“I will make you that bargain,” replied Casimir readily, “with, of course, the understanding that I am very difficult to convince, and that I have never been able to maintain much interest or concentration in my lessons.”
“In that case,” smiled the old man, “it will not be a lesson, but, rather, an entertaining story—a story which, in fact, my father told us to help pass the hours before his death. But I must warn you, it is a rather long narrative, and perhaps you would be more comfortable here at my feet.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, King Casimir of Poland sat down on the carpeted steps, and the Rabbi Eliezer began his tale.
III
“LIKE ALL GOOD STORIES,” said the rabbi, “mine begins slightly before the beginning. For everything we know about a man’s life means nothing unless we understand the circumstances surrounding his birth. By this, you must not take me to mean the position of the stars, nor any such thing; I would not wish to offend Your Majesty right off by flying straight into a skyful of superstition. No, we are talking science here, and what I am trying to say is this: I have often seen cases in which a man’s whole life has been influenced by the thoughts and dreams in his parents’ minds at the moment of his conception.”
“So I have heard,” snapped the king sharply, having no desire at that moment to picture either his own conception or that of his unborn children. “But everyone knows it has never been proved.”
“Then this story will prove it,” replied Eliezer, equally brusquely.
“You will not prove anything unless you begin,” growled Casimir.
“I am truly sorry,” apologized the old man. “I had no idea your opinions ran so strongly on this matter. Now be patient, and I will try to find a more straightforward prologue for my story.” After a short pause, the Rabbi Eliezer cleared his throat and began again.
“In my father’s village, three hundred miles from the city of Cracow, lived a brilliant scholar by the name of Simon Polikov. To those who knew him, the fact that he was a scholar seemed even more obvious than the fact that he was a man. For, if your best court artist were to combine all the traits and features traditionally attributed to the diligent student, this improbable caricature might well be an accurate portrait of Simon Polikov. He was short, skinny, and gangly, with a slack, toneless body. His thin face had turned a pasty blue-white shade, the color of dim lamplight in the late afternoon; his myopic eyes were the dead brown of plants which have died from lack of sunshine. He was absent-minded, forgetful, timid, withdrawn; he squinted, and scratched his head perpetually with a tense, irritated motion.
In fact, everything about Simon Polikov was spare and pinched, except for his heart, which was large and extraordinarily generous.
As a youth, the promising student had been hounded by all the Jewish families with marriageable daughters; but not a single girl could be found whose love for God and wisdom could reconcile her to the prospect of sharing a double bed with Simon Polikov. Sensing this, Simon decided that his bachelor’s habits were already too well established to change, and, as gracefully as possible, hastened to remove himself from the marriage market.
Then, in his fifty-fifth year, he awoke one night with a searing pain in his chest and knew that none of his precious textbooks would be able to say the memorial prayers necessary to insure his soul’s speedy entrance into heaven.
The next morning, his new-found determination to take a wife was reinforced by the realization that he already had one.
For almost five years, Simon’s meager home had been conscientiously tended by an attractive middle-aged spinster named Hannah Bromsky, who, though not a charwoman either by necessity or inclination, did the scholar’s cooking, cleaning, and washing as an act of charitable piety. To Simon, the fact that she had lived only a short time in the village seemed far less important than the fact that she had spent that time practicing for the job of being his wife. After due consideration, Hannah somewhat reluctantly admitted the seemliness of Simon’s proposal, and opened her well-rounded arms to him.
Overjoyed at the mating of two such worthy people, the villagers danced for three days and nights at their wedding, then left the happy couple alone to go about the serious business of producing an heir.
The Polikovs put all their energy and concentration into this task; during the first days of marriage, Simon’s eyes could hardly focus on the printed page, and Hannah’s housekeeping grew careless and inattentive. Weeks passed, and the aging pair learned to integrate their strenuous efforts into a certain routine. Months went by; the couple was amazed at the tenderness developing between them, but still nothing came of it. At last, on the evening of their second anniversary, Hannah looked down and slapped the skin of her flat belly with anger and frustration.
She simply could not believe it might be too late for her, especially when all signs seemed to indicate the contrary. Nor could she understand why God might wish to punish her in this way, when, all her life, she had never committed a single sin worth fasting over. Like many women whose expectations for girlish happiness are awakened only late in life, Hannah had been sure that the satisfactions of her coming years would compensate for all the disappointments of the past; faced with the possibility of finding a fresh set of disappointments, she grew bitter and furious—so furious, in fact, that she resolved to force down her pride and seek a remedy for barrenness.
Immediately, the villagers began searching through their memories and their family almanacs for time-tested sterility cures; none of their suggestions proved too obscure or unpleasant for Hannah to try. Day after day, she immersed herself in ritual baths while swallowing endless philters, powders, and potions. She smeared her body with pastes and poultices, cut her hair and nails and buried the clippings, waded through bogs, cut the combs off roosters, and choked down mouthfuls of raw fish.
