The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

  “I would like wine, cheese, and bread,” says Nahman. “Several loaves.”

  The old man gives Nahman the loaves of bread, not taking his eyes off him, as if surprised by his foreign-looking costume, though here at the border he shouldn’t be surprised by much of anything anymore.

  When Nahman, having paid, starts to leave, he sees that the old man is staggering strangely, unsteady on his feet.

  Nahman’s stories are not always to be believed—even less so when he writes them down. He has a propensity for exaggeration. He detects signs in everything; in everything, he seeks and finds connections. What happens is never quite enough for Nahman—he wants what happens also to have some heavenly, definitive meaning. He wants it to be meaningful, to have consequences for the future—wants even minor causes to provoke great effects. This is why he slumps so often into melancholy—has he not mentioned that himself?

  When he gets back to Jacob, he tells him the old man fell down dead as soon as he handed over Nahman’s purchases, before he even had a chance to take his money. Jacob laughs at this, pleased. Nahman likes to bring him pleasure in this way. He likes his deep, hoarse laughter.

  What is gleaned by the sharp gaze of every variety of spy

  Since crossing the Dniester, Jacob has been followed by spies, although Yente sees them better than they see Jacob. She watches them scribble inept reports on dirty roadhouse tabletops, entrusting them to messengers who will carry them to Kamieniec and Lwów. There they are transformed in chancelleries, taking on a more refined character, becoming disquisitions, rubrics of events; they wind up on better paper and earn seals—and so, as official dispatches, they go by post to Warsaw, to the tired clerks of that collapsing state, to the papal nuncio’s palace that drips with so much luxury, and also, via the secretaries of the kahalim, to Wilno, Kraków, and even Altona and Amsterdam. They are read by Bishop Dembowski, who is freezing in his dilapidated mansion in Kamieniec, and by the rabbis of the Lwów and Satanów kahalim, Hayim haKohen Rapaport and David ben Abraham, who send each other frequent messages riddled with insinuations and vague hints, as this whole shameful matter is difficult to express in straightforward holy Hebrew words. Finally, they’re read by officials in Turkey, who need to know what’s happening in this neighboring country, especially since they’re in business with its noblemen. The hunger for information is great all around.

  The spies, whether royal, ecclesiastic, or Jewish, report that Jacob has proceeded to Korolówka, where he was born and where a portion of his family still lives, in particular his uncle, Yankiel, the rabbi of Korolówka, with his son, Israel, and his wife, Sobla.

  Here—according to the spies’ reports—some twenty people have come to join him; most of them are relatives, all have ceremoniously written down their names, in so doing vowing to keep their faith in spite of any threats of persecution and without fear. And if it becomes necessary to convert to another religion, they will follow Jacob in this. They are like soldiers, one of the spies writes in a flight of poetic fancy—ready for anything.

  The spies also know about Yente in the woodshed by the house. They describe her as “one holy old lady,” “an elderly woman who doesn’t want to die,” and “a witch who is three hundred years old.”

  It is to her Jacob goes first.

  Sobla leads him to the woodshed, opens the wooden door, and shows him what he asked to see as soon as he arrived. Jacob stands transfixed. The woodshed has been transformed into an elegant room, kilims woven by the local peasants hanging on the walls, striped and colorful, the floor covered in the same. In the center of the room stands a wide bed with beautiful bedding, embroidered, now a little dusty—Sobla sweeps the blades of grass and cobwebs away with her hand. A human face, meanwhile, peeks out from under the covers; above them lie her arms and her pale, bony hands, so that Jacob, who has remained irreverent, who is still quick to make a joke, now finds his knees going weak. This is his grandmother, after all. Others, too—Nahman and Nussen, Reb Mordke and Old Moshe from Podhajce, who is also here to say hello to Jacob—come peer down at Yente. At first, Jacob just stands there petrified, but then he starts to sob, theatrically; the others follow. Sobla stands in the doorway, keeping out the curious; men have crowded into their small yard, pale and bearded under their fur hats, stamping their feet in the fresh snow to stay warm.

  This is Sobla’s big moment, and she is proud that Yente looks so lovely.

  She shuts the door and comes inside so she can show them how Yente’s eyelids tremble slightly, how her eyeballs move beneath them, traveling through unimaginable worlds.

