Grief Street

a rodef shalom. You understand what I’m saying here? No, of course not. Who can understand but an old Jew?
    “The rabbi, maybe he already mentioned—I was with my father and two brothers in the camps. My mother and sister, they took to another camp. Anyway, so much for my family. My sister and I lived, that’s all.
    “So, I have seen many hateful, horrible things... Och, but it sounds so puny what I tell you! In English I don’t know the words strong enough. In Yiddish I don’t know the words even. All right, never mind. But please, allow me to say this about all I have seen: even you, a policeman in New York City—you should not have such a life.
    “Enough!
    “The horrible thing I must tell you is something I know from my experience, which you must take on faith. But I warn you: what I say is not something a detective would call a proper clue, it is not something seen. A shadow, what is that? A destroyer of light, yes? Light we need to see. Therefore, we do not actually see a shadow. Maybe you think it’s crazy what I’m saying, but this is the only way I have to tell you of the shadow that was here. Right here, at midnight, in this temple.
    “I have known shadow in my life. The others who were here for the Kaddish of Yom Hashoah—they, too, know the shadow. We know what to fear in the dark: the terror of imagination.
    “What I’m telling you, Mr. Detective, I don’t bother saying to your colleagues. An ordinary policeman is like any other simpleton, he has no respect for what he cannot understand...”
    Glick’s pale eyes passed over Caras, then focused again on me.
    “There was a great Flemish artist by the name Petrus Christus, a heretical Christian of the fifteenth century. One of his paintings hangs at the Metropolitan Museum—a very Christian scene, the assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary. You would think that the Christian mother of God could have herself an easy journey, yes, Mr. Detective?”
    “Offhand, yes.”
    “Don’t forget, Petrus Christus was a heretic. There on the canvas is a death’s head—Och, so much like the ones I would see on the sleeves of the camp commandants!—and huge, huge bat wings. Beneath those wings, the bodies of men and women and children are dropping downward, into hell. And there is an animal head—bloody and severed, with sharp teeth and spiny quills—that hangs from a thread. The animal’s limbs are pressed together in its terrible descent. Anybody looking at this picture sees himself: falling, all of us falling, in spite of the beautiful Virgin Mary, mother of God. Petrus Christus never actually saw such a thing as he painted, of course. But this Christian artist, he looked into shadow sometime during his life, and imagined—and was terrified. He knows what we old Jews know.”
    “Knows what?” The old man’s story was absorbing; I was growing slightly impatient. But he had waited all night to say his piece, and he would say it in his own due time-“Exactly what was in the shadow that came here, Mr. Glick?”
    “The things I have seen in my time have not left me a brave man. It shames me to say I looked away from the shadow, for fear of my imagination. Ask the others, they’ll say the same. But this is my belief: if seeing is not believing, then it must also be true that believing is not seeing. The shadow killed our rabbi, I am telling you. It scalped off his face and like a thief ran away with it. This thief...” Glick’s voice failed him momentarily. He raised a hand to his throat. His veiny eyelids drooped, and finally shut. “Its name is Bá’al zbub.”
    Glick’s eyes opened then, and he was quiet for several seconds. He seemed greatly relieved. He asked, “You’ll take me home now?”

    I had Glick on my arm and we were standing next to a maple tree at the curb outside the synagogue. The maple was struggling to bloom leaves in tenement-shadowed West Forty-seventh Street, I was struggling for a taxicab. Officer Caras had offered to run the old fellow down to his place near Herald Square in a sector car, but I declined the pleasure on Glick’s behalf. A little of Caras goes a long way, especially for a man confused about what he saw...
    ... Or did not see.
    I was certainly confused.
    A yellow cab swooped around from behind a van, cutting across its path and almost scoring a direct hit on a speeding bicycle messenger in black Lycra and visored helmet. There was the usual ruckus of horns and death threats, after which the