She takes a deep breath and massages her temples. Walk, Bilhah. Keep walking. The walking will calm her.

She passes a tower that is being constructed, she turns, heads north, and finds herself next to the cave of Zecharyah. She stands behind an olive tree, and her eye catches a small group of workers. They have moved rocks into a circle and are sitting, listening attentively. She watches.

There is an old man; he must be teaching them, for his arms wave around in explanation and he rocks gently, back and forth. It is that group from Tzfat, the ones who think they can bring the final Redemption. Bitterness wells up inside. With all their prayer and study, they can do nothing, nothing, against the likes of Papa.

She steps out, the better to see. The man reminds her of the chachamim in Salonika. Watching him soothes her. A young man — the man she spoke to regarding all the arrangements — approaches him and offers him a drink from a flask. The elderly sage pauses, nods his thanks, then drinks, handing the flask back to the younger man with a smile.

He must have noticed her as he returned to his place, for he walks toward her. He approaches and dips his head, a sign of respect. He is the youngest of the group, the man with the straggled beard and a face so thin that his eyes seem huge.

“About the work assignation.”

She nods curtly. “I know that it is not fitting for your friends.” Say your piece and leave me, she thinks. “I suppose that you simply want to get home.”

He shakes his head. “I have no family.”

“Oh…. No wife, no children?”

“My wife died in childbed. Our son followed a few days later.”

His words are a stab wound. Sometimes she forgets herself, and thinks she is the only one who knows suffering. It is a childish falsehood.

“And parents? Surely you are not….”

“I was 18 when my father passed away. And that was a gift, for the Rabbis teach, 18 for the chuppah. And even though I did not marry then, not for some years, my father had brought me to that stage. He was my lulav, my backbone.”

She pulls a silvery leaf from the olive tree and tears it into shreds. The man winces. Let him. This is the least of the destruction. Who needs a father? She has managed well enough without one.

He continues. “But there are three partners to every person. Mother, Father, and the Almighty. When a mother or father pass away, or fall to illness or grief, then the third Parent makes His presence felt.”

She shakes her head, rage rising to the surface. This man, he lives in dreamland. “Not for me. My mother lies in a graveyard in Salonika. She died when I was two years old. I imagine her but I do not remember her.”

He nods. “But you had a father.”

“He was not… a father.”

“What do you mean?”

How can she explain? The dread that would roll in along with him when he entered the house. When she saw him, first her toes would curl into her shoes, as if that would help her steady herself should he decide to lift his hand against her. Then her legs, how they would stiffen. Her stomach would tighten, and if there was any food in her belly, it would rise up and graze the back of her throat with acid. Her palms would grow wet with sweat and her cheeks would flush and she would focus so hard that her forehead hurt: focus on trying to push away the terror and hold on to the anger.

Anger, that was her only protection, for if he sensed it, if he sensed her fury, then she was safe, he would take a step back and look at her with something like curiosity — who is this child I have fathered and what fire burns inside her?

“He… he would hurt me.”

He nods and says nothing. She pulls at the purple olives that dangle from the tree, splits one open with her fingernail and watches the dark juice stain her fingers. “I. I ran from him. First to Istanbul, where I worked in the Imperial Palace. There are other Jewish girls there, you know. Then I was sent here. You may think that a wall is built from stone, but I know that it is constructed from paperwork. That is what I do here. Letters and signatures and—” Why is she saying this? Why is she telling this stranger about her life?

“And finding us a place to sleep and food and work clothing. I did not thank you.”

She looks down, but feels his gaze.

“What gave you the strength?” he asks suddenly.

She gives a bitter laugh, opens her palm and lets the olive stone roll onto the ground. “Do you think it was strength? It was fear.”

“It was not just fear. You carved out for yourself a choice. You fled. You found work. Protection. How did you have that strength?”

“I do not know.”

“Unless that was your Third Parent. Giving you the gifts you need. Courage. Strength.”

She shrugs. Who is he, talking this way? But then, it was she who opened up to him. Why? Fear. Confusion. The sound of Papa’s voice echoing on the stone walls.

He speaks quietly. “We thank the Almighty for our sight. That we can walk and breathe. But there are other gifts: the fact that we can heal. Not just a cut or a burn, but I… a person… can be in a raging ocean of grief and suddenly find peace. We can find friendship. We can give, and learn, and pray. We have courage. Even the fact that we yearn.”

She nods, moved by his words.

“All of this talk of the Mashiach — it means that we are saying something can be different. Something can be better. There can be a place, a time, when our nation is not splintered and fractured, limping and lost and bleeding.”

“Hope,” she says. Her voice is flat.

“Yes. Hope. We can thank the Almighty that we can hope.” With those words, he turns and leaves.

***

That night, as Bilhah lies in bed in the dark room, the conversation replays in her mind. She tosses and turns, pulls the blanket higher around her shoulders, then pushes it down. She watches moonlight move across the floor, stands and throws open the shutters to see it in the sky. The wind is cold. She shivers and closes the shutters and returns to her bed.

