Even at the inn, he is not treated very well, although Hayim is paying a pretty price. The woman who keeps the inn snaps at Jacob rudely. He tells her to make sure to check her pockets, since she has a silver tymf there. She stops, astonished.
“How would I have that?”
He insists she reach into her pockets—all this takes place in the presence of witnesses. And she does pull out a coin, not as valuable since they started being counterfeited, but still, money. She looks at it, a bit embarrassed, then looks away and would like to leave, except that Jacob grabs her by the arm.
“You know exactly how you have that, don’t you?” asks Jacob without looking at her, because he is looking over the heads of the curious little crowd that has already gathered.
“Don’t say anything, mister, please,” begs the innkeeper, wresting her arm free.
But he has no intention of listening to her and is already shouting, raising his head high so that everyone can hear:
“She got it from a nobleman she sinned with last night.”
People burst out laughing, thinking he has made this up, but to their surprise, the innkeeper acknowledges it to be true! She says that he is right, to the astonishment of their spectators, and then, beet red, she disappears.
Now Jacob’s message becomes as clear and distinct as the footprints stomped in the snow for warmth by those who didn’t make it inside and will have to find out about all of this secondhand. It is a question of uniting the three religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Sabbatai was the First, and he opened the door to Islam, while Baruchiah paved the way to Christianity. What appalls everyone and makes them stomp and shout? It’s the fact they have to ford the Nazarene faith as they would a river, and that Jesus was a shell and a shield for the true Messiah.
At around noon, the idea seems shameful. By the afternoon, it’s up for discussion. By evening it’s been assimilated, and late at night it’s perfectly obvious that everything’s exactly as Jacob says.
Late at night, yet another aspect of the idea, which they hadn’t really taken into consideration before, occurs to them—that once they are baptized, they will cease to be Jews, at least as far as anyone can tell. They will become people—Christians. They will be able to purchase land, open shops in town, send their children to any schools they wish . . . Their heads spin with possibilities, for it is as though they have suddenly been given a strange, almost inconceivable gift.
The Lord’s female guardians
The spies have been aware that as early as Jezierzany, Jacob has been accompanied by a young lady, later joined by a second. Both are purportedly there to guard him; the first one, a beautiful Busk girl, has light hair and pink cheeks and is invariably smiling, and she always walks one step behind him. The second one, Gitla, from Lwów, is tall and as proud as Queen Saba, and barely speaks. They say she is the daughter of one Pinkas, the secretary of the Lwów kahal, but she insists she is of royal blood, descended from the Polish princess her great-grandfather abducted one day. They sit on either side of Jacob like guardian angels, wearing beautiful furs on their shoulders, hats on their heads like noblewomen wear, decorated with precious stones and peacock feathers. At their sides sit small Turkish swords in turquoise-lined sheaths. Jacob positions himself between them like he might between the pillars of a temple. Soon the darker one, Gitla, becomes his true bodyguard, pushing ahead in crowds and barring access to him with her person, using a walking stick to protect his flanks. She keeps a warning hand on her sword. The fur only gets in her way, and soon she switches it for a red military doublet decorated with white silk cords. Her lush, unruly curls pop out from under her fur-lined military cap.
Jacob won’t go anywhere without her, and, as if she were his wife, he spends every night with her as well. He says God has sent her to protect him. She will accompany him on through Poland, she will keep him safe. For Jacob is afraid—he’s not blind, after all, and behind the backs of his followers he can see the quiet mob that spits at his mention, that mutters curses. Nahman sees that, too, which is why he has guards placed around whatever house they’re sleeping in that night. Only a jug of wine and the beautiful Gitla can calm Jacob’s nerves. The other guards can hear their giggles and amorous moans through the thin wooden walls of each humble home. Nahman doesn’t like it. Moses, the rabbi of Podhajce—the one who advised the Shorrs to call off the wedding—also warns that such a display is egregious, and that it will cause some to speak ill of Jacob—even though he himself, a recent widower, can’t help but look at Gitla with interest from time to time. Gitla gets on everyone’s nerves, puts on airs, looks down at the other women. Hayim from Warsaw and his wife, Wittel, cannot stand her. Although Jacob gives up the light-haired girl in Lwów, Gitla he keeps. In any case, the light-haired one is soon replaced.
