Twelve pairs of Medzhiner eyes turned upon Dovidl as he weighed the options for the rest of his life, his first cognitive act for a week. He stroked his chin and found it prickle-bearded. He looked for guidance but the Rebbe’s eyes were averted. He had noticed that the Rebbe avoided the use of personal pronouns. To address another person directly would be a discourtesy, an intrusion on his four cubits of privacy. To determine another’s life was unthinkable. The Rebbe, when pressed, gave principles, not performance instructions. Decisions were a matter of individual conscience. His was the least prescriptive of leaderships.

It was Spielman who forced the issue. ‘Forgive me, Rebbe,’ said the big man, ‘but our guest cannot go back. The police are looking for him.’

At the mention of ‘police’, the Rebbe flinched. Dovidl was not surprised. He had learned by now that certain nouns, innocuous to him, were loaded for Medzhiners with negative meaning. A necktie, for instance. None of the Hassidim wore a tie, even on the Sabbath. When he wondered why, Spielman explained that in knotting a tie a man inadvertently made the sign of the cross, and that was to be avoided at all costs.

He choked on his toast one morning when, after grace, Dovidl had casually quoted a Psalmic verse in Latin. ‘Vus iz dus? ’ barked Spielman.

‘A classical language,’ said Dovidl.

‘Classical?’ thundered his host. ‘It’s the tongue of the destroyer who laid waste our Temple. May it rot and be forgotten for ever, amen.’

Dovidl did not quibble with the prejudice, reinforced as he knew it was by memories of incense-choked churches from which priests preached murderous pogroms upon harmless neighbours. Spielman was a village Jew from the old world: he lacked the serenity of a classical education. The gulf between his response and modernity’s was unbridgeable. Similarly, the Young Rebbe’s suspicion of metropolitan policing was understandable. To him, the word ‘police’ did not mean bobbies on the beat and flat-hatted inspectors with departmental budgets. It meant oppressor, enforcer, agent of hostile authority. The Rebbe’s pallor turned cadaver-grey at the mention of police and his eyes shrank within their sockets.

Spielman had laid out on the table a broadsheet newspaper with Dovidl’s portrait on the front page. He recited details of the nationwide search for the missing violinist, a thousand-pound reward offered for information leading to his safe return. The Rebbe listened mutely, fingering the outer margins of the page as if he expected to find peripheral commentaries by the Tosafists.