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CHAPTER 6

Four days later Zalman entered the workout room where Chaim was standing next to a treadmill having monitor electrodes pasted all over his body. “Ah. One of the endurance tests, I presume, Marta?”

The tech nodded as she applied the last electrode and handed the wireless unit to Chaim for him to hook to his belt.

“The marathon? The steeplechase?”

She looked up at Zalman. “The hill climb.”

“Oh,” Zalman said, “that’s not so bad.” He gave an evil chuckle. “For certain values of not so bad.” For a change he was in sweats, and climbed up on the treadmill next to Chaim’s.

“Thanks,” Chaim muttered as he shifted the unit to the back of his waist. He looked over at the other man. “You going to watch?”

“No,” Zalman said as he settled his feet onto the track. “I’m going to pace you.”

“What?” Chaim was perplexed at that. “Why?”

“Partly for something to do,” Zalman replied. “I get just as bored as you do. And partly because they asked me to.” He nodded at the tech, who nodded back and left the room.

After a moment, her voice came over the intercom. “Okay, if you will take your places, we’ll start things up in a moment.”

Chaim stepped onto the treadmill and settled his feet fairly close to the front of the belt, placing his hands on the side rails in preparation for the initial lurch that always caught him off guard. It didn’t seem to matter how much warning they gave him, the first movement of the belt staggered him. And as usual, when the belt started moving a moment later, he lurched and it took him three steps to find the rhythm.

“I hate these things,” he muttered.

“Why?” from Zalman, who was pacing smoothly on his machine.

“I’m a bit of a klutz, and these things just seem to make it worse.”

Zalman chucked.

“What are you laughing at? I bet the first time you used one you tripped over your own feet.” Chaim let go of the rails and stepped up his pace as the treadmill increased its speed. The readouts of the machine were blanked out, supposedly because they didn’t want him reacting to them rather than the sensations of the run.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard one of your generation use that word.”

“What, klutz? Ha. Growing up around my parents, I heard it almost every day. ‘Chaim, don’t be such a klutz.’ One of the joys of moving out of the house was not hearing that word.”

“Well, I doubt you’ll hear it anymore,” Zalman said, his stride lengthening as the belts sped up again. “I suspect you’ll find your balance and agility are improving.”

“From your mouth to haShem’s ear,” Chaim said with earnestness. “I’d love to be able to walk down a block and not trip over a crack in the sidewalk or even worse, my own shadow.”

Zalman chuckled again.

At first it bothered Chaim that their steps weren’t in synch as they ran, but he figured out soon that since the other vampire was taller than him, his pace would be different, so he mentally shrugged and quit thinking about it.

After the treadmills both elevated to introduce a grade to their run, Chaim looked over at Zalman. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What do you do?”

“What?” Zalman looked at him with a quizzical expression.

“What’s your job? If I wasn’t here, what would you be doing? Are you Rabbi Mendel’s deputy director, or something?”

Zalman laughed. “No, not hardly. I’m here right now because you’re here. I can help you adjust, and they use me for a baseline of what you’re going to probably become.”

“Okay, I can see that.” The treadmill ratcheted up another couple of degrees. “So what would you be doing if I wasn’t here?”

“Hard to say,” Zalman replied. “I don’t necessarily do just one thing. I’m kind of an independent contractor, going from place to place and doing whatever people need me to do.”

“Uh-huh.” Chaim leaned forward a little as the grade increased yet again. He could feel the tension in his leg muscles, but they weren’t burning like they used to when he ran hard. Interesting. “So what’s the most important thing you do?”

Zalman looked over at him. “You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“All right.” They ran several steps before Zalman said, “I’m a magen.”

Chaim translated the Hebrew word in his mind. “A shield?”

“No, or not exactly. More of a…a protector.”

“What’s that? Like a bodyguard?”

“No. I belong to a…group, let’s call it, that occasionally can be called on to deal with…situations…involving Jews.”

“Like Mossad, or something like that?”

“No, no,” Zalman said with a grimace. “Not part of the Israeli government, or any government, for that matter. We’re not a large group, nor are we militant, and mostly we work behind the scenes to convince those causing the problems that they need to stop.”

