A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  “Quite a show this afternoon, gentlemen, quite a show,” he said. “Now, I’m certain neither of you have ever seen such a strange thing in the whole of your lives. Am I correct? However, rest assured, the poor miscreant has confessed his crimes to me, and I have sent a quorum of honest men out to put markers at the graves of his victims and to unbury the loot he has hidden in the woods. And yet” — the rebbe sighed — “that’s the least of my concerns tonight.”

  The rising moon filled the little window in the wall behind him, its light illuminating his shoulders with a glowing mantle. His eyebrows, thick and wiry, were as tangled as two blackberry bushes. As I studied his face, they looked suddenly out of place, as though a prankster had cut off someone’s mustache and glued it, in two pieces, over the rebbe’s eyes.

  “Are you familiar with the term dybbuk?” he said, clasping his hands together and learning forward on his elbows. “I thought not. However, I’m certain you know that the human soul is a spark of the Holy One’s light. Of course, you know this — you’re children and still see things clearly — and so you also know that just as one flame can be made from another flame without diminishing the first, the soul of man, like a wick properly trimmed, may burn with the radiance of divine light. Now, our sacred Torah tells us that God is an all-consuming fire, and yet it also tells us that those who cling to God are alive today — not consumed by the fire! How can that be?” he demanded. “Which is it? Which is the truth?” he shouted, slamming his hand against the desk. “Is the Lord an all-consuming fire or a being to whom we may cling and not burn up?”

  I was afraid he expected one of us to answer the question, but before we could speak he continued on in a calmer voice. “Now, the teachings of the Eternal are perfect. You know this. God isn’t a man that He writes and blots out. God forbid! There are no contradictions in His holy teachings. And so which is it then? Is the Lord an all-consuming fire or may we cling to him and not perish in the flames? Ah, but I see that you’re ahead of me here, my dears. Yes, you are, you’re quick, and that is correct: fire is not consumed by fire. The fiery soul of man cannot be extinguished in the burning embrace of Heaven. And yet, and yet, my good boys, there are souls, souls of the dead, who naturally fear this divine conflagration. We see this in life all the time, do we not? How a man runs and returns, runs and returns …”

  He sat for a moment with his arms crossed, looking from one corner of the room to the other, as though at a man running and returning, and finally, he spoke again. “The Judge of the Universe is, thank Heaven, a fair judge. He cannot be bribed. Indeed not. The Heavenly Court runs according to the same strict system of justice as, l’havdil, our Emperor’s Court. How could it be otherwise? There is an Eye that sees, and an Ear that hears, and each of us must give an accounting of his own life. Each of us — why, both of you, for that matter — will stand trial in the Heavenly Court. Yes, that’s true. One day, you will be required to defend every one of your deeds, may they all be for good, my darlings, may they all be for the good!”

  He sighed, and his face grew sad.

  “However, just as there are men in this world who owe and do not hurry to repay or who, having committed crimes, connive to put off their punishment, so there are souls — the souls of the blackest of sinners — who prefer to put off such a reckoning in the next world for as long as they’re able. Refusing to submit to divine justice, these souls wander the great broadways and desolate plains of the other world, a world that touches our own — can you feel it, children? can you? I know you can — at various points and most rapturously, I’m told, though I’ve never experienced it myself, in our holy city of Jerusalem, may we live to see the day of its redemption, when the Holy Messiah will make known His holy name, may it be soon in our times, amen!”

