When I look at him, I see that there are people who are born with something that I cannot find the words for, something that means that others respect them and hold them in the highest esteem. I don’t know what it is—is it posture, is it a head held high, a penetrating gaze, a way of walking? Or maybe some spirit hovering around him? An angel who keeps him company? He has only to enter any space, be it the most decrepit shed or the holiest chamber, and all eyes turn to him at once, pleasure and appreciation on everyone’s face, although he has not yet done or said a thing.
I have watched his face many times—even as he was sleeping. I have already said it—it is not a beautiful face, but it can look beautiful. It is not an ugly face—but it can look repulsive. His eyes are capable of being as gentle and sad as a child’s. Those same eyes are capable of looking as ruthless as those of a predator watching its prey. Then a mocking expression appears in them, a derision so cold it suffuses your whole body. I don’t even know what color they are exactly, because even that is changeable. Sometimes they are quite black, without pupils, and completely impenetrable. Other times they take on a golden-brown hue, like dark beer. Once I saw that in their deepest essence they are as yellow as a cat’s, and I realized that he only darkens them for others, like a gentle shade.
I permit myself to write about Jacob in such a way because I love him. Because as a person who loves him, I give him greater rights and privileges than I give to anyone else. But I also fear falling into blind love, exaggerated and unhealthy, like that Heshel, who, if he could, would lie down like a dog at his feet.
Of doubles, trinities, and foursomes
We conducted many investigations into the Trinity in Ivanie, and it seemed to me that I had come to grasp its meaning.
What is our real task if not the establishment of equilibrium between the unity of God and the multiplicity of the world created by him? As for ourselves, people—are we not abandoned in this “in-between,” in between the One and a world of divisions? This limitless “between” has its strange critical point—the double. This is the first experience of the thinking man—when he notices the abyss that appears between himself and the rest of the world. This is the painful Two, the fundamental crack in the created world that gives rise to contradictions and all sorts of dualisms. This and that. You and me. Left and right. Sitra Achra, or the other side, the left side, the demonic forces in the guise of the broken shells of the vessels that could not hold the light when they were broken (shevirat haKelim)—that is the Two. Perhaps were it not for the Two in the world, the world would be completely different, although it’s hard to imagine that; no doubt Jacob would be able to. One time we worked ourselves to the bone, late into the night, trying to complete this assignment, but it was to no avail, for our minds think in this rhythm: two, two, two.
The Trinity is holy, like a wise wife, reconciling contradictions. Two is like a young roe doe, leaping over every contradiction. That’s what makes the Trinity holy, that it can tame evil. But because the Trinity must ceaselessly work on behalf of the equilibrium it disturbs, it is shaky, and it isn’t until you get to Four that you attain the highest holiness and perfection that restores divine proportions. It is not in vain that God’s name in Hebrew is composed of four letters, and that all the elements of the world were established so by Him (Yeruhim once told me that even animals can count to four!), and everything that is important in the world must be quadruple.
Once Moshe went to the kitchen, took some challah dough, brought it back, and started forming some sort of shape from it. We laughed at him, especially Jacob, because nothing went together less than Moshe and kitchen work.
“What is it?” he asked us, and revealed the result of his project.
We saw on the table an alef made of dough, and we answered him accordingly. Then Moshe took the ends of the holy letter made of dough and in a couple of simple movements reshaped it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Now it was a cross.
For, Moshe argued, the holy letter is the germ of the cross, its original form. If it were a living plant, it would grow into a cross. The cross thus contains a great mystery. For God is one in three forms, and then to the threeness of God we add the Shekhinah.
