by Boris Akunin
As he walked along the street on the way to Madame Perlova’s house, Shmulik made a decision. I’ll go and listen to Rabbi Menachem-Aizik. What I don’t understand, I’ll remember by heart, and then, so be it, I’ll marry the widow and make her happy. I’ve had enough of sleeping on the floor.
In the Armenian quarter he speeded up to a trot. The bad boys who lived here threw asses’ droppings at Jews. Never mind, in Zhitomir the pranksters from the Workers’ Settlement would even fling stones. What would you rather be hit with in the back, a sharp cobblestone or an ass’s turd, which will stick on for while but then fall off?
Of course.
From every point of view, Shmulik had certainly advanced a long way up the stairway of life during the spring just past—you could even say he had leaped from the very bottom to the very top, right over God only knew how many steps: the Zhitomir mamzer had become a desirable bridegroom, and he had done it in the glorious city of Erushalaim, may it stand for all eternity.
The redheaded shiksa
AFTER LUNCH, WHICH had been particularly good today, Shmulik lounged in comfort for just a little while on the soft cushions in the courtyard, reciting from the Torah for Madame Perlova. She didn’t understand a single word, but she listened reverently and didn’t dare pester him with her caresses. The widow had a shady tree growing in her courtyard, a very rare thing in the Old City. He could have gone on sitting there for ages, but he had to hurry back to the yeshiva. During the afternoon, Rabbi Shefarevich himself taught the pupils, and you’d better not be late for him. He wouldn’t care if you were an ilui—he’d lash you across the fingers with his pointer, and that hurt. The teacher made no allowances for the flesh—neither the flesh of others nor his own, because the body belongs to the asia, the lowest sphere of phenomena, and it is not deserving of indulgence.
Even in the Erushalaim heat the rabbi dressed as befitted an Ashkenazi sage, in a long-skirted black frock coat with a velvet collar and a fox-fur shtreaimel, with his gray sidelocks, stuck together with sweat, dangling below it. And this was in May—what was it going to be like in summer? They said it could be so hot in the Promised Land that an egg laid on the sand would be hard-cooked in two minutes. Would the rabbi’s holiness withstand such a trial?
It will, Shmulik thought as he glanced at the Teacher striding around the classroom.
Rabbi Shefarevich stopped beside cross-eyed Leibka and prodded the back of the boy’s head with one finger. “Why haven’t you copied out the chapter from the Mishna as you were told?”
“I had a bellyache,” Leibka replied miserably.
“He had a bellyache,” the Teacher informed the other yeshiva boys, as if they hadn’t heard for themselves. “Let us discuss this.”
This last phrase indicated that a learned discussion had begun—the spring of wisdom would now burst forth from the rabbi’s lips. And so it did.
“It is written: all illnesses are visited on man as punishment for sins. Agreed?”
Leibka shrugged—this beginning promised him no good at all. Rabbi Shefarevich pretended to be surprised. “Is it not so? He whose thoughts are of the vain and the dishonest suffers a headache. The lover of sweet things who nibbles too much sugar suffers a toothache. The libertine consorts with indecent women and his ud rots. Do you agree with this?”
Leibka was obliged to nod.
“Well, that’s good. Since you had a bellyache, your belly must have sinned: eaten something that it shouldn’t have. It is responsible for your illness. Agreed? And who does this belly belong to? You. So you yourself are to blame. Agreed?”
If I were Leibka I would reply with a quotation from Iuda Gabirol’s Scattering of Pearls, Shmulik thought: “The fool blames others; the intelligent man blames himself; the wise man blames no one.” In recent times Shmulik had developed the habit of arguing with the Teacher. This was a highly praiseworthy habit for a student of the Talmud, but not without its dangers where Rabbi Shefarevich was concerned, and so the ilui conducted his polemic with himself, inside his own head.
Leibka, unable to adduce quotations in his own defense, received a blow from the pointer.
The Teacher was out of sorts again today, as he had been recently. Shimon also received the pointer across his fingers for reciting the lesson hesitantly and incompletely.
“Have you said all that you know?” the rabbi asked with a frown.
“Yes, I have said all that I know,” Shimon replied in due form, as required.
