The Book of Levi

A match strike. Sulphur hangs in the air. Moishe’s hands, their lines deepened by time, cradle me. Fingers stroke the gold lettering pressed into my black cover. My leathered edges relax into the warmth of his hands. His reverent fingertips run the length of my words like when he first touched my pages when I was handed to him by his father. The long, black ink lines on my pages are the transcendent link between this moment on earth and the heavenly infinite.

Moishe’s voice rises, suspends on a note before climbing tones in stair steps. He bestows a benediction on the Most Holy and begins the Sabbath meal when the door rattles. Frau Rosenbaum, the neighbor, bursts in, her chest heaving.

“They’re coming!”

From behind her echoes “Raus!” Out!

Moishe claps my cover shut over the liturgy.

“Quick, Esther,” he says to his wife. “Hide your wedding ring and jewelry in the oak tree with the notch.”

I remember the tree, planted seven days after Levi’s birth.

Moishe’s fear pulses from his wrists and through my pages. He scrambles into an overcoat and slides me into a pocket. Darkness. Muffled screams. Barking dogs. Frantic steps too fast for an old man. I offer him my prayers which he recites in quick succession.

The townspeople’s voices swarm around us.

“They are burning the temple!”

“Bastards! They pissed on the Torah!”

A harsh, guttural voice barks.

“Where is the rabbi?”

Moishe’s heartbeat thrashes through the wool, piercing my silk-lined hiding place.

“No!” Esther’s scream.

I am crushed into Esther’s hand. Moishe is slammed into a wall. A gun report. Moishe’s prayers slump.

Esther has one hand clutching me to her chest and the other cuffed to Frau Rosenbaum’s arm. The streetlamps glint off gold threads woven through Frau Rosenbaum’s shawl and streak across her glasses. Guffawing men prod us toward the train, baiting the dogs to lunge and snap. We are herded into oblong cars that reek of animal and human waste. The locks clank shut and the train’s steam billows through barbed-wire laced windows. Frau Rosenbaum, at Esther’s begging, opens her dress and lifts her sagging breasts.

“You must give this to Levi,” Esther whispers. “He will be there.” My pages flutter as I am bound her chest with Esther’s stockings. My leather edges drink the cold sweat collected there. It tastes of rancid tears. As Frau Rosenbaum buttons her dress closed, I lose sight of Esther.

Even through flesh and cloth, I hear the stammering voices and panicky exclamations I am useless, unable to offer comfort as the train’s wheels clack on the rails. Only terrifying uncertainty awaits us at the terminus.

* * *

“How old are you?” Man’s voice. Impatient.

“32.” Frau Rosenfeld’s voice. Anguished. She pinions her arms around herself, shoving me deeper into her ribs.

“Occupation?”

“Baker’s wife.” Her grip on my bindings speaks to her strength.

“Left.”

* * *

Frau Rosenbaum clings to the woman in front of her, concealing me in her nudity. An echoing concrete vault swallows us. Her ribs lurch with each breath, and my dampened leather bleeds gold onto her skin. The doors clang shut. Her thready heartbeat smashes into a frenzied rhythm. She gulps air. Holds her breath. It ruptures from her, and her heartbeat scrambles as she sucks in air again. In a burst, water sluices down, seeping into my pages. Draping an arm across me, she arches her back, rises to the water and drinks. Sobs cascade from her. Her fingers touch my pages, feel the moisture. She bends. Bows beneath the water, and the tide stems.

She tucks me into her blankets and sleeps with her scratchy, bald head upon my covers. In the darkness, the women cluster around me, pass me to one another. The plump, supple hands lose their nimbleness. The women whisper the Kaddish.

* * *

One morning, after summer’s heat has ebbed to autumn’s chill, Frau Rosenbaum’s sleep-whispered prayers are choked by coughing. She whispers to her bunkmate, “This book must go to Levi Treiger.” The bunkmate nods and shuffles outside for roll call without looking back in spite of her taut shoulders. I lay under Frau Rosenbaum’s head. I pray for her as her gurgled wheezing slides into silence. Before the buzzing flies can feed on her body, two men dump her body onto a sledge with the others.

That night, the bunkmate rests her head on my cover, and the next day, she slips me under her shawl, delivering me to a warehouse. We enter a mausoleum of spoons, clothing, and eyeglasses. Within my hiding place under pillaged false teeth, I eulogize Moishe. Esther. Frau Rosenbaum. I wait for Levi.

* * *

Winter. Harsh, dry cold. From disuse, my leather covers crack, the decades of my existence lose their suppleness. A rat nibbles on my corners. Moisture wimples my pages. My ink is bleeding. My pages are so pleated with sorrow, threads in my bindings snap.

“The Red Army is coming.” Whispers. Jubilant. Terrified. Vindictive.

“We’ll be freed.”

“We’ll be massacred.”

My sense of purpose deflates. I have not found Levi and another ending is approaching.

* * *

I am exhumed, wrapped in a scarf whose thin fibers admit shards of light, like stars bursting through clouds. I am passed from hand to hand, tucked inside a coat and buttoned against the chest.

As evening approaches, the time when we would have lit the Sabbath candles, I am released from my bindings and am cradled in hands weighed with pain but suppliant with youth.

“My father’s prayer book.” A reverent whisper.

Levi.

