“When after the propagation of the holy Christian faith Christians began to rise against the Jews and condemn them, the Jews came together to determine ways in which they might appease the Christians and render their hearts merciful toward them. They went at that time to the Jerusalem rabbi, the eldest one, by the name of Ravashe. This rabbi tried every natural and unnatural method, but, finding that the Christians’ fervor and vehemence against the Jews could not be softened, he at last ventured into the Book of Rambam, the most famous of the Jewish scholars. In that book, he read that the effects of a harmful thing can only be lessened by the sympathetic application of a second thing of the same kind, which the aforementioned rabbi translated to the Jews as follows: The flame of Christian obstinacy against them could only be stifled by spilling the blood of said Christians. From that time on, they began to capture Christian children and to viciously murder them, in order to render the Christians milder and more merciful to them, and they put it down for themselves as a new law, as the Talmud clearly and extensively describes in their book Zyvche Lev.”
I was greatly alarmed by it all, and if I had not seen those written sources myself with mine own eyes, my mind would have defended itself against the acceptance of that truth. Yet everything is written down in their books, though since among themselves they write—as Father Pikulski says—with dots, or accents, of which there are nine in the Hebrew language, and they print their Talmuds without those dots, there is an abundance in the Talmud of ambiguous words, which the rabbis understand differently, and can translate to the people in various ways, as suits the preservation of their secret.
It frightens me more than Your Ladyship can possibly imagine. I shall return to my Firlejów in a state of terror, for if such things can go on in the world, then how are we to even begin to conceive of them and deal with them just in our minds alone? But after all, such learned books cannot lie!
Who would believe the Talmudists under such circumstances? I can’t stop wondering. For if they are in the habit of lying and deceiving the Catholics on everyday things, then of course they would lie about a matter so essential. And the fact that this need for Christian blood is kept in great secret amongst the rabbis themselves! Among the simple and uneducated Jews it is unknown; however, it must be true, given how many times it has been proven by testimony, and punished severely by decree . . .
Of Pinkas, who cannot understand what sin he has committed
He fulfilled all the commandments, performed good deeds, prayed more than others. And what could holy Rabbi Rapaport have done, that man who is a walking kindness? And what did all these Podolian Jews do, that such a great misfortune in the form of these heretics befell them?
Gone gray, although still not old, he sits at the table in his ragged shirt, hunched over, unable to read, although he would like to escape into the rows of letters that evoke familiar associations, but this time it doesn’t work: Pinkas bounces right back off the holy letters like a ball.
His wife walks in with a candle, ready to go to bed already, wearing a nightgown that goes down to the ground and a white kerchief on her head; she beholds him in concern, then sits down next to him and presses her cheek into his shoulder. Pinkas feels her delicate, fragile body and starts to cry.
The rabbis have ordered them to stay at home, close the shutters, and draw the curtains in preparation for the arrival of the heathens to Lwów. If they cannot help it, if they really have to go out, they must avoid all eye contact. It cannot be allowed to happen that the eyes of Jacob Frank, that mongrel, come into contact with the eyes of a proper Jew. The gaze must be kept on the ground, at the base of the walls, or in the gutter—it should not accidentally flit upward, toward the demonic faces of those sinners.
Tomorrow Pinkas is going on a mission to Warsaw, to the nuncio. He is in the process of assembling the final documents. This disputation is inflaming passions, provoking people to hatred, fomenting anxieties. The seventh point accuses the Jews of consumption of Christian blood, and yet they already have a ruling from the pope himself that says to file all such allegations away with folk and fairy tales. At the same time, this sect of Jacob Frank’s practices some mysterious rituals it would be very easy to blame on all Jews. Rabbi Rapaport was right to say: “They are no longer Jews, and we are not bound to act toward them as we would toward our fellow Jews. They are like that mixed multitude, that mongrel horde that joined in with the children of Moses as they fled from Egypt: half-breeds and harlots, fops and thieves, suspect types and madmen. That’s what they are.”