The whole tour takes a solid month. Every night it’s different lodgings, different people. In Dawidów, Jacob greets Elisha Shorr like a father—Shorr in a floor-length overcoat and a fur-lined hat, his sons on either side of him. With a trembling hand, Shorr points out a strange glow over Frank’s head, and the longer they look at it, the bigger it gets, until all those present kneel down in the snow.
When he stays with the Shorrs again in Rohatyn, Old Shorr says, in front of everyone:
“Jacob, show us your strength. We know you have received it.”
Jacob refuses, saying he’s tired, saying it’s time to get some sleep after all those long disputations, and he heads upstairs to his rooms. But his feet on the oak steps leave tracks that look almost burned into the wood, permanently imprinted for all to see. From that night on, people come to behold those divine tracks in pious silence, and there in Rohatyn they also keep one of his embroidered Turkish pantofles.
The spies sent from the Lwów kahal take detailed notes on everything, from the contents of the new prayer Jacob Leybowicz Frank has brought with him to the fact that he adores kaymak and Turkish sweets with sesame seeds and honey. His companions always carry them in their baggage. In the prayer, Hebrew words intermingle with Spanish, Aramaic, and Portuguese, so that no one can understand exactly what is being said, which makes it sound all the more mysterious. They pray to someone they call Señor Santo, sing “Dio mio Baruchiah.” From the snippets they have heard, the spies try to reproduce the contents of the prayer, coming up with this:
“Let us know your greatness, Señor Santo, for you are the true God and Lord of the world, and king of the world who was incarnate and who destroyed once and for all the order of creation, raised yourself up to your proper place to cast aside all other created worlds, and apart from you there is no other God, neither high nor low. And do not lead us into temptation or shame, so we kneel and praise your name, great and mighty king. For He is holy.”
Scraps by Nahman of Busk kept secret from Jacob
When God had Jews set forth into the world, He already had in mind the end point of such a journey, though they did not know of it yet; He wanted them to go toward their destiny. The end point and the point of departure are divine; impatience is human, as is believing in chance and hoping for adventure. And so when it came time for the Jews to settle somewhere for some longer stay, they showed—like children—discontent. Joy, on the other hand, when once more they were called upon to leave. And so it is now. God is thus the frame of every journey. Man provides its contents.
“Are we already in the worst possible place? Is this Busk?” Jacob asked me, and burst out laughing as we came up to Busk.
In Busk, we received Jacob in the home of my brother, Hayim ben Levi, as my wife did not wish to host him. Because she was heavily pregnant, I acquiesced. She, like many women, was disinclined to the new teachings. My one son who had survived his infancy was named Aronek, and Jacob took a particular liking to him. He would hold him on his lap, which gladdened me to my very soul, and he would often say that the little boy would grow into a great sage whom no one would be able to defeat with words. This gave me pleasure, though I knew that Jacob was familiar wit
h my situation, aware that none of my other children had ever survived a year. Little Aronek became very flushed that evening, and Leah scolded me for taking a weak child outside and carrying him about in the cold.
She went with me once to Hayim’s, but that was enough for her. She asked if it was true what they said about us.
“What is it they say?” I asked her.
“You promised to bring us a truly learned rabbi, but because of him”—and she nodded toward the window—“God has punished us. He has us bear children who die.”
“Why because of him?” I asked.
“Because you’ve been going with him for several years now. Wherever he is, there you are.”
What could I say? She may have been right. On the other hand, maybe God was taking away my children so as to bring me closer to Jacob.
