by Jan Potocki
A short time afterwards Testalunga died of pleurisy, and his whole band dispersed. My brothers, who were very familiar with Spain, persuaded me to go there. Placing myself at the head of twelve men, I went into the Bay of Taormina and remained hidden there for three days. On the fourth, we seized a vessel, on which we reached the coast of Andalusia.
Although there are in Spain several chains of mountains that could have offered us suitable hideouts, I gave preference to the Sierra Morena, and I had no cause to regret my decision. I captured two convoys of piastres and pulled off other major coups.
Eventually my successes caused offence at court. The Governor of Cadiz was given orders to take us dead or alive, and sent several regiments after us. Meanwhile, the Grand Sheikh of the Gomelez invited me to enter his service and offered me refuge in this cavern. I accepted without hesitation.
The Court at Granada refused to accept failure. Seeing we could not be found, it had two shepherds from the valley seized and hanged as Zoto’s two brothers. I knew those two men, and I know they committed several murders. Yet they are said to be angry at having been hanged in our stead and at night slip free of the gallows in order to cause chaos. I have never been witness to any of this and I don’t know what to say about it. However, it is true that I happen to have passed close by the gallows at night on several occasions, and when there was moonlight I saw clearly that the two hanged men were not there, and in the morning they were back again.
And that, honoured guests, is the story you asked me to tell. I believe that my two brothers, whose lives have not been so wild, would have had more interesting things to relate, but they will not have time to do so, for our ship is ready to sail and I have firm orders it should do so tomorrow.
Zoto withdrew, and the lovely Emina said with sadness in her voice:
“That man was quite right: the time of happiness is all too brief in a person’s life. We have had two happy days here such as we may never know again.”
Supper was not at all cheerful and I lost no time in wishing my cousins good-night. I hoped to see them again in my bedroom and to be more successful in dispelling their melancholy.
THE SEVENTH DAY
I had fallen asleep and was awakened by a bell that rang twelve times – a bell I had not heard the nights before. Its lugubrious chimes reminded me of the bell at the Venta. I expected to see some apparition. Emina appeared, with Zibedde following her sister. She held her finger to her mouth, as though to urge me to total silence. Emina placed her lamp on the ground. Zibedde removed from around her neck a braid of hair interwoven with threads of gold. Through signs, she made it clear to me that she wanted to put it round my neck, but that I had to remove the relic I was wearing. I refused to do so. Then mindful that they were Muslims and that an object revered by Christians might hurt their feelings, I weakened and agreed. I took off the little reliquary; but then I felt a qualm of conscience and at once seized it back again. Then came the sound of a cry, and the lamp went out, leaving me in darkness. There was another cry, and I recognized it as the howl of the demoniac Pacheco.
A hard dry hand seized hold of mine and dragged me out of bed. I had not undressed. I groped for my sword and found it, and followed where I was led. I walked for a long time in darkness. At last I emerged from the underground passage and in the light of the full moon I saw it was indeed Pacheco who had served as my guide.
We walked on a few paces more in the countryside. Pacheco seemed to succumb to his pains and rolled about in the dust. Another man appeared and signalled me to follow him. He took great strides, and as far as I could tell in the moonlight he was in no better health than the demoniac. Besides, there was something extraordinary about his dress, and he wore a bandeau round his forehead.
We reached the top of a mountain. My guide halted and said to me: “Stay here until daybreak. When the sun is risen, you will see the gallows on which Zoto’s brothers were hanged. You will find there a man alseep and you will wake him.”
“Who are you?” I asked my guide.
“I”, he replied, “am he who is not born and will not die, who walks and never rests, who remains awake and never sleeps, who once had a body but not any more. I am the Wandering Jew. Farewell. I am going to help Pacheco. We shall meet again some day.”
The rising sun revealed in the distance the gallows built for Zoto’s brothers. I walked for an hour across the scrub before reaching it. I found the gate open and a person lying between the two hanged men. I wakened him.
On seeing where he was, the stranger began to laugh, and said: “It has to be admitted that the person who studies the cabbala is liable to tiresome misapprehensions. The evil genii are able to take on so many forms, he does not know who he is dealing with.”
“But,” he added, “why do I have a rope round my neck. I thought it was a braid of hair I was wearing.”
Then he noticed me and said: “Ah! you are very young for a cabbalist. But you too have a rope round your neck.”
Indeed I did. I remembered that Emina had slipped round my neck a braid made of her own hair and that of her sister, and I did not know what to think of this.
The cabbalist stared at me for a few moments and then said: “No, you are not one of us, your name is Alphonse, your mother was a Gomelez. You are a captain in the Walloon Guards, a brave fellow but still a bit naive. Never mind, we must get away from here.”
Then the stranger turned his head to his right shoulder and muttered a few words, as though giving an order under his breath.
“I have sent for my horses,” he said, “and you will see them come.”
Sure enough, we soon saw the arrival of a black servant riding a horse and leading another by its reins. The stranger mounted one, and I the other, and so we reached Venta Quemada.
