In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist Read Free Page B

He knew what a kohein was. He had heard the tour guides speak about these Jewish holy priests who took care of their temple in ancient times. He stared at the retreating Jew. He took a step forward and stood in the sunlit strip between the stalls. What did the man mean—he a kohein? The Jew was disappearing into the alley, about to turn at the copper and brass stall, and Mustafa opened his mouth and shouted, “Mister, where can I find you? What’s your name?”
    “Isaac Markowitz, Seven Ninveh Street,” the man called back and kept walking.
    “Isaac Markowitz,” he repeated. The name sounded like an old book, like history. “Isaac Markowitz,” he whispered. “I am Mustafa.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Isaac’s stomach tensed under his suit jacket. He looked out the kitchen window and saw the people in the courtyard: here a morose Hassidic teenager, there an out-of-work musician, and next to him a beggar, and there in the far corner near the rosemary bushes, someone who had brought his German shepherd, even though he had been asked not to.
    It wasn’t going to be easy today, not with the news he had to tell them.
    The kabbalist’s assistant settled the brim of his black hat and stepped out onto the pocked, desert-colored stones.
    A shiny purple flap of cellophane (probably used to wrap yesterday’s Purim holiday baskets) blew itself against the olive tree in the center of the courtyard. Before he could snatch it, he saw an empty vodka bottle under the stoop and tossed it into a garbage pail, then frowned, unsure what to do with a sultry Queen Esther mask he had just stepped on. The sun hung wanly in the March sky, as though it, too, were hungover along with the rest of the country that had spent the holiday fulfilling its religious duty to get drunk.
    “When is the rebbe coming out?” a grizzled-haired old woman called out fretfully.
    “I heard a rumor we can’t see the rebbe anymore,” said the bearded saxophonist. He gripped his instrument tightly. “Is it true?”
    “I have to see Rebbe Yehudah!” Mazal the beggar rested her bulging pita sandwich on her ample lap. “He always says I make him happy!” Her guttural trembling voice spoke for all of them.
    A murmuring went through the courtyard, rumbled past the jasmine and honeysuckle bushes littered with holiday garbage and swept past three women leaning against the iron gate. Isaac heard the fear in the murmurings. His own fear and concern for the rebbe he swallowed back.
    He raised both hands for quiet. The German shepherd yelped sadly, refusing to stop, until finally, he and his owner left. Isaac coughed a few times and waited for the courtyard to settle down. “Unfortunately things have changed.” He paused to wipe a trickle of sweat with his jacket sleeve. “The doctor told us this morning that the rebbe isn’t well enough to have any more visitors.” They all stared back at him, shock-faced. As if on cue, the women near the gate reached for their little books of psalms, their lips already twitching in prayer. “Don’t worry,” Isaac rushed on. “From now on, you can give me your questions and I’ll pass them on to the rebbe. Plain and simple.”
    “Not so plain, not so simple,” shouted the old lady. “What about my food delivery?”
    Every Wednesday, the rebbe’s wife arranged for boxes of food to be delivered to the poor. “Mrs. Klopper, didn’t you get your food delivery?” he asked, solicitously bending his tall, lean frame toward the old woman. “It was sent to you yesterday. One of the volunteers delivered it.”
    “It wasn’t the rebbe who brought it,” she said in a voice that mingled grief and blame.
    “Mrs. Klopper, I promise you. It’s the same potato kugel and chicken soup. Same gefilte fish and cholent stew that gets delivered every week. No better, no worse. A kugel is a kugel is a kugel.” As he spoke, he felt a low inflammation, an itch, building in his scalp.
    “Yes, but when the rebbe used to come, he washed my