“You were listening at the door when I—struggled with Lilith?” he suggested.
“No, I was lying with you. I was on you when you struggled. I was Lilith,” she said.
“It was Lilith,” he said.
“No, it was me,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
Shayna Basya could no longer help herself. She began crying. She neither sobbed nor shuddered, but she should have: the copious tears flooded her eyes and poured down her cheeks. She put her hands to her face, and her fingers waded in the warm stream.
“Why do you think it was you?” he asked.
His question was one of intellectual inquiry, not sympathy. Tears to him—as his wife well knew—represented one more form of bribery. Envelopes stuffed with money, eyes spilling tears—all corrupted judgment. She was trying to confess, and he would not believe her. How could she prove that she had visited him in the night? His arrogance infuriated her all the more. On the nocturnal stage of his desires, no major role could be played by his mere wife. Nothing less than a demonic prototype would meet his expectations. She felt a suffocating wave of horror and had a desire to scream. A screeching blast that would bring all the town into the holy rebbe’s study. But what good would that do? They would certainly believe their holy rebbe, not a frail woman. She buried her face deeper into her hands. Her hands knew that she told the truth.
“One should be careful not to slander oneself. One must guard one’s tongue,” her husband said gently.
“Guard one’s tongue?” she mused to herself.
“Yes,” he answered.
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? You are the one who starts with the tongue. Unless yours is caressing your ‘Lilith of a Thousand Desires,’ we could never begin.” She said this aloud in lonely despair.
Shayna Basya’s weeping face lay buried in the remorseful shelter of her hands and she was unaware that the rebbe had moved until she heard his voice, heavy in anguish and seething with anger. “You, woman, are Lilith!” he rasped.
The voice seemed to be above her. She removed her hands and opened her eyes to see that her husband loomed over her with a hazel feline fury blazing in his eyes. The ferocity of a cornered beast and the savageness of a humiliated man.
“You devil! You she-devil. It was you!” he spat through teeth frozen in fury.
All Shayna Basya could do was nod in agony. She shuddered and began to sob as she saw his hand spring forward toward her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DESPITE HIS APPARENT LETHARGY, THE KRIMSKER REBBE had been in remarkably good spirits when his wife had entered the study. Her visit had plunged him into angry despair. This was not his first sudden dramatic change of mood on this Tisha B’Av. As he leaped with Itzik Dribble, he had experienced an ease that he had thought lost forever. An ease based on honesty and kindness. Since the Destruction, prophecy had been given to fools and children. It was true that one teacher in the Talmud believed that prophecy had been given to the wise, but the Krimsker Rebbe, based on his own experience as a wise man, knew that to be absurd.
When Itzik Dribble dashed to his side, the rebbe welcomed the prophet. Itzik Dribble had all the necessary qualities: he was both a child and a fool. Hadn’t the wispy blond dunce divined that the rebbe was a frog? Yaakov Moshe did not believe that a fool was divine, but he was convinced that a fool truly reflected the post-Destruction world. Certainly since the Temple burned and the Jews went into exile it had become a fool’s world.
The rebbe believed that his foolish act of leaping on the tabletop was honest testimony. Since he believed that he had once been a frog, there was the added honesty of a public confession in front of his hasidim. How else could Yaakov Moshe have witnessed the Emperor Napoleon—that modern pharaoh—crossing the River Nedd? It was not a fish’s-eye view; it had been a frog’s eye that had seen so clearly through the blue waters and the blue air to the emperor’s blue uniform. Fish could see only in the water, not in the air. The real proof was from the Torah. The delicate oblong fish was the silver-scaled symbol of good fortune, dwelling only in the water where the evil spirits cannot penetrate. The fish, too, his eye forever open, never falls victim to the evil eye. It was the blinking, croaking frog, one of the eight creeping impurities, who understood pharaoh’s rapacious passion, and Lilith’s, too. The amphibious hibernator, impure in two realms, asleep in the mud or hopping like a meshuggener.
As the rebbe hopped like a madman, he experienced a calm sense of fulfillment. This led him to tell Itzik the story of Rabbi Chanina and the miraculous frog.