  His face grew tender. “There are doorways, my dears, doorways to the next world and doorways back, and there is no doorway more open than the human heart. Only with his heart may a Jew serve the Holy One. But out of fear, the eye of the heart darkens, and we mistake the blessings the Holy One renders us for punishments. There is no punishment, my dears, but sometimes the Holy One blesses us with a very harsh Hand. And so it is with these errant souls, upon whom the Holy One causes to descend a horde of unruly angels. But is there no place where a soul like this may shelter from the pangs of her tormentors? I can see the question in your eyes. You’re sweet children, you’re dear, sweet children, and you’re wondering: How could God allow these demons to torment a poor and naked soul, tearing into it, as though into its flesh, with their whips and their cudgels and their chains? And also what kind of repentance may a soul sincerely make under such extremities? And you’re right. No, of course, you’re right, it isn’t just!” He shook his head. “It isn’t just. And so, in His mercy, which is infinite, the Holy One extends shelter even to those souls who refuse to submit to His judgment, permitting her to hide in a rock or an animal or, may God protect us from such plagues, in the body of a human being. Is the Merciful One not merciful? He provides shelter even for the soul who flaunts His justice, spitting into His face, as it were, God forbid. However, just as, at dawn, all eyes turn to the east, so all souls, no matter how degraded they’ve become, seek a reunion with the Beloved of all Beloveds, perhaps without even knowing it, for by hiding in a human being, the dybbuk gives herself away, doesn’t she, and why would she want to do that?”

  The rebbe stared over our little trembling shoulders, as though, without making a sound, someone had entered the room. He smiled gently, as one might at a friend one hasn’t seen in years. “You know,” he whispered over his interlaced fingers, raising his woolly eyebrows, “this is not the first dybbuk to whose aid I have been called.” He leaned in closer to us.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this.” He glanced about the room like a sneakthief. “But will you promise never to reveal a word I say to you to another living being? Not even to your own mothers or fathers?”

  Shaya and I nodded mutely.

  “And not even to talk of it among yourselves after you leave this room?”

  We silently agreed.

  He snarled. “You know what happens to little boys who break their promises, don’t you?”

  We shook our heads.

  “No, and you don’t want to know either!” Finally, he sat back in his chair. “So it’s agreed, then? The following will remain strictly between the three of us here tonight? Good. Now as I was saying: Khave Kaznelson’s was not the first dybbuk to whose aid I had been summoned. Nothing remarkable about that. But would it shock you, my dears, if I told you that the last time had been more than three hundred years ago?” He raised his furry eyebrows. “And what if I added that it was neither as myself as you see me now, nor in this town, nor in this life that I performed this good deed?” He crossed his arms. “And yet it was so.”

  A strange smile illumined his face, and soon his entire countenance was glowing. He sipped his tea, seeming to delight in the simple drink. “The year was 5336, the month Adar, and I, a young rabbi in Genoa, was summoned to the bedside of a maiden by the name of Bianca. Oh, children, you have never seen a maiden as beautiful as this Bianca. She lay perfectly still in her bed, as though in a trance, her eyes shut, her mouth slightly parted, not moving, barely breathing. And yet, as soon as I entered her room, she turned her face from me.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ I commanded instantly.

  “ ‘No, I shall not speak to you,’ she cried.

  “As with Vladek the Wagon Driver today, she addressed me in a voice not belonging to herself. A low-pitched growl, it was deeper in timbre than a woman can properly make. She spoke to me in Italian, of course, my language at the time. Ah, children!” the rebbe said, interrupting himself. “How I loved those Petrarchan sonnets! I composed literally thousands of them. Ah,” he sighed, “life to life, so much is lost. In any case, I was not to be put off.

  “ ‘Look at me!’ I insisted.

  “ ‘I cannot,’ she demurred. ‘I cannot gaze upon t
he holy light shining from your face.’

  “Ah, a flatterer, I thought.

  “ ‘Spirit, do not flatter me,’ I said.

  “ ‘But I don’t,’ said she or he or whoever it was inside of her. ‘Everyone knows of Rabbi Leonardo Emanuel. Beyond the Heavenly Curtain your name is whispered with reverence and trembling.’

  “ ‘Look at me,’ I commanded again, ‘and tell me your name.’ But he did not. ‘I order you to obey me,’ I said, and not then and not later, but eventually the dybbuk obeyed. His name was Bernardo Messina. I had known him in my youth, and I knew him for what he was: an apostate who’d been hanged as a horse thief.

  “ ‘Also,’ he confessed, ‘I sired many bastard children, their mother the wife of my tutor. I’ve lain as well with my stepmother’s daughter and with my stepbrother as well.’ Brazenly, he added: ‘Or even better.’

  “ ‘Vile creature!’