Such knowledge was not for everyone. People who had gathered with us in Ivanie were of such varying backgrounds and had had such different experiences that we all agreed not to give them this holy knowledge, lest they understand it amiss. When they asked me about the Trinity, I would raise my hand to my forehead and touch the skin there, saying, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
These were the kinds of conversations we had only with each other, in a small group and in hushed voices—for the walls of the Ivanie huts tended to not be sealed completely—when we finished writing letters, and our fingers were all covered in ink, and our eyes were so tired that all they could do was gaze into the dance of the candle flames. And then Moliwda would tell us tales of the beliefs of those Bogomils, as he called them, and in those beliefs we were surprised to determine that we had much in common with them, as if the path taken by both us and them were in the beginning one but later bifurcated to then converge again into one, just like our two roads in Ivanie.
Is life itself not a stranger to this world? And are we not strangers, and is our God not a stranger? Is this not why we appear so different, so distant, so scary, and incomprehensible to those who really do belong to this world? But this world is equally bizarre and incomprehensible to any stranger to it, and its rules are incomprehensible, as are its customs. For the stranger comes from the farthest distance, from the outside, and he must endure the fate of the foreigner, alone and defenseless, completely misunderstood. We are foreigners’ foreigners, Jews’ Jews. And we will always be homesick.
Since we do not know the roads of this world, we move through it defenseless, blind, knowing only that we are strangers to it.
Moliwda said that as soon as we strangers, living amongst those others, get used to and learn to take pleasure in the charms of this world, we will forget where we came from and what sort of origins were ours. Then our misery will end, but at the price of forgetting our true nature, and this is the most painful moment of our fate, the fate of the stranger. That is why we must remind ourselves of our foreignness and care for this memory as we would our most treasured possession. Recognize the world as the place of our exile, recognize its laws as foreign, as strange . . .
Dawn is beginning to break when Nahman finishes; a moment later, just outside the window, the rooster crows in such dramatic fashion that Nahman trembles like a night demon who fears the light. He slips into the warmth of the bed and lies there for a long time on his back, unable to go to sleep. Polish words crowd into his mind, sticking together into sentences, and not even knowing how, he silently composes his prayer for the soul, but in Polish. And since yesterday he saw Gypsies here, they, too, are jumbled up in his mind, and they jump into his sentences, the whole caravan of them:
Like a sailor visiting the sea’s abyss,
Or, in the vast uncharted wilderness,
Like a Gypsy caravan, my dear soul
Won’t travel toward just any goal.
No shackles of iron can close it in,
Nor the pompousness of their chagrin,
No custom, no tradition will strain it.
Not my own heart’s shelter can contain it.
It alters since it doesn’t alter,
My soul won’t let me down or falter.
My soul rises, good Lord, to Your great dome;
Give it a fit room inside Your home.
Not even Nahman himself knows when he falls asleep.
Of candles put out
In the night of July 14–15, after the date of the next disputation has been set, the women and men gather in the chamber, close the shutters tight, and light some candles. Slowly they undress until they’re naked, some folding and stacking their clothes neatly like they’re going to the mikvah. All kneel on the wooden floor, and Jac
ob holds a cross. He sets it on the bench, and then he kisses a small figure, the little teraphim that Hayah has brought in, and he lays it by the cross, and then he lights the tall candle and stands up. Now he will walk around in a circle, a naked man, his body hairy, his manhood dangling between his legs. The unsteady candlelight brings out of the darkness the others’ bodies, grayish orange, and their golden heads bowed against their chests.
Bodies are tangible; you can see Moshe’s hernia and Wittel’s stomach that sags from her many children. They glance furtively at one another while Jacob walks around in a circle, murmuring the prayer: “In the name of the Hallowed First . . . in the idea of life from the light of the world . . .” It is hard to focus on what he’s saying when some sort of other world has revealed itself in this indistinct, frail light. One of the women starts to giggle nervously, and then Jacob stops and angrily extinguishes the candle in one blow. From then on, things take place in darkness. For what they are to do next, that darkness is a balm.
