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(Continued from page 8)

Part 2

Chancellor Borin, named after the Viking god of the wind, was worried, but felt no guilt, about the captured rabbi’s remarks.

The guards looked askance as Borin told them to forget what the Jew had alleged.

It was 1741. It was East Prussia. His world was feudal, that is dominated by a royal military dictatorship. He knew that he need never apologize, in such a regime, for shaking down minorities for protection money and for inside data too. But extorting the clergy, albeit priests of an alien faith such as judaism, was verging on the dubious, he thought. He was married to a niece of the king’s cousin, and that made him royal too. He smiled inwardly at his good fortune. “I’ll visit the silly assassin at midnight in his cell,” he told the enormous guardsmen, “but first give him wine, meat, cheese and bread. If he refuses it, thinking it poisoned, come back and tell me.”

“Yes, Excellency, at once, Excellency.” grovelled the senior (and more obsequious) guard, Heinrich Stringer, now 40 with five children to feed.

“And find out from the public notary in the village whether the captive Jew’s name is really Julius Hector Rosenwald as he claimed. We’ve yet got to decide whether to prosecute him for trespassing and attempted murder or whether we should send him straight to a lunatic asylum – a sanatorium for criminals.” Borin stared hypnotically at his transfixed officer, willing his own intention to be freely accepted without resistance.

“Certainly, Excellency. I’ll arrange everything in accordance with what you said.” Stringer saluted Borin and clicked his heels together in the Prussian manner, before wheeling out of the door, showing his total professional discipline. Borin began to write in his leather-bound desk diary: “Jews soon to do an uprising in this vicinity. Contact both Ecclesiastical authorities and the Berlin headquarters of the military.” Then he smoked from his briar pipe and drank his schnapps, no longer dwelling on the fate of the intruder now in the castle dungeons.

Part 3

Borin, flanked by four armed men, confronted the Jew at midnight. The Prussians carried fiery torches as there would be no electric light in those damp oppressing dungeons for 150 years.

“Do you think we intend to poison you, Rosenwald? We are men of honour and we respect your dissidence,” began Borin. The Jew met his eyes with chutzpah. “I trust in nobody except God Jehovah. Bad faith dominates Prussia as you well know. If you really respect my so-called dissidence then let me go home in safety and peace,” brave Julius replied. Two of the guards, the youngest, fresh from military training college, guffawed at these words from the orientalist rabbi. They would regret their mockery.

“What we want to know before we release you is not the formula for kosher meat, nor the private address of Jehovah nor the name of the chief rabbi. What we must be certain of is whether the Jews like yourself are planning an insurrection against our king and lord, Friedrich Hohenzollern, God give him victory!” Two hundred years later, Rosenwald’s descendant would be the owner of a Chicago merchandising emporium, in a democratic capitalist America where extortion and bribery were federal offences. The Jew being interrogated eerily and spookily knew this already; he knew all of his progeny since he was a psychic and a mystic. He said, staring at the feudal lord Borin with deep conviction “Jehovah hath judged all of the Prussians already and made them sadistic and asexual. They are bent and twisted inside because of false hierarchies, mad pyramids, which they impose upon the innocent. I deny you the information you want. Even now your king Friedrich is dying of a nemetic heart attack in Potsdam – none can save him or you!”

The guards and Borin gasped with fear, rage, pain and astonishment. They had met their metaphysical match. Would they, out of pique, now torture the outrageous and magical rabbi?

Part 4

The four guards and their boss, Borin, were so shocked and upset by Rosenwald’s remarks that they stepped backwards and dropped their fiery torches. In the darkness and confusion, Borin shouted “The Jew! The Jew! He is more dangerous than we thought! Grab him quickly!”

But the Jew was quicksilver and elusive. In the pitch-black chaos he slipped away, grateful for the over-confidence of the Prussians leaving the dungeon door ajar. Within a minute he was on the battlements of the grim castle and from those high walls he athletically plunged into the still waters of the moat below. He ran like a cheetah for the forest a mile away. Did he have four minutes lead on his erstwhile captors? - would they send horsemen to chase him? – he ruminated as his agile feet carried him to safety.

He got into the undergrowth of the sad pine forest and quickly scaled a tree, now watching intently for the drawbridge to be lowered and for the Prussian cavalry to emerge – but he was lucky. Borin and Stringer and the captain of the guard Bendtner believed that Rosenwald was hiding somewhere in the castle since the sentries had not seen him leave it. It was only twenty-five minutes past midnight, Borin was calling a staff meeting, and the rabbi cackled with delight at his exploit.

Suddenly, a great electromagnetic storm and a gale force wind began. As his welcoming branch swayed uncertainly Rosenwald saw lightning strike the tower where Borin had his office. The granite blocks burst asunder, ripped apart as if they were papier-maché. Rosenwald once again thanked and praised Jehovah for his salvation.

In the castle’s conference room Borin lay under a large piece of wall comatose but not dead. His head and shoulders bled profusely.

 . . .continued in the next Homeless Diamonds (Issue 13, December 2010)