* * *

His forehead pressed against my cover, Levi begs for protection. The men surrounding him have their hands clasped on each other’s shoulders and, as one, they look at one another in farewell. Levi shoves me into a pocket over his heart. The order to “march” bellows, and he lurches forward. A disjointed pace, he runs with one hand clutching me, my words guiding his steps. During hours that pass like eras, I fear his ragged breathing, a rasping against the bursting gunshots. When Levi collapses into a bunk at a new camp, he holds me and I open to prayers of thanks. Bending his head, he starts to recite the words but chokes and thanks the Almighty that he doesn’t have to run anymore.

* * *

Gunfire is replaced by birdsong, the wind sieving through pine trees. After laboring for so long, all the men lived for is ash and they have forgotten how to hope.

I am unwrapped from my place within this threadbare coat. I relish the warmth of the golden sun, and I crave for each page to be turned. Levi’s filthy, calloused fingers skim the inked lines. His voice lifts, climbs stair steps of notes. And breaks when he sobs.

* * *

Levi’s hand trembles around me when he finds the stolen mezuzah’s splintered gash. The songs of our home are suspended in permanent rest. He stumbles on a loose floorboard in the hall and emerges in the garden where holes have been dug in search of treasure. He approaches the tree, runs his hands along its rough barked body. His fingers nestle in the grooves, find a niche where he discovers the leather pouch. Tucking me under his arm, he loosens the strings and weeps over Esther’s wedding ring and jewelry. This is all he has left of her.

The pouch is lighter when Levi places it on me in his small suitcase. The vaulting ocean waves tick us through the days. In the evenings, when Levi stares at my black cover, the corner where the rat chewed, the missing gold leaf, he whispers names. His father’s. His mother’s. The friends fed into the ovens and poured into the river.

Stepping off the gangplank, the skyscrapers intimidate Levi, their surfaces reflecting each other and a patchwork of sky. Pressing me against his chest, his heartbeat verges on triumphant.

* * *

The years drift, and one Sabbath, Levi lays me in his son’s hands. David’s soft palms warm my leather, and I open for him. Leaning over David’s small shoulder, Levi rests his finger on my words and speaks. Little hands shake. The little voice stumbles through the pronunciations. Together, they sing the words of blessing. And they lay me on the blue velvet just before the candles are lit and the Sabbath begins.

* * *

Painters unfurl white drop cloths over the furniture. One worker, a boy with a gawky, knobby frame, lays picture frames flat on the table before covering them. He hovers where I rest, his eyes reflecting the glinting of the two silver candlesticks flanking me. He glances over his shoulder, his wiry chest heaving. From the kitchen, Sara, Levi’s wife, offers everyone water. In a quick motion, he sweeps everything into a canvas backpack, the zipper snarling upwards.

* * *

The intense light exposes the scars left by the rat’s teeth. The dealer thumbs through my leaves, scrutinizing my dimpled pages and blurred words. Surrounding him are flags with the red circles surrounding broken, skewed squares. On the walls are rifles and bayonets. Spiked helmets rest beside artillery shells. This is a warehouse of death.

“How much?” The boy’s voice in desperation.

The man bunches my binding in one hand and flips the page ends with a quick swish. My blessings are hiccupped exclamations snapped into silence when he plops me on the table.

He mutters a number.

“That’s it? But I need the money. I’m trying to go to college!” The boy’s outrage snaps his voice up an octave. “It’s a relic. It’s--.”

“Son, look around. The people I represent want action, not torn up, old books. You oughta take this to the museum downtown.” The boy snatches me up and with lurching steps, slams himself into his car. His thunderous music muffles his screams.

* * *

Soft, white gloves stroke my binding, the hands lift and cradle me. Reverently, Levi’s hands leaf through my prayers, resting on the thirtieth Psalm. I praise the Almighty for raising me back to life.

In glass cases are yellow six-pointed stars, dinged metallic soup bowls, shirts in variegated stripes of dingy gray. Once more, the voices of hopelessness emerge. The whisper of Esther pulling off her stockings. Water in darkness, spilling between Frau Rosenbaum’s breasts. The inexhaustible hours of Levi running because stopping meant death. The heartbeats of those who carried me and bore me as a testament to courage and strength.

Shameful tears break along the boy’s cheekbones.

“Why are you crying? You have brought home an artifact of a lost community.”

“I stole it. I needed the money to go to college.”

“It’s value is beyond measure.”

“I can’t take money for it now. That wouldn’t be right.”

The boy’s atonement makes Levi’s knotted hands supple.

"The museum has a budget for the procurement for artifacts such as these. Please give me a moment.”

With Levi’s departure, the room feels empty, and the boy is entombed within history. He digs into his backpack and extracts the candlesticks, setting them on a shelf filled with reliquary. Levi returns, handing a check to the boy. The boy’s face pales and his body quivers.

“Twenty thousand? But. I...don’t deserve this.”

“This book has seen enough suffering. Allow it to witness an act of healing.”

* * *

I am carried from the car to the house within cradled hands, his heartbeat a steady, sad pulsation. Levi lays me on the blue velvet, presses his hand against my cover as though pushing into me the weight of his sorrow. But when his hand lifts blooms a quiet peace. Sara stands beside him, slides out a match. A crisp zipping sound. Sulphur hangs in the air, and Levi begins to pray.