But that didn’t save him. “The fool says what he knows. The wise man knows what he says!” the Teacher barked.
In his head, Shmulik immediately parried with another aphorism: “Foolishness shouts, wisdom speaks in a whisper.” An excellent reply. It would be grand to debate with the rabbi—no matter what the subject was. Who could tell which of them would win? There was this thing, a “telephone” it was called. The very thing for a dispute with Rabbi Shefarevich: say whatever you liked, the pointer couldn’t reach you.
Shimon had not replied so badly that he deserved to be beaten with such energy. The poor boy howled and the tears poured down his cheeks. None of the yeshiva pupils, apart from Mikhl-Byk, with that thick skin of his, could ever have borne a lashing like that without crying out.
Again he had remembered that forbidden name, for the second time that day.
Rabbi Shefarevich was apparently thinking about the same thing, because the theme he chose for the day’s discussion was apostasy. Modern Europe represents a terrible danger for Jewry, the great man said. Earlier, when we were robbed, murdered, and locked in the ghetto, things were actually easier—oppression merely united us. But now the governments of the so-called advanced countries have abandoned their anti-Semitism and the Jews there have been faced with the temptation of becoming the same as everyone else, of being no different from the goys. For after all, being a Jew is not merely an accident of birth; it is also a conscious choice. If you do not wish to be a Jew, that is up to you. Have yourself baptized, or simply stop demonstrating your Jewishness, and immediately all roads will be open to you. In the countries of Poland and Lithuania, which are now part of the Russian Empire, the situation is still tolerable, because there the Jews who have ceased to be Jews are allowed no true freedom and persecuted for their origins. But in Western Europe things are really bad. In the country of Germany the greatest harm has been done to the Jewry by Bismarck, and thousands of Jews have turned away from the faith of their fathers. The situation is also appalling in the country of France, which proclaimed the equality of the Jews a hundred years ago. Thanks be to God, the stupid goys decided to put the baptized Jew Dreyfus on trial there, and that gave many apostates pause for thought.
The enemies of the Jews belong to two types. The first wish to annihilate us, and we should not be afraid of their kind, because the Lord will always protect His chosen people. The second type is a hundred times more dangerous, because they do not attack our bodies, but our souls. They lure us with gentle words and kindness, they want us to reject our own special character, to stop being Jews. And many, very many give way and become meshumeds. A meshumed, having accepted Christ, is a thousand times worse than the most vicious goy In order to curry favor with his new masters, he maligns us and our faith. And when he appears among us, he sows doubt and temptation in the hearts of the cowardly by putting on airs with his rich clothes and the fine position he has won.
Rabbi Shefarevich grew more and more incensed as he spoke. His eyes flashed with the fire of holy wrath, and the forefinger of his right hand was repeatedly raised toward the ceiling.
“These traitors should be eliminated, as a sheep infected with murrain is eliminated before it can destroy the entire flock! The Lord said: ‘If any of the house of Israel should detach himself from Me, I shall turn My face against that man and crush him in portent and parable, and eliminate him from My people, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’
Shmulik objected to this as follows: “The Lord said precisely ‘eliminate from
My people,’ that is, expel them out of Jewry, and let them carry on living as they like, without Me.”
But, naturally, this was said “over the telephone,” so that the rabbi did not hear the argument and continued with his thundering, this time against the apikoireses:
“We Jews are the only keepers of the fire of God, which would long ago have gone out without our people. We do not change, we have remained the same, since the times of Abraham and Moses. But what do the Zionist-apikoireses want? They want the Jews to become an ordinary nation and an ordinary state. But ordinary nations do not live long, they appear and disappear. Where are the Moabites, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans who tormented us? They are all long gone, they were squeezed out by new nations: the English, the Germans, the Turks, the Russians. Two or three centuries will go by and the torches of these nations, which now blaze so brightly, will be extinguished and new, brighter ones will be ignited in their place. But our candle will go on burning with the same quiet, unquenchable flame that is already thousands of years old! Is there any other nation on earth whose candle has been burning for so long?”
At this Shmulik could hold back no longer. “What about the Chinese, Rabbi?” he said out loud. “They have maintained their customs for as long as we have. Perhaps even longer. For as long as four thousand years.”