“So like James Bond, or Rambo?”

That produced a laugh, followed by, “Not usually. More like the IRS, much of the time.”

“Okay, now that is scary.”

“There are occasional times, though, where we need to be a bit more…direct.”

Chaim waited, but Zalman said nothing more along that line. “So how did you get into this line of work? That’s not exactly something I would see a vampire doing.” The treadmills ratcheted up another degree, and Chaim was starting to feel the effects of it. It took him a moment to realize that Zalman hadn’t responded. When he looked over at him, he saw a very hard expression, a fixed gaze like he was staring off into a far distance. “Um, Mordechai?”

Zalman looked over at him, and grimaced. “Sorry. Old memories.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, you probably need to know anyway.” After a deep breath, Zalman continued with, “I was in Warsaw in 1944. Me and Menachem and Eleazar.”

“Who are they?”

Zalman looked surprised. “Didn’t I tell you there were two other vampires in Israel?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t say their names.”

“Ah. Sorry. But we were in Warsaw.”

It clicked in Chaim’s mind. “The Ghetto Uprising.” One of the most famed events involving Jews in World War II, after the Holocaust and the concentration camps.

“Yes. The Ghetto Uprising.”

“How did you…stupid, you’re vampires. Of course you survived.”

“It was hard. Bad. Menachem and Eleazar managed to escort some mothers and young children out early on. I stayed through the end.” Zalman’s expression was grim.

“Umm, what did you do?”

“Whatever I had to do. And I made sure the besiegers paid in blood for their victory. The official German casualty list is off by at least a factor of ten, maybe more. They buried—no pun intended—the rest of them in the Eastern Front casualty lists. That wasn’t all my doing, but enough of it was.”

They ran in silence for several minutes, before Chaim again mustered enough courage to speak. “So, is that why you’re a protector now?”

“Partly. Maybe mostly. Even for me, who had witnessed pogroms and oppression for almost two hundred years, that was extreme.”

“Eye for an eye part of that?”

Mordechai shook his head. “No.” His face closed in again and set like granite. Chaim looked at him once, then looked forward without saying anything further.

He figured they’d run at least a mile before Mordechai spoke again.

“The rabbis say that an eye for an eye is not a formula for justice. It would, if implemented literally, leave a world full of blind people. It is instead to prevent oppression by the strong and cruel. And it is to teach us that revenge is not our right, not our mission, not our prerogative, and certainly not our passion. And despite that, it is a hard-fought lesson to learn, especially for such as us.”

“How so?”

“Even more than regular humans, the adrenaline”—Mordechai slapped his chest twice with his right hand—“the anger”—he tapped his temple with the first two fingers of his right hand—“the power and might”—he raised a right fist clenched so tight that Chaim could see the tendons in his arm and hand standing out—“all make us—we vampires—susceptible to that fault, that breakdown. And to be a magen, to be a shield, you cannot do that. You cannot be that. You must not. You can channel your adrenaline and your rage to fuel your strength, but you cannot unleash it, you must restrain it and only do what is necessary, no matter how wrong those who face you are. And oh, but how the Nazis pushed me to that limit over and over and over again.”

“But wouldn’t they have deserved the worst?”

“Undoubtedly,” Mordechai said in his deepest, raspiest tones. “But it wasn’t my place to do that to them. And if I had descended to their level, I would have become them, and that I refused to do.” He looked directly at Chaim. “That we cannot—we must not—do. We are not…Hebrew doesn’t have a word for this…like what the Russians would call nekulturny. Vampires though we are, we are still part of Adonai’s chosen people”—Mordechai’s use of one of the actual Names of haShem made it clear to Chaim how deeply the older vampire felt this and how holy he considered it to be—“and we cannot bring disrepute on His Name.”

Chaim bore his gaze for a long moment, still pacing on the treadmill, before he nodded slowly. Mordechai faced forward again, and they ran for a distance without speaking. Finally, Mordechai spoke again. “Do you know of tikkun olam? What does it mean to you?”

