The frozen rabbi by Steve Stern

Author:Steve Stern [Steve Stern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9781565126190
Published: 2010-08-15T05:50:55+00:00

1908.

They slept together like brothers in the same bed, which Shmerl lowered each evening from the ceiling and raised again (sometimes with Max still in it) in the late mornings when he woke. For although Max had adjusted to Shmerl’s odd hours, he often continued to sleep in his borrowed longjohns through much of the day. In fact, during those first days after his rescue Max never set foot outside the automated shack, as if the ordeal of the previous months had finally caught up with him and laid him low. Even though his wound was minor and largely healed before the week was out, he remained convalescent, and Shmerl was happy to indulge him in his prostration. Having saved him, the dung carter now felt somehow responsible for securing his guest’s enduring safety and health. Though Max assured him the attack in the alley was merely a chance episode not likely to happen again, Shmerl remained anxious concerning his new friend’s welfare. He changed his head dressing daily, examined him for any symptoms of concussion, and continued to apply the vile medicinal compresses; he cooked him meals: mostly a gluey amalgam of kasha and eggs, though sometimes there was Jewish fish: “Is now my namesake, Karp.” And Max, who had eaten all manner of treyf these many months, was appreciative, not to say amused by the crucibles and alkaline cells Shmerl employed in his culinary endeavors, the results of which were more often than not inedible. Nor did it help that the aroma of every dish partook of the stables’ distinct bouquet. All the same, in a show of abiding gratitude (and in deference to Shmerl’s insistence that he keep up his strength), Max would dutifully sample the fare; though in time the guest, begging his host’s permission, revived Jocheved’s dormant skills and took over the cooking himself.

Of course the subject of the frozen rabbi had necessarily to be broached and dispensed with before the ice (so to speak) could be broken between them. It was Shmerl, protesting all the while that he had no wish to pry, who had nonetheless initiated the conversation on that very first night.

“So how by the old chasid did you come?”

Max demurred, not inclined to lie to the hunchback but also unready to state the plain truth. “He is in my family a cherished memento,” was his lame explanation.

“What he makes you to remember?”

Again Max was stymied, while Shmerl, to his relief, seemed to dismiss his waffling silence as an occasion to offer a theory of his own. “I think he is yet alive, di alter mensch,” he stated, a faraway look clouding his eye; “he is only asleep and dreaming. He dreams the dream of the world that we are all of us in it, and to wake him now might make already the end of the world.”

While questioning the dung carter’s sanity, Max acceded at the same time to Jocheved’s endorsement of a concept she regarded as rather sound.

At first Shmerl

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