Burning Twilight Read Free Page A

lifeless. She was grateful that the cat had made a clean kill of it, because even mouse blood would have bothered her just then.
    “Good girl,” she said, kneeling to scratch behind the cat’s ears and running her fingers through her thick orange-black fur. Then she picked up the mouse by the tail and tossed it into the woods.
    She rewarded the cat with another bite of meat. Then she fanned the coals until the fire came back to life, laid a piece of wood on the newly glowing embers, and sat in front of the fire for a good long while, waiting for the dull flames to warm her up.
    She closed her eyes, but still saw the clotted clumps of scarlet and the shiny blue skin of the stillborn child like scenes from a magic lantern. The images made her shudder.
    The wise women who helped coax difficult babies into the world labored under the constant suspicion that when no one was watching, they would slink off into the night with the blood-gorged remains of the afterbirth and umbilical cord to perform black magic with them. God help you if they accused you of offering the child up to the Devil by killing it at the moment of delivery. She had once watched helplessly as an old woman was stoned to death on the steps of the cathedral for just such a crime. She could still hear their voices.
    What are the charges against me? the woman had demanded.
    You should be able to figure them out for yourself, her accuser replied.
    Kassy squeezed the cross around her neck. She could just picture herself trying to explain to an examining magistrate who didn’t know a birth canal from a carpenter’s bit that sometimes it just happens that way—a child is stillborn, and you are left with empty hands. There’s no evil involved, it’s just nature’s way.
    The cat brushed against her leg, looking for attention.
    “Now what?” she said. “Don’t tell me I need to think up a name for you.”
    She scratched the cat under the chin.
    “But you must have one already. What is it? Calixta? Pyewacket? Nibbles?”
    Then she heard it. She looked to the west. At first it appeared to be a cluster of stars gliding toward her through the forest. But the flickering shadows were all too human.
    Villagers with torches.
    They came after her with ropes to tie her hands and chains to weigh her down, for the rivers were deep and swift in this part of the wilderness.
    Kassy grabbed her bundle and ran to the northeast, leaving the gamecock and all else behind.
    The shadows grew longer, and a thick darkness spread over the land.

 
    II: BENYAMIN’S STORY
    If the rich could hire others to die for them,
    the poor would make a very nice living.
    Yiddish proverb

 
    W e needed eight more Jews to make a minyen , so we said our minkhe prayers without the final prayer for the dead. But our little ceremony was cut short by the sound of robbers ambushing a wayward traveler a short way up the road.
    The rugged passes near the frontier offer easy concealment for thieves and highwaymen, so we said a quick prayer for protection. But when a woman’s scream was suddenly cut off, I abandoned the safety of our tiny patch of neutral ground and ran ahead, rounding the bend in time to see a group of men hurling the uncooperative woman into the rushing waters, her cloak flapping behind her like a blackbird’s wing. I took three steps toward the robbers, but they turned on me like a pack of wolves and blocked my passage.
    Rabbi Loew was still fifty yards behind, ambling along with his staff like an old gray shepherd. So I knelt and grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it through the air toward the gang of thieves, while cursing them with these words:
    “Adam Havah Abton Absalom Sarfiel Nuriel Daniel!”
    The words were completely harmless, but these mountain folk are a superstitious lot, and they scattered like mice.
    I rushed to the river’s edge. The poor woman was pressed up against a rock about twenty yards downstream, kicking and fighting the current, but she couldn’t do much