A few days later, Jacob has them stand in a circle, which he calls “ringaround,” and stay like that for all of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday until afternoon. They stand day and night, the whole group together, in the circle. Isaac’s wife is released, because she feels sick after just a few hours and has to lie down. The rest remain. They are not allowed to talk. It is hot, and it feels to them like they can hear the drops of sweat sliding down their faces.
A man who does not have a piece of land is not a man
“If there is a more beautiful cemetery anywhere than the one in Satanów, then I will walk barefoot to Lwów,” says Hayim’s wife, Hava.
And although they are not to speak of death for any reason, and they are not to judge land by its cemetery, nonetheless this cemetery is indeed quite lovely, the others agree. Sloping beautifully down toward the river.
“Like the cemetery in Korolówka,” adds Pesel, who has been here with her family since May. “It’s the second-best cemetery there is, with respect to physical appearance, I’ll give you that.”
“But this one we have in Satanów, outside the city—it’s bigger,” continues Hava, “and you can see half the world from it. Down on the river there’s a mill, and the water flows around it, ducks and geese paddling along . . .”
That mill is leased by her father, and someday it will belong to them according to hazakah law—legal acquisition by right of possession. The little town itself lies on an elevation and two things immediately stick out about it—the little castle of the most venerated lord, now lying almost in ruins, brought all the way up along the highway so that the lord could supervise who went there and with what, as well as the synagogue up farther, like some fortification, in the Turkish style. And although they haven’t had anything to do with that synagogue in years, Hava is hardly about to lie about it—it is exceptional. When you walk from the highway down the steep path into the little town, climbing down along those curves, you have to go by the synagogue—there is no other way. In the little town, there is a small market square that holds fairs weekly, always on a Monday. Around the market, as everywhere, Christian and Jewish stalls alternate, and sometimes, in the summer, there are Armenian and Turkish stalls, too.
They would only be able to obtain this land from the church’s holdings—the church is the only option. Who else would give Jews land for free? “Maybe the king!” someone suggests. “It’s nicest right where the Zbrucz flows into the Dniester.”
“Who’s going to give Jews a plot where rivers meet?” says some doubtful person.
“Just a small one . . . and maybe a bit of woodland, and some lesser stream, such as the Strypa—just enough to put in some fish-ponds and raise our own carp in them,” Hava fantasizes.
“But who is going to give such riches to Jews?” the doubter starts again.
“But we’re not Jews anymore. Or are we—are we still Jews?”
“We will always be Jews, just our own kind.”
It would be lovely just to live as they wished, explaining nothing to anyone, not having any noblemen above them, not fearing the Cossack, keeping in good stead with the Church, working the land, doing some trade, having children, having their own orchard and their own shop, even if it’s very small. Growing gardens out behind the houses, harvesting vegetables.
“Have you seen the synagogue in Husiatyn?” old, deaf Lewiński pipes up belatedly to Hava. “You haven’t seen it? Hahaha. You don’t know anything, then. That one is the biggest and the most beautiful.”
Outside, the children are raising a ruckus. They are pretending to do battle with singlesticks and shooting cannons made out of stiff old stalks of angelica. Jewish children are playing with Christian children from the next village over, who come out of curiosity. Now they have just assigned everyone’s roles, regardless of origins. Some are Tatars, some are Muscovites. In a battle of singlesticks and stalks, all differences disappear.
Of stablehands and the study of the Polish language
The word stablehand cracks Jacob up.
They study Polish in the afternoons in groups, women and men together. The Warsaw Hayim and the Shorrs’ younger Hayim teach. They begin with basic things. Hand. Foot. They say: A steady hand. A stable hand.
Yet stablehand is equestrian, is a caretaker of horses, Jacob knows this word and is also greatly amused by the coincidence. During dinner he offers Nahman a plate he pretends to almost drop and says:
“A stable hand.”
All those who get the joke now burst out laughing. Except for Nahman.
