Jacob the Mutant

by Mario Bellatin

  Jacob not only dedicated his time to carrying out the responsibilities of a rabbi, maintaining a small zoo, and running a tavern, but also seemed to have a mission to save the lives of those in danger.

  The first sign that times were also to change in the community where they lived came when he warned that the authorities put into place by the new regime (which had all been established while the large part of the inhabitants had no awareness of when exactly this had happened) began to act slightly differently than was normal.

  Given that the town was situated in a somewhat far away location, it was difficult for recent news to reach them quickly.

  This is why, suddenly, the inhabitants noticed that the uniforms of the soldiers who started to wander down their streets were different from those that had appeared in the past.

  And not only that, but they also had to tolerate a series of harsh inspections that initially left them taken aback.

  Then, calmly, the inhabitants went about growing to a certain extent accustomed to these initial changes.

  Then a series of at times unexpected intrusions suddenly began to occur.

  For example, the new civil servants developed a habit, just like that, of interrupting the classes Jacob gave to the village children, asking questions that appeared to be out of place.

  Curiously, they never made an allusion to the tavern or the classes that he gave; their interest seemed to lie solely in the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo that he kept as a sort of attraction.

  The agents of the new order kept placing increasing obstacles and demands on its operation.

  They primarily cited reasons of a sanitary nature.

  One morning the inspectors appeared after classes, and as Jacob’s wife slept, they closed the establishment, giving its owner a pressing deadline to remove the animals.

  Without the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo, it would be impossible for Jacob to continue with the routine that saw his wife spending her nights awake before a group of drunken men.

  He wasn’t just not going to be able to manage the tavern but not able either to provide shelter and help to those fleeing the pogroms carried out in the neighboring country.

  Jacob then found himself facing a dilemma:

  What to do with the wild animals?

  He knew that in the Sacred Texts no great reference was made to them.

  Save for Noah and his redeeming ark, he didn’t know of the existence of a possible guide for divine precepts to follow, which could orient him on the matter.

  As an initial measure, Jacob closed the whole tavern.

  Not just the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo, as the authorities had ordered him to.

  He retreated into his Torah studies, waiting for the moment when the agents of the new order would carry forth the final sentence: that is, what he had slowly been suspecting would occur to the members of his community at a relatively soon point in time.

  Jacob continued to teach his pupils, to whom he had the habit of repeating, among other things, that any person who engaged with the Torah was capable of accepting the idea that he had the strength necessary to sustain the world on his own.

  Of carrying upon himself each and every one of the objects of Creation, including, of course, animals.

  Upon seeing the children’s anxious faces, Jacob would tell them to keep up with their daily tasks because all work would be noted and tallied, as corresponded, as is appropriate and fit to occur.

  Jacob’s wife had accepted her job as manager of the tavern after a long night of theological debate with her husband as to whether or not such a position was acceptable.

  It seems to me that on that occasion Jacob employed for the first time that idea that every tally would be tabulated as corresponds, as is appropriate and fit.

  Jacob’s wife would often remove her wig in the presence of her husband and cry when Jacob tried to convince her that an obligation of that nature was not at odds with the laws.

  His wife felt that it was.

  Jacob’s wife wasn’t capable of explaining it with words, but she was certain that spending entire nights dealing with men who were becoming drunk while watching a group of caged animals could not be seen as good by divine eyes.

  For Jacob’s wife there could be nothing divine in setting up the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo, whose real purpose was to hide the fact that a rabbi’s wife was managing a tavern, all the while this tavern acted as a front for an operation to save the many lives of those who found themselves in danger.

  As his wife cried, Jacob repeated to her that, within the community, it was not possible that any member of the human species existed without also possessing a corresponding entity.

  With that he hoped to express to her that the Torah had already accounted for the fact that she was to administer the tavern.

  What’s more, he was trying to tell her that her mirror had already engaged in that activity since the beginning of time.

  She (Jacob would say to her as he caressed her real hair), as a human being, was divided into parts, like stages, that at the same time were a reflection of other times in history.

  The members of any community of believers were organized into parts of a single body.

  In other words, Jacob seemed to want to tell his wife that she was not only his wife, but that she also represented a portion of a much more extensive body.

  And not just that, Jacob informed her that this means of structure didn’t correspond only to mankind but was also found throughout the entire world, including animals.

  All creatures, Jacob would repeat to his disconcerted wife before she would accept her post running the tavern, are members upon members, some positioned over others, organized into one sole body.

  And these beings, which at the same time form stages, are like the Torah, because the Torah is made up entirely of members and joints, pirkin, also known as sections or segments, that are always found some positioned above others, organized all of them and continuously functioning as one sole structure.

