By Night Under the Stone Bridge Reprint Edition

By Leo Perutz, Eric Mosbacher

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright © 1988 Paul Zsolnay Verlag G.m.b.H
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-841-1

Contents

Pestilence in the Ghetto,
The Emperor’s Table,
Dog Language,
The Saraband,
Emissary from Hell,
The Filched Taler,
By Night Under the Stone Bridge,
Wallenstein’s Star,
The Painter Brabanzio,
The Forgotten Alchemist,
The Brandy Jug,
The Emperor’s Retainers,
The Guttering Candle,
The Angel Asael,
Epilogue,

CHAPTER 1

PESTILENCE IN THE GHETTO

In the autumn of 1589, when the great pestilence was raging in the Prague ghetto and children were dying off like flies, two wretched, greying professional entertainers, who made their living by amusing guests at weddings, walked down the Belelesgasse that led from the Nicolasplatz to the Jewish cemetery.

It was getting dark. Both of them were weak with hunger, because for two days they had had practically nothing to eat but a few crusts of bread. These were hard times for entertainers, for the wrath of God had descended on innocent children, and there were no weddings and no occasions for celebration in the ghetto.

A week before, one of the two men, Koppel-the-bear, had handed over to Markus Koprivy, the money-lender, the worn skin in which he performed his comic leaps, dressed up as a wild beast. His companion, Jäckele-the-fool, had pawned his silver bells. All they had left were their shoes and the clothes they stood up in, though Jäckele-the-fool still had his fiddle, for which the pawnbroker would give nothing.

They walked slowly, for it wasn’t quite dark yet, and they didn’t want to be seen entering the cemetery. For years they had earned their daily bread, and a little extra for the sabbath, by honest toil, and now they were reduced to looking for copper coins that pious visitors to the cemetery left behind on gravestones for the poor.

When they reached the end of the Belelesgasse and could see the cemetery wall on their left, Jäckele-the-fool stopped and pointed to the door of Gerson Chalel, the cobbler. “The cobbler’s Blümchen is sure to be up still,” he said. “I’ll play her ‘I’m still only six and my heart is still happy’, and she’ll come out and dance in the street.”

Koppel-the-bear started out of his dream of hot radish soup with pieces of meat floating in it.

“You’re a fool, and if the Messiah comes and heals the sick you’ll still be a fool,” he snapped. “What do I care about the cobbler’s Blümchen? What do I care about her dancing? I’m aching with hunger in every limb.”

“If you’re aching with hunger, take a knife and sharpen it and go and hang yourself,” said Jäckele-the-fool. He slipped the fiddle from his back and began to play.

But, however much he played, the cobbler’s little daughter failed to appear. Jäckele-the-fool dropped the fiddle and thought for a few moments. Then he crossed the road and looked through the open window into the cobbler’s shop.

It was dark and empty, but there was a gleam of light from the living room, and Jäckele-the-fool saw the cobbler and his wife sitting on low stools facing each other and singing the prayer for the dead for their daughter Blümchen, whom they had buried the day before.

“She’s dead,” said Jäckele-the-fool. “So the cobbler’s another who has fallen from the heavens and landed on the hard earth. I have nothing, and yet I’d give everything if only she were still alive. She was so small, and yet when I saw her it was as if the whole world were in her eyes. She was only five, and now she has to chew the cold earth.”

“When death goes to market he buys up everything,” Koppel-the-bear murmured. “Nothing’s too small, nothing’s too petty for him.”

And they walked on, quietly muttering the words of the psalm of King David:

“Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation: there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”

By now night had fallen. A pale moon hung in the sky between dark rain clouds. So quiet was it in the streets that you could hear the murmur of the river. Nervously and fearfully, as if what they were going to do was contrary to God’s law, they passed through the narrow gate into the garden of the dead.

It lay in the moonlight, as quiet as the dark, mysterious river of Sam-Bathyon, whose waves stand still on the Lord’s day. The grey and white gravestones leant against one another, propping each other up as if unable by themselves to support the burden of their years. The trees stretched up their bare branches as if in anxious complaint to the clouds in the sky.

Jäckele-the-fool led the way and Koppel-the-bear followed him like a shadow. They walked down the narrow path between the jasmine shrubs and the elder trees until they came to the weather-worn gravestone of the great Rabbi Abigdor. Here, on the grave of the holy man whose name was a shining light in the darkness of exile, Jäckele-the-fool found a flat Mainz pfennig and a copper three-pfennig piece and two foreign coins. Then he went on towards where the gravestone of the famous physician Rabbi Gedalya stood under a maple tree.

But suddenly he stopped and clutched his companion’s arm.

“Listen,” he murmured softly. “We’re not alone. Can’t you hear a whisper? Can’t you hear something moving?”

“Fool!” said Koppel-the-bear, who had just picked up and pocketed a bent Bohemian groschen. “Fool! It’s the wind blowing dead leaves along.”

“Koppel-the-bear,” whispered Jäckele-the-fool, “can’t you see something shimmering and shining over there by the wall?”

