The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  Bluma.

  * * *

  —

  Afterward, she could not say who had moved first—her or one of the demons.

  All she remembered was running.

  Gnashing teeth and grabbing hands, long, scraping claws, voices screaming, yelling, pushing, cursing—she had to keep going, she had to keep moving, running, and she dodged and leapt over headstones, and still they were grabbing on to her, touching her, and there were fingers in her hair pulling her back, and she wrenched forward, but there was no end to them, none, grabbing, their hands, and as soon as she had torn herself away, there were more, and there were more, and there were more, and there were more, and their faces loomed up, twisted and furious, and the monsters beneath, fiery eyes, teeth, gullets deeper than the ocean, talons, barbed, stinging tails, and the gate was just ahead, she could see it, and if she could only make her way through, then they could not follow, but she was slowing, the strength sapping from her legs, encumbered, weighted down by the sheer number of grabbing hands, and now they began to pull her in opposing directions, and she began batting at them, kicking and flailing, and she was sure that they would rip her apart, and her throat was ragged and sore and she found that she was screaming, and she pushed hard against a gravestone behind with her feet, and this was it, she was there, the heavy iron gates looming up on either side, and the warm, silky light of the raging pavilion fell quickly away, leaving only the silent, snowy midnight of Zubinsk to receive her.

  From this perspective—from the mortal side—there seemed to be no tent, no crowd, no demons: just a still and snowy graveyard at the edge of the slumbering town.

  But as she passed through the gates, a cold, clammy hand closed around her ankle.

  Something had her—a snarling, rabid, grasping thing—and she fell on the cold cobbles, and it was pulling its way through, hand over hand up her leg, she could see its eyes, alight with desire, and she kicked hard, once, twice, against its head, and with a yelp, it let go.

  Bluma skittered back, out of reach of its long arms, and she watched with horror as the demon began to realize its situation:

  It was caught halfway through.

  Stiff with terror, the demon looked down in the direction of its feet.

  But there were no feet to be seen. The demon simply stopped, as if cut in half by the threshold of the cemetery.

  For a long moment, tense with fright, the demon barely moved. Bluma could hear its rasping breath echoing out through the dim of the night.

  And then, with a light so bright Bluma had to look away, the demon began to burn, yelling, screaming so loud that curtains drew back in nearby bedroom windows.

  But it was not the threat of discovery that made Bluma fly, sprinting, down the cobbled lane.

  It was the screaming.

  She couldn’t stand the screaming.

  On and on Bluma ran, deeper and deeper into sleeping Zubinsk, the scream ebbing away behind. Zubinsk was much larger than Tupik, all high brick row houses and glassy-eyed storefronts, and in no time at all, Bluma had thoroughly lost her bearings.

  Soon the screaming was subsumed in snowy silence. Bluma slowed to a trot, and then to a walk.

  The streets were hushed all around her, cushioned with accumulated snow, and the wind grumbled softly, as if it wanted to go home.

  Gradually, Bluma’s walk slowed to a creep. It seemed wrong to disturb the heavy silence of the night, and she found herself fighting to hush her panting breath.

  Bluuuuuuumaaaaaaa…

  The sound was anything but certain—hidden behind the moaning wind like frozen earth beneath the snow.

  Bluuuuuuumaaaaaaa…

  Without meaning it, Bluma began to quicken the pace of her steps once more.

  She was not running. She didn’t need to. There was nothing behind her.

  Nothing.

  Bluuuuuuumaaaaaaa…

  As if to throw the sound off her track, Bluma turned sharply down the first road she saw—a broad, cobbled shopping street—and with a stumble, she came immediately back. A stranger was blinking at her from every polished windowpane: an obscure, faceless girl.

  Bluuuuuuumaaaaaaa…

  There was no question. Something was calling her name. And no matter where she went, it grew louder.

  She could no longer run—she no longer had the strength. Her legs were weak, wavering atop her ankles with each step.

  Bluuuuuuumaaaaaaa, sang the wind.

  And then she saw, far down a dim and narrow alleyway, the unmistakable form of a woman in white:

  Lilith.

  The Rebbe’s granddaughter could not sleep.

  Tomorrow, her wedding day, was to be the most important of her life, and people had come from far and wide—many, many, many of them—to see her married.

  She was sure she would disappoint them.

  What if she tripped? What if she said the wrong thing?

  Everyone would whisper to their neighbor: Ah. I always knew.

  She rolled over in bed.

  Outside the window, the Rebbe’s granddaughter could see flakes of snow rolling through the overcast nighttime sky.

  And what if her groom didn’t like her? Would he still go through with the wedding? That would be less embarrassing than having it called off at the last minute, under the canopy with everyone watching. But would it be better? What if he went through with it just to save her feelings? Then what? Would he be cruel? Would he divorce her?

  And all of this was to say nothing of what she thought of him. She’d heard plenty about the boy—a good young man, they’d said, the son of a rabbi. He was suitable.

  But his suitability was based on other people’s expectations—not hers. Come to think of it, she didn’t even know how she would begin to evaluate the suitability of a young man.

