Maxie’s Demon (32 page)

The monstrous
Adam had clumped down an outside stair into some kind of cellar, which suited me right down; he was an unnerving creature – or whatever. Now he was gone I felt calm and secure here, more so than I had for what could have been a lifetime. But I also felt
very alien, and not only from my own era. I’d never thought much about the Jews I knew. A terrible load of gonophs some were; the spirit of the brothers Kray hadn’t entirely left the East End. Just as many were nice guys, like Joe from the deli who was always generous with his salt beef and gefilte fish when I was really down on my luck. All in all, they about balanced out with the rest of the human
race, in my book, with maybe a few brains extra. But here was the ancient culture alive and formidable, and with the power of the Spiral bringing its shadow to awesome life. I looked at the
menorah
and the
shofars
, and thought of prophets and judges, Joshua and Elijah, and the thing called Adam in the darkness below my feet, and shivered a little.

Rabbi Loew caught me looking as he set down wine
and rye bread before me, with a small dish of salt. ‘They are not much,’ he smiled, ‘but they are old – from the land of Spain, some of them, if you know where that is. Some of the scrolls also, from the cities of Toledo and Santiago in the time of the Moors, many hundreds of years past. A kindlier time, in some ways.’ He hesitated, and for the first time I noticed the circle on his robe was yellow.
‘You will excuse me if I do not—’ He didn’t want a Gentile touching them, even a friendly one.

‘Of course, yes. I wouldn’t want to, anyway. You see – I’m a thief.’

He cocked
his head reflectively. ‘Well, that’s more than any other thief I know will admit; and thieves run thicker than rats in this city. It suggests you’re thinking better of it. If not, you should go try your fellow
goyim
across
the wall. They’ve about cleaned us out anyhow, those who can’t afford lock and guard.’

‘No. I wasn’t out to steal anything. Just to save myself – my soul, if you like. It was stealing that got me into this.’

He waved a surprisingly long, slim hand. ‘Then tell. My wife and family are well abed, and I need little sleep. Wake me if I nod, though. The ears of the righteous should never be closed
to a plea, but the eyes may sometimes droop a little.’

He was not really that old a man, though at first I’d thought of him as venerable. He was probably only fifty-five-ish, though that was older in these times; the hair that straggled from under his skullcap was more black than white. Nor was he as frail as he looked, I guessed; the fingers he steepled against his nose were a worker’s, calloused
and wiry. I told him what I could, and he sat unmoving. He never showed the least sign of sleep, though. Only the lamp flame made the shadow slump on the wall behind him, and his bright eyes caught the glow.

I watched it as I talked, and at the back of my mind I thought of that bastard Fisher again, and how people cast shadows into the Spiral, shadows of legend. I wondered which I was talking
to, a man or his shadow; and I wondered what separated them. Could they ever meet? That would be like a
doppelgänger
– and I remembered
The Student of Prague
. Prague, where the Spiral was so strong. What sort of shadow would I cast in the night?

My tale trickled away into nothingness, and I sat silent, feeling like about tuppence-worth of Kelley-coating. The rabbi also sat silent, and I squirmed
inwardly. I’d been too truthful. Probably now he thought I was a total flake. Suddenly he sat up, and spoke.

‘So, you
are truly determined to resist these creatures, these demonic servants and whatever lies behind them? Even with the power they offer?’

I sagged with relief. Of course I’d been forgetting that a man with a home-made
golem
in his basement has reasons to take a liberal line on magic
and suchlike. ‘Power? God, you don’t know what it’s like. Like dabbling your feet in a flood. It keeps trying to whirl me away, suck me down … No, I want to cut loose. At all costs! Whatever I might’ve … No matter what! Anything!’ I hugged myself, shivering.

The rabbi stared at the floor. ‘This, this
Spirale
of yours – of such a matter I have heard, yes, though under other names. It does not
altogether accord with the tenets of our faith, though according to the
Zohar
of de Leon some aspects of the kabalistic belief, the
Sephiroth
… But to travel in time, as upon a river – upstream this day, downstream yesterday, maybe no day if you don’t paddle fast enough,
ai
! No matter. I cannot say yea or nay. Suffice it that in these parts the art magical is stronger than elsewhere, whatever
the reason, and so many scholars flock here. That much I can accept.’ He stroked his beard, and nodded.