“If you’re a fool, drink vinegar, ride broomsticks and milk billy goats, but leave me in peace. What you see is white stones gleaming in the moonlight.”

But at that moment the moon vanished behind dark clouds, and Koppel-the-bear realised that it wasn’t white stones that he could see over there just by the cemetery wall, but gleaming forms floating in the air, children in long white shifts, holding hands and dancing over the new graves. And above them, invisible to the human eye, was the Guardian Angel appointed by God to watch over them.

“May the Lord have mercy on me,” Koppel-the-bear groaned. “Can you see what I see, Jäckele-the-fool?”

“Praised be the Creator, for He alone works wonders,” Jäckele-the-fool whispered. “I can see Blümchen, the darling little innocent, and I can see my neighbour’s two children, who died a week ago.”

And, when it dawned on them that it was the next world that was being revealed before their eyes, they were seized with panic. They turned and fled, jumping over graves, crashing into branches, falling and picking themselves up again. They ran for their lives, and did not stop until they were outside in the street.

Then for the first time Jäckele-the-fool looked round for his companion.

“Koppel-the-bear,” he said with his teeth chattering, “are you still alive and are you there?”

Koppel’s voice came out of the darkness.

“I’m still alive and I praise my Creator,” he said. “Truly the hand of death passed over me.”

And, as they had both survived, they realised that it was the will of God that they should bear witness to what they had seen.

For a time they stood whispering in the dark, and then they went and sought out the hidden king in his own house, the Great Rabbi who understood the speech of the dead, listened to the voices of the deep, and could interpret and explain God’s fearful signs.

He was sitting in his room, bent over the Book of Secrets that is called Indraraba or the Great Collection. Lost as he was in the infinitude of numbers, signs and effective powers, he did not hear their footsteps as they entered, and not till they greeted him with the words: “Peace be with the holy light” did his soul return to the terrestrial world from the remoteness of the spirits.

And when the Great Rabbi directed his gaze at them the two began to speak, calling on God and exalting His power; and Jäckele-the-fool breathlessly described in a torrent of words how terrified he had been in the cemetery by the rustling and the whispering and the gleams of light between the elder trees, and he told him what he had said to Koppel-thebear and what Koppel-the-bear had said to him, and how, when clouds suddenly hid the moon, they had seen the spirits of dead children dancing in a ring over the graves.

The Great Rabbi, who in dark nights had paced the Thirty-two Hidden Paths of Wisdom and in magic disguise had passed through the Seven Gates of Knowledge – the Great Rabbi understood God’s sign. He now knew that a sinner was living in the streets of the ghetto, a secret sinner who was sinning again and again, day after day: and that it was because of this sinner that the great pestilence was ravaging the ghetto and the dead children’s souls found no peace in the grave.

The Great Rabbi gazed for a time in silent contemplation. Then he rose and left the room, and when he came back he held in his right hand a bowl of groats and two pieces of unleavened bread and in his left a small embossed silver bowl containing spiced apple sauce, the sweet Passover dish.

“Set to and eat,” he said, pointing to the groats and the bread, “and, when you have eaten your fill, take this bowl of sweet nourishment and go back to the children’s graves.”

The two men were terrified at being told to go back to the cemetery again. But the Great Rabbi went on:

“Have no fear. He through Whose word the world came into being has power over the living and the dead, and His will alone prevails. You will sit by the graves and wait until one of the children approaches and wants to taste the apple dish, for the dead have not yet forgotten the food they ate on earth. But you will seize the hem of the child’s garment with both hands and ask in the name of the One Who is the Beginning and the End what sin it is that has caused the great pestilence to descend upon this town.”

And the Great Rabbi spoke over them the words of the priestly blessing, and their fear vanished, and they rose and went, determined to do as he bade them.

* * *

They sat between the graves, leaning against the cemetery wall with the bowl of spiced apple sauce on the damp earth in front of them. As they sat there in pitch darkness not a sound was to be heard, not a blade of grass moved, and there was not a glimmer of light in the cloud-covered sky. And, while they waited thus, fear overcame them again, and Koppel-the-bear started talking to himself, because he could stand the quiet no longer.

“I don’t like sitting here in the dark, I wish I had a penny candle,” he said. “There’s supposed to be a full moon tonight, but I can’t see it, a cock must have crowed and the moon fled. It would be better to be sitting at home beside the stove. Frost is rising from the earth and creeping into my clothes, frost is my enemy. Jäckele-the-fool, I can see you’re freezing too, you’re shivering. There are hundreds of rooms here in this graveyard, well built all of them, with no windows and no doors, and frost can’t get in and nor can hunger. Both of them, having to stay outside, can keep each other occupied. The grave is the same, and that’s the truth, for prince or beggar, age or youth …”

He fell silent, the last words stuck in his throat for, standing in front of him, bathed in white light, was Blümchen, the cobbler’s daughter, holding the silver bowl in her hands.

