[A/N: This was dashed off very quickly and quite late at night, so it's definitely rough. Still, it was a moment of inspiration, so I couldn't ignore it. I just thought I'd explore a bit of the Changer, one of those super minor characters who's mentioned once and disappears. And hey, as far as I can tell he's the only Jewish character in the Brick.]
From time to time, in the quiet moments when he was not attending to clients or reviewing his meticulously kept catalogue, Léon Glück wondered what stroke of misfortune had befallen him that he should find himself here in Paris. He looked about him at the horrid hovel with its low ceilings and grimy windows with all the more disdain, knowing it was his own. He passed through the labyrinth of his own creation, a forest of racks and hooks bearing the strangest foliage: clothes of a dizzying array of colors and fabrics, all of them garish, none of them new. His eyes fell on a particular all-black ensemble that had once belonged to some ambassador or other; whereas once it was a smart, if severe, set saved for special audiences, by now it had seen more use than its original owner could ever have imagined. The suit had gone from one pair of dirty callused hands to another and another, and these days its tired seams, shiny elbows, and drooping buttons begged to be replaced.
He hastily grabbed the cloth coat by its sleeve and noticed it had been badly hemmed — by whom? Its last wearer? But that was in clear violation of his shop's policies. Léon sighed and removed the coat from its place on the rack, determining to patch it up at his table as best he could before closing. With the confident, clear gestures of a born tailor, he threaded a needle and set to work.
Only he wasn't even born to be a tailor, much less a rag peddler. His scholarly father, who loved the words of the Torah and the Talmud more than he loved his own children, would have died of shame to see him if he weren't dead already. And time was when Léon too would have scoffed in disbelief if someone told him, "You will be a clothes-broker for thieves." His ambition lay elsewhere, miles away in Strasbourg, where as a boy he watched in awe as the town sofer scribed a Torah scroll with bold strokes, black ink on white parchment. No, black fire on white fire. As the sofer's pen glided, Léon felt himself gliding along with it, barely skimming the perfectly formed Hebrew letters lest they burn him.
He had begged the sofer to teach him the art of letters, had pestered the old man until he relented. "Do you see these?" the sofer said, showing his hands to the young Léon. "Mark them well, because your hands will look just like them." Léon scrutinized every detail, reading the blue veins on backs of the old man's hands. Blue ink on white parchment. A Torah, a lifetime within those lines.
Now, in Paris, Léon paused from his mending work to examine his hands and was surprised to see they looked just like the scribe's. What depressed him was that he was currently only half the age the scribe was then.
He was stirred from his contemplation by the sound of his front door opening and heavy boots crossing his threshold.
"Changer!" trumpeted a voice that sounded like it belonged on a stage.
Léon did not rise from his chair or even turn toward the recent arrival. "It's Friday. I close early on Fridays — the Sabbath starts at sunset." Not that it mattered much. It had been some time since he had celebrated a Sabbath properly. The local synagogues, having somehow heard of his profession, wanted nothing to do with him and would not let him through their doors, not even when he wanted to recite Kaddish for the anniversary of his father's death.
"Nonsense," said the voice. "You have time for us."
Us?
Léon turned and immediately recognized the two faces before him from somewhere, but no names came to mind. They made a rather ridiculous-looking pair, one of them with the build of an acrobat but the dramatic air of a master of ceremonies in vaudeville, the other tall and broad, solid as a wall. While under normal circumstances the little man would have drawn all his attention — people of his ilk have such power, despite their appearances — Léon could not take his eyes off the Goliath, or more specifically, the enormous crowbar he held in his hand.
"I don't allow weapons in my shop," Léon said quickly. "Get it out of the way, or I'm not doing any business with you. That's how it's always been done here."
"Our sincerest apologies!" said the small man. "Gueulemer can be a bit loffe at times, but he's not a bad sort. We're not here to scare you." Without a word, the large man leaned his crowbar against the door as if it were just an umbrella.
"What can I help you with, monsieur—?"
"Babet. Just Babet." His gaze ran over Léon's racks in a leisurely way, sampling the merchandise with his eyes. When he seemed satisfied, he leaned both elbows on Léon's table and rested his chin in his hands. "I'll tell you what I need, guinal. I need to look like a ratichon, you get me? And I don't mean the country parish kind of ratichon, I mean a decently respectable abbé — but no, not too respectable. I have to have my standards, too. Can you fix that for me?"
"My usual abbé ensemble is not available at the moment, but I do have a curé's cassock that might suit you." He rose to fetch it.
"Ah," said Babet. When Léon returned and draped a black cassock and wide-brimmed black hat over the table, Babet said again, "Ah!" The first "Ah" conveyed disappointment; the second, a note of promise.
"Will it suit you, then?"
"Yes, this'll do nicely," said Babet, running his hand over the buttons. "A sash and all! But the hat..." He examined that closely, fingering the felt with the expertise of a costumer. "Bah! No matter. I'll play the part of the Spanish padre. What do you think, Gueulemer?"
