FullReads

As the Shamash took the bottle, with a fearless shrug of the shoulders, every eye strained painfully towards him, save in the women’s gallery, where many covered their faces with their hands. Every breath was held.

Keeping the same amused incredulous face, Red Judah gulped down a draught. But as the liquid met his palate a horrible distortion overcame his smile, his hands flew heavenwards. Dropping the bottle, and with a hoarse cry, ‘Mercy, O God!’ he fell before the Ark, foaming at the mouth. The red fluid spread in a vivid pool.

‘Hear, O Israel!’ A raucous cry of horror rose from all around, and was echoed more shrilly from above. Almighty Father! The Jew-haters had worked their fiendish trick. Now the men were become as the women, shrieking, wringing their hands, crying, ‘Ai, vai!‘ ‘Gewalt!‘ The Rabbi shook as with palsy. ‘Satan! Satan!’ chattered through his teeth.

But Ben Amram had moved at last, and was stooping over the scarlet stain.

‘A soldier should know blood, Excellency!’ the physician said quietly.

The officer’s face relaxed into a faint smile.

‘A soldier knows wine too,’ he said, sniffing. And, indeed, the spicy reek of the Consecration wine was bewildering the nearer bystanders.

‘Your Excellency frightened poor Judah into a fit,’ said the physician, raising the beadle’s head by its long red beard.

His Excellency shrugged his shoulders, sprang to his saddle, and cried a retreat. The Cossacks, unable to turn in the aisle, backed cumbrously with a manifold thudding and rearing and clanking, but ere the congregation had finished rubbing their eyes, the last conical hat and leaded knout had vanished, and only the tarry reek of their boots was left in proof of their actual passage. A deep silence hung for a moment like a heavy cloud, then it broke in a torrent of ejaculations.

But Ben Amram’s voice rang through the din. ‘Brethren!’ He rose from wiping the frothing lips of the stricken creature, and his face had the fiery gloom of a seer’s, and the din died under his uplifted palm. ‘Brethren, the Lord hath saved us!’

‘Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever!’ The Rabbi began the phrase, and the congregation caught it up in thunder.

‘But hearken how. Last night at the Seder, as I opened the door for Elijah, there entered Maimon the Meshummad! ‘Twas he quaffed Elijah’s cup!’

There was a rumble of imprecations.

‘A pretty Elijah!’ cried the Rabbi.

‘Nay, but God sends the Prophet of Redemption in strange guise,’ the physician said. ‘Listen! Maimon was pursued by a drunken mob, ignorant he was a deserter from our camp. When he found how I had saved him and dressed his bleeding face, when he saw the spread Passover table, his child-soul came back to him, and in a burst of tears he confessed the diabolical plot against our community, hatched through his instrumentality by some desperate debtors; how, having raised the cry of a lost child, they were to have its blood found beneath our Holy Ark as in some mystic atonement. And while you all lolled joyously at the Seder table, a bottle of blood lay here instead of the Consecration wine, like a bomb waiting to burst and destroy us all.’

A shudder of awe traversed the synagogue.

‘But the Guardian of Israel, who permits us to sleep on Passover night without night-prayer, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Maimon had bribed the Shamash to let him enter the synagogue and replace the Consecration wine.’

‘Red Judah!’ It was like the growl of ten thousand tigers. Some even precipitated themselves upon the writhing wretch.

‘Back! back!’ cried Ben Amram. ‘The Almighty has smitten him.’

‘”Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,”‘ quoted the Rabbi solemnly.

‘Hallelujah!’ shouted a frenzied female voice, and ‘Hallelujah!’ the men responded in thunder.

‘Red Judah had no true belief in the God of Israel,’ the physician went on.

‘May he be an atonement for us all!’ interrupted the Cantor.

‘Amen!’ growled the congregation.

‘For a hundred roubles and the promise of personal immunity Red Judah allowed Maimon the Meshummad to change the bottles while all Israel sat at the Seder. It was because the mob saw the Meshummad stealing out of the synagogue that they fell upon him for a pious Jew. Behold, brethren, how the Almighty weaves His threads together. After the repentant sinner had confessed all to me, and explained how the Cossacks were to be sent to catch all the community assembled helpless in synagogue, I deemed it best merely to get the bottles changed back again. The false bottle contained only bullock’s blood, but it would have sufficed to madden the multitude. Since it is I who have the blessed privilege of supplying the Consecration wine it was easy enough to give Maimon another bottle, and armed with this he roused the Shamash in the dawn, pretending he had now obtained true human blood. A rouble easily procured him the keys again, and when he brought me back the bullock’s blood, I awaited the sequel in peace.’

‘Praise ye the Lord, for He is good,’ sang the Cantor, carried away.

‘For His mercy endureth for ever,’ replied the congregation instinctively.

‘I did not foresee the Shamash would put himself so brazenly forward to hide his guilt, or that he would be asked to drink. But when the Epikouros (atheist) put the bottle to his lips, expecting to taste blood, and found instead good red wine, doubtless he felt at once that the God of Israel was truly in heaven, that He had wrought a miracle and changed the blood back to wine.’

‘And such a miracle God wrought verily,’ cried the Rabbi, grasping the physician’s hand, while the synagogue resounded with cries of ‘May thy strength increase,’ and the gallery heaved frantically with blessings and congratulations.

‘What wonder,’ the physician wound up, as he bent again over the ghastly head, with its pious ringlets writhing like red snakes, ‘that he fell stricken by dread of the Almighty’s wrath!’

And while men were bearing the convulsive form without, the Cantor began to recite the Grace after Redemption. And then the happy hymns rolled out, and the choristers cried ‘Pom!’ and a breath of jubilant hope passed through the synagogue. The mighty hand and the outstretched arm which had redeemed Israel from the Egyptian bondage were still hovering over them, nor would the Prophet Elijah for ever delay to announce the ultimate Messiah.