It was Chaim’s turn to not speak for long moments as they ran. When he finally had his thoughts together, he said, “Repairing a broken world. I know some use it to justify their political causes. Others use it as a platform to launch mitzvot of good works—women’s shelters, food banks, free medical clinics.”

“But what does it mean to you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I would like to make life better for people. That’s why I started working to be a doctor. Does that count as tikkun olam?” They ran for a while longer. “Turnabout’s fair play—what does it mean to you?”

Mordechai sighed. “I am not a Kabbalist, not a mystic. But in this, I do find some merit in the teachings of the Lurianic strand of Kabbalah, for whom tikkun olam was the gathering of light and souls. To repair the broken world is to preserve and separate what is holy until it is all reclaimed in the Godhead.” He shook his head. “To me, the fragments of light, the souls to be gathered, are those of our people. And for them to be gathered, they must first be preserved. So for me, tikkun olam is first and foremost the protection of Jews, wherever they are. Only then can other aspects be brought into play.”

“And so you are a magen?” Chaim asked.

“And so I am a magen.”

There was another interlude of silence, eventually broken by Chaim. “So who is this group you work with?”

Zalman pulled the necklace from around his neck that he had shown Chaim back in their meeting and handed it to Chaim. He held the medallion in his hand. “The magen shield,” he murmured, “and”—he parsed out the Hebrew word גיבּורים inlaid in the center of the shield—“the Gibborim. King David’s Mighty Men.” He handed the medallion back to Zalman, who placed the chain back around his neck as he continued running. “So is your group thirty and three, then, like David’s?”

The older vampire’s mouth quirked. “No. In fact, it’s barely three. But it helps me remember what I should be about.”

A few more minutes of silence passed.

“I think I might like that,” Chaim said quietly. “If I’m not going to be a doctor and healing people, and if I’m going to toughen up like you say I will, I might be able to do that.”

“Well, don’t give up on the doctor thing just yet. The old man wants to talk to you about that,” Zalman said. “But if you’re serious, there is no reason why you couldn’t do both.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Just then both treadmills clicked and began slowing and lowering to their starting positions. Chaim was surprised. “We’re done already?”

“You’re done.” Marta had reentered the room. She motioned Chaim down off the treadmill and started removing the sensors.

“Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like we did that much.”

“You ran sixteen kilometers at mostly a twenty-five percent grade, all the while holding on a lengthy conversation. Yeah,” she snorted, “you’re done.”

“Wow.”

Chaim looked over to Zalman, only to receive a sardonic grin.

* * *

It was a couple of days later when Chaim stepped out of the most recent testing room to find Rabbi Mendel and Mordechai Zalman both waiting on him. Mendel looked his professorial usual and Zalman wore one of his London bespoke suits. “Come, my boy, we need to talk.” He followed them to their normal conference room, wondering what was going to happen now.

Once they were seated. Chaim looked at Mendel and jerked a thumb at Zalman. “He said you had something to talk to me about. Something about my being a doctor.”

“Yes, I do.” Mendel was serious, Chaim saw. His usual good humor seemed to be not in view today. “But to do that, we need to talk about something else first.”

“Fine,” Chaim said. “What’s that?”

Mendel laced his fingers together on the table before him. “You’re Orthodox, correct?”

“Uh-huh. Not Lubavitcher, but Orthodox otherwise.”

“And since your family is Eastern European in background, then you are Ashkenazic in background as well, nu?”

“Of course. My great-grandparents were from Lithuania.”

Mendel shrugged. “You will be able to work that out, I’m sure.” Before Chaim could work through that in his mind, Mendel continued with, “You are aware, I am certain, of the recent work in genetics that has established the genetic almost-uniquity of the Kohanim, the priestly lineage.”

“Umm, yeah,” Chaim said. “But what does that have to do with…” His brain caught up with his mouth and his jaw snapped shut.

After a moment, he said, “Does this have something to do with the vampire thing?”

Mendel nodded.

Chaim looked at Zalman. “What was your surname before you took the Zalman name?”

“Kaplan.”

“One of the priestly names,” Chaim murmured.

“As is yours,” Mendel said.

“As are those of Menachem Aronson and Eleazar Katz in Israel,” Zalman added.