Then the rebbe and his congregants soared in prayer. Yaakov Moshe carried them to great spiritual heights, and in response they carried him even further, as if he and his hasidim were two wings of one great, noble eagle. For the first time in his life as rebbe, he experienced a relationship with his hasidim as one between the loved and the beloved, each giving and receiving to create a union that went beyond their individual talents. From this heady nectar of exaltation, the Krimsker Rebbe tasted the bitter gall of Tisha B’Av. He realized what had been lost: Israel’s holy union with the Divine Presence, and prophecy among the nobles. Those passionate worldly and divine unions that only the Holy Temple could effect. It was then that he sank onto his mourner’s bench in tears.
The rebbe, who could not remember tears, found himself bawling and found it the most natural thing. Through the ease of his soul’s outpouring, he felt comforted. Yaakov Moshe recognized the penitent source of his comfort. Then Itzik Dribble came to him for the second time and profaned the name of the Messiah. The rebbe had said Lamentations in response, and he had meant it. In spiritless lethargy he sat through the reading, and then he had dragged himself to his study.
He heard a voice and thought that Lilith, his old seductress of his lonely nights, was attempting to frustrate him further. When the voice spoke to him about a horse’s backside, he finally looked up to discover Boruch Levi. And Boruch Levi brought the most wonderful news about Grannie Zara, may her name be erased forever.
From the moment he had arrived in Krimsk, the rebbe knew that he was involved in mortal combat with the witch of Krimichak. She ruled the Jews of Krimsk. Even among his own hasidim, pregnant wives furtively sought out the witch to forestall any miscarriage or birth defect. The Krimsker Rebbe struggled unceasingly to convince the Jews that the witch had no cures; rather, she herself was the disease. Grannie Zara, as representatives of the Other Side often do, masqueraded as a life force. Before the rebbe had arrived, she had saved both Krimsk and Krimichak from certain destruction. How could he convince the common folk that the legions she had dispersed had arrived at her command? How could he convince them that there is a fate worse than a Cossack pogrom? If we make ourselves impure by running to witches, then we lose both worlds, this one and the World to Come.
Losing the World to Come was a terrible thought. This depressing world of burdens and woe did not have much to offer the Jew. The rebbe understood that the reason for this lay in its very genesis. When God was considering creating man, the angels argued furiously among themselves. Mercy said, “Man will be merciful and act mercifully,” but Truth said, “Man will be false and act falsely.” Righteousness said, “Man will be righteous and act righteously,” but Peace said, “Man will be quarrelsome.” And what did God do? He took truth and flung it into the ground and created man.
The rebbe understood that man’s very creation was posited on the absence of truth. If God had buried truth to create man, what hope did the Krimsker Rebbe have of persuading Krimsk that in Krimichak dwelled a Satanic illusion of life? The more he pleaded, the more quickly they melted into the forest toward her abysmal cat-filled cottage.
His very soldiers deserted to her camp. Her home itself was a very picture of deceit. Her cottage, neat and clean; her person, energetic and warm. The Krimsker Rebbe knew that he was a messy, fractious sort. How was he successfully to do battle against such a diabolical, devious antagonist? Oh, how he yearne
d for a true pharaoh—mighty and obvious in his cruelty. Pharaoh, honest and unrepentant, courageous and true in his evil, not hiding behind the skirts of kindness and health! Plague after plague, the mighty pharaoh spat in God’s eye. Against him a Moses, half Yaakov Moshe’s namesake, could stand steadfast and demand that he let the Jews go, but what could Yaakov Moshe do against a lovable old lady who saved the Children of Israel from Cossacks and women from miscarriages? The Krimsker Rebbe was at a loss.
Yaakov Moshe pictured the witch and himself locked in indecisive struggle, like Jacob and the angel. As months stretched into years, they remained tightly clutching one another, and Yaakov Moshe despaired of morning’s arrival, when Esau’s angel would have to flee and Jacob would be called “Israel,” his reward for having successfully struggled with an angel of the Lord.
Yaakov Moshe had attempted to retreat from the struggle, but he could not. God seemed more abstract, and evil seemed more real. In the solitary depths of his study, he felt the witch’s embrace. He smelled her breath, and at night she sent him Lilith, Samael’s wife, the Queen of Zmargad. Lilith with her long hair entered when he was asleep and aroused him. She covered him with her caresses, and he responded. The nights when Lilith did not visit were the worst, for he longed for her with a bitter, burning bile, awakening in the night and tossing until morning. And after her visits, no polluted remnants remained. Clearly, Lilith was robbing him of his seed to create hordes of demons and spirits.