“Bilhah?” Elvira’s voice is heavy with sleep.

“Hmmm?”

“What are you thinking about?”

She hesitates. “Hope.”

“What about it?”

“When I was a little girl, I gave people hope.”

“What do you mean?”

It is late, and she should not burden Elvira now, but it is a relief to talk into the darkness, for her head is full, saturated with thoughts, and Elvira is lying in the next bed, offering to listen. And to drop words into the darkness, is easier than in the glare of the day, when you see their reaction: the pain and horror in their eyes and you want to say, it is not so bad. See, I’m here, after all.

“When I was a child, eight, maybe nine years old. My father bought me a white dress. My maid took out my braid and brushed my hair, so it was long and loose. And Papa told me, first open your eyes very wide, then almost close them but not quite. And give people comfort.”

“What do you mean?” Elvira asks.

“Tell them about people in Heaven. The neshamot that they had lost. An aunt. Once, a son.”

“And what did you do?”

“It was like a game. I would say something, a few things, and I could feel that they were looking at me, and listening and…”

“And what?”

“How can I explain? It felt like I was alive. Well, alive and dead all at the same time. Not here and not there. Not a child, not an adult, not a good spirit, certainly not that, though the people thought I had ruach hakodesh. Maybe because I sensed what they wanted to hear. The mother, that her son was at peace and singing with the angels. The aunt would tell them to do kindness to her family. It was not too hard.”

Elvira’s bedclothes rustle and Bilhah senses her sitting up in bed, listening. But still, she speaks to the stone wall in front of her.

“And the strange thing was that what I said happened. It took place. I told the people that surely, the time was ripe for a redeemer to come. And the very next day, word went around that a man had arrived, riding a great white horse, with a glow on his face and his tzitzit — tzitzit with techeilet — flying out behind him.” She pauses for breath. “It was Rav Shlomo Molcho. He had arrived in Salonika.”

“Rav Shlomo Molcho? The one who took up with David HaReuveni?”

“The very one.”

“And who went to the pope, and told him that he would raise a Jewish army, and help him to fight the infidel Turks?”

“Yes. And with a great banner, a flag. He did not announce it then, but everyone knew he was a special soul.”

“There was that story that he gave himself a brit milah.”

“Yes. He was born to a family of Anusim, and rose through the ranks in the court of Portugal. When he met David HaReuveni, he decided to forsake his position and he gave himself a brit milah. It was then that he fled to Salonika. He arrived at my father’s print shop with a sefer he had written, talking about the end of days.”

Quiet. She can hear the sound of Elvira breathing.

“He learned in Salonika for a few years, with the greats, and it was a time of… well, it was springtime every day. Small injuries, big troubles — all of them faded, for it was like the dawn had come and everything glowed gold. And then he left. Soon enough came word that he was prophesying. That he was the Redeemer we had all been waiting for.”

She takes a deep breath and wraps her arms around herself.

“Such excitement that followed. We all gathered in the beit knesset and we had Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur in the middle of the year. In the winter. The days were short, and the rain was pounding down on the roof and the windows, and we all fasted and asked that we be worthy of the redemption.

“I said the words: v’taavir memshelet zadon min ha’aretz — let the kingdom of iniquity be removed from the land. I closed my eyes and thought of Papa and I held my breath for so long that I thought that my chest would burst.”

“When night fell, we all left the beit knesset with… with a sense of anticipation. We were ready. We were cleansed, we were forgiven. And I thought, surely, now I will be safe. For Papa knows I am an orphan. I had looked it up, you see, as I had not been sure: is an orphan one who has lost only both parents, or just one? Because if it is both parents, then he could still be justified, but if an orphan means from only one parent, then there was a reason not to hurt me.”

Bilhah’s voice cracks. “I was so sure.”

She lapses into silence.

Elvira’s voice comes out of the darkness. “And then?”

“He came home and broke his fast and ate and drank, and I thought I was safe, so I did not hide from him.

“I sat on the floor and sang to myself, one of the tunes from the tefillah of the day. And my singing must have been too loud or too tuneless or something must have been wrong with it or with me, for all of a sudden I felt a force on my head. I fell backwards, there was a sting, a bang to the back of my head and a fire on my cheek, and it had all come so suddenly, I did not expect it. I had thought it was safe to hope, but it was not safe at all.

“I should have known better. For always, it wasn’t so much what he did, but what he might have done at any moment.”

Bilhah closes her eyes. She wants to say it and be released, to be able to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. “And Shlomo Molcho: he burned.

“We thought we would be redeemed, that the bleeding of our hearts would be staunched. That we would be gathered up and placed in the verdant garden of Eden, where all we would hear was the tinkle of water from the four streams and the sound of the angels singing.

“And instead, we heard the jeer of the crowds, gathered to watch him burn. The screams as the flames licked his feet. The howl of mothers. The cracking and grinding of the men’s teeth as they tried to swallow their own cries.

“Memshelet zadon.” Bilhah hears her own voice harden and grow bitter. “This is what we are in. A memshelet zadon. Hope is dangerous.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 831)