"Jane Yolen - Granny Rumple" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

before her was extraordinarily beautiful.
"I am the wife of Shmuel Zvi Bar Michael."
"Who is that?" asked Tana. For her, one Jewish name was as unpronounceable as
another.
 "Shmuel Zvi Bar Michael," Shana explained, patiently, as to a child. "The
moneylender. Who lent you money for your wedding."
"My father paid for my wedding," Tana said, making the sign of the cross as
protection for herself and the child in her arms.
Shana did not even flinch. This puzzled Tana a great deal and frightened her as
well. "What do you want?"
"Repayment of the loan," Shana said, adding under her breath in Yiddish: "Vi
men brokt zikh ayn di farfl, azoy est men zey oyf," which means "The way your farfl
is cut, that's how you'll eat it." In other words, You made your bed, now you'll lie in
it. You don't want to ask about farfl.
"I borrowed nothing from you," Tana said.
Talking as if to an idiot or to one who does not understand the language, Shana
said, "You borrowed it from my husband." She took a paper from her bosom and
shoved it under Tana's nose.
Tana shrank from the paper and covered the child's face with a cloth as if the
paper would contaminate it, poor thing. Then she began to scream: "Demon! Witch!
Child stealer!" Her screams would have brought in the household if they had not all
been about the business of the day.
But a JewтАФany JewтАФknows better than to stay where the charge of blood libel
has been laid. Shana left at once, the paper still fluttering in her hand.
She went home but said nothing to her husband. When necessary, Shana could
keep her own counsel.
Still, the damage had been done. Terrified she would have to admit her failures,
Tana told her husband a fairy tale indeed, complete with a little, ugly black imp with
an unpronounceable name who had sworn to take her child for unspeakable rites.
And as it was springtime, and behind the ghetto walls the Jewish community of
Ykaterinislav was preparing for Passover, Tana's accusations of blood libel were
believed, though it took her a full night of complaining to convince Leon.
Who but a Jew, after all, was little and darkтАФ never mind that half of the
population both in front of and behind the walls were tall and blonde thanks to the
Vikings who had settled their trade center in Kiev generations before. Who but a Jew
had an unpronounceable nameтАФnever mind that the local goyish names did not have
a sufficiency of vowels. Who but a Jew would steal a Christian child, slitting its
throat and using the innocent blood in the making of matzohтАФnever mind that it was
the Jews, not the gentiles, who had been on the blade end of the killing knife all
along.
Besides, it had been years since the last pogrom. Blood calls for blood, even if it
is just a story. Leon went to his friends, elaborating on Tana's tale.


What happened next was simple. Just as the shammes was going around the
ghetto, rapping with his special hammer on the shutters of the houses and calling out
"Arise, Jews, and serve the Lord! Arise and recite the psalms!" the local bullyboys
were massing outside the ghetto walls.
In house after house, Jewish men rose and donned their tefillin and began their
prayers; the women lit the fires in the stoves.