Yaakov Moshe realized that the struggle would not go on forever. He realized that, as with the patriarch Jacob, the other half of his namesake, he had to give himself totally to the contest. Had the patriarch failed, all the world of good would have been destroyed. Yaakov Moshe saw in that struggle the parallel for his own merciless encounter. The patriarch had to overcome Esau’s angel at Esau’s own forte, violence. Grannie Zara’s weapon was deceit: death posed as life; impurity as purity; evil as good. So Yaakov Moshe had to risk his life in the world of impurity to overcome the witch. They were two deceitful creatures trying to suck the vital force from one another. Would Grannie Zara, saving Jews, choke on good before the Krimsker Rebbe, flaming with passion, would rot with evil?
The Krimsker Rebbe had lusted with such passion that his soul might have withered in shame. The Talmud taught the primacy of intention—a transgression in the name of Heaven is better than a good deed performed mindlessly. In a perverse universe of reversals, with truth in the ground, only the Jews who stood at Mount Sinai could have worshiped the golden calf, and only the pure Jacob could have stolen his brother’s birthright and his father’s blessing.
The Krimsker Rebbe plunged deeper and deeper into his supreme struggle. He concentrated upon the defeat of evil, swallowing it whole and rendering it harmless inside his very own body. One day his daughter Rachel Leah brought him his supper and innocently asked why he was doing this to himself, and he answered, “I am giving my life for God and his Torah.” Rachel Leah’s eyes brimmed with tears. “God bless you,” she said. As she closed the door, the Krimsker Rebbe knew that through his foolish boast, the struggle was over. He had lost, and all his nights had been spent in sin. Perceiving the failure of his exile, he ended it on Tisha B’Av.
Tisha B’Av was the day the Krimsker Rebbe understood. The rebbe was most relaxed during the worst of times. He knew that it is easier to mourn than to serve through happiness. Yaakov Moshe was prepared to mourn, but he furtively harbored the hope that since he had admitted defeat, he might not be defeated.
As he entered the beis midrash, he was in search of honesty. Honesty brought him to the tabletop, to the floor, to his study, and to Boruch Levi, who had given him the incredible news that the witch of Krimichak had died. In victory the rebbe was exultant. He celebrated by sending his sexton, Reb Yechezkal, for Yechiel Katzman. It was time for Rachel Leah to stand under a wedding canopy, and the rebbe hurried to exploit the propitious hour.
According to the rebbe’s calculations, precisely at the moment he had decided to return to the world, the witch had died. Just as the rebbe had suspected, they had been locked in a deadly duet, and at the eleventh hour he had triumphed when he was admitting defeat. Only he knew how weary that witch—may she burn in hell—must have been after all their years of struggle. Israel had struggled with Lilith and bested the Queen of Zmargard. Or so the Krimsker Rebbe had thought until his wife had enlightened him. Yaakov Moshe had not been struggling with the long-haired Lilith after all, but with his own petty, shrewish wife, Shayna Basya.
No man likes to be made a fool of. Least of all a rebbe, and least of all the Krimsker Rebbe. He had withdrawn from the foolish, frail, ephemeral world, risking, he had imagined, his very own soul, only to have his own foolish frail wife seduce him nightly in the guise of an ephemeral spirit. He would cry, “Lilith of a Thousand Desires, Samael’s Queen, Unclean Beast,” and a host of other names too foolish to be believed while Shayna Basya Grosbart from Bezin flipped around on top of him like a carp breathing its last in a fishmonger’s stall! She had made a mockery of his life.
Yaakov Moshe had imagined that he was in the desert wandering along like Moses at the moment he saw the burning bush. Now he knew that he might as well have crawled into his wife’s bed for five years. To think that he had accused Grannie Zara of hiding behind skirts! Where was he all those years? Hiding under his wife and screaming about the devil! At least there remained one giant in Krimsk—Grannie Zara.
