
    Almost choking on his wine, Otto Kracauer nodded vigorously, and slapped the table with glee. He’d never said the boy wasn’t smart.
    The Liebmann family also had finished dinner. Yetta and Leo had eaten sparsely; they rarely ate much, especially in the evening; a full stomach undermined sleep; an empty stomach didn’t cost much. The boys had devoured most of the food that Frau Schnapper had brought from the market. Pushing himself away from the table, Hiram motioned that he was going to wash his face and change his shirt. Frau Liebmann pulled Hersch into a corner of the kitchen, where Leo with his failing ears wouldn’t hear them.
    “What’s with your brother?” Yetta asked, speaking softly. “He’s going to the funeral, and then to evening services? Why is today different? He hardly ever goes to schul.”
    ”Why ask me? Why don’t you ask him?”
    “Because I’m asking you.”
    Hersch looked around the kitchen, as if for a place into which he could disappear. “I don’t know,” he said.
    “You do know. I’ve never seen him so excited. Tell me why.”
    Hersch’s parents seemed unusually old to him today. During dinner Yetta had told the story of the overcoat. Sadness pressed him like a vise as he watched his father shuffling off to his room.
    “Hiram’s going to be disappointed tonight. He might be hurt badly.”
    “Hurt?” Her hand moved to her sunken cheek, her lips. It hovered there, shaking slightly, like a baby bird. Also like a dying one. “What do you mean, hurt?”
    “Not physically hurt, Mama. Hurt inside.”
    “How could he hurt more than he already does?”
    “He’s gotten a strange idea into his head, I think. After the funeral, the Chief Rabbi is going to name the new Schul-Klopper.”
    “So nu? What has this to do with Hiram?”
    “I think Hiram wants it to be him. He wants to be the new Schul-Klopper. No, it’s worse. I think he expects to be the new Schul-Klopper.”
    “He told you this meshuganah thing?”
    “He didn’t tell me.”
    “Then why do you think such nonsense?”
    Hersch picked up a plate from a shelf beside him, studied it front and back, put it down. Through an open window across the room he could hear a shuffling sound, the muffled noise of people beginning to move down the lane to the schul.
    “When we were starting to dig the grave today, Hiram motioned to Rabbi Simcha. He pointed to the grave for the Schul-Klopper, then he knocked in the air, as if he held a hammer. And he pointed to his own chest. What the Rabbi took it to mean was Hiram saying he was digging the grave for the Schul-Klopper. As if Hiram was a simpleton, saying the obvious. I think what Hiram was telling him was that he wanted to be the new Schul-Klopper. And because the Rabbi nodded, he thinks he’ll be chosen.”
    “Didn’t you say anything to Hiram? Tell him the truth?”
    “I was going to. But I changed my mind. It’s bad enough he won’t be chosen. He doesn’t need to be embarrassed, too, by us knowing this notion of his. Not unless he wants to tell us.”
    Frau Liebmann pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. “My poor baby,” she said.
    Hersch had been a normal, happy infant when he’d been born to Leo and Yetta, a first child, late in their lives. Though