Jacob got that Polish book from the Shorrs and is currently using it to learn to read. Wittel has helped him, but she cannot read well in Polish either, so they finally hired a teacher, a young man from a nearby estate. He comes every other day. They read about animals. The first piece Jacob is able to read and understand on his own is about which animals found themselves in Noah’s ark:
These animals were not ex putri materia, or multiplying out of rot, like Muckworms, Fleas, for those can always genus suum reparare (renew their tribe), even though they will die out; wherever something breaks down, dies, vermin will be born there at once. Nierembergius, the Author of the Natural History, considers that these Animals the Lord God did not create, for their Mother is corruption or rot.
It’s hard to grasp what’s going on when you are reading Polish. As a language, it’s quite strange.
Of new names
Just as first Jacob selected seven of the women, so, too, sometime later he chooses twelve trusted men. He has them all take the names of the apostles from the Gospel, which here, in Ivanie, everyone reads every evening.
First Jacob chooses Nahman and puts him on his right side, and from then on, Nahman is Peter. On the other side, he puts old Moshe—now he is the second Peter. Then there is Osman of Czernowitz and his son, or Jacob Major and Jacob Minor. Then, in a special place, sort of in the middle, he puts Shlomo Shorr, who has already been using the Polish name Franciszek Wołowski, Franciszek meaning Francis. Behind him stands Krysa, who has already taken the name Bartholomewł. And farther, on the other side, there is Elisha Shorr, now known as Łukasz (or Luke) Wołowski, and on either side of him, Yehuda Shorr, now Jan (or John) Wołowski, as well as Hayim of Warsaw, now called Matthew. And there is Hershel, the second John, and also Moshe of Podhajce, called Thomas, and Hayim of Busk, Nahman’s brother, called Paul.
Shlomo Shorr, or Franciszek Wołowski, Elisha’s oldest son, teaches everyone about names. They want everyone to think about a new, Christian name. He counts out on his fingers the twelve apostles, and yet he wants to be known as Franciszek. “Who was Francis?” they ask him. He tells them about saints, the Catholic hakhams.
“This was the name I liked best,” he says. “And you, too, should choose carefully, and take your time. But do not get too attached to your new names. Nor to the country, nor to the language, although you have to speak it. Names must come about before nations do; the sound that creates them corresponds to a certain accord of th
e universe. That is your real name. The names we carry on the street, on the other hand, around the market, traveling in a carriage on a muddy road, or those others use to call us—all that is just tacked on. Those names are useful like the clothing you put on to go to work. There’s no sense in getting attached to them. They come and go, like anything. Here one minute, gone the next.”
Wittel won’t let it go. So she asks Jacob:
“We’re supposed to think up some new name for ourselves. We have to be able to say, ‘Me, Wittel, me, Jacob,’ right? But what do we call ourselves to ourselves?”
Jacob answers that he immediately thought of himself as “Jacob,” always calling himself Jacob in his mind. But not just any Jacob: this Jacob, the only one.
“The one who saw the ladder in his dream,” Wittel guesses.
But Jacob sets her straight:
“No, no. The Jacob who put on an animal’s hide and then set himself before his father’s hand that it might take him for someone else, for his beloved Esau.”
Yente sees all of this from above, watches names peeling off the people who have carried them. For the time being, no one notices, and they all trustingly call each other what they always have: Hayim, Sprynełe, Leah. But those names have already lost their luster, dulled, like snakeskins from which the life has faded even before they’re shed. So it is with the name Pesel, which slides off the girl like a too-big shirt, and underneath, the name Helena is already coming into its own, though for now it is still very thin, like skin after a burn—completely new, almost transparent.
Wajgełe sounds careless now and has absolutely nothing to do with this petite, slender, but very strong girl, with her skin that’s always hot and dry, who, with a carrying pole over her shoulders, is currently bearing water. Full buckets. Wajgełe, Wajgełe. Somehow it just doesn’t suit her anymore. In the same way, Nahman seems too big for her husband, as if it were an old kapota.
The Books of Jacob Page 54