He had read about the Chinese in an encyclopedia, at Madame Perlova’s house.
The sally hit home, the rabbi’s beard trembled. Well, now, what would he say to that, what quotation would he adduce?
Shmulik was not granted any quotation, he was granted the pointer—not across his fingers, but across his neck and the back of his head. He went flying out of the classroom, howling, under a hail of blows and insults.
It was hard to dispute with Rabbi Shefarevich.
NOW HE HAD to wait until the Teacher cooled off, then go back and beg his pardon—but only after an hour or two. Shmulik stuck his hands in his pockets and started strolling up and down the street.
Near the Dung Gate someone called to him in Russian: “Boy! Boy!” A shiksa in a dark silk dress came over to Shmulik, her ginger hair covered with a transparent scarf. She had a traveling bag in her hand. The woman’s freckled face seemed vaguely familiar to him.
“Your name’s Shmulik, isn’t it?” the redhead said with a happy smile. “I was the one who spoke to you on the steamer. Remember? I was dressed as a nun then?”
Right, now he remembered. He had seen this shiksa before when they were sailing down the river from Moscow—Jewish parents had brought their children there from various towns in order to hand them over to study in Rabbi Shefarevich’s yeshiva. Only the shiksa hadn’t been so beautiful in a nun’s habit. With those golden speckles on her face and that glowing halo of hair she looked much prettier.
“Hello,” Shmulik replied politely. “How are you?”
“Well, thank you. What a good thing that I met you!” said the redhead, still delighted.
And what exactly was so good about it? Here was a pupil of the venerable Rabbi Shefarevich, standing in the middle of the street chatting with a shiksa. God forbid that anyone should go telling tales to the Teacher. Shmulik had enough problems without that. That Lithuanian Jew over there in the black hat and robe had stopped and was squinting at them. Shmulik would have liked to remind him of the wise saying: “Better to talk with a woman and think of God than the other way around.” But to be quite honest, Shmulik was not thinking about God at all at that moment, but about how much more pleasant it would be to marry Madame Perlova if only she had white skin like that.
“I really need to have a word with you,” said the shiksa.
But the Lithuanian was still staring. This was sure to end badly—he was bound to tell the rabbi.
“I’m in a hurry,” Shmulik muttered. “I don’t have time.” And he tried to walk on; but the beautiful shiksa suddenly swayed and leaned on his shoulder, moaning.
“Oh, I feel so dizzy … Boy, take me into the shade … Give me some water …”
She squeezed her eyes shut and reached one hand up to her temple. It was the hot sun that had given her a headache, she wasn’t used to it.
One of the most important of God’s commandments, surpassing all the prohibitions in importance, says: Be charitable. I’ll take her into the shade, give her a drink, and then run off, Shmulik decided.
He took the stricken woman by the arm and waved his hand in front of her face like a fan—that was so that the Lithuanian would see there was no flirting going on here, just someone feeling unwell because of the heat.
It was shady and cool in the narrow alley. Shmulik sat the Russian woman on a stone step, ran to the well, and brought some water in his yarmulke.
The shiksa took a sip and immediately felt better. She said, “I’m looking for a certain man.”
At this point Shmulik ought to have gone on his way. He had shown charity, and that was enough. But he suddenly felt curious about who she was looking for. The narrow little lane was not the street. There was nobody much strolling about here, no one to stare at a yeshiva pupil talking to a shiksa.
“What man?”
“He’s called Manuila. The prophet of the ‘foundlings’ sect. Do you know him?”
Shmulik shuddered. How strange! The shiksa was talking about the barefooted focusmacher!
Some glimmer in his eyes must have given him away, because the redhead asked quickly: “He was here, wasn’t he? You saw him, didn’t you?”
Shmulik took his time before he answered.
IT HAD HAPPENED on the first Sabbath after Passover, an entire two weeks ago now, but it seemed like just today. Rabbi Shefarevich had taken the boys from the yeshiva to the Wailing Wall. They had stood in a row and started to pray Shmulik had closed his eyes in order to picture the Temple in all its imperishable magnificence—the way it had been before, and the way it would be when the hour struck. Suddenly the next boy along had nudged him with his elbow and pointed off to one side.