‘And thence,
one thing I am sure of. These things that pursue you are very wicked indeed, yes. But they are not demons as we understand them – nor, as I believe, your faith also. They have too much of a flavour of humanity. Men who have made themselves into the image of demons, perhaps; yet
they command too much power for that, and move with too single a purpose. You fear for your soul, you say. Whatever is to fear from them, I do not think it is
Sheol
– to you, Hell.’

I glared at him. ‘You haven’t seen them! You haven’t felt—’

‘No. And I did not say there was nothing to fear.’

‘Then … You. You’re some kind of magician, a powerful one. Can I ask you to help me, somehow? I can’t
trust old Dee – he means well, sure, but if he tries this ceremony of his I just bet Kelley will skew it somehow. Dee trusts him too much. What’d happen to me then – it wouldn’t be good. Kelley’ll see to that.’ My mouth felt very dry. ‘And besides …’

‘Yes?’

‘If Kelley gets that power, in the state he is now, I think an awful lot of people might get hurt. And even if it passes to Dee, well, who
knows? Even old scholars can get corrupted. What if these creatures fasten on him?’

Rabbi Loew looked sternly at me. ‘It seems you do not trust anyone with such power. You judge all others by your own low standards.’

‘Well … OK, I do. I’ve seen a lot of people, the way I live. Maybe the wrong sort of people, all right; but I look at a whole lot of respectable types, politicians, stuffed shirts,
you name it, and I see them act just the same way as low-lifes, a lot of the time – what’s the big joke?’

Loew was
making that peculiar snorting chuckle, and his thin beard wagged. ‘I am sorry! Stuffed shirts, hehhehheh, that is good, very good!’ He slapped his thigh.

‘Look, it’s not original, OK? My father – he thought he was a pillar of the business world, but he was a bigger bloody thief
than I’ll ever be. I don’t trust
anybody
! Not that much. Not a millionth part.’

The rabbi was still smiling. ‘Then evidently you have gained some understanding. Of course these creatures would seek a master to serve, for that would be how they gain their ascendancy. What is a little service to them, if with every move they draw you deeper into their web? Seeking to live again through you! They
spoke the truth, because that is the strongest lie. Ruling you by your own urges, always bolstering you where you are weakest, until you can do nothing at all any longer without their aid and are little more than their creature. Then the servant is the master indeed! Your life would be theirs. They would absorb you, consume you, draw you into their central will. The
vrkolak
that the Germans call
vampir
could not do worse.’

My throat felt suddenly full of broken glass, so dry I couldn’t speak. He was putting into words exactly what I’d felt. He moved his hand a little, and his firelight shadow made a gesture of sweeping power. ‘Probably that is how they were ensnared in their turns. I can imagine them as you describe them – weak, resentful men, aye, and women, who found in that central
will, whatever it was, the chance to become what they believed they ought to be. Petty criminals – you will forgive me? – often see themselves as daring, romantic bandits. Romantic to them, anyhow.’

I winced. I
could understand that all too easily. I had the updated version, so I could only believe in it behind the wheel of a car; and by a mercy those bandits had never caught me there, since
the first time.

‘Yes,’ said Loew thoughtfully. ‘This Kelley. A rascal, but how much worse would he be if he had no fear or weakness to restrain him? And which of us shall be exempt? Is it not merciful that the powers I have found lie in the hands of a weak old man with few ambitions left in this world? You have done well to resist, young fellow.’

‘Then … you’ll help me?’

Loew was silent a moment,
and my heart sank. ‘Here, now, yes, I can defend you. Evil things do not cross this threshold. But this link that has been forged, this tether that draws this power to you – I know of nothing to sever that. It is in my case best that he who creates such a bond is also the one to break it. There are what you would call rites of exorcism in my faith, but they are not for Gentiles.’

I began to feel
the panic climbing up my trouser leg again. ‘Yes, look, but I’m not much of a Christian, really – I’m, what’s the bloody word, ecumenical, that’s it—’

Loew’s smile
was as firm as a frown. ‘I do not doubt it. But no. And this ceremony of your Dr Dee, it cannot but be a Christian ceremony, can it? As
reb
I can have nothing to do with that.’