  “She’s alive,” Sobla reassures them. “Touch her, she’s even a little bit warm.”

  Obediently, without hesitation, Jacob touches his finger to Yente’s hand. Then he jerks it back. Sobla giggles.

  What, Wise Jacob, do you have to say about this?

  It is known, of course, that Israel’s wife is opposed to these true believers, which is what they call themselves, twisting things around, since they are not true to the traditional faith at all. Like many women, she doesn’t like Jacob. Especially when she sees him praying without phylacteries! And when he contorts his body in strange ways, gritting his teeth. Up to his old tricks, thinks Sobla. Jacob tells her to go to the gentiles’ shop—higher up there is a village of goyim—to get some Christian bread. Sobla declines. Someone else fetches the bread, and Jacob starts to pass out pieces of it, and some are so in awe of him that they receive it, committing sacrilege. His behavior is bizarre, too; he suddenly stops to listen as though hearing voices only he can hear. He says nonsensical things in some strange language, repeating, for instance, “ze-ze-ze,” and trembling all over. What that is supposed to mean, Sobla has no idea—no one knows, but his disciples take it seriously. Moshe from Podhajce explains to Israel that what Jacob’s chanting is just “Ma’asim Zarim, Ma’asim Zarim,” that he’s talking about the “Strange Deeds”—in other words, that from which it would be necessary to begin. Foreign deeds, bizarre, strange things, incomprehensible at first glance, that would seem very odd indeed to the uninitiated—though the initiated, those closest to Jacob, would understand. They now have to do everything that was once prohibited. Hence that Christian bread, formerly impure.

  Israel thinks about this all afternoon. Since the long-awaited, muchanticipated messianic times have dawned, Jacob is right: the laws of this world—the laws of the Torah—cannot be in effect anymore. Now everything is the other way around. But this idea fills Israel with fear. He sits on a bench and watches with his mouth open as the world is utterly transformed. His head is spinning. In the yard, Jacob promises there will be more of them, these “Strange Deeds,” and that they must be performed concertedly, with zeal. Breaking the old laws is necessary, is the only thing that will hasten the arrival of salvation. In the evening, Israel asks for some of that gentile bread, and he chews it slowly, laboriously, thoroughly.

  Meanwhile, Sobla is an exceptionally practical person and not at all interested in such things. Were it not for her sound reasoning, they would have starved to death a long time ago, given that Israel’s only pursuits are things like tikkun, Devekut, salvation, and the like. Besides, he has an ailment in his lungs that means he can’t even chop wood properly. So Sobla gets the water heated so she can cook some chickens, oversees the preparation of a thick broth. She goes about her business. She’s helped by Pesel, who is eight and resolute—the two of them are peas in a pod. Sobla is breastfeeding yet another child—Freyna. Freyna is voracious, which is why Sobla is so thin. The rest of the children run around the house.

  Sobla would be quite curious to see the wife of this off-putting cousin she has to host in her home—they say she’s given him a daughter. Is she ever going to come to Poland to join her husband? What’s she like? And what sort of family is it that they have out there in Nikopol? Is it true that Jacob is rich there, and that he has his own vineyard? And if so, what could he be after here?

  On the first day, there isn’t t
ime for anything, since people are always clustering around him, touching him, tugging at his sleeves. Jacob gives a lengthy talk to those assembled, full of parables. He proclaims a new religion, one accessible exclusively through Esau, meaning Christianity, just as Sabbatai crossed over to Ishmael, meaning the Turkish faith. The progress of salvation depends upon extracting from those religions the seeds of revelation and sowing them in one great divine revelation, the Torah of Atzilut: Torah of the World of Emanations. In this religion of the end of days, all three religions will be braided into one. On hearing this, some people spit into the snow and leave.

  Then there is a feast, which leaves Jacob so tired or drunk that he goes to bed immediately—not alone, of course, for in Sabbatian homes a particular type of hospitality is practiced. To keep Jacob warm, Moshe from Podhajce sends his youngest daughter for the night.