  Despite finding myself before the story of Jacob and his wife, the manager of a tavern, despite seeing the house and the tavern—with its Tiny Nocturnal Zoo—rise up scant few kilometers from the border, it never stopped seeming weird to me (a curious reader of the Joseph Roth texts rescued from the archives of some German publishing houses) that a situation of this nature could arise. This situation was precisely one in which a rabbi, at whose hands the members of his community found themselves, insisted on making his wife become the manager of a tavern and, additionally, take on the responsibility of displaying a group of caged wild animals.

  Both Jacob and his wife endured that process for quite some time.

  As you could guess, Jacob’s wife was not quickly convinced.

  On more than one occasion Jacob appealed to the teachings of David, particularly the moment when David opened his eyes and said: How innumerous, Lord, are your works!

  All of your works you created them with Great Wisdom…the Earth is full of your creatures (Psalms 104:24).

  In the Torah, the celestial secrets are sealed and intangible—de’la yakhlin lehitdabaka, “they cannot be grasped”—Jacob kept telling his wife until one night, exhausted, she acquiesced, saying: It is true, I have understood it, it is God’s will that I be the manager of a tavern of lost men.

  The wife gave her acceptance immediately after Jacob informed her that in the Torah the celestial matters, both revealed and unrevealed, are one and the same.

  The world is always the same.

  The world of today and the world to come.

  And in the Torah every possible word from every time is present.

  Nevertheless, it cannot come to be that someone should be able to see them, control them or even know them, in the same way that the sheikha who manages the order to which I pertain hinted to me at the existence of each one of the ninety-nine names of God.

  Nobody can see the names of God—both Jacob the Mutant and the sheikha of my order said.

  This is perhaps the reason fo
r which it is written: Who can speak of the great works of the Lord? Who can sing His praises? (Psalms 106:2).

  What happened next was terrible.

  Very soon the agents of the new order carried out what they had warned of and entered the barn violently, shooting each of the caged animals dead.

  In that era of social disorder, many Russian brethren came through the village and managed to cross all of Europe until many of them reached the ports of the Mediterranean or the North Sea in aims of fleeing as far as possible.

  Following the first incursion of the agents of the new order, Jacob sought out the services of a good taxidermist.

  Jacob checked with the members of his community and learned that a distant cousin of his who lived in a relatively distant village specialized in that activity.

  Jacob left on his search.

  After a few days of investigating, he found him and, luckily, managed to convince him to stuff the beasts he had managed to maintain with such care in the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo.

  But upon returning to his village, Jacob returned to the news that his wife had left him.

  His wife had fled with someone—the young Anselm, who had helped her manage the tavern—a man who seemed to have very clear plans to reach the American continent as quickly as possible.

  It would seem as though Jacob’s words that the Torah looked with good eyes upon the wife of a rabbi managing a tavern had been so convincing that when that establishment closed to the public she realized that her life had no meaning at Jacob’s side.

  Upon hearing the news—all while the distant cousin made preparations to stuff the animals from the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo—Jacob tried to console himself faced with his loss by reciting out loud a passage from one of his Sacred Books:

  When a human being climbs into bed it is first appropriate for him to somehow crown the Kingdom of Heaven and then recite a verse of loving kindness.

  The companions who aided in the creation of the Zohar elucidated this: that when a human being sleeps in his bed, his soul abandons the body and wanders above.

  The aforementioned companions never clarified what the blessed “above” meant.

  Nevertheless, they pointed out that each and every soul did so—this wandering—according to its own manner.

  After repeating these paragraphs a number of times, what Jacob did during this time was endlessly sleep.

  That is the other fundamental passage that isn’t found in the book Jacob the Mutant.

  The one about Jacob’s deep sleep.

  Jacob perhaps held out hope that the moment would come when his soul would wander above and find a certain reason for his wife’s conduct.

  What is written? In a dream, in a vision of the night (Job 33:15).

  Perhaps Jacob dedicated himself during those days to putting into practice this idea that when human beings lie down in their beds, they fall asleep and their souls leave them, as is written, as they slumber in their beds, then He, God, opens men’s ears.

  And thus, the Holy Blessed One tells the soul, through the grade or stage on which the poor soul stands, both the future of the Universe and matters of less transcendence.

  According to his innermost thoughts—those disturbing or exhilarating thoughts, those that truly ought to be remembered, his mind must transform them into a transitory or momentary thought.

  It is through these means that the human being is capable of traveling down the Universe’s path of admonition.

  Jacob knew that an angel had the information, who would at the same time transfer it to the soul and from the soul to the human being.

  And this dream came from above, from the moment when the souls left their bodies and each one rose according to its manner.

  As the cousin carried out his task in the most meticulous way possible, Jacob remained asleep.

  And he didn’t bring forward the sleep of the righteous, as one could expect.

  He wasn’t in that state of rest that both humans and animals tend to fall into in order to continue their customary habits.