  “ ‘Oh, Leonardo, if you only knew the half of it!’

  “ ‘Still, death has undone you,’ I reminded him.

  “ ‘As it will us all,’ said he.

  “Now, children, listen to me, this Messina had repudiated the One True God and His Holy Torah, and had embraced the Trinity as part of a scheme to defraud a brotherhood of monks who’d hoped to redeem him from his evil ways, but who, under his influence, had succumbed, instead, like him, to pederasty and to other such abominations. How he met his death is too gruesome a story to recount. Embittered over his fate, he made it his business to mock both of the faiths he had traduced. Accordingly, every morning and every evening, when the church bells rang, Messina forced Bianca to recite the customary Christian prayers, which she did with alarming fluency. When her parents witnessed this for the first time, they were aghast, and they sent for me. Though time was of the essence — I knew not how long the maiden could endure alive with Messina inside of her — I realized that there was much to learn from him, from studying him, before releasing him from her mortal coil.

  “To begin with,” the rebbe said, “his voice. I’d noted that it seemed to emanate from the young girl’s neck. Now, this was a curiosity to me and, to resolve the puzzle, I asked him many questions concerning the nature of his form.

  “ ‘I know not,’ he replied.

  “I asked about its volume: ‘Is it like a goose egg, or the egg of a hen or maybe a dove?’

  “ ‘More like a dove, I think.’

  “ ‘Where are you inside the young woman’s body?’

  “ ‘Between the rib cage and her waist on the left side.’

  “Her lips never moved during the course of this interview, and when I’d exhausted my line of questioning, I pleaded with Messina to let the young woman speak on her own behalf, so that I might interview her as well. Naturally, he was reluctant to do so, hungry for attention, as all such sinners are, but I appeased him. How, you wonder? An excellent question! I flattered him, my dear children! Yes, I flattered his bravery, his intelligence, his cunning. I laughed with him over the fools he’d made of those dunderpated monks. Eventually believing I was his friend, he complied, and agreed to release the poor girl from his power.

  “Along with my students (whom I’d summoned to me), I watched in alarm as the egg-sized protuberance that had been visible near the girl’s throat began to move from where it had stationed itself in order to speak out more clearly. It moved first across her chest, then down to her side and finally to the place beneath her rib cage where it normally lodged. It resembled nothing so much as a small mouse moving beneath the blanket of her skin. The young woman appeared in extreme pain during this procedure. She writhed, dampening her sheets with bucketsful of perspiration, and when finally she opened her eyes, she stared at us in wonder

  “ ‘Can you see me, child?’

  “ ‘I can.’

  “ ‘And you can hear me?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Yes, although you are speaking as though from a great distance away.’

  “ ‘I will come closer now, my dear,’ said I, moving nearer to her bedside.

  “Someone, a relative, her mother perhaps (I no longer recall who) brought me a chair, and I sat in it, pondering what to do next. After a fervent, though necessarily brief prayer, I decided on a course of action. I ordered the room emptied, except for my most trusted pupil, Benyamin Navarro, whom I stationed by the door. Knowing that from there, he would not be able to hear us, I returned to the maiden.

  “ ‘Daughter,’ I said softly.

  “ ‘You speak so calmingly, Rabbi.’

  “ ‘I’m here to aid you, my dear child.’

  “ ‘How could you minister kindness to a girl as wicked as I?’ she said. The strain of the ordeal overwhelmed her, I’m afraid, and she began to cry. I handed her my kerchief, and she wiped away her tears. She brought the kerchief to her mouth, bunched up, like a rag, you see? But beneath it, unbeknownst to me, she was drawing the waters of her saliva together in her mouth. ‘Rabbi Leonardo,’ she said tenderly.

  “ ‘Yes, my daughter?’

  “ ‘May I tell you what I think of your kindness?’

  “ ‘Certainly, my child.’

  “With a great hawking sound, she coughed up the phlegm and, using her mouth and tongue as mortar and pestle, mixed it into a gelatinous mass, which she unceremoniously spat into my face!

  “ ‘Messina!’ I roared.