“And this is important why?” Chaim wasn’t sure where this was heading.

Mendel sighed. “Every Jewish vampire that we have been able to trace who has lived for more than a few years was male and of the Kohanim—was of the priestly lineage.”

There was silence while Chaim worked through that in his own mind. At length, he laid his hands palms down on the table before him. “You think this may have something to do with this Y-chromosomal Aaron thing they found.”

Mendel spread his hands out to each side. “May. May. But the fact that we have found no trace of long-lived female Jewish vampires and the only long-lived male vampires we’ve found are of the Kohanim does kind of make us wonder, you might say.”

“I can see that,” Chaim muttered, staring down at his hands. After a moment, he lifted his head. “All right. What does this have to do with me?”

“You wanted to be a doctor,” Mendel said, clasping his hand together and leaning over them. “How about if you became a geneticist?”

Chaim pursed his lips. “I had thought about cardiology or neurology, but I wasn’t anywhere close to making—or needing to make—that decision yet.” He thought about it. “Knowing this, the thought intrigues me. But what’s in it for me?”

“The group I am associated with will pay your way through university and medical school in Israel if you’ll give us several years of service after you graduate,” Mendel said. “Tuition, fees, books, room and—well, not board, but sustenance. Add in a moderate monthly stipend. Tel Aviv University is probably top of the list, but we have more than one good school, so you can take your choice. And from your grades and transcript so far, they would almost certainly love to have you. We have the connections to get your visa and enrollment fast-tracked, get you on the lists for the programs you would need, and to get you enough night classes and labs and independent study sessions to make it easier on your schedule.”

How did they get…of course they had his transcript. He’d given it to them. Stupid. “What about residency?”

Mendel snorted. “Night shift in a big teaching hospital with a busy emergency room. No problem. In actuality, you’ll most likely work shifts around the clock, but since you won’t be outside, it shouldn’t be a problem. Postgrad study, probably at Weizmann Institute of Science.”

“So why me? There’s got to be other geneticists out there.”

“Of course there are,” Mendel admitted. “But we can’t just advertise for someone to research the genetics of vampires.”

Chaim snorted. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”

“The good ones are all signing up to research well-funded common and popular issues,” Mendel said. “No one wants to link up with a small group who won’t even tell them what they want researched without a major-league nondisclosure agreement being signed first. So if you want in on this, you’re our first real hope for this work. Plus, it won’t hurt that you have a personal stake in it.”

Silence for the space of three breaths.

“How long?” Chaim asked.

“How long to make your decision? Fairly soon, I’m afraid.”

“No, how long would I have to work for you afterward?”

Mendel’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Ah. Well, we would hope you would work with us for quite some time, but the minimum would be a year for every year or part of a year that we support you.”

“Fair enough,” Chaim replied. After a moment, he asked, “So who is your group? The Gibborim that Mordechai belongs to?”

“No.” Mendel smiled. “A very limited partnership with no name funded by very long-sighted people concerned about the future and welfare of the human race in general and the Jews in particular. It’s not open to investments from the public. We’re not related to or officially connected with the Gibborim”—he grinned at Zalman—“but we acknowledge each other exist and we do cooperate upon occasion.”

“Like with me?”

“Like with you,” Zalman acknowledged.

Chaim looked at Mendel. “You’re not just a rabbi, are you?”

Zalman laughed. “I told you he’d figure it out.” He looked at Chaim. “Undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Heidelberg, another degree from Oxford University, and a PhD from MIT. All before age forty, which is when he decided to do his rabbinical training.”

“Wow,” Chaim said, impressed. “I thought I was an overachiever.”

“Neither here nor there.” Mendel waved a dismissive hand. “Mordechai, how much longer are you going to be with us?”

“A few days, maybe, but I’m probably going to have to leave soon. There’s a problem heating up in New York that I may have to look into.”

“Past time for that one,” Mendel said with a frown. “Past time.” Zalman shrugged.

Mendel looked back at Chaim. “You don’t have to decide on the offer tonight, but the sooner you can decide, the sooner we can put things in motion if you say yes.”