Every evening came together in a similar way: First, a communal dinner—kasha, cheeses, baked meat, bread, olive oil, potatoes. Everyone sat down together at those long tables—women, children, and young people, those who contributed something to the meal as well as those who had nothing to contribute, who were provided for and did not go away hungry. Then Jacob told his tales of the Turkish countries, often humorous and entertaining, so that the majority of the women, enchanted by his beautiful speech and humor, let go of their negative opinions of him, while the children agreed he was the best storyteller they had ever heard. Then there was a communal prayer that he had taught us, and after the women had cleaned off the table and put the children to sleep, we who were ready to participate in the nocturnal studies remained.
He always began with the burden of silence. He would raise his index finger and move it, pointing upward, back and forth in front of his face, and our eyes would all follow that finger, behind which his face would melt and vanish. Then he would begin with the words “Shloisho seforim niftuchem,” which meant “The three books are opening.” At this a thrilling quiet fell, and you could almost hear the rustle of the pages of the holy books. Then Jacob would break that silence and remind us: “Whatever you hear here must fall into you as it would into a grave. And going forward, this will be our religion: silence.”
He said:
“If a person wanted to claim a fortress, he would never be able to get there by just talking about it—for words are fleeting. He’d have to go in with an army. That’s what we have to do: walk, not talk. Did our grandfathers not have enough discussion, did they not strain their eyes over the Scriptures? What good did any of it do them? What purpose did it serve? It’s better to see than to speak. We have no use for know-it-alls here.”
It always seemed to me that whenever he mentioned know-it-alls, he would look directly at me. For it was I who was striving to preserve his every word, though he had forbidden me from writing down those words. And so I would write them in secret. I feared that all of them, now so intent upon him, would forget every single thing the very second they went out the door. I did not understand the prohibition. When the next morning I sat down as though to do our accounts, to write letters, or determine schedules, underneath what I was doing I had placed another sheet of paper, and there I wrote, like I was translating for myself, the words spoken by Jacob:
“You have to go over to Catholicism,” he told the simple people. “Make peace with Esau. You have to go into the darkness, that’s as clear as day! For salvation awaits us only in darkness. Only in the worst place can the Messianic mission begin. The whole world is the enemy of the true God, don’t you know that?
“This is the burden of silence. Masa duma. Words are such a weighty burden that it is as though they carried half the world inside themselves. You must listen to me and follow me. You must cast aside your language, and with each nation speak its proper tongue.”
It is virtuous not to allow anything ugly to leave one’s lips. It is virtuous to keep quiet, to keep everything one sees and hears inside. To be constant. Just as the First, Sabbatai, invited guests to his wedding and stood the Torah under the huppah as his bride, so, too, have we now replaced the Torah with a woman. Since then she has come naked every evening, with no concealment, here among us. Women are the greatest mystery, and here, in the lower world, they are the Holy Torah’s counterpart. We will join with her, gently at first, with just our lips, with a movement of the mouth that pronounces the word that is read and in so doing re-creates the world from nothing every day. For I acknowledge—I, Nahman Samuel ben Levi of Busk—that there is a Trinity with one God, and that the Fourth Person is the Holy Mother.
Of secret acts in Lanckoroń and an unfavorable eye
Nahman won’t describe it—yes, words do add weight. When he does sit down to write, Nahman divides things into what can be written and what cannot. He must be careful to remember this. Especially since Jacob always says: No traces, keep everything a perfect secret, no one can find out who we are and what we do. Even though he actually makes quite the ruckus, with his strange gestures and the odd things that come out of his mouth. He speaks so enigmatically that it’s hard to figure out what he means. That’s why people stay together for a long time after he leaves, trying to interpret for themselves and one another the words of this Frank, this foreigner. What did he say? In some sense, each can only understand it all as best he can, in his own way.
When they reach Lanckoroń, on January 26, guided by Leybko Abramowicz and his brother Moshek, both on horseback, they head straight for Leybko’s home. It’s already very dark.
