The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Some Old Goat Named Kessler

TO SACHA’S RELIEF, Wolf began his hunt for a Kabbalist not on Hester Street but on the Upper East Side — a neighborhood where Sacha was blessedly certain they wouldn’t run into anyone who’d ever heard of Rabbi Kessler.

First they visited a Jungian Kabbalist — a wild-eyed fellow with alarming eyebrows who kept insisting that the dybbuk was an instantiation of Edison’s “Shadow Self” and Edison’s only hope of salvation was to immerse himself in the “Collective Unconscious” and embrace his “Anima.” Then came the Freudian Kabbalist, whose ideas about dybbuks practically set Sacha’s ears on fire. And then came the Analytical Kabbalist, who inflicted page after page of alchemical calculus on them. Sacha didn’t have to imagine what Rabbi Kessler would say about alchemical calculus, because he’d already heard the speech too many times to count: “God created the Universe in plain Hebrew, and any fool who thinks he knows enough to check God’s math deserves whatever he gets.”

By the time they staggered up to the last address on Wolf’s list, Sacha had sore feet and a splitting headache.

“Wow!” Lily said when they first walked in. “It’s like a cathedral!”

She was right. If Sacha hadn’t looked closely enough to notice the discreet Stars of David carved into the gothic arches, he would never have known it was a synagogue at all.

The rabbi’s office looked like a fancy New York architect’s idea of an English country house. Inside, a cheerful fire crackled in the hearth. Outside, red-branched cherry trees swayed in a fall wind that carried the faint promise of snow. The chairs were upholstered in nut-brown leather. The walls were covered with paintings of foxhounds and racehorses. And the books in the oak bookshelves ran more to the collected works of Dickens than to Talmud and Kabbalah.

Rabbi Mendelsohn matched his surroundings perfectly. He was tall and blue-eyed and collegiate-looking, and you knew the minute you laid eyes on him that his family hadn’t come over from Russia in steerage.

Mendelsohn settled back into his chair and crossed his impeccably trousered legs as he toyed with the letter Wolf had sent him. “Dybbuks,” he mused. “Not really my bailiwick, old chap. But I did look through the rabbinical literature to see if I could dig up anything useful for you.”

“I appreciate that,” Wolf said humbly. He had slipped into his dumb cop act, Sacha noticed.

“Tell me,” Mendelsohn leaned forward confidentially, “is this to do with a criminal case? Some poor naïf who committed an act of violence under the delusion that he was attacking a dybbuk?”

“I’m afraid I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

Mendelsohn hid his disappointment well, except for the irritated tic under his right eye. “Well, I’m certainly delighted to be of assistance in any way possible. I hope you understand you can count on my discretion.”

“Very gratifying,” Wolf assured him.

“And of course, discretion is paramount in this case. The poorer class of Jew is lamentably superstitious. The faintest rumor that a dybbuk was loose in New York would send them into paroxysms of terror that could threaten public order—”

Sacha must have made some involuntary sound that betrayed his outrage because Mendelsohn trailed off and frowned at him, as if noticing his presence for the first time. He seemed to be taking inventory, registering Sacha’s black curls and dark eyes and finely drawn features, and trying to figure out what they added up to. He didn’t seem to be able to make the sum come out right — especially in the context of the New York City Police Department.

“You’re an interesting-looking young man,” he said when he was done staring. “I suppose you’re what they call black Irish?”

Sacha had been practicing Wolf’s unnervingly bland smile in front of the mirror at home and he now did his best imitation. The results were, he had to admit, highly satisfactory.

“Ahem,” Mendelsohn said. And then he launched into a general history of dybbuks in the rabbinical literature. He seemed to know quite a lot about it. And he was very eloquent. But Sacha got the oddest feeling that he didn’t believe a word of it.

In fact, Sacha decided, there was something very odd in the way Rabbi Mendelsohn talked about God. People on Hester Street treated God like a member of the family. You respected him the way you respected a crotchety and demanding grandparent. You loved him, but you showed your love the same way parents showed their children love: by nitpicking everything he did and pointing out all his faults and failings so he wouldn’t get a big head. And of course by making fun of him — after all, what else was family for?

But Rabbi Mendelsohn didn’t make fun of God at all. Sacha couldn’t imagine Rabbi Mendelsohn joking about the passover plagues or cracking everyone up at Hanukkah by calling out, “But what have You done for us lately?” when Grandpa Kessler recited the line about the miracles God performed of old in the land of Israel. Instead, Mendelsohn seemed to feel that propriety required him to call God “Our heavenly Father” instead of just plain God and to freeze his face into a strained expression that made him look constipated.