  Right after breakfast, Jacob asks to be taken up to the hill where the caves are. There his companions are to wait for him, while he vanishes into the forest. More shuffling of feet in snow. A substantial little crowd gathers, including village goyim, too, asking what is going on. They’ll later tell the curious authorities: “A learned Jew came from Turkey, Your Honor. Big, with a Turkish hat on and pockmarks all over his face.” More villagers join them, waiting for him to come back from the forest, sensing something significant is happening, certain Jacob is conversing with underground spirits. By the time he does return, it’s starting to get dark, and with the dusk falls snow. The whole company heads back to the village, cheerful though cold, happy they will find vodka and warm broth on their return. In the morning they’ll head out again, this time going farther, to Jezierzany, for Hanukkah.

  The spies know exactly what happens next: This prophet, Jacob, spends two weeks with Simha ben Hayim and starts to see a light over the heads of certain of the faithful. It is a halo, greenish, or maybe cerulean. Simha and his brother have this light over their heads, and it means they have been chosen. Everyone would like to have a halo, some people can even feel it, a slight tingling sensation along their scalps, warm, as though they were without kippot. Someone says that such a halo comes from an invisible little aperture in the head through which an internal light pours forth into the world. It’s that little hole that tingles. Everyone should get rid of whatever mats of hair they have there that might interfere with the light’s passage.

  “Three things are too wondrous for me; the fourth I can’t understand.” —Book of Proverbs 30:18

  When Jacob walks through villages or towns, the local traditional Jews run after him, shouting, “Trinity! Trinity!” as though it were a slur. Sometimes they pick up stones and throw them at his followers. Others, those under the sway of Sabbatai Tzvi, the forbidden prophet, look on in curiosity, and it is primarily from them that Jacob draws ever more followers.

  People are poor here, and because they’re poor, they’ve grown suspicious. The poor can’t afford to place too much confidence in anyone. Before the fat man gets skinny, the skinny man will croak, as the saying goes around these parts. They want miracles, signs, shooting stars, water become blood. They don’t completely understand what Yankiele Leybowicz, called Jacob Frank, is saying. But because he’s tall, handsome, and dressed like a Turk, he seems exceptional, and he makes a big impression. In the evening, as they talk around the fire, Jacob complains to Nahman that he feels like a merchant with the most beautiful pearl for sale, and yet here they treat him like some rag-and-bone man and can’t appreciate the value of the pearl, taking it for a fake.

  He tells people what Isohar has taught him, what Reb Mordke tells him to say in the evenings, and what he has learned from Nahman. Nahman is well-versed in every disputation, but lacks Jacob’s good looks and powers of persuasion. But when Jacob puts these ideas forward, he adds quite a bit of his own. He especially loves striking comparisons and never balks at profanity. He talks like a simple Jew, like the milkman from Czernowitz, like the harness-maker from Kamieniec, except that he throws in lots of Turkish words, blending them into his Yiddish phrases, the result something like challah with raisins.

  At the Christian New Year, they head for Kopyczyńce, encountering on the road many richly bedecked sleighs going in the opposite direction, local magnates traveling solemnly and in high style to church. The horses slow to pass, and the members of each procession turn to look at one another in stunned silence. Jacob is wearing an open fur-lined overcoat with a broad collar and a dyed, fur-lined kalpak, and he looks like a king. The noblemen, meanwhile, shrouded in their own furs, look heavyset, squat, their hats adorned with feathers at the forehead, fastened by ornate, expensive brooches. The women, pale but for their cold red noses, look as though they’re drowning in their fur-lined robes.

  In Kopyczyńce, the tables have already been set, and all the true believers from the village are waiting outside the home of Shlomo and his wife, Zytla, shuffling from foot to foot, stamping to keep the cold at bay, talking amongst themselves. The sky reddens as the sleighs pull up. The crowd quiets down and in rigid silence watches Jacob go inside. Just before he makes it to the door, he pauses, comes back, goes up to Rivka and her little daughter, and her husband, Shyle, and looks just above their heads, as if he has seen something there. This causes a stir, and even the chosen ones feel ill at ease. When he goes inside, Rivka starts to snivel, and so does her little girl, who is maybe three years old, and a lot of people suddenly start to cry, whether from stress or cold or exhaustion it isn’t clear. Some traveled all night. Some of them were also in Jezierzany before, and even Korolówka.

