The Tangled Web(54)

Then Jachant Wohl was sitting there. Then her mother. Her mother and his mother, who was next, had their arms linked together.

They were all agreeing.

Jachant opened her mouth. "I refuse to even consider having a husband who would spend so much time as a vagrant."

"A postal courier is not a vagrant," David protested.

"David," his father said. "It is not your place to be talking."

"A postal courier is not a vagrant," someone else said. That was Zorline Neumark, his Uncle Meier's wife. "And they make reasonably good money. I know that Crispin's brother-in-law does."

The row of people on the other side of the table glared at her. Crispin, the grandson of the apostate. His grandfather had changed his name from Neumark to Neumann. How could Zorline admit that she still spoke with that branch of the family?

They all thought it. Hindle Kalman, Jachant's mother, said it.

Der dicke Meier defended his wife.

Jachant opened her mouth again. "You look like a rabbit, Meier ben Aron. And so does David Kronberg."

Her parents stared at her.

"It's true."

Everyone stared at her.

Except David, who took the chance to leave the room.



"He's leaving," Zorline Neumark told Hindle Kalman. Zivka, the wife of Simon zur Sichel, stood quietly in the back of the shop, listening. "David. Today. He says that he is going before he has an irretrievable fight with his parents. Meier suggested that he should come to Frankfurt with us, but he refuses to become another point of contention between brothers. He says that he is going to Fulda. So that is what your daughter Jachant and her runaway tongue have accomplished for us."

"To the up-timers?"

"He says that according to their 'constitution,' a religious test for holding public office is forbidden. He is going to apply to work as a postal courier there, somewhere in the New United States. Just walk in and apply, without even a letter of introduction."

Zivka had not missed the direction in which her daughter Riffa's eyes sometimes wandered. She went home.

"Oh," Riffa said. "I think that's the bravest and most daring thing that I ever heard of any man doing."

"I," Zivka said, "am going for water. After that, I may visit the bath. I certainly will not be back for two hours at least; possibly three."

* * *

"Riffa," David said. "Why are you here? Outside of the walls?"

He had never been so close to her. He dreamed about her, but he had never approached her, because he knew that his parents would never agree that he could have her honorably, under the canopy. So he should not look. Even though he had looked, of course.

"I wanted to say something to you before you left."

"What do we have to say to each other?"

"I wanted you to know that I would be proud to be married to you. Even if Jachant Wohl will not. I just thought that I would like you to know that before you went away."

Now he looked up.

"Jachant Wohl won't take you, you know. Not if you leave. Her parents won't let you have her, either. Have you thought what you are doing? She's the best match in Gelnhausen. Pretty. Rich."

"You're prettier." The tone of David's voice carried full conviction.

Riffa had been about to say something else. Her mouth had been open. After a few seconds, she closed it, trying to remember what she had planned to say.

"Not richer. Is it true that you are going to the New United States?"

"To Fulda, yes. To talk to the up-timers there. I'm pretty sure that I can't get a job with the municipal couriers here in Gelnhausen. The messengers are all one another's relatives. They look out for each other. But I've spent enough time watching, all these years. I know as much about what they do as anyone could who hasn't actually done it."

"All by yourself, someone said. Without even a letter of introduction."

"I'm not quite that foolhardy, no matter what some people think. Martin Wackernagel, the courier, gave me a recommendation to a Major Derek Utt. Wackernagel is acquainted with some of the people there."

"There's no Jewish community in Fulda."

"I know."

"How will you live, then?"

"Without one, I guess."

"Have you ever talked to my father?"

"No. Should I have?"

"He's a peddler, you know. That's why families like yours look down on him. After the Jews were expelled from Hanau in 1592, my grandfather went peddling. Unvergleidet, without a charter of protection from any Christian lord. My father did, too. When the duke let the Jews come back in 1603, my grandfather and father didn't come back. They kept peddling, from Denmark to Switzerland. Not far east, but sometimes west into Alsace. I was born on the road. There was no mikvah for my mother to cleanse herself in forty days. Not for over a year. I don't remember it well. I was eight when he obtained permission for my mother and me to stay in Gelnhausen when he is traveling. You could have asked him, some time when he was here. Asked him what it will be like for you now."