His nose ejected whizzing sounds. The beat of his heart was steady. A screeching snore startled her and sent the gerbil scurrying for shelter. Deep opium sleep had overcome him. Rebekah approached the stool. Her hand rested on the object under the sash. Lifting the stretch of yellow satin, she smiled to herself. His pickled organ was safe in brine. She grabbed the jar and stuffed it in her bundle. Storming into the gardens, she searched for Raven.

Raven slumped on a stone bench; peacocks roamed around her. Rays of sun tumbled on her hair. There was no sign of her once spirited grandchild. Her eyes were dull, her hands limp at her sides, her lips lifeless and cracked. Rebekah gathered her in her arms.

“My father invited my mother to war and now I’m so thirsty. I gave him courage. But he took her.”

“Child, the thirst is in your mind. Neither the sun nor your father caused it, but your own unhappiness. Don’t rely on others to quench your thirst. You want to fight? Come with me. I’ll show you a world where every breath is an endless fight.”

The One-Eyed Rabbi kissed the single scroll of the Torah, housed in a tall wooden casing that stood on a wide shelf in the ark above the pulpit. With only a single Torah, his spacious ark was pitifully bare. If he had had the means to obtain six more holy books for his synagogue, he would have been a contented man. He bowed reverently to the Torah, shut the doors of the ark, shuffled around and leaned on his cane, squinting to bring into focus the blurry images impinging upon the sanctity of his temple. Before he could place her, he recognized the offensive shimmering of her chador, the impudent tap of her sandals, and the shameless halo of her golden curls. He pounded his cane on the pulpit, his frail body swaying like a willow branch. “Impure woman! How dare you come here?”

Rebekah approached the pulpit, Raven marching by her side and observing this curious world through the slits in her mask. The strangeness of the dusty alleys intoxicated her, the shabby synagogue, the One-Eyed Rabbi who shook with anger and age as if he would die in front of her eyes.

“I’ve come to beg for shelter,” Rebekah shouted for the rabbi to hear her.

The One-Eyed Rabbi brought a fingertip to the corner of his sightless glass eye and wiped a lingering tear. “Wash your mouth! Don’t utter such blasphemy. This place shelters angels and their holy books, not whores!” His hand sprang up to his mouth as if to shove back the word he had just vomited.

Rebekah had an urge to bare one shoulder, to narrow her eyes and lower her lashes, maybe whisper in his ear promises of fulfillment. “Soon the palace guards will be after us. They’ll hang us. A temple is a house of mercy. Where else could we go?”