Chaim shrugged. “I want it. I just have to figure out how to explain to my parents that I’m not going back to school at UCLA and that I’m moving to Israel. On the one hand, Dad will probably be excited about it, especially the parts about Israel and full tuition and expenses coverage. But Mom…she is a Jewish mother, with everything that that implies. She’ll immediately start worrying about terrorists.” He sighed.

“Have you talked to them lately?”

“I started calling them every Saturday night. That’s enough for Dad—more than enough, usually,” he said with a twist to his mouth. “Mom”—he pursed his lips for a moment—“Mom usually finds excuses to call me at least twice during the week. She keeps trying to find out what I’m doing, even though I told them I signed a nondisclosure agreement. She seems to think that because she’s my mother she’s not subject to that. She’s started trying to find out where I’m at, trying to get at it that way somehow. I had to disable my GPS locator on my phone.”

“A not uncommon problem with mothers,” Mendel murmured.

“Yeah, well, she also manages to ask at least once a week if I’ve met any nice Jewish girls where I’m at.” Chaim shook his head. “I made the mistake of telling her I had, and now she wants names and what they do. Mothers.” He shook his head. “I’ll figure out some way to explain this.”

“So you’re going to agree?”

Chaim took a deep breath. “Oh, I’m in. This sounds like the best deal possible in my new existence, and as you say, I do have a personal stake in the matter.”

Mendel smiled, rose up from his chair and stretched his hand across the table. “Good. Very good. You won’t be sorry.”

“Yeah, well, that remains to be seen,” Chaim muttered as he shook hands with the rabbi. He frowned at a pang in his abdomen.

“Hunger?” Zalman spoke in a quiet tone, all humor gone from his face.

“Yeah.” Chaim laid a hand on his stomach. “They don’t want me to take too much blood at a time or too frequently, for more than one reason. I understand, but it does mess with me when I’m getting close to the next time.”

Mendel looked over at Zalman. “Give it to him.”

“You sure about this? Does Hurwitz know?”

Mendel nodded.

“All right.” Zalman pulled something out of his pocket and slid it across the table to Chaim. “Here. Try this.”

Chaim picked it up. “A sports bar? Or rather,” he said, looking at the wrapper which had a Star of David prominently featured on it alongside Hebrew lettering, “a magen bar? Really?”

“It’s not a sports bar,” Zalman said. “Or not just a sports bar. Try it.”

He peeled the wrapper back, then looked at Zalman.

“Try it.”

He lowered his head and took a cautious sniff.

“Huh. It doesn’t smell bad.” Eyebrows lowered, he looked up at Zalman again.

“Try it.”

Chaim took a cautious nibble of one corner, chewing the bite carefully. He felt his eyebrows climb in reaction to the surprise of the taste.

“It…it doesn’t taste bad.” Chaim tried another small bite, and chewed it thoroughly before swallowing. “It doesn’t taste great…it’s actually kind of blah…but it doesn’t taste bad.” He took a larger bite. “What’s in this thing?”

Flattening out the wrapper, Chaim read the ingredient list. “Figs, ground and whole roasted sesame seeds, sesame oil, barley, native honey, and…manna?” He swallowed and looked up, remembering the narratives in Exodus. “Honestly? Manna?”

Mendel smiled at him. “Honestly. It’s produced in Israel from native products. Manna is a type of edible resin originally produced by several types of bushes and trees in the Sinai area. A researcher managed to adapt it to horticulture. It’s become surprisingly popular.”

Chaim looked down and realized in surprise he had eaten the entire bar. “I thought vampires…”

“Remember, how much is truth and how much is myth is part of what we’re trying to discover.” Mendel’s smile broadened into a momentary grin.

Zalman nodded. “We don’t know if it’s because you—we—are all Jewish, or if it’s because the ingredients are all raised and processed in Galilee, or both, or if it’s something altogether different.”

“Not ignoring the possibility of the divine, either.” Mendel’s smile had faded to a most sober expression.

“I don’t care,” Chaim said. “Just having something to actually eat will be great.” He looked over at Zalman with a fixed stare. “You got any more of those on you?”

Zalman’s sly grin appeared once more, and he took another bar out of an inside pocket and slid it across the table to Chaim.


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