  I think of Jacob’s sleep as somewhat similar to the state of remaining enclosed for two days in a prayer cell by the sheikha’s order with the goal of repeating the ninety-nine names of God until exhaustion.

  A state in which one is in a place of curious wakefulness.

  A place where it is possible to find myself once again with my grandfather standing in front of a group of camels that display their dirt-covered backs, and to simultaneously discern the border town where Joseph Roth decided to place a tavern known as The Border.

  A space where I can hear the absurd tales my grandfather would make up about Macaque and Master Porcupine.

  It seems to me that only in a situation such as this one—finding myself enclosed in a prayer cell—could it be possible for me to imagine a poster like that of the film Enter the Dragon, with Bruce Lee as its protagonist.

  I am certain that it was not the intent of my order’s sheikha—when she suggested that I remain in a prayer cell to repeat the ninety-nine names of God in an interminable manner—for me to remember such a concrete phase of my childhood.

  For me to hear yet again, in those circumstances, of the existence of a strange teacher who studied nothing less than a science that he had christened the Mariotic Theory.

  In one of Joseph Roth’s texts, long forgotten in those archives, it is written that Jacob tried more than once to explain to the children in his charge that the Merciful One—in this case, God—would be capable of forgiving them only if at some point in their lives they were in condition to explain Him.

  That is to say, to give testimony to the existence of God Himself.

  Nevertheless, giving testimony of the existence of God Himself is what I suspect my grandfather was doing with me during our visits to the camels.

  Sometimes he told me that Macaque was not the character who lived in a camper in a park near the zoo where we took our walks, but a Slavic woman who some time later became the artist Norah Kimberley when she went to live in the United States.

  I don’t believe that my grandfather suffered from any type of mental imbalance that would make him constantly change the versions of his stories he would tell me.

  Once he even used our entire walk around the zoo—our visit to the camels, to the seal pool, and the birds of prey preparing to hunt the small birds placed by zoo employees inside their cages—to tell me the details of the Mariotic Theory that Master Porcupine had tried to expound.

  A study that, among other things, had cost Master Porcupine his job—the reason why he needed shelter in Macaque’s camper.

  As I realized, my grandfather never explained to me why Macaque threw her efforts behind protecting various people in the precarious home where she lived.

  In some way, Macaque’s intentions gave the impression of conforming to the ideas that Joseph Roth seemed to want to transmit in some of his work’s passages.

  Both my grandfather’s Macaque and Joseph Roth’s Jacob seemed to want to transmit the idea that knowledge of God couldn’t be transferred to any but the modest, those who lacked the habit of getting angry, to the humble and to experts in awe.

  That was what my grandfather’s Macaque seemed to want to accomplish with Master Porcupine, just as Joseph Roth’s Jacob wanted to accomplish with the children whose parents left them at the door to Jacob’s house each morning.

  As he carried out his work as a rabbi, just before they killed his animals and he would remain asleep for entire days, Jacob knew that the living conditions maintained for generations were very soon to change.

  He knew that what he could teach the children under his instruction would be worth little.

  He was convinced that many of them would end up dead at the least expected time.

  The survivors would be dispersed and each one would be thrown to his fate.

  They would go through life carrying wounds—both of the body and the soul.

  Among other matters, Jacob knew that water was the el
ement best fit for transferring knowledge.

  Perhaps for this reason he carried out a series of curious ablutions before the bewildered gaze of the other community members.

  The voice of the Lord is over the waters (Psalms 29:3).

  In some way he gave the impression of trying to bring a representation of the Kabbalistic ritual bath into practice on a small scale.

  In the Scriptures it says:

  And before the Rabbi teaches his student, they shall bathe in water and they shall submerse themselves in forty se’ot.

  A se’ah is a biblical measure the size of an egg.

  Forty se’ot is the minimum size for a mikveh.

  A mikveh is a ritual bath.

  To carry out such an act they had to dress in white clothes and fast the entire day before the ritual.

  The participants had to begin standing with the water reaching up to their ankles.

  The rabbi would then open his mouth and with awe he would repeat his repetitive song:

  Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the World. The Lord, God of Israel.

  You are one and Your name is one, and You have ordered us to hide Your great name because Your name is wondrous.

  Blessed are You and blessed is the name of Your glory forever, the glorified and wondrous name of the Lord, our God.

  The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

  Blessed are You, Revealer of Your secret to those who fear You.

  God is the knower of secrets.

  As these ideas went through my head (I remained confined in my prayer cell), Jacob remained sleeping, and his cousin focused on his labor of stuffing the bodies of the wild animals.

  Many a person could inquire into the meaning of such a task.

  For what reason could it be so important, for Jacob and for his cousin as well, to carry out this sort of homage to the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo, which for so many years simply served the purpose of disguising the existence of a tavern managed, in such a strange way, by the wife of a rabbi?

  At that time, things began to get progressively worse in the community.