Rapaport will demonstrate in Konstantynów, where all the rabbis of the Polish land are to meet, that there is no other way for them to free themselves of the Frankists, those heathens, than to force them to convert to Christianity. In other words, they must themselves see to it that those dogs are christened. A lot of money has already been collected for this effort, and every pressure is being applied in order to ensure that the baptism of the heretics is accomplished as soon as possible. Pinkas, fighting with a smoking candle, tabulates the sums in the same manner as an exchange office would. On the left side, the last name, first name, and title, and on the right side, the amount of their donation.
Suddenly there is a pounding on the door, and Pinkas pales. He thinks: it has begun. With his eyes he tells his wife to lock herself in the bedroom. Their youngest child begins to cry. Pinkas goes to the door and listens, his heart beating wildly, his mouth gone dry. On the other side he can hear nails scratching, and after a moment, a voice:
“Open up, Uncle.”
“Who is it?” Pinkas whispers.
The voice answers:
“It’s me, Yankiel.”
“What Yankiel?”
“Yankiel, Natan’s son, from Glinno. Your nephew.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
Pinkas slowly opens the door, and the young man squeezes through the narrow opening. Pinkas looks at him in disbelief and then, in relief, holds him close. Yankiel is tall, broad-shouldered, well-built, and his uncle barely reaches his shoulders. Pinkas puts his arms around his waist and stands that way for such a long while that Yankiel eventually clears his throat, embarrassed.
“I saw Gitla,” he says.
Pinkas lets him go and takes a step back.
“I saw Gitla today, this morning. She was helping that medic with his patients in the Halickie Przedmieście.”
Pinkas grabs at his heart.
“Here? In Lwów?”
“That’s right!”
Pinkas leads his nephew into the kitchen and sits him down at the table. He pours him some vodka and drinks a glass himself; unaccustomed to alcohol, he shudders in disgust. From somewhere he takes out some cheese. Yankiel talks—they all came to Lwów, set up camp on the streets; they have little children with them; they’ve been getting sick. And this Asher fellow, the Jewish medic of Rohatyn, has been treating them, apparently hired by the city’s authorities.
Yankiel has big, beautiful eyes of an unusual color—they look aquamarine. He smiles at his weary uncle. Pinkas’s wife, in her nightgown, cracks the door of the bedroom and peeks out.
“And just so you know, Uncle,” Yankiel says with his mouth full, “Gitla has a child.”
Of the human deluge that overwhelms the streets of Lwów
The carts are so packed that one has to get down off them to have a chance of making it over even the smallest rise. Feet raise clouds of dust, for September is hot and dry, and the grass by the road is faded from the sun. Most people go on foot, resting every few miles in the shade of the walnut trees, and then all the adults and children look around in the fallen leaves for the nuts, which are as big as their palms.
At crossroads such as this one, pilgrims coming from all different directions join together and greet one another heartily. The majority of them are poor, small tradesmen and craftsmen, the kind who support their families with their own hands, weaving, wiring, sharpening, and mending. The men, in ragged clothing, are b
ent double from the portable stalls they carry on their shoulders from morning to night. Dusty and tired, they exchange news and offer one another simple food. They don’t need anything other than water and a piece of bread to tide them over until the great event. When you think like that, a person doesn’t want much in order to live. He doesn’t even have to eat every day. What does he need combs, ribbons, clay pots, sharp knives for, when the world is about to be totally transformed? Everything is going to be different, although no one can say how. That’s what they are all talking about.
The carts are full of women and children. Cradles are strapped to the little wagons and hung up under a tree when they stop awhile, mothers putting down their infants in them with relief, their hands having gone numb from holding them. The bigger children, barefoot, grimy, dazed by the heat, doze in their mothers’ skirts or on little beds of hay covered with dirty linen.