  The Rebbe’s granddaughter squeezed her eyes shut for the billionth time that night. She had to get some rest. None of this could be solved by sleep deprivation.

  But every time she shut her eyes, the image of her grandfather swam up to meet her.

  Her grandfather.

  The Rebbe.

  Standing beneath the wedding canopy.

  Waiting for her.

  Waiting.

  Her grandfather was perhaps the most daunting part of this whole undertaking. One could feel the holiness in his gaze, and it was not always comforting. He had never been anything but kind to her in the rare moments he could spare, but the way he looked at her—looked into her—made her feel defenseless, like an open book, her pages riffled by the wind.

  What would he think? If she was not good enough?

  There was nothing for it. She couldn’t sleep.

  With a sigh, the Rebbe’s granddaughter opened her eyes again. While they had been shut, a large gray cat had come to sit quietly on the sill outside her bedroom window. It was an odd thing—her bedroom was on the third floor, and the narrow sill did not seem like a very comfortable place to rest, particularly on a blustery night such as this.

  Once, twice, the Rebbe’s granddaughter blinked.

  The cat was staring intently through the window.

  After a moment, the Rebbe’s granddaughter began to grow uneasy.

  What did it want with her?

  And then, softly, unmistakably, like purring, she heard the cat speak her name:

  Rokhl.

  Rokhl, the Rebbe’s granddaughter, sat up in her bed.

  * * *

  —

  Mammon was in a foul mood.

  “Unbelievable,” he grumbled. “Unbelievable! You completely ruined the effect. Foolish boy. Now all they’ll be talking about is that girl.”

  His petulant little voice bounced and jostled with every bump and cobble they went over.

  “Just you wait,” he said. “Just yo
u wait. Once we’re back in my Treasure House, I’ll make you wish you weren’t alive.”

  Yehuda Leib’s head was swimming, and no matter how hard he fought to still it, it wouldn’t come to rest. Everything was a wide, turbulent nighttime sea, and as soon as he thought he recognized something—a person, a place, even an idea—it slipped away, sloshing into oblivion in the darkness.

  Where was he? Where was he going? And for God’s sake, who was this sour little beast sitting between his fingers?

  The cold wind whipped angrily through the streets of Zubinsk, cutting through the open neck of Yehuda Leib’s coat. He wanted to pull his lapels shut, but he couldn’t move his hands.

  His scarf. If only he hadn’t forgotten his scarf.

  But he hadn’t: that he could remember. He’d gone back to get it.

  Where was it?

  What had happened?

  “Well?” said Mammon. “Where is he?”

  It took Yehuda Leib a moment to realize that the little fellow was speaking to him.

  “Um?” said Yehuda Leib, bringing the wheelchair to a stop.

  “The Rebbe,” spat Mammon. “Where is the Rebbe?”

  Yehuda Leib’s brows wrinkled and creased. Back in Tupik, he knew where to find their rabbi. But a little community rabbi is nothing like a holy mystic Rebbe.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  With an exasperated sigh, Mammon turned back in his chair to glare at Yehuda Leib.

  “Zubinsk, boy,” he said. “We are in Zubinsk. And you are to take me to this miracle-working Rebbe so that I may claim him before any of those pompous fiends in the cemetery manage a way through.” In a huff, he sat back hard. “Honestly,” he muttered.

  Yehuda Leib was still for a moment. Murky forms were beginning to emerge in the gloom of his mind.

  Zubinsk.

  The miracle-working Rebbe.

  Yehuda Leib needed a miracle himself. What miracle did he need?

  “Well?” cried Mammon.

  With a sigh of his own, Yehuda Leib chose a street at random and pushed the wheelchair down it.

  “That’s more like it,” said Mammon.

  What miracle did Yehuda Leib need?

  He had to think.

  Zubinsk.

  The road to Zubinsk.

  Something had happened on the road to Zubinsk.

  But everything was so strange here. The cobbles beneath his feet were firm and unmoving, not a single stone swapping with its neighbor.

  Why was nothing in this place like a dream?

  Think:

  The road to Zubinsk.

  Why had he been on the road to Zubinsk?

  There had been another boy, a stupid boy in a donkey cart. And a warning—what had it been?

  This was getting him nowhere. He needed something still—a landmark in his mind to reckon by.

  And, like a lighthouse shining out through the dark, there she was:

  Bluma, standing in the doorway. Bluma the baker’s daughter. She had given him a loaf of challah—he still had it in his bag.

  Because he’d had to go.

  Because someone had chased him.

  And someone had caught him.

  With a rush, it all came flooding back: the Treasure House, Mammon, the march of the Army of the Dead, the cold forest that had become a graveyard.

  And like a blazing comet that flew out of the darkness to land warm and flickering in his pocket:

  His father.

  His poor, awful father.

  That was the miracle he needed.

  “How much farther?” snapped the ancient demon in Yehuda Leib’s hands.

  “Not much,” said Yehuda Leib. He had no idea where he was going, but still it felt like telling the truth. “Not much at all.”

