The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (18 page)

— Now you’ll marry me.

— Anything else, Chet, but not that.

— You have nothing, Naomie.

— All I have, I’ve given you already.

— Then what have you got to lose? I don’t expect a dowry.

I’ve turned away dozens of those.

— I don’t love you, Chet. I can’t give you that. You can’t buy it.

— Marry me anyway. You’re the only one who knows me. The only one who’s seen what I’ve done.

She let him hold her hands. She let him take her to bed. She let him caress her however he desired. She spent the whole night with him and when they awoke it was well past daylight. He kissed her with that mouth that glistened with greed, and reiterated his vows. She shook her head and dashed back to the orphanage.

The others had, of course, noticed her empty cot, and, their suppositions confirmed, called her trollop and necromancer and succubus. Since she’d no bread with which to appease them this time, they didn’t stop tormenting her even after Yidel sent them begging: In the sewer behind the orphanage, the boys molested her while the girls tore out her hair.

She was too ill to leave the orphanage that night. Chet waited for her in the graveyard. He waited ’til dawn, nibbling on sins as the hours passed and his hunger spread. When nothing was left, he slept.

Lately Chet’s dreams had been as soft and warm as his bed, but, on this particular night, they raged through his head, angry and mean like a thrashing. At last Chet opened his eyes. He found Ofer standing over him, shouting his name.

— There’s been a murder, Chet. The town bell has been ringing for hours.

— What concern is it of mine?

— The rabbi wants everybody to gather. Since you weren’t at your estate, he sent me to fetch you here.

Hundreds of people were in the square, and still more were coming down every road. Chet looked for Naomie where the orphans stood. He couldn’t find her. He tried to get closer, but the rabbi’s disciples brought the meeting to order.

Sender appeared on the balcony of the town hall with the mayor, whom he’d single-handedly elected many years before, and whose only role was to stand beside the rabbi at municipal functions, lending them legitimacy in the capital city. Sender stepped forward and said that Reuven the moneylender had been murdered two nights before, and that his body was gone, save for a shroud of blood in his bed. The rabbi demanded a confession.

Of course nobody liked the moneylender, and almost all stood to have debts forgiven, or, rather, forgotten, now that he was gone, but no one was about to lay claim to the crime. Which presented a serious problem: With motivation nearly universal and the corporeal evidence gone missing, there was no means of investigation. Justice had to be done. Someone had to hang. The capital city insisted on it, and promised to handle it if the community couldn’t. That meant large dogs and small cells from which folks didn’t always emerge as whole as they’d entered: A town could be decimated by the time the crime was solved.

For three days, nobody came forward with a confession. In such situations there was but one course of action: Sender ordered Yidel’s orphans to draw straws. Society has a use for everyone.

To ensure that Naomie’s lot would be shortest, the children enlisted a boy named Falk, who was shrewdest at dice and cards and other games of chance, to hold the bundle while they drew. When Naomie’s turn came, he spat in her eye so she wouldn’t see him press down on the straw she was drawing, snapping it in two. If only Falk had been as good at addition as he was at division, his ruse would have worked. But he’d started with one lot too few, which left in his hands, when his own turn came, just the severed end of Naomie’s straw. Anybody could see it was the shortest segment, that he’d botched the job. Everyone began talking at once, yet within a few moments, they’d reached a consensus: Naomie had used her witchcraft. Falk grabbed her straw, and, to universal approval, broke it to bits. Then they marched her to Sender, who imprisoned her in the town hall, and had his beadle post an announcement of her impending death.

When Chet went to the graveyard that night, he saw a copy of the notice. He read it twice.
HANGING AT NOON
, it said.
ALL INVITED
.

There were sins to be dispatched that evening, coins to be collected. He left the cemetery, though, candles still burning. He went to the rabbi’s study.

As usual, Sender was with his disciples, reading through the night. When the pupils saw Chet coming, they surrounded the sin-eater, not to block his way, but to praise him, venerable citizen, and to admire his furs. Sender clapped his hands and waved for them to be gone. The disciples dispersed. The rabbi invited Chet inside, and poured him a cup of tea. The sin-eater took a sip. He set down his cup.

— Why are you punishing Naomie, Rabbi? She’s innocent.

— She drew the shortest straw. You were in the orphanage once. You know how it works.

— But . . .

— Don’t think of it as punishment, Chet. This has nothing to do with her personally.

— She’s going to die.

— We have no other option.

For a moment, Chet thought about that. It wasn’t right. The cheat stared at the rabbi.

— There’s
me.

— You haven’t done anything wrong.

—
I’m
guilty.

The rabbi refused to believe him, so Chet went to the woods, where the remains of his former master still lay, and brought back some bones. He dropped them, one at a time, on Sender’s floor. Did he give a showman’s bow? The rabbi couldn’t be sure.

— But those bones are old.

— Reuven wasn’t a young man.

— What happened to the rest of him?

— Carrion.

— You wouldn’t kill someone without a reason.

— I didn’t like that he had as much money as me.

The rabbi wasn’t convinced, but he had to admit that, at least from the standpoint of the capital city, Chet made a more compelling suspect than Naomie. Sender called for his beadle, who led the sin-eater to prison.

Naomie was stirred by the turning of the beadle’s key. She opened her eyes. She squinted, perplexed. She stared at Chet. She murmured his name. She asked if he was her executioner. The beadle informed her that she was free. He said that she had to leave.

Only, she’d nowhere to go. The other orphans would already have parceled out her bedding, taken her place in the poorhouse. The streets were under curfew. She crept to the cemetery, where she figured Chet would go once he’d paid whatever bribes were behind her release. She curled up and slept. She dreamed of marrying him, of making children to fill each of his bedrooms.

