"Can you hear how it beats and throbs, Herman? It's my death knell ringing for my funeral. You call yourself a great doctor and you haven't even noticed it?"
She spoke these last words with such a charming smile on her face that the idea of her early demise seemed all the more shocking to me. I seized both her hands in mine and shouted at her angrily: "To joke about such things is madness! In the ordinary way I make allowances for you, but such words go too far, even for you!"
"No joke was intended," she replied. "Do you want me to tell you
Mahalath's story?"
I could only nod my head, prey to an endless malaise of gloom and foreboding.
Jemimah Loew commenced there and then to tell me the story: "She who lies buried here was called Mahalath because her limbs were slim and supple and her feet seemed to dance when she walked. She too was born in the grime of poverty and darkness like I was, and in even greater poverty and even greater darkness than me, for the Jewish quarter of Prague was a much less happy place than it is today during the reign of the great and mighty empress Maria Theresa, and not even fresh air was granted to us free of charge and every year we had to pay two hundred and eleven thousand guilders for her gracious permission to waste away here by ourselves amidst mist and darkness. But Mahalath's soul was freer than that of the proudest Christian woman in Prague. She was well-read too and played the lute with those fine hands of hers so that she came to be called a pearl of her race like Rabbi Jehuda's wife, Pearl. She was born in darkness and longed for the light. Many great men from all over the world have died for that. Why should a poor girl not lay down her life for it too? Why are you looking at me like that, Herman? Are you also of the opinion that a girl can only die for love? Don't go thinking it was love that killed our Mahalath even though her heart broke in the end. Those who are of the opinion that she died because of her affair with a young count are wrong. The young count in question tried to abduct her from her father's house by force and Her Imperial Majesty Maria Theresa later admitted that he had had to flee abroad. Mahalath laughed at this young fop who had nothing more to give her than his name, his wealth, his velvet frockcoat and his plumed hat. They called her the dancer and she died because her soul was too proud to reveal outwardly what she suffered for her people inwardly. The only place where she could see the sun was here in Beth-Chaim. She read the inscriptions on the gravestones here and learned the stories of those who lie buried under them and her soul danced over the graves until the dead pulled her down to join them down below!"
How ominously the young girl at my side uttered that brief phrase 'down below'!
"Jemimah," I cried, clasping together my hands, not knowing what I was doing: "Jemimah, I love you!"
But she stretched out her hand at me with an admonitory gesture and stamped on the ground with her tiny foot. "That's not true. The young lordling in his green and gold, the one with the white plumed hat, didn't love Mahalath either and whoever proclaims that she died for the love of him is lying. She had something wrong with her heart and our defunct forebears dragged her down to their level to join them. You say you love me, Herman, but, were I to begin right now this minute to sink into Hades, you wouldn't lift a finger to pull me back!"
How penetrating was the look she gave me! It was as though her dark eyes were drawing from my heart its deepest secrets. If I had truly loved her, I would have borne that look and answered it in kind, but she was right to say I didn't love her and, because of the high fever I was running, I averted my eyes from her and lowered them.
The last thing that I wanted was to play her false, to betray her. In befriending this poor girl no wicked thought had as yet suggested itself to me. Then why this debilitating guilt, this feeling of remorse for which my memory was unable to account? I felt the burden of a terrible responsibility nagging at me as I timidly and almost fearfully contemplated this adorable creature in her threatening posture as her eyes flashed and her hand became a fist in desperation to defend herself against her feelings of affection for me.