In some villages other Jews go out to them and spit at their feet, and children of every origin—Polish, Ruthenian, and Jewish—shout at them as they pass:
“Ne’er-do-wells! Ne’er-do-wells! Trinity! Trinity!”
In the evenings they don’t even ask for a place to sleep, they just lie down by the water, at the edge of a thicket, by some wall still warm from the day. The women hang the cradles, the diapers, light a fire, and the men set out into the village for some food, gathering along the way fallen green apples and purple plums that are swollen from the sun and lure wasps and bumblebees with their profligate sweet bodies.
Yente sees the sky opening over them in their sleep; they sleep strangely lightly. Everything is holy, as though it were special, as though it were Shabbat, as if it had all been washed and ironed. As if one had to walk very straight now and take very careful steps. Maybe the one watching them will finally wake from the numbness that lasts thousands of years? Under the divine gaze, everything becomes strange and heavy with portent. Children, for instance, find a metal cross pressed into a tree so firmly that it cannot be extracted from the bark that has grown around it. The clouds take on unusual shapes, perhaps of biblical animals—maybe those lions no one has ever seen, so that no one even knows what they looked like. Or a cloud that looks like the fish that swallowed Jonah as it floats over the horizon. And in the tiny little cloud beside it someone even spotted Jonah himself, spit out, crooked as an apple core. Sometimes they are accompanied by Noah’s blue ark. It glides across the firmament, enormous, and Noah himself bustles about in it, feeding his animals for a hundred and fifty days. And on the roof of the ark, just look, everyone, look—who is that? That is the uninvited guest, the giant Og, who, when the floodwaters were rising, latched on to the ark at the last minute.
They say: We will not die. Baptism will save us from death. But what’s it going to be like? Will people get old? Will people stay the same age for all eternity? They say everyone is going to stay thirty forever. This cheers the old and scares the young. But supposedly this is the best age, where health, wisdom, and experience are entwined harmoniously, their meanings equal. What would it be like, not to die? There would be a lot of time for everything, you’d collect a lot of groszy, build a house, and travel a little here and there, since, after all, a whole eternity cannot be spent in a single place.
Everything has lain in ruin until now, the world is made up of wants—this is lacking, that is gone. But why is it like that? Couldn’t there have been everything in excess—warmth, and food, and roofs over people’s heads, and beauty? Whom would it have hurt? Why was such a world as this created? There is nothing permanent under the sun, everything passes, and you won’t even have time to get a good look at it. But why is it like that? Could there not have been more time, and more reflection?
It is only when we become worthy of being created anew that we shall receive from the Good True God a new soul, full, whole. And man shall be as everlasting as God.
The Mayorkowiczes
Here is Srol Mayorkowicz with his wife, Beyla. Beyla is sitting in the cart with her youngest daughter, Shima, on her lap. Beyla is dozing off; her head keeps falling onto her chest. She might be sick. On her slender cheeks bloom two splotches of red, and she is coughing. Grayish locks peek out from under a drab linen kerchief that is fraying at the ends. The older girls go on foot after the cart with their father. Elia is seven years old, as thin and petite as her mother. Her dark hair is braided and tied with a rag, and her feet are bare. Beside her walks Freyna, thirteen years old, tall—she will make a beautiful woman. She has light, curly hair and black eyes, and she holds the hand of her sister Masha, who is a year younger and has a limp in one leg since she was born with crooked hips. Maybe that is why she hasn’t grown. Masha is duskier, as if from the smoke of their miserable shack in Busk, leaving home rarely, ashamed of her disability. Yet she is, people say, the wisest of all the young ladies. She doesn’t like to sleep in the same bed as her sisters and instead spreads out a dismal pallet on the floor—a sort of mattress made of hay. She covers herself with the rough horse blanket her father wove out of scraps during better days.
Srol walks ahead with eleven-year-old Miriam, his favorite, the chatterbox. Her mouth never closes, but she, too, speaks with wisdom. Her father deeply regrets that she was not born a boy, for she definitely would have become a rabbi.