There was a tramp standing there, dressed in a dirty robe belted with a blue rag. He was holding a knotty stick in his hand, and on his feet he had peasant sandals of birch bark stained with dried clay. His shaggy head was uncovered, and a sack hung behind his back on a string—in the land of Poland those were called sidor.
The ragamuffin was watching the Jews with curiosity as they swayed and lamented. He absentmindedly pulled up the hem of his robe and scratched his sinewy calf, overgrown with hair—he wore no trousers under his ragged robe.
What are you doing, people, and why are you crying? he had asked in Hebrew, pronouncing the words outlandishly So despite the birch-bark sandals, he was a Jew after all, only a very strange one. How could a Jew not know what they were crying about at the Wailing Wall? He must be a madman.
The Law orders us to treat the mad with pity, and Shmulik had replied to the tramp politely, but, of course, not in Hebrew (the sacred language was not intended for idle talk), but in Yiddish, “We are weeping for the destruction of the Temple.”
Rabbi Shefarevich gave the ignorant man a fleeting glance but said nothing to him, because it was beneath his dignity as a gaon, or perhaps even a lamed-vovnik, to make conversation with just any riffraff.
“I don’t understand your language very well,” the barefooted man had said in his laughable Hebrew, which was like the clucking of a bird. “You say you are weeping for the temple? For the temple that stood here before?” And he pointed at the Temple Mount.
Shmulik nodded, already regretting that he had got involved in the conversation.
The tramp had been amazed. What point was there in crying about it? he had asked. Stones were just stones. It would be better if they wept for the Messiha to come.
Shmulik didn’t understand immediately what he meant by “Messiha,” but when he realized it was a mispronunciation of the word “Messiah,” he felt frightened. Especially since the rabbi had stopped whispering his prayer and turned around. Berl, who knew everyth
ing, had trotted over to him and whispered, “Rabbi, that’s the Russian prophet Manuila, the same one who … I told you, he has already been seen in the city.”
The Teacher’s forehead had gathered into menacing folds and he had spoken loudly in Russian: “I am Aron Shefarevich, a member of the Rabbinical Council of the City of Erushalaim. And who are you, to go making idle conversation in the language of prayer, which you do not even know properly? Where have you come from, and what is your name?”
The tramp had said that his name was Emmanuel, and he had come from the Mount of Olives, where he had spent the night in one of the caves.
He was not very good at speaking Russian either—they say people like that have porridge in their mouths. And what caves were these on the Mount of Olives? Surely not the burial chambers? Well, now the rabbi would let him have it for sacrilege.
But the Teacher did not ask any questions about the cave; instead, he asked contemptuously, “Is that why you are so dirty on the Sabbath?”
“I was digging in the earth, and I got as filthy as a pig,” Emmanuel had laughed lightheartedly. “That’s a funny expression, isn’t it?”
“Digging in the earth? On the Sabbath? And after that you call yourself a Jew?”
Quite a crowd had gathered. They all wanted to hear the great Talmudist and master of verbal duels make short work of this miserable excuse for a prophet.
The man who called himself Emmanuel had waved his hand casually. “Eh,” he had said, “the Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
“Jews do not say that—that is what the Christians’ god, Jesus, says,” Rabbi Shefarevich had noted in an aside, especially for his pupils. “No, Emmanuel; you are no Jew.”
The tramp had squatted down on his haunches, set his staff across his knees, and looked up merrily at the Teacher. And the gist of his answer had been this: I know no god called Jesus, and I am a Jew, you can take my word on that. But you, angry man, are not a Jew. A Jew is not someone who is born of a Jewish woman, wears sidelocks, and does not eat pork, but someone who wishes to cleanse his soul. Anyone can become a Jew if he concludes a covenant with the Lord, and there is absolutely no need to go inventing stupid prohibitions and cutting small pieces of flesh off little boys. God will trust a person without that. And at that point Emmanuel had burst into laughter and concluded his sacrilegious speech in an absolutely shameful fashion. Judge for yourself, he had said, O member of the Rabbinical Council, what would God, to whom all the treasures of the heavens and the earth belong, want with a treasure like that—a little piece of your pipiske?