He was overwhelmed by the desire to hurt Shayna Basya. He wanted to humiliate her in her nakedness the way she had humiliated him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHAYNA BASYA WAS SITTING ON THE COUCH, AND THE Krimsker Rebbe was glowering over her. Blinded by rage, he struck an inexact blow. His openhanded slap glanced off her head, dislodging her matron’s wig. The limp brown object gathered itself into a lump on the wall, where it seemed to hang for a moment like a spineless little hairy beast and then fell to the floor, revealing itself as a lifeless sham. The Krimsker Rebbe didn’t follow its journey past the wall, and it came into Shayna Basya’s field of vision only when it was on the floor. She made no move to retrieve it. Shayna Basya felt as if she were a hairy rag whose place was on the floor. Seeing herself there seemed to give her strength. She turned to face her irate husband.
“I beg the rebbe’s forgiveness,” she said.
He did not respond.
“I have betrayed the rebbe,” she added.
“Betrayed the rebbe?” he repeated as if he were in another world.
“Yes,” she said. “The rebbe did what he had to do, and I carried on like a wagon driver’s wife. It wasn’t right. I ask your forgiveness. It was all my fault.”
She continued to look at her husband, even though tears sprang into her eyes. His hand lay limply at his side, and he wore a distant expression.
The Krimsker Rebbe was indeed in another world. Yaakov Moshe had the sense of having been through this before. This was Boruch Levi accepting responsibility and asking forgiveness. Down to the detail of the wagon driver. And Yaakov Moshe had asked the wagon driver for forgiveness ! Why in the world, the Krimsker Rebbe wondered, was he striking his own wife? He searched his mind for what he had told Boruch Levi.
“Enough,” the rebbe said aloud, repeating his earlier conversation. “You are forgiven and I ask your forgiveness.”
“My forgiveness?” Shayna Basya asked in quiet amazement, as Boruch Levi had.
“Yes, yours. If the shepherd does not remove the stone from the well, then the flock must drink where it can. Shayna Basya, I ask your forgiveness.”
Shayna Basya looked at her husband, who still seemed to be in another world. But in all the years of their marriage they had never inhabited the same world.
“No, no, Yaakov Moshe, you must forgive me,” she implored, and as she continued to cry, she quickly turned away, for she felt naked and ugly in his eyes. Now he was asking her forgiveness after she had so thoroughly humiliated him. She saw her matron’s wig lying on the f
loor and wanted to put it back in place to hide her disheveled hair. As she moved toward the edge of the couch, her husband’s hand intercepted her. His gentle, awkward touch on her naked hair seemed like a kiss, and she flamed crimson in shame. She tried to push past it to retrieve her wig, but the gentle contact proved insistent and guided her to look up into his face.
“Yes, it is you, my Shayna Basya of a Thousand Desires,” he said softly, and he kissed her with a darting tongue. As he embraced her in his arms, she felt all the strength and enthusiasm that he had lavished on Lilith. She had already begun to respond in a rush of passion before his lips had even touched hers. When she heard him say, “My Shayna Basya,” her face flushed even more—like that of a young bride on her wedding night.
Shayna Basya knew that she was competing against herself. She wanted to generate, at the very least, the passion with her husband, Yaakov Moshe, that the succubus Lilith had generated with the holy recluse, the Krimsker Rebbe. Maintaining contact with her lips, she ceased embracing Yaakov Moshe’s neck. As she unbuttoned him, he began to unbutton her. In no time whatsoever, they stood clinging together like one body that had sprung full-grown from the pile of clothing encompassing their feet. Yaakov Moshe motioned to his wife to move onto the couch. Shayna Basya pulled away to blow out the kerosene lamp, but with the lightest touch, he restrained her.
“No, my angel-wife. We have done it in the dark for too long.”
At those words, Shayna Basya spun back to him with a fervor and commitment that a “she-devil” could never generate. No sooner had Yaakov Moshe touched the couch than she was upon him with an assault upon his most private self that left him gasping. Shayna Basya hovered above him, and he swept upward to return the kisses. He continued to enact their love with Shayna Basya’s name. He plunged into her, kissing with his penetrating tongue, and withdrew gasping for breath to call her by her rightful name—but the ritual name at this point was “Unclean Beast,” and he hesitated for a second. She lowered her face to his ear and rasped, “Clean, my husband. Clean, always with you, clean.”
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