But, when the spring came round again, the scholar’s wife resented it, and accused the earth of trying to taunt her with its fertility; for, by then, Hannah was worn out, dispirited, and still childless.
Fortunately, the sense of being cheated had not died in her, and, in a last kick of strength, this outrage pushed her to follow a course which was quite daring for a poor, no-longer-young woman. Hannah Polikov decided to travel alone, all the way to Cracow, to seek the advice of Judah the Pious, the most famous sage and miracle worker in all of Europe.
It was the end of April when Hannah set out on her pilgrimage; August had come and gone before she returned.
Naturally, the news of her imminent homecoming outraced her to the village; Simon put down his books and came out to greet his wife, whose true worth he had only begun to realize during the months of her absence. But, after one brief kiss, Hannah brushed past him, and, hurrying through the door, began to busy herself with the long-neglected housework.
Not a word was spoken between them for the rest of the day; an atmosphere of tense expectancy hung over their home, until, at last, lying close beside his wife in the narrow bed, Simon Polikov broke the silence:
“Tell me, at least,” he said, trying to sound cheerful, “what the people of Cracow eat for breakfast in the morning.”
“Plain tea,” replied Hannah sensibly. “Just like us.”
These few words were all that was needed to break the spell. “Listen,” she went on quickly, glad to be getting to the heart of things, “I actually managed to get an audience with the great Judah the Pious. And even he—whose holiness and wisdom I could never begin to describe to you—even he needed a few days in which to comprehend the nature of my case. But, at last, it came to him: I am much too dearly loved, by you, and by our neighbors, so that certain of the spirits have become jealous and cursed me with barrenness in revenge. According to the holy saint, they will never be satisfied until I am dead and buried, and completely erased from the memories of all living men.”
“But surely the spirits have never been so smart that they could not be tricked?” asked Simon.
“That is just what Juda
h the Pious suggested,” beamed Hannah, proud that the years of study had made her husband so perceptive. “Since the spirits would never believe that you and all our friends have suddenly begun to hate me, our only hope lies in making them think that I am dead. You must put me in a simple coffin, and carry it out to the edge of the cemetery near the woods; then, with all the suitable prayers, place my casket in a trench. After that, I may be able to escape the spirits’ notice for a few weeks, just long enough to conceive a child.”
The wise scholar naturally had some reservations about this idea, but his love for Hannah and his strong desire for a son kept him from expressing them. So, he contented himself with the thought that few men have the luxury of being able to choose a sunny day on which to bury their wives.
On the appointed afternoon, Hannah Polikov climbed into the wooden box, which was so rickety, so full of gaping holes and rough surfaces, that even the most unobservant spirit would have had no trouble spotting it for a fraud. Simon groaned loudly and struck his breast, urging on the neighbors who had volunteered to pose as mourners. Wailing a pitiful dirge, the procession wound through every street of the town, until at last it reached the cemetery.
The coffin was lowered into the shallow pit, which Simon had dug with his own hands; the prayers were dutifully chanted. But suddenly, just as the mourners had turned their backs on the grave and scooped up the dirt to throw over their shoulders, an unexpected thing occurred:
A band of unemployed mercenary troops, whom Hannah had hired in private, swooped down on Simon and the funeral guests. Shooting their pistols in the air, the soldiers scattered and chased all the terrified mourners in different directions, so that Simon was forced to lift up the hem of his robe and leap over the roots and fallen branches as he scrambled through the forest towards safety.
Thus, for just a few minutes, Hannah Polikov seemed to the spirits not only dead and buried, but also quite definitely forgotten by all those who might have remembered her.
Nine months later, Hannah gave birth to a son; they named the child Judah ben Simon—in honor of Simon’s father, who had been called Jacob, and according to the Biblical fashion.
Everyone hailed the birth as a miracle. The people hesitated to rejoice too openly, for fear of attracting the spirits, who might try to compensate for their temporary negligence by harming the baby. Yet there was not one villager who did not awaken with a smile on his face every morning for weeks after the event; and, in the hazy obscurity of the May twilight, they tiptoed to each other’s houses with bottles of sweet wine and platters of cake.
“You know,” said Rabbi Eliezer, who realized that his listener’s attention had begun to wander, “it has always struck me as odd, in a cheerful sort of way, that even the most downtrodden societies should rejoice so sincerely whenever another child is pushed headfirst into the harshness of their world.”
“Yes,” nodded Casimir vaguely. Despite himself, he had been remembering his own pale, distant mother, who had spent her short life shivering like an aspen, whose death he had not learned of until she had successively missed four of her weekly visits to the nursery; even more distressing was the king’s memory of his father, which, by now, consisted of only a few sensory images—the sweet, sickly odors of hair pomade and vodka, and the droning sound of long, tearful monologues on the pains of being sovereign.