“This is an inn,” said my companion, “where a very cruel trick was played on me last night. Yet we must go inside. I have left some provisions there that will do us good.”
We duly entered the inauspicious Venta and found in the dining room a table laid for a meal, with a pheasant pâté and two bottles of wine. We ate quite heartily, then we remounted our horses and took the road to the hermitage.
We got there an hour later, and the first thing I saw was Pacheco, stretched out in the middle of the room. He seemed to be at death’s door, or at least his chest was racked with that dreadful rattle, the ultimate sign of imminent death. I wanted to speak to him, but he did not recognize me.
The hermit took some holy water and sprinkled it over the demoniac, saying: “Pacheco, Pacheco, in the name of your Redeemer, I command you to tell us what happened to you last night.”
Pacheco shuddered, gave a long drawn-out howl, and began with these words:
The story of Pacheco
Father, you were in the chapel, singing litanies, when I heard a knock at the door and a bleating that sounded just like our white goat. So I thought it was her, and I thought that because I had forgotten to milk her, the poor beast was coming to remind me. I believed this all the more readily since the same thing had actually happened a few days ago. So I came out of the hut and there I saw your white goat; she had her back to me, so I could see the swollen udder. I tried to grab hold of her in order to do her the service she was asking of me, but she slipped through my hands. And so she kept stopping and slipping away, until she led me to the edge of the precipice near your hermitage.
When we reached it, the white she-goat turned into a black billy-goat. This transformation terrified me, and I tried to run back to our house, but the black goat blocked my path, and then rearing up on his hind legs and staring at me with his blazing eyes, he instilled such fear in me that I was frozen to the spot.
Then the cursed goat began to butt me with his horns, driving me towards the precipice. When I was on the edge, he stopped to savour my mortal anguish. Finally he forced me over.
I thought I had been smashed to smithereens, but the goat reached the bottom of the precipice before me, and I landed on his back
without incurring any injury.
New fears were not long in assailing me, for as soon as this cursed goat felt me on his back, he started to gallop in a strange way. He leapt from mountain to mountain in a single bound, jumping over the deepest valleys as though they were no more than ditches. Then we arrived at the gibbet for Zoto’s brothers, who immediately came down from it. One of them sat astride the goat, and the other on my neck. We set off like streaked lightning, and I don’t know how it could be, but I went as fast as the goat. The hanged man who was riding me felt that I was not going as fast as he would have liked. He picked up two scorpions as we ran, attached them to his heels and began to tear at my sides with the most peculiar barbarity. So we came to some vast caverns, which seemed to be inhabited, but everyone was fast asleep. We went into a stable. The two hanged men knelt before the goat that licked the tips of their noses. Then they shed their dreadful countenance and appeared to me as two young Moorish ladies of astonishing beauty.
One of them picked up a lamp in one hand, gave the other to her young companion, and they disappeared down an underground passage. The black goat vanished into a hole in the rock…
Soon afterwards I saw a thin gaunt man who had a sign emblazoned on his forehead that looked rather like a cross. He came up to me and said: “Pacheco, Pacheco, in the name of your Redeemer, I command you to follow the two hanged men to where the young nobleman whom you have already met lies in bed, and to drag him out of this cavern. This I command you to do, and I shall give you the power to carry out my command.”
I obeyed. I dragged out the young Alphonse, but I was no sooner out of the cavern than my torn sides caused me terrible pain. The man who had spoken to me inside the cave picked me up like a feather, brought me to your hermitage, where I have found some relief. But he came too late. The scorpions’ poison has worked its way into my guts. I am dying.
Thereupon, the demoniac gave a dreadful howl and fell silent.
Then the hermit spoke, and said to me: “My son, you have heard his story. Is it possible that you have carnally conjoined with two demons? Come, make your confession, admit your guilt. Divine mercy is boundless. You do not reply? Could it be that sin has hardened your heart?”
After giving this a few moments’ thought, I replied: “Father, this demoniac gentleman has seen some strange things. Perhaps his eyes have been tricked. The events that concern us are of the most extraordinary nature. We could never gather too much information about them. Here is a gentleman whom I had the honour of finding asleep beneath the gibbet. If he would tell us his adventure, his account could not fail to be of great interest to us.”
“Signor Alphonse,” said the cabbalist, “people who, like me, take an interest in the occult sciences, cannot disclose everything. However, I shall try to satisfy your curiosity in so far as it lies within my power to do so, but not this evening. If you please, let us have supper and go to bed. Tomorrow we will be feeling more calm and collected.”
The anchorite served us a frugal supper, after which everyone’s only thought was of going to bed. The cabbalist claimed to have reasons for spending the night with the demonaic Pacheco, and I was sent to the chapel, as on that other occasion. My mossy bed was still there. I lay down on it. The hermit wished me good-night, and warned me that, for greater safety, he would lock the door after him.
I fell asleep and was woken by the midnight chimes of a bell.
