prayer books in front of the cracks to try and make our presence less apparent. While the girl hyperventilated in fear, I held her hand in an attempt to comfort her, and then knelt down and pressed my eye against a tiny hole in the Aaron Kodesh, just making out my grandfather in the hazy view it afforded.
Somehow, he did not seem frightened, but rather determined. He looked towards the entrance to the synagogue and then spoke out in a loud and clear voice.
‘You need not continue to wait for me to exit the building,’ he said, ‘you may enter if you so wish!’
And in an instant it seemed that there was suddenly another presence in the room.
‘How very gracious,’ said a tightly clipped and sardonic voice. A tall man dressed in elegant, dark-green, garments stood before my grandfather. He had sharp, pale features, and a black moustache and sideburns that grew thinly across his face.
‘Shalom Aleichem,’ said my grandfather.
The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘I believe you might have something that belongs to me, Jew?’ said the man offhandedly as his eyes studied the room. He gazed down at the book strewn table, but appeared to be careful not to touch anything.
‘Everything ultimately belongs to G-d,’ my grandfather bowed.
‘Indeed,’ the man smiled, ‘alas, it seems there is little difference between our preachers and yours.’
He proceeded to pace up and down investigating his environment while my grandfather remained impassive. ‘Reality,’ he said, ‘is somewhat different. Everything ultimately belongs to the powerful here on earth.’
‘You seem agitated, Sir,’ said my grandfather.
‘You’re damn right I’m agitated,’ snapped the man, ‘we both know a girl came into the ghetto, I can smell her. Now hand her over, Jew!’ he shouted approaching my grandfather, but did not touch him.
The girl grabbed my arm as I watched, burying her face into my back. My grandfather however, looked into the man’s eyes.
‘You have clearly not been doing this for very long?’ he pondered openly, regarding the man carefully.
‘Excuse me?’ he growled.
‘This,’ he motioned back-and-forth, referring to the two of them. ‘The count it seems has not instructed you about your history.’
‘What!’
‘Forgive me,’ my grandfather demurred, ‘our history.’
The man appeared to be confused.
‘If you do not give me what I have come for, Jew, I will rip your throat open and feast on your blood!’
‘Oh you cannot touch me,’ said I grandfather cautiously. ‘No vampire can.’
Up until that time, I had never heard the word “vampire”. The girl next to me cringed at the sound of the word and the man himself seemed shocked that he had been identified.
‘So you know what I am?’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ nodded my grandfather, ‘but it seems you do not know what I am.’
The man...the vampire stared at him.
‘If you were to ask the count, he will tell you that you cannot suck the blood of a Jew.’
‘And why not?’ asked the vampire with curious irritation.
‘Because we are a holy people - a nation of priests. As G-d’s chosen people we do not need symbols of faith to ward you off. We have our blood covenant. Our holiness runs through our veins, the very life-force that you so desire.’
‘Nonsense!’ laughed the vampire, but he seemed uncertain.
‘Do not take my word for it,’ beckoned my grandfather, ‘I will happily give you my arm or my neck so that you may taste for yourself. But I warn you, it will be the last thing that you ever drink.’
‘I don’t have to kill you to drink your blood, old Jew. I can simply kill you for the pleasure,’ and he grinned widely.
‘True,’ my grandfather agreed. ‘It is unfortunate that your kind have long caused difficulties for my people. The count would drain the blood from a young, Christian child and place the body at the ghetto gates. The Christians would than accuse the Jews of murdering the child and using their blood to bake our Passover Matzah. Vicious pogroms would be perpetrated against my community as a result.’
‘Ingenious,’ grinned the vampire.
‘Perhaps,’ my grandfather said sadly.
‘We have known of you kind for thousands of years. The first vampires were called, Am Lak – the lickers of blood, from the tribe called the Amalekites.’
A sense of recognition crossed the vampire’s face. ‘From the bible,’ he said, ‘they attacked the Israelites from behind, and Moses raised his hands while they fought off the attack, and whenever he lowered them the Amalekites would win, and whenever he raised them the Hebrews would win.’