“I know it’s hard to credit the fact that people actually believe in such things,” Mendelsohn said. “Still, all these tales of demons and dybbuks do perform a necessary social function. It requires a certain degree of, shall we say, cultural development before people can leave behind their Old World ways and begin to think like Americans.”

Finally Sacha realized what was so strange about Rabbi Mendelsohn. He talked about God as if he didn’t believe in him. And to his surprise Sacha realized that he didn’t much like it. He had no problem with the way Mordechai or Bekah or Moishe talked about God. None of them believed in him — and one of them didn’t even believe in Brooklyn. But they were all perfectly happy to tell you so straight to your face. Rabbi Mendelsohn, on the other hand, believed one thing and said another. And from what Sacha could make out, he only did it because he thought God was a good way to scare poor people into behaving themselves.

“I quite see your point,” Wolf told Mendelsohn, “but to be honest, I was hoping you might have some more … er … practical insights to offer.”

It took a while for Mendelsohn to understand what Wolf was getting at. Then he let out an offended laugh. “If you want to talk to a practical Kabbalist, you’ll have to go down to Hester Street and see the tenement rabbis. There’s a whole gaggle of them down there, and they all go to a storefront shul run by some raggedy old goat named Kessler. But you won’t get any sense out of him,” Mendelsohn added scornfully. “He still stinks of the shtetl.”

“Now, look here—” Sacha began.

But Wolf interrupted Sacha before he had a chance to tell Mendelsohn what he stank of. “And what about my other question?”

“Oh. Yes. That.” Suddenly Mendelsohn sounded halting and unwilling. “I’ve never come across the idea of building a machine that could create a dybbuk. and yet…”

Wolf waited, motionless as a cat poised to pounce. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Mendelsohn said. “It’s just that you’re not the first person to ask me that question. I had a visit from … that is to say, someone asked me about…”

Wolf just kept waiting. He really had an amazing talent for creating the sort of awkward silences that people couldn’t help babbling into. Was it something you could learn, Sacha wondered, or was Wolf just born knowing how to do it?

“They had blueprints,” Mendelsohn blurted. “Someone had filed a patent on the device, and they wanted my opinion as to whether it would actually work or not before they … well, I got the impression they were considering investing a rather large sum of money.”

“They?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you the names of the parties involved,” Mendelsohn said primly. “A rabbi is like a priest. People repose confidence in him. And they have a certain expectation of—”

“Naturally,” Wolf agreed in a pleasant voice. “Your congregation depends upon your discretion. And such a highly respectable congregation as yours must expect their rabbi to be very discreet indeed.”

“I appreciate your understanding, Inquisi—”

“But under the present circumstances, I’m sure they’ll understand when you explain to them the necessity of cooperating with our investigation. Would Monday be too soon to start questioning people? And do you have a spare office we can use for our … well, interrogation is a nasty word. Perhaps it would make people less nervous if we just called them interviews.”

“You want to drag respectable people down here and question them like criminals?” Mendelsohn yelped, his dignity forgotten. “What on earth could you possibly have to ask them about?”

Wolf smiled beatifically. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

Rabbi Mendelsohn moaned softly and put a hand to his handsome forehead. “If I tell you who it was, will you go away?”

Wolf’s smile broadened.

“Fine! It was Thomas Edison. And since you’ll probably find out anyway, you might as well know now that it was Mr. Morgaunt’s librarian, Miss da Serpa, who made the appointment for him.”

“You said someone had filed a patent on the device. Do you remember the name by any chance?”

“No.”

Wolf’s pale eyes widened. It was such a small movement that you couldn’t even really call it an expression. Yet it seemed to have a remarkable effect on Rabbi Mendelsohn.

“That is to say, I didn’t really pay attention, but I… I think it started with a W. And it was an unusual name. Worley, Wormley. Something like that. and I remember what the machine was called. It was called a Soul Catcher.”

For a moment Wolf looked like he was about to ask another question. But then he slipped his notebook into his pocket and unfolded his lanky, rumpled frame from the leather armchair. “Thank you, Rabbi Mendelsohn. You’ve been most helpful.”

Suddenly Wolf seemed to be in an unusual hurry. He grabbed the two children by the elbows and practically dragged them back through the synagogue and onto the sidewalk.

“That’s ridiculous!” Lily erupted as soon as they were outside. “Morgaunt can’t have summoned Edison’s dybbuk! Why would he want to kill his own business partner?”

“I don’t know,” Wolf said shortly. Then, to Sacha’s writhing mortification, he asked, “this Rabbi Kessler wouldn’t be any relation of yours, would he, Sacha?”

“No! Well … maybe.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

“I have a big family. he’s some kind of … distant cousin? I’d have to check.”

Now Wolf and Lily were both looking at him like he was crazy.

“Well, check, then,” Wolf said. “And find out where he lives. I want to talk to him.”