  Inside, Jacob is ceremoniously received by Hayim from Warsaw, whom everyone respects because he runs a business in the capital. There, too, Jacob’s fame has spread, and people would like to know what’s going to happen now that the world is nearing its end. Jacob patiently explains all afternoon, so that the panes of the tiny little windows get white with steam, which the frost instantly transforms into filigreed palm trees.

  That evening, those who peer in through the tiny windows can’t see much. The candle flames flicker and keep going out. The Holy Spirit descends into Jacob again: ruah haKodesh. Not much of it can be seen—just a bit of shadow on the wall from the candle flames, flickering, uncertain. A woman’s cry is interrupted.

  When it’s over, Shlomo, in accordance with the ancient law, dispatches Zytla to Jacob’s bed. But Jacob is so tired that Zytla, wearing her good nightgown, clean and scented, feeling angry and rejected, has no choice but to go back to her husband.

  In Hayim’s parents’ house, Jacob converts three people. Jacob likes Hayim very much because he has a zeal for organization, and the very next day, he gets to work. Now, from village to village, they are followed by a proper retinue, some dozen carts, people on horseback, and others on foot who can’t keep up with the rest of the caravan and don’t reach their destination until evening, tired and hungry; they sleep anywhere they can, in the barn, on the floor of the inn. Jacob is passed from one village to the next like a bizarre and holy wonder. Whenever they stop to rest, new people come and look in through the windows, listening to whatever he is saying. They don’t entirely understand him, but still they get tears in their eyes. They are moved not only by Jacob, whose gestures have gotten more brusque now, decisive, like he’s here for the moment but already elsewhere in his mind, with Abraham, with Sarah, with Sabbatai, with the great sages who have broken down the world into just the letters of which it is composed. There’s also a comet that has appeared in the sky and is getting bigger and bigger every day; it follows Jacob every evening, as if he were the comet’s son, a spark of light fallen from the sky. The procession goes through Trembowla, Sokołów, Kozowa, Płaucza, Zborów, Złoczów, Hanaczówka, and Busk. They all lift their heads to the sky. Jacob heals people by placing his hands on their heads, and lost things are found, abscesses diminish, women achieve long-awaited pregnancies, and the love between husbands and wives is restored. Cows give birth to twins with strange colorations, while chickens lay unusual egg
s with two or even three yolks. Polish noblemen come to watch this Frank, this Turkish or Wallachian Jew, work miracles like no one’s ever seen before and talk about the end of the world. Will Christians be saved, too, or is this only the Jewish end of the world? It isn’t clear. They want to talk with him. In conversation via a translator—either Nahman or Hayim from Warsaw—the noblemen try to maintain their superiority, first calling him over to their carriages; Jacob goes up and answers politely. He starts by saying he’s a simple man, a simpleton, but just the way he looks at them makes them lose their self-assurance. Soon they are standing in the crowds with the others, differentiated only by their thick furs and the feathers in their hats.

  In Busk, the whole town has spilled from its houses, burning torches; a severe frost has taken hold, and the snow creaks underfoot. Jacob spends an enjoyable week in the home of Nahman’s brother, Hayim, and his wife. The little boys follow Jacob around like a king’s pages. Here, Jacob sees a cerulean halo over almost everybody’s head. Just about the whole town is converted to the faith of the Holy Trinity, as Jacob himself calls it. By day, they bring him suffering children, that he might lay his hands on them. Then they send for him from Dawidów, and then they want him in Lwów. In Lwów, he gets to speak in a great hall, and a massive crowd comes to see him, but when he broaches the necessity of turning to the faith of Esau, that is, the Catholic faith, to bring about the Final Days, people start to leave, grumbling. The Jews of Lwów are wealthy, hostile, spoiled. Lwów is not as receptive to Jacob as the poor villages and towns. The rich and the satisfied are in no hurry for the Messiah; the Messiah is, after all, the one on whom the world must wait forever. The one who arrives is a false Messiah. The Messiah is the one who never arrives. That’s the whole point. When Jacob starts to speak in a Lwów synagogue, his audience drowns him out. So Jacob smashes the pulpit and throws it into the crowd, and then he has to run away because the crowd starts to close in on him in fury.