Gueulemer shrugged. "As long as you don't look like a Jesuit."
Babet waved his hand dismissively and turned to Léon. "Does it come with... accessories?"
"Yes, a few," said Léon, opening a wooden box labelled "CURÉ." One by one, he removed a linen handkerchief ("A blavin!" cried Babet with approval), a dilapidated leather-bound Latin missal, and a jet bead rosary. Léon grimaced, wondering what his pious ancestors would say about his not merely handling the sacred objects of a strange faith, but donating them for the purposes of thievery and deceit. Some of them had been killed at the hands of people who prayed on beads like these.
"How much in total?" asked Babet while Gueulemer thumbed through the missal, the pocket-sized book dwarfed by his massive hands.
Léon swallowed to try to rid his mouth of a bitter taste that lingered there. "Thirty sous per day. That includes all the... knickknacks." His voice was hoarse.
"I'll take it," said Babet, "and if you don't mind, I'll change right now — just to see how it fits."
Léon gestured to the rear of the hovel, behind the racks, where his clients were accustomed to trying on their disguises. Gueulemer busied himself in examining a full-page engraving of the Sermon on the Mount with a bored expression. "That's not good quality."
"What, the art?" asked Léon, relieved at this little bit of conversation. It distracted him from other thoughts.
"I mean the printing," replied Gueulemer. "The way it was done... it's just not right. Too heavy. Everything looks smudged." He held the picture a few mere inches from Léon's face to prove his point. "See?"
"From this close up? Yes, I see," Léon muttered, pushing the book away.
At that moment, Babet emerged in his priest's garb. It was too large, but not laughably so; instead, the size lent him the aura of an ascetic, and his face perfectly reflected the angular severity of a saint painted by El Greco. He made his way to Léon and grasped his hand, but addressed Gueulemer. "My son, we have here a bit of unfinished Christian business."
Gueulemer laughed. "And what would that be, Père Babet?"
"I am referring, of course, to this man here," Babet said, patting Léon's hand. His tone changed abruptly. "And it's not a laughing matter! No, it's tragic! Pity this man! Pray for him that he may be saved from his perfidy! This, this... Jew, this deicide, killer of Our Lord!" These last words he practically spat, like a minister during a Good Friday sermon.
There was a pause. Babet could no longer contain himself and burst into laughter, with Gueulemer joining him in a cacophonous duet. Léon's blood ran cold; he removed his trembling hand from Babet's.
"Thirty sous," he said.
"Of course, of course, my good man," said Babet, wiping a tear from his eye. "You know I was just joking — getting into the role and all that. I would never say such things about you! I should buy you a drink! Hey, Gueulemer, do you know who this is?"
"Who's that?"
"This," said Babet, pausing to gather his breath, "this is more than just any guinal here. He's an artist! No, a magician! He turns rogues into honest men and the godless into the godly!"
"Ha! Not you, you old mariol," said Gueulemer. "Some sinners just can't be turned into saints!"
"Well, never mind that! I'll tell you what he is. He is an ingenious Jew!"
"Are you finished yet?" said Léon more sharply than he intended.
Babet stared at him, but his expression was unfathomable. "Yes, yes..." He continued cheerfully, "Gueulemer, leave thirty sous for the Changer, and let's be on our way."
Once they had gone, Léon locked up and settled his accounts for the day in his logbook as was his routine. He glanced at the statesman's coat still lying on the table, awaiting attention, and suddenly he hated it with every ounce of his being. "Damn the horrid thing!" he said to himself, seizing the coat and very nearly ripping it in half. He would have done so gladly, but then he regained his senses. If he destroyed these ugly rags, he would be destroyed with them. He had engaged in this trade for ten years at most, but already he could not conceive of his existence without them, and neither could the criminals who were his clients. To them, he was just the Changer, the Jew in the Rue Beautreillis who asked no questions, who never talked back. There was no room for Léon Glück the sofer; Paris, it seemed, had enough Torah scrolls.
He would have to be his own scribe.
On a whim, he cleared the table of everything — coat, needles, thread, and assorted buttons — and instead fetched a single sheet of heavy paper and the inks and quills of the trade that should have been his. He began to write, forming letters as black and beautiful as any written by his mentor in Strasbourg, not stopping until long after the sun had set and he had to start working by the light of his poor lone candle, a blasphemous Sabbath.
When he finished adding decorative flourishes, he found a dusty frame that used to house a portrait of his father, placed the sheet inside, and hung it on the only part of the wall that wasn't covered with hooks. From then on, for years afterward, even as he walked with a stoop in his shoulder and a shuffle in his step and was consumed by quotidian worries about food and debts, he would stop in front of that frame and read the words aloud like a prayer:
Cholek im-ganav shone nafsho
alah yishma velo yagid.
"To be a partner of a thief is to hate one's own life;
one hears the victim's curse, but discloses nothing."
Argot glossary:
loffe: stupid
guinal: Jew
ratichon: priest
blavin: handkerchief
mariol: devil