“Blümchen!” said Jäckele-the-fool in a hoarse whisper. “Alas that you had to go. Don’t you recognise me? I’m Jäckele-the-fool, and Koppel-the-bear’s here sitting beside me. Don’t you remember how you used to jump about and dance when I played my fiddle in the street? And how you used to laugh when Koppel-the-bear dashed about on all fours and made everyone split their sides with his antics?”

“All that’s over and was only in time,” the girl said in a strange voice. “But now I’m in truth and eternity that has neither limit nor end.” The silver bowl slipped to the ground and the girl turned to rejoin her companions. But Jäckele-the-fool remembered what he had been sent to do. He held the child by the hem of her garment and would not let her go, and he said: “In the name of the One Who is the Beginning and the End I call on you to tell and reveal the sin that caused the great pestilence to afflict this town.”

There was silence for a while. The girl stood motionless, looking into the darkness to where, invisible to the eyes of the living, the angel of God, the guardian of souls, was hovering over the graves. Then she said:

“The angel of God has spoken, the servant of the Lord has said: ‘It happened because of the sin of Moab committed by one of you. And He, the Eternal, saw it, and He, the Eternal, will destroy you, as he destroyed Moab.’

At that Jäckele-the-fool dropped the hem of the garment, and the child was gone as if carried away by the wind, and the glory and the light that surrounded her vanished behind the dark shadow of the elder trees.

And the two men, Jäckele-the-fool and Koppel-the-bear, left the cemetery and went to the house of the Great Rabbi and told him what they had heard.

At first light the Great Rabbi sent his messengers from house to house, summoning the community to the house of God, and they came, all of them, men and women alike, and noone stayed away. And when they were all assembled, he mounted the three stone steps, and under his coat he wore a white winding sheet and over his head there was a banner on which was written:

“The Lord of hosts fills the world with his glory.”

And when all was quiet he began to speak. Among them, he said, there was a woman who was living in the sin of adultery, like the children of the accursed race whom God had destroyed. And he called on the sinner to come forward and confess and accept the punishment that the Lord God would inflict on her.

A whispering and a murmuring arose among the women, and they looked at one another in terror, but none of them came forward, none of them would confess to the sin of Moab.

Then the Great Rabbi raised his voice a second time. It was because of this secret sin, he announced, that the great pestilence had afflicted the town, carrying off their children. And he called on the sinner in the name of the Holy Letters and the Ten Terrible Names of God to come forward and confess, so that the calamity might be brought to an end.

But once more the Great Rabbi had spoken in vain. She who was guilty of the sin kept silent and would not be diverted from the path she had chosen.

Then a dark cloud of anger came over the Great Rabbi. He took the sacred rolls from the tabernacle and spoke the words of the great curse over the sinner, that she might dry up like the cliffs of Gilboa accursed by David, so that the earth might do to her what it had done to Datam and Abirom and that her name might be extinguished and her race be accursed in the name of the Sparkling One and in the name of the Flaming One and in the name of the Shining Lights and in the name of Zadekiel, who is the Ear and the Eye, and so that her soul might descend into terror and remain there until the end of time.

Then he left the house of God. And in the streets of the ghetto there was fear and dismay and bewilderment and despair.

When the Great Rabbi had returned to his house and was sitting in his room again, he remembered something that had happened many years before. Two butchers had come to him and complained that they had lost everything during the night. A thief had broken into their stall and wrought havoc with their meat. He had taken away as much as he could carry and befouled the rest.

Then too the Great Rabbi had summoned the community and called on the thief to confess and make good to the best of his ability the damage he had done. But, as the evildoer kept silent and refused to abandon his evil ways, the Great Rabbi had pronounced a curse on him, expelling him and his family from the community of the children of God.

During the night that followed a dog had appeared outside the Great Rabbi’s house and had howled and howled so long and so dreadfully that he had eventually realised that it was this dog that was the thief, and he had lifted the curse he had pronounced on the creature.

Now, the Great Rabbi reflected, if the curse is so effective that it is intolerable even to an animal into whose dark soul no gleam of the knowledge of God enters, how can it be possible for this adulteress to go on living under the burden of it without appearing before me and confessing her sin before the day is over?

But the hours passed, night came and went, and the Great Rabbi waited in vain. So he called his silent servant, the work of his hands, who carried the name of God on his lips, and sent him to look for Koppel-the-bear and Jäckele-the-fool in the streets of the ghetto, for he needed them. And when they came he said to them:

“When daylight has faded and the shadows have fled, you will go once more to the cemetery, and you, Jäckele-the-fool, will play on your fiddle one of the songs that children sing on the feast of Tabernacles. And the spirits of the dead will hear you, because for seven days they remain bound to this world by terrestrial tunes. Then you will both come back, and you, Jäckele-the-fool, will go on playing without stopping until you enter this room. Then you will leave it immediately, and you must be careful not to look back, for what I want to do is the prerogative of the Flaming Ones, who are also called the Thrones, the Wheels, the Powers and the Hosts, and your eyes must not see them.”

(Continues…)Excerpted from By Night Under the Stone Bridge Reprint Edition by Leo Perutz, Eric Mosbacher. Copyright © 1988 Paul Zsolnay Verlag G.m.b.H. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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