The village lies on a steep slope that goes down to a river. The road, rocky and uncomfortable, leads up. The night is thick and cold; light gets bogged down in it a short way from its source. It smells of smoke from damp wood, and the outlines of houses loom in the near-blackness; here and there, a dingy yellow glow makes its way out of a little window.
Shlomo Shorr and his brother Nathan are meeting with their sister. Hayah the prophet has lived in Lanckoroń since her wedding with the local rabbi, Hirsh, who runs a tobacco business here and enjoys great respect among the true believers. Nahman feels slightly dazed at the sight of her, as though he’s just had vodka.
She comes with her husband, and as they stand there in the doorway, Nahman first thinks it is her father, so much does Hirsh resemble Old Shorr. Which isn’t that surprising, given they are cousins. Hayah has grown more beautiful since having children, she’s very thin and tall. She wears a bloodred dress and a light blue scarf, like a young maiden. Her hair is tied back with a colorful schmatte, and it cascades down her back. From her ears hang Turkish earrings.
The dusty little windows always let in too little light, so all day they burn wicks submerged in oil inside a clay shell, hence the stench of soot and burnt fat. Both rooms are crammed with furniture, and there is a scuttling sound, a rustling from somewhere that never lets up. Since it’s winter, the mice have sought shelter from the frosts beneath the roof; they are creating vertical cities in the walls and horizontal ones under the floors, cities more complex than Lwów and Lublin combined.
In the front room above the hearth there is a recess to allow the air to reach the fire, but it’s always getting clogged, and the stove smokes. So everything is permeated by the mixed scent of smoke and mice.
They close the door carefully and cover the windows. It could seem as if they’ve gone to sleep—they’ve been traveling all day, they’re tired, just like the spies. There is already an uproar in the village, that this Sabbatian plague has reached all the way here. But there are also two curious people, Gershon Nahmanowicz and his cousin Naftali, the one who leases the land from the local lord and thinks very highly of himself because of it. He creeps up and manages to peek in through a window (someone must have left a bit of it exposed). The blood rushes from his head, and he stands there like someone’s cast a spell on him, and he can’t tear his eyes away, and although he can peer through only a vertical strip, by moving his head around he can nonetheless take in the whole scene. And so he sees—barely, by the light of a single candle—a circle of seated men, and in the
middle of the circle, a half-naked woman. Her large, firm breasts seem to be glowing in the dark. This Jacob Frank walks around her in circles, seemingly babbling to himself.
Against the backdrop of all the clumsy objects in Leybko’s home, Hayah’s body is perfect, miraculous, as though she were come from another world. Her eyes are half closed, and her mouth is half open, so that you can see the tips of her teeth. Droplets of sweat glisten on her shoulders and her chest, and her breasts look so heavy as to make the viewer want desperately to hold them up. Hayah is standing on a stool, the only woman amidst the many men.
Jacob is the first to approach her. He has to stand ever so slightly on tiptoe to reach her breasts with his lips. It looks as though he even holds her nipple for a moment in his mouth, as though he might be swallowing a couple of drops of milk. And then the second breast. Next goes Reb Schayes, an old man with a sparse beard that comes down to his waist. His lips, moving like a horse’s, seek Hayah’s nipple, blindly—Reb Schayes doesn’t open his eyes. Then Shlomo Shorr, Hayah’s brother, comes up, and after a moment’s hesitation does the same, though hurriedly, and then everyone’s doing it—an emboldened Leybko Aronowicz, their host, and right behind him his brother, Moshko, and then another Shorr, this time Yehuda, and then Isaac of Korolówka, and each of them, even those who have been standing back, hiding in the shadows, now coming forth, knows that he has been admitted into the great mystery of this faith, and in this way he’s become a true believer, and these people are his brothers, and so it will be until the savior destroys the old world and reveals the new. Because the Torah itself has entered Hirsh’s wife, Hayah; that is what beams out now through her skin.
The Books of Jacob Page 31