‘Well done,’ my grandfather smiled, ‘you know your scripture.’
‘I have not always been this way,’ the vampire stared down at my grandfather who had now sat upon a chair. ‘There was something else,’ he said approaching the old man, ‘G-d instructed the Israelites to kill the Amalekites. To wipe them off the face of the earth.’
‘That is also true,’ said my grandfather, ‘it is a very powerful commandment, and one which till now I have never had the honor of fulfilling.’
‘What!’ cried the vampire, but it was too late. My grandfather seized the vampire by the arms and from his seated position pulled him towards him.
My grandfather started to recite in Hebrew as the vampire began to struggle.
‘I shall surely erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens,’ and with that the vampire began to shake and scream in agony, ‘God is my miracle. For the Hand is on the throne of God. God maintains a war against Amalek, from generation to generation.’
As my grandfather continued, reciting the verses a total of three times, the vampire appeared to waver and collapse, his body thinning and desiccating before my very eyes. Finally when my grandfather stopped, there was nothing but the lavish garments that the beast had worn.
My grandfather seemed exhausted. Beads of sweat peppered his brow and he sat breathless. I did not dare speak or call out to him, I was frozen in awe at what I had witnessed. Finally he raised his hand and beckoned in my direction, as if knowing that I could see him. I pushed the shelves aside and slid out, leaving the nervous girl behind me.
I quickly ran and fetched my grandfather a glass of water and helped him drink, his hands still shaking from the ordeal.
‘Thankyou, Abraham,’ he smiled.
I looked down at the man’s clothes. ‘Is he really gone, grandfather?’ I asked.
My grandfather nodded.
‘We can only hope that the series of events that brought him here do not bring others of his kind,’ he said.
‘Others,’ I thought.
‘It is perhaps time we helped return that young girl to her family,’ he said. ‘Go and get your mother and sister and together we will take her back to the Christian side.’
And so our little family escorted the young woman out of the ghetto to her home. My grandfather had reasoned that the city’s authorities would be less likely to suspect a whole family of foul play than two males accompanying an injured woman in the early hours of the morning, irrespective of their age. Her family were indeed relieved, elated and very grateful that their daughter had been saved from both a humiliating and deadly fate by no-less than a group of Jews.
Emily Stoker, as her name turned out to be, spoke very highly of my grandfather and his role in protecting her, as well as how I had sat with her in the darkness and helped stop her from screaming or going insane when her pursuer had appeared. And so it was that some days later, her father, a wealthy industrialist entered the ghetto and approached our little synagogue. He had a proposition for our family, a way he proposed to thank us and grant us an opportunity that we would never otherwise receive. He wished to adopt me. To take me out of the ghetto and give me a secular education - access to opportunities that I would never receive either in the ghetto or
as a Jew.
My grandfather was vehemently against it. He argued that my identity was not a matter for compromise. Yet it was my mother who stood against him. After all the years of acquiescence to his will, she stood firm on the man’s offer.
‘Abraham knows who he is Papa,’ she cried. ‘He will return to us one day. And although I understand your fears for him, I can see the hope he would never otherwise have.’
A few weeks later, I left the ghetto to attend schools in Berlin, than Paris, and finally Dublin, where my adoptive family established themselves after the Revolutionary outbreaks of the 1840’s. Although I visited my family in the early years, I did not maintain my religious identity. As my grandfather had feared, it was all too easy to assimilate; to lose the rigidity of Jewish observance when not amongst a broader community of one’s own. That was the existential danger of pulling down the ghetto walls. How would we maintain our identity when we were no longer forced to be Jews?
Although there is much that I had forgotten, I would always remember the night where I watched an old Rabbi kill a vampire with words from the holy Torah. I would never forget the one commandment that G-d had given to my ancestors, to kill the Amelikites – those lickers of blood. So later, when I began to write, I decided to expose these creatures for what they were – to identify their characteristics, and extol their weaknesses, so that others would know them when they encountered them, and understand how to eradicate them when necessary. Although some friends have given me hope that I have been successful. The results, I