Vienna Secrets

38

RABBI SELIGMAN AWOKE AND saw his wife’s face looming over him. He had dozed off while reading in an armchair next to the fire.

“Wake up!” She shook his shoulder. “Wake up. Kusiel is here.”

“Kusiel?”

“Yes, Kusiel. He says it’s urgent.”

The rabbi got up from the chair and shuffled out into the hall, where he found the old caretaker.

“It’s happening again,” said Kusiel. “You must come.”

Seligman signaled that Kusiel should lower his voice. Taking his coat from the hall stand, he called out to his wife, saying that he wouldn’t be long. The two men stepped out into the night and walked the short distance to the synagogue. The Alois Gasse Temple was dark, except for the eternal light that danced in front of the golden edifice of the ark. Kusiel lit a paraffin lamp.

“It’s been terrible. It’s like something’s being tortured up there.”

The old man rolled his eyes.

Seligman listened. All that he could hear was his own pulse hammering in his ears.

“I can’t hear anything.”

“Wait… and you will.”

The silence unfurled like a bolt of cloth, accumulating in suffocating, heavy folds. It was unyielding and contained within its emptiness a foretaste of oblivion.

“Perhaps you have been working too hard,” said Seligman. “You might have fallen asleep and had a dream.”

“There is something here, Rabbi. Something unnatural.”

Kusiel’s expression was resolute.

Time passed, and Seligman allowed himself to feel less anxious. Perhaps the old man really had imagined the noises after all. The hammering in Seligman’s ears slowed. He was just about to say I’m going home when there was a sound that trapped the words in his throat: a deep, loud groaning. The quality of the vocalization suggested not so much torment-as Kusiel’s reference to torture had suggested-but rather rage or anger. There was something brutal about its depth and fury, like the bellow of a taunted bull.

The whites of Kusiel’s rheumy eyes glinted in the darkness.

“It’s upstairs, Rabbi. Come. You must confront it.”

Seligman’s legs were weak with fear. Was it possible? Had some demonic entity found a home in his synagogue? No! He was letting the old caretaker’s credulous talk get to him. There would be a rational explanation. He took the paraffin lamp from Kusiel and climbed the stairs to the balcony.

When they reached their destination, there was a loud thud: the floorboards shook.

“It’s coming from behind there,” said Kusiel, pointing to an old door.

The two men looked at each other, amazement mirrored in both their faces.

“Impossible,” whispered Seligman.

“It hasn’t been opened in years,” said the old man. “Your predecessor lost the key.”

“Was there anything in there?”

“No. It’s just an empty attic space.”

Lumbering steps and another bellow: impatient stamping. The cacophony conjured a picture of something mythic and bovine in the rabbi’s mind. Seligman moved closer to the door. He reached out and clasped the handle, but as he did so, whatever was on the other side crashed against the woodwork. Seligman released his grip as if he had been electrified, and sprang back. He steadied himself by grasping the balcony rail, his legs shaking.

“I am g-going,” he stammered.

“Shouldn’t you do something first?” pleaded Kusiel.

“No,” said Rabbi Seligman. “I’m calling the police!”