Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller Read Free Book Online

women. I worried that I would die all over again, this time of boredom. Confident that I wouldn’t miss anything important at this rate, I allowed myself a short nap.

6
    H aving fled the great house of the Comte de Villars and his bizarre offer of employment, I had returned gratefully to the routine of my days: my mother woke me tenderly at five o’clock each morning, bringing a basin of water to my bed. I performed my ablutions, washing my hands of the unclean spirits that might have settled on my body during the night, and said my morning prayer of thanks. I put on my tzitzit, a fringed protective garment, like a prayer shawl with a slit cut in the middle for the head to go through. Over this I wore what I hoped was a French-looking chemise, a red vest with silver buttons, and a black coat. I hid my yarmulke beneath a black felt three-cornered hat.
    I scurried to morning prayer with my brother and my father at one of several places of worship set up in various houses in our section of Paris—we did not have a synagogue—then my father and I yoked up our peddler’s boxes and set off to make a little money, calling out hoarsely, “Watch fobs! Knives! Snuffboxes!” etc. The streets of Paris were cacophonous with the cries of peddlers selling everything from baked apples to firewood to water pumped from the Seine. Each peddler had his or her own cry, and we milled through the streets, across the bridges, baskets and boxes strapped to us, crying out our wares.My brother Shlomo was exempt from this work; the treasured scholar of the family, he stayed back to study all day. I didn’t envy him. In the afternoons I played skittles with other boys in the courtyard, or ran wild through the neighborhood with my gang of friends. I had no inclination to study the holy texts in my free time as I was meant to—nor did I have any great interest in business. I just wanted to enjoy myself as much as possible. My father, a serious, even doleful man, thought I was a ruffian in the making. His selling was punctuated by prayer morning, afternoon, and night: Shacharis, Mincha, and Ma’ariv. He was also one of a group of stalwart men who volunteered to prepare the dead of our community in the traditional manner. His attitude toward me, his blithe eldest son, was one of resigned disappointment, occasionally peppered with disgust. I avoided him as much as I could.
    In addition to selling, I loaned small sums to the gentiles in the area—trifling amounts, really; I was no banker. People often needed a little something to tide them over to the next month, and usury was forbidden to Catholics. My father, brother, and I lent money at reasonable interest, collecting the pledges when they were due. Within our own community, we lent to one another without charging interest. That was our custom.
    Our world of German and North European Jews took up about four cramped and winding streets of Paris, branching off the rue Saint-Martin, on the Right Bank of the Seine. The Portuguese Jews lived on the Left Bank, near the rue des Grands Augustins. They traded in silks and chocolate, and received passports for twice the time we did.
    There had once been a much larger Jewish community in Paris. But in 1306, Philippe IV, in need of income for the bankrupt French state, had a brilliant idea: he simply arrested all the Jews in France, confiscated our money and property, and deported us. This initiated a series of expulsions that were revoked and reinstated several times during the coming centuries. We were let in or kicked out, depending on how important for business we were seen to be. Luckily forme, Louis XV was a tolerant king; in the past fifty years or so, we Jews had been allowed to slink into Paris in dribs and drabs, like rats trickling back into a house once the catcher has left the premises.
    My young life pattered on in its usual way for several months until I got the jolting news that I was to be married. I was