I sagged. Back to the sewers again, boys. Might as well
go down fighting – though down in something else would have suited me better.

Loew was still smiling. ‘However,’ he added in a kindly voice, and my spine snapped me bolt upright, ‘I
can
seek to banish evil with prayer from any gathering of any kind. That is always lawful. Indeed, it is my duty. I do not have to pay too much attention to whatever other gabble is also going on, do I? So, if your
Dr Dee will have me—’

I shot out of my chair and grabbed his hand. ‘Oh, he will, he will! He’s a good man too, he’ll understand! He’d bloody well better, anyway – if he wants me, he’ll have to! Thank you, I can’t say – I’ll never be able to repay—’

He shook his head, and now he did look stern, under the cloak of that shadow, straight now against the wall and very tall. ‘Ah, ah yes, you can repay
me, indeed. In advance, if you like. Richly. You see, times have been hard for us, for so long, in so many lands. And now, here, they seem to be growing a little easier. Rudolph is a better master than any other Christian monarch alive – not least because he values our money. We begin to prosper as nowhere else. And yet his protection extends only so far – not into the hearts and wills of his
subjects, or most of them. So we live still behind walls, and bear a yellow badge of shame, and yet—Hope is like a limb long unused, painful to stir. Dare I ask—’ He looked down, and for the first time he seemed nervous. ‘You who comes walking out of years that are yet to be, you can tell me—’

‘Yes?’ I prompted him, for he looked as anguished as I must have a moment back.

‘You can tell me –
what is to be the fate of my people?’

I must
have just stared at him stupidly for a second. My brain was boiling. Pogroms; emigrations; deportations; America; Auschwitz; the Rothschilds; Stalin; lampshades; Israel; the furnaces; fundamentalists; Sobibor; the Six-Day War, all struggling to the fore.

I drew a deep breath.
‘Well …’
I began.

I slept that night on the hearth, warmed by the dying
fire. The rabbi had only beds for himself and his family; but the straw mattress he hauled out was a lot more comfortable than your average trendy futon, and the blankets were more than enough. The lamp had guttered and gone out before I’d finished my potted history, leaving us in near darkness. But the firelight still showed me the play of expression across Loew’s narrow features, and the way he
tugged at his beard sometimes. Just once he struck his brow, hard; and it wasn’t when I might have expected it. I guess I probably didn’t tell it well; but at the end he didn’t speak for quite a while, and when he did, it was of bed, and of prayer.

The next morning I was awakened by Loew’s womenfolk, wife and daughter-in-law and granddaughter, much amused but very polite, though only the young
girl spoke much German. A nice cheery trio, who could have got off a bus in Golders Green any day, except for those yellow circles. Loew and his son, also a Talmudic teacher, had apparently gone out to the school, and to send some kind of message, and when he came back, alone, he was still in a very reflective mood. About what I’d told him he said nothing; but I got the feeling he was ringing like
a bell. Also, he seemed to be waiting for something; and around midday it came, with a knock on the door.

A young
man stooped under the lintel, elaborately curled locks swinging beneath his broad floppy hat, a yellow circle ingeniously embroidered into his elegant doublet. I could guess where he fitted in by the granddaughter’s reaction, instantly suppressed, and the way he glared suspiciously
at me. He exchanged a quick word with the rabbi, who nodded to me. ‘They are here!’

They? I stepped back as two others strode hastily in, muffled in yellow-circled cloaks despite the mild sun. One struck his head on a beam, but made only a noise of dignified expostulation. The other—

I didn’t need to be told who. There was this faint, lingering pong …

I glared at Loew. ‘
He
wasn’t supposed to
be here!’

Dee threw back his hood, blinking around him with the air of a duke in a public men’s room for the first time. ‘I would not come without Brother Edward. He has a right to his voice in this matter.’

I backed behind a convenient table. ‘Has he? He was after me with a sword last night! And he’s been conning you – I mean, cozening you, all this time. You, the Emperor, J—everyone!’

Kelley
didn’t bother to uncloak. He took one step towards me, grabbing at his waist, then froze with the dagger hilt in his hand. The young man’s dagger was already drawn, a lot longer, and poised just under Kelley’s breastbone. He grinned with satisfaction at my cowardly reaction.