“Tell me,” murmured Casimir finally, “is this the case with all parents, that the desire for children drives them to stop at nothing? If babies start out their lives so loved and wanted, why are there so many unhappy men in the world?”
Rabbi Eliezer stared at him in disbelief until he realized that the boy was not joking. “I see now,” said the old man softly, as if to himself, “why certain country people think the king’s palace has its foundations built on whipped cream.
“King Casimir,” he continued more loudly, “I am afraid that many people do not bear their children out of pure love. There are a few men who, fearing death, think they will be immortalized in a son; others, dissatisfied with their lives, are looking for an opportunity to start over again. But these things are so obvious that I need hardly go into them; you will find them out for yourself if you just live long enough, or have the good fortune to escape briefly from this—if I may say so—unreal court.
“Yet it is also true that there are men and women, like the two in my story, who develop a fierce love for their children before they are even born, and who continue to love them all the way into the other world.”
“And were your parents of this sort?” asked Casimir.
Taken by surprise, Eliezer frowned for a second, then turned to the boy with a newly open and unguarded expression. “That is something,” he smiled, “which one can never definitely decide about his own case.”
“Thank you,” answered the King of Poland quietly. “That is mainly what I wanted to know.”
Then, with the atmosphere in the room somehow indefinably lighter, the Rabbi Eliezer resumed his tale.
IV
THROUGHOUT THE EARLY MONTHS of Judah ben Simon’s life, his parents awoke each day with the fear that their good fortune might prove to be a dream of the previous night. Every morning, they lay in bed warily, afraid to move until they heard the baby’s first cries. Then they rushed to the crib and spent hours marveling at their son, until the scholar remembered to begin his prayers, and his wife went off to make tea. Simon Polikov had not been able to jump out of bed so effortlessly since he was a boy; Hannah was amazed that her dry, fallen breasts could, after so many years, suddenly give milk. Indeed, the old couple actually seemed to be growing younger.
In public, they did their best to keep from praising their son too immodestly; nevertheless, the neighbors had to agree that the baby was unusually beautiful. Visitors inevitably commented on the child’s alert, affectionate nature; no one was surprised at how quickly he learned to walk and speak. After all, the villagers murmured approvingly, a boy conceived under such miraculous circumstances could only be expected to have an extraordinary childhood.
After a few years, however, people gradually became less free and casual in their references to the miracle, until at last they stopped mentioning it at all.
For, contrary to everyone’s expectations, the boy’s light hair had not grown darker. His small, sturdy frame already seemed stronger than his father’s brittle skeleton, and his clear, handsome features gave him a dashing expression which neither of the Polikovs could ever have worn.
Fortunately, the townspeople were neither mean nor suspicious enough to interpret these signs as definite evidence of some complication in Judah ben Simon’s paternity. They never began to gossip openly, nor even speculate about Hannah’s innocence. It was just that they came to feel somewhat uncomfortable speaking reverently about the miracle which had taken place in their town.
Yet legends, as a rule, die slowly, and the story of the miracle was no exception. In fact, so well did the village remember the strange events surrounding the birth of the Polikovs’ child that Judah ben Simon seemed to be the only schoolboy in the whole region who did not know of them.
It took the other children quite some time to discover Judah’s ignorance, since, at first, they had no desire to taunt him about his colorful origins. Strong and skillful at all sorts of games, he was loved and respected by Jews and Poles alike; during his early years at school, he did nothing to single himself out for special praise or criticism.
Then slowly, inexplicably, the course of his life started to turn. Though obviously clever, he began to lag behind his classmates; his attention lapsed, and the fat, drowsy old rabbi who ran the Hebrew school began to nag and scold him. Like veteran prisoners, the other boys came to realize that the monotony of their terms might be safely and amusingly relieved by tormenting the convict who was most unpopular with the warden.
From then on, each time Judah ben Simon entered the Rabbi Joseph Joshua’s dank front parlor after playing in the yard, the students smirked dramatically; spe
aking in stage whispers, they suggested that his mud-streaked appearance was perfectly appropriate for a boy who would never have been born if his mother had not wriggled her bottom in the dirt. At first, Judah knew only that he was being insulted, but did not understand precisely how, or why. Gradually, however, their constant badgering chipped away at his good nature, until one afternoon, maddened with fury, he confronted his former friends and threatened to beat them, one by one, unless they explained the meaning of their sly allusions.
As they stared at Judah’s powerful fists, the schoolboys felt no overwhelming urge to fight—particularly when they knew that the battle might be simply and elegantly won by telling the plain truth. Giggling and snickering, they presented him with a somewhat exaggerated version of his mother’s attempt to fool the spirits; only