Soon afterwards I heard a knock at the door and what sounded like the bleating of a goat. I took my sword, went to the door, and said in a firm voice: “If you are the devil, try to open this door, for the hermit has locked it.”
The goat fell silent… I went back to bed and slept until the following day.
THE EIGHTH DAY
The hermit came to wake me. He sat down on my bed and said: “My child, last night evil spirits again assailed my poor hermitage. The stylites in the desert were not more exposed to Satan’s malice. Nor do I know what to think of the man who came with you, and who claims to be a cabbalist. He has undertaken to cure Pacheco, and has actually done him some good, but he did not use the exorcisms prescribed by the rites of Our Holy Church. Come to my hut, we will have something to eat, and then we will ask him to tell us his story, which he promised us yesterday evening.
I got up and followed the hermit. I found that Pacheco’s condition had indeed become more tolerable, and his face less hideous. He was still blind in one eye, but his tongue was no longer hanging out. He was not foaming at the mouth any more, and his one eye seemed less wild. I congratulated the cabbalist, who replied that this was just a very poor example of his expertise. Then the hermit brought our breakfast, which consisted of hot milk and chestnuts.
At the end of our meal the hermit said to me: “Ask this gentleman if he would kindly tell us his story. It sounds as though it should be interesting.
The cabbalist protested, saying that there were many things in his story we would not be able to understand. But after a moment’s reflection he began with these words:
The cabbalist’s story
In Spain I am known as Don Pedro de Uzeda, and it is under this name that I own a pretty castle that lies one league from here. But my real name is Rabbi Sadok Ben Mamoun, and I am Jewish. This is a rather dangerous admission to make in Spain, but my trust in your integrity aside, I warn you that it would not be very easy to cause me harm. The influence of the stars on my destiny began to manifest itself from the moment of my birth, and my father, who cast my horoscope, was overwhelmed with joy when he saw that I had come into the world simultaneously with the sun’s entry into the sign of Virgo. To tell the truth, he had exercised all his skill so that this should happen, but he had not hoped to succeed to such a degree of accuracy. I have no need to tell you that my father, Mamoun, was the leading astrologer of his time. But knowledge of the constellations was the least of the sciences of which he had mastery, for he had pursued that of cabbalism to a level no rabbi before him had attained.
Four years after I came into the world, my father had a daughter, who was born under the sign of Gemini. Despite this difference between us, our education was the same. Even before I was twelve, and my sister eight, we already knew Hebrew, Chaldean, Aramaic, Samaritan, Coptic, Abyssinian, and several other dead or dying languages. Besides, we could, without the aid of a pencil, combine all the letters of a word in every way prescribed by the rules of the cabbala.
It was also at the end of my twelfth year that we were both most scrupulously confined, and so that nothing should belie the modesty of the sign under which I was born, we were given only virgin animals to eat, with care taken to feed me with none but male animals, and my sister with none but female.
When I reached the age of sixteen, my father began to initiate us into the mysteries of the Sefiroth cabbala. First he placed in our hands the Sefer Zohar, or Book of Splendour, so called because the light it sheds so dazzles the eye of understanding, it defies comprehension. Then we studied the Sifra da-Zeni’utha, or Book of Concealment, the clearest passage in which may pass for an enigma. Finally we came to the Idra Rabba and Idra Zutta – that is, the Greater and Lesser Sanhedrin. These are dialogues in which Rabbi Simeon, son of Yohai, author of two other works, simplifying his style to the level of conversation, pretends to teach his friends the simplest things, and yet reveals to them the most astounding mysteries; or rather, all the revelations that come to us directly from the Prophet Elijah, who secretly left the heavenly abode and joined us here below under the assumed name of Rabbi Abba.
Those who are not initiates may think they can acquire some idea of all these divine scriptures from the Latin translation published with the original Chaldean in the year 1684 in a small town in Germany called Frankfurt? But we laugh at the presumption of those who imagine that in order to read, the physical organs of sight are sufficient. They might indeed suffice for the purposes of certain modern languages, but in Hebrew each letter is a number, each word a scholarly combination, each sentence a dreadful form
ula that, if properly pronounced with all the right breathings and stresses, could level mountains and make rivers run dry. You well know that Adonai created the world through the Word, then made himself the Word.
The Word strikes the air and the mind, it acts on the senses and on the soul. Although uninitiated, you can readily conclude from this that it must be the true intermediary between matter and intelligences of every order. All I can tell you is that every day we acquired not only new knowledge but also a new power, and if we dared not make use of it, at least we had the pleasure of sensing our strength and of being inwardly convinced of it.
But our cabbalistic joys were soon cut short by the most woeful of events.
Every day my sister and I noticed that my father, Mamoun, was losing his strength. He seemed a pure spirit that had assumed human form only to be discernible to the unrefined senses of terrestrial beings.
At last came the day when he summoned us to his study. He looked so venerable and divine that we both instinctively knelt. He let us remain in this position, and pointing to an hour-glass, he said: “Before the sands run out, I shall be no more. Do not let a single word I say escape you.