Behind them walks the eldest, Esther, who has already taken on the obligations of a mother—small, bony, with the lovely, delicate face of a weasel, but she is stubborn as a mule. She was promised to a boy from Jezierzany, and her father had already paid the future groom, by way of dowry, money that was very hard to scrape together in such poverty. But the boy died of typhus four years ago, and his father did not give back the money. Srol is awaiting a verdict on it from the local court. He worries about Esther, for who will take her now, with no money, coming from such dire straits? It would be a miracle if he could marry off these daughters. Srol is forty-two years old, but he already looks like an old man—a wrinkled, weather-beaten face, dark, sunken eyes into which a kind of shade has crept, and an overgrown beard matted into a Polish plait. The Jewish God is clearly against him—why would he have only daughters? What sins did Srol commit to be given only girls? Must he expiate some long-standing offense of his ancestors? Srol is convinced this God is not the one for him. That there is another God, truer and better, not this earthly manager and leaseholder. To the true God it is possible to pray by way of Baruchiah, singing songs or trusting Jacob.
They had been in Ivanie since April. Were it not for those good Ivanie people, they probably would have starved to death. Ivanie saved their lives and health, Beyla feels better now, and isn’t coughing quite as much. Srol believes that once they have been baptized, they will be as well off as the Christians. They will receive a piece of land, Beyla will have vegetables in her garden, and he, Srol, will weave carpets, because he knows how to do that and is good at it. In their old age, once they have married off their daughters, the girls will take them in. That is his whole dream.
Nahman and his raiment of good deeds
As Nahman is speaking in the cathedral, his very young wife, Wajgełe, is giving birth to a daughter in Ivanie. The child is big and healthy, and Nahman breathes a sigh of relief. He already has a son, Aron, who is in Busk with Leah. Leah has still not remarried. They say the state of her soul is beclouded, that her heart is not easy. So he has two children, and in some sense, it could be said that he has fulfilled his duty. Nahman takes the birth of his daughter as a signal from God that they are on the right path. Henceforth, Nahman no longer feels the need to be intimate with women.
Yet that evening, as they are leaving the cathedral, where the seventh point of the disputation has just been discussed, Nahman loses the enthusiasm that has carried him through the past few days. It was not so much enthusiasm, even—more like a knack and a hopefulness. A joyful insistence. The excitement of a merchant who took a big risk in order to make a great fortune. Of a player who’s put everything on one card. Nahman is strangely excited, he has sweated a grea
t deal during the disputation, and now he can smell on himself a ratlike odor, as though he had been in a physical fight with someone. He would like to be alone, but they are going in a group. Jacob has been staying at the Łabęckis’ estate—so that is where they are headed. They order a lot of vodka and dried fish for after the vodka. That is why this evening Nahman is able to record only a few sentences:
By life on earth, souls weave themselves a raiment out of their mitzvot, and after death, they will wear this raiment in the higher world. The raiments of bad people are riddled with holes.
I often picture what my raiment will look like. Many people must wonder the same, and no doubt see themselves as better, as if looking at themselves through the eyes of someone else. They see their clothing as clean and tidy, and maybe also nice—that is, in harmony.
But I already know that I won’t like the looks of myself in heaven’s mirrors.
Then, with his usual force, Jacob comes in to where he is and takes him back out. They’re going to celebrate.
When the baptisms begin, Nahman has Wajgełe and his little daughter sent for. He waits for them by the city gate, looking into every cart that enters, until finally he finds them: with Wajgełe are her mother and sister. The child is lying in a basket, covered in the thinnest baby blanket. Nahman rushes to pull it down from over the infant’s face—he is scared she might suffocate. The little girl has a tiny, scrunched-up face, her teeny-tiny fists clenched by her mouth. They are the size of walnuts. Wajgełe, flushed and full of milk, pleased, gazes at her husband in triumph. He has never seen her this way before.
The Books of Jacob Page 58