  “ ‘Look, Leonardo,’ Messina spoke again, but this time using the face and mouth of the young girl, his deeper voice issuing, as naturally as it could, from her lips. ‘Do you think she’s as innocent as she pretends? Do you think she’s so meek and mild, this daughter of Israel?’ Using her own hands against her, he began to rub her private places, grinding her hips in an unbecoming manner. ‘Take me, Rabbi Leonardo!’ he howled. ‘Come to me like a lover!’

  “Now, this perfidy wasn’t enough, but he ripped at her bodice and, exposing her young breasts, picked one up in each hand and pressed them together like two pumice stones, whispering lasciviously: ‘Spill your seed across my chest so I’ll remain a virgin.’

  “ ‘Dastardly creature!’ I screamed at him. ‘Desist immediately! Or I’ll — ’

  “ ‘Or you’ll what?’ He flung the question back at me as though it were a slur. And when I stammered mutely, wiping his spittle from my beard, he let out another long and maddening laugh. ‘This is what she dreams of every night, Leonardo, I promise you,’ he said. ‘And not only that but this.’

  “And here, he turned her over, exposing her bare rump to the cold air of the room. ‘Enter her from behind, like a dog. Or a monk,’ he laughed. ‘That’s what she wants.’ Forcing her head down onto her pillows, he lifted her backside and, with his hands grasping each cheek, spread them far apart.”

  At that moment, the rebbe looked at Shaya and me quizzically, as though, until then, he had forgotten to whom he was speaking.

  “Yes. Well” — he coughed — “perhaps these are not the sorts of details I should be sharing with small boys, but I want you to understand the gravity of the situation.”

  “But Rebbe,” I asked him, “what did you do?”

  “What did I do?”

  “How did you help Bianca?”

  “And Bernardo,” he said.

  “And Bernardo?” Shaya asked.

  “Why, of course.”

  “But why would you ever help Bernardo?” I said.

  “Now, don’t forget, my dear children, I’d been summoned to Bianca’s bedside to aid and assist not one lost soul, but two, his as well as hers. No matter how much he had blackened the shroud of holiness that was his birthright, no matter how many blasphemies he’d recited, no matter how many sins he’d committed, his was still a soul in dire straits, and I had commended myself, years before, to its aid.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Exactly! What did I do? What could I do?” he said. “ ‘Be still, Messina!’ I shouted. ‘Dress the maiden and desist from your vile rogueries.’ Of course, he didn’t listen to me, and so I had no other cho
ice. I stared into the young girl’s eyes and recited a verse from the Psalms of King David: Set a wicked one over him and stand the Satan at his right! I recited it three times. Then three times backwards: Then three times reversing all the letters: Until the poor devil could withstand no more.

  “ ‘Enough!’ Messina yowled, quickly buttoning up the girl’s blouse and covering her knees. I took the opportunity to intone the kavones proscribed by the most secret of our holy books and called upon the aid of certain angelic forces.

  “ ‘Leave her,’ I commanded again, and again the young girl began to writhe in pain, her hands clutching at her sheets, her head jerking backwards and forwards. Vomit frothed from her mouth, and I was alarmed to see that her throat had swollen dangerously.

  “ ‘She seems to be choking!’ I called to my student, and again I recited the formula.

  “ ‘Leave, I order you, without harming her in any way!’

  “Quickly I called in the rest of my students and set them to reciting all the Psalms from their beginning. That did the trick — aha! — and I had him on the run!

  “ ‘Promise me …’ Messina choked out, but the girl’s thrashings were so terrible, he could barely get a word out.

  “ ‘Promise you what?’ I roared over the din.

  “ ‘I will not harm her if …’

  “ ‘Yes? If? If what?’

  “Every word was a torment for him: ‘If you … will promise … to … recite …’

  “ ‘Recite? Recite what, Messina?’

  “ ‘… Kaddish …’

  “ ‘Aha! The Kaddish prayer?’

  “ ‘… on my behalf!’ ”

  The rebbe folded his arms. “Though they desire nothing but the good, still their ways are crooked from long habit, and one must negotiate with these wretched souls as one would with a shtreimel-maker in midwinter.