  * * *

  —

  On the night preceding the wedding of his final granddaughter, the Rebbe of Zubinsk retired early. The parents of the groom had insisted upon issuing a completely open invitation to the wedding—a spiritually hazardous proposition, to be sure, but, all in all, slightly less hazardous than the prospect of revoking such an invitation once it had been issued. The result of this was that Zubinsk was full to bursting tonight—of guests, of Hasidim, of spirits and beings of all sorts—and the Rebbe was deeply overwhelmed.

  Imagine yourself seated in a crowded train station at the very center of the waiting area. All around you, a hundred conversations are taking place in a hundred different languages. Bells clang. Whistles scream. Outside, arrivals grind into the station as departures rumble and chug themselves into full heads of steam.

  Now imagine that you are a sublimely talented musician. Each of these sounds in each of its constituent parts—the rhythm of the engines, the pitch of the squealing wheels, the timbre of the voice of each of the waiting passengers, not to mention its words and intonation—each of these is perfectly clear, perfectly distinguishable, and entirely inescapable to you.

  This is much how the Rebbe felt. Every soul that ventured into his orbit, even as far as the farmland surrounding the town, called out to him clearly as if to say, Help me, help me.

  It was a cacophony. And it was exhausting.

  And so the Rebbe retired early, immediately following evening prayers. He had taken great care to disguise the fact, but he had not managed to sleep in the three years since his wife’s passing. At first, this had presented him with quite a challenge—sapping his energy, stealing his focus. The Rebbe soon discerned, however, that his fatigue came not from sleeplessness, but rather from fighting against it. Now, once the darkness fell, the Rebbe would retire to his private chamber, don his kittel, a long white robe worn for holy occasions, and, enclosing himself beneath the cowl of his prayer shawl, sit and meditate.

  If he could not manage to sleep, at least he might leave his body behind for a time.

  When he had still been a young Hasid himself, it had taken him quite a long time to quiet his mind and loosen his spirit. Now he was practiced, skilled.

  Scarcely had he shut his eyes before his soul began to rise.

  The Rebbe saw himself from above—first the kittel, prayer shawl, and long white beard and then (with a pang of sadness every single time) the half-empty bedchamber in which he sat. Slowly, like smoke, he continued to rise, his entire house spreading out below him: the Hasid dozing outside his bedroom door, waiting to attend him; the little sanctuary on the first floor with its Torah scrolls asleep in their ark.

  On and on he would rise, higher and higher, until the shape of the town below faded in the darkness of night, leaving only the shining light of its souls to twinkle like a vast constellation of candles. At the peak of his rising, even the dark spots fell away, and all the lights were revealed to be One.

  This was a glorious, holy thing.

  But this evening, deliberately—out of a certain weakness—the Rebbe remained rather lower.

  That night, Zubinsk looked very different than it normally did. There were far, far more souls within its boundaries than usual, crammed into corners and rooming houses, stables and stockyards, sleeping wherever they might find rest. There was even one excited young Hasid dozing in the doorway opposite the Rebbe’s window, desperate to catch a glimpse of him.

  But it was none of these new lights that compelled the Rebbe to break off his meditation and rush out into the cold, snowy night.

  This he did because of what he saw at his granddaughter’s house: a blazing white light, ushered out into the beckoning darkness by a clutch of creeping gray shadows.

  * * *

  —

  “Friends!”

  The young Hasid came sprinting around the corner toward the study house, calling out from the far end of the street. “Friends!”

  But the Hasidim in the street did not pause in their dancing.r />
  The young man came rushing up. “Friends!” he said again.

  Only one of these Hasidim was singing, a man in a coat blacker than the night, blacker than the darkness hidden inside your eyes, and he stood in the very center of their circle, clapping his bony hands in a pulsing, hypnotic rhythm. At his feet, half buried in the snow, was a very large and very empty glass bottle.

  “Friends,” said the young Hasid. “The Rebbe is abroad!”

  At this, the drunken Hasid in the middle of the circle stopped his singing, and his cold eyes grew wide.

  But the pulse of his clapping hands never faltered.

  “The Rebbe?” said the dark Hasid. All around him, the swirling dance continued unabated, the Hasidim shuffling and stepping to the rhythm of his hands.

  “Yes,” said the young man.

  But something was wrong:

  The rhythm of the Dark One’s hands, like the finite beat of the heart, like the lurching tick of the clock.

  “Where is the Rebbe?” said the dark Hasid, his words slurred with drink. “Can you take me to him?”

  The dancers—something in their eyes. Something manic.

  Something frightened.

  “Yes,” said the young Hasid. “Yes, of course. He’s just—”

  But the dark Hasid cut him off. “Then come!” he cried. “Join us!”

  The young man found that he was breathing in the dark rhythm:

  In-out, in-out.

  Clap-clap, clap-clap.

  And then, suddenly, as easily as falling asleep, his feet began to move:

  Step-step, step-step.

  And it all made terrible sense.

  The dance was sweet; there was nothing as sweet as the dance. And he could not abide the fear of what would come to pass once it reached its end.

  The whole world was the shuffling beat of palm upon bony palm.

  “Come!” called the Dark One. “Take us to the holy Rebbe!”

  * * *

  —

  “Lilith?” said Bluma.

  The reply came back soft and clear, as if the pale lady were only inches from her ear.