The sun was nearly overhead when she woke again. All the candles had burned out. Vultures were consuming the sins. And Chet was still gone.

Then she heard the village bell tolling death, chiming in sets of thirteen. She tried to imagine how they were hanging her if she wasn’t there. She tried to guess who they were executing in her place. Then she knew.

She plunged into the forest. She started to run. A root caught her foot. Her ankle snapped. Still she sprinted. She hit cobblestone. She broke through mobs of oglers into the hangman’s procession. She saw Chet, bound in chains. She called out to the crowd. She said he couldn’t possibly have killed Reuven, because on the night of the murder she’d been with him, in his bed. The mob ignored her, boastful little orphan girl. They wanted Chet dead: The cheat had never done anything except take their money and build himself a mansion. Had he ever actually atoned for the sins he purported to eat? Had he given alms? Ephraim had been holy. What was Chet? He was just greedy. The moneylender was forgotten, yesterday’s murder, last week’s villain. Chet was all they talked about, and he deserved nothing less than death.

Naomie turned from the crowd. Still shouting to be heard, she told Chet that she’d been wrong. She demanded to know how she could live without him, where she was supposed to go.

Was it gallows humor that made him mouth the word
graveyard
? A moment later, he was dead.

Not a soul attended Chet’s funeral, except to pile waste atop his coffin, rancid animal offal and excrement, determined to bury him in his own sin. To complete the grotesque ritual, they surrounded his casket with every candle they could find in his house, lest his sins be carried away inadvertently by wild beasts.

The flame was furious. Terrified, Naomie hid inside a nearby crypt. The townsfolk went away. The sun set. At last she emerged, Naomie the orphan sin-eater. She approached her supper. As she got closer, the fire grew higher. It stretched past the treetops, each candle flame as broad as a trunk at the base, yet, up above, all of them branched together, woven into one light. She took another step. The fire collected. She plunged forward. The flame lifted, as if on a wind, and went out.

For many hours, Naomie was blind. Only with dawn did she see what had happened: The fire had consumed, completely, the food on Chet’s coffin. There was no sin. Not a trace of who he’d been.

Naomie felt, deep in her stomach, a hunger unlike any she’d had before. And she knew that, no matter how much she ate, it would always be there. In that pit, she would always have Chet.

TET THE IDLER

Bell towers are the lighthouses by which we navigate the hours.

There once was a town with a clock that, like a bright beacon on the coastline, became a surrogate for the sun. Nobody ever rested in that town, for the bells rang all the time, a grand carillon that had been chiming, day and night, since before the eldest villagers were born. The townsfolk didn’t question what caused the bells ceaselessly to repeat their song—whether it was a mechanical glitch or a metaphysical slip—any more than they wondered what it might be like to shut their eyes and sleep. Dreamy philosophy meant nothing to them. What mattered was that, on account of their peerless bell tower, their town prospered above all neighbors.

Folks worked constantly. Some farmed, while others plied the trades. But none toiled harder, under a greater burden, than Sol the timekeeper.

Sol was responsible for keeping the town clock wound. The carillon was powered by two lead weights, which ran down the center of the tower on loops of rope, and, if Sol wasn’t hoisting one, he was tugging up the other. It was a job for two men, for which reason he’d heeded his father’s deathbed advice: He’d taken a wife and raised a son.

The wife hadn’t lasted many months past childbirth, but the son survived, as stout a boy as a papa could want. Sol called him Tet, and set him to work as soon as he could walk, fixing meals and cleaning up. Yet there wasn’t much for a child, still too light to haul a weight, to do in a bell tower. While farmers and tradesmen always had suitable tasks for even their smallest sons and daughters, Tet had hours each day of leisure.

Some of these he spent watching folks work. He kept himself hidden, lest they solicit his help, for he knew that effort caused calluses and blisters, and wanted neither. He also saw that tireless exertion produced fine goods and delicate foods in such abundance that merchants from foreign lands were over-whelmed: If local builders weren’t making new mills and kilns and looms, they were framing warehouses to store the surplus of luxuries ready for market.

When he wearied of seeing people toil—whether sowing or spinning or butchering cows, their jobs were as repetitive as the tower bells—Tet would visit the warehouses. There the boy could eat all the delicacies he wanted, wearing clothing woven of silk and gold, seated on a throne of cut gemstones. He’d pretend that he was the emperor of an exotic land, where everyone worked for his pleasure. If he wore a fur mantle, he envisioned a manservant wrapping him in it. If he ate a crown of figs or a round of cheese, he pictured a maid bringing it to him on a golden platter. His maids always had ample breasts and his men were sturdy like livestock. He couldn’t imagine a finer retinue, yet, no matter what he had them do for him, his fantasies felt a bit empty: There was nobody to enjoy his leisure with him.

It was not for want of effort on his part. A hundred times he tried to come up with conversations to detain the servants in his reveries. A thousand times, he contemplated ruses to be-friend them. But like the people he watched in field and shop, those who populated his fictions were beholden to the carillon. He simply didn’t know how to dream up folks who weren’t.

Tet asked his father why nobody ever used the luxuries that the town produced.

— Those goods are sold.

— Who buys them?

— Merchants. You know that, Tet. You’ve seen them come in with their lorries and haul away all that they can carry. You see them practically every week.

— Then what do they do with all the goods they get? Do
they
use them?

— They barter the goods. That’s what makes them merchants.

— They barter the goods with people who use them?

— They barter the goods with other merchants.

— And
those
merchants . . . ?

— Can’t you see I’m busy? Why do you care? Why aren’t you upstairs, polishing the carillon bells, Tet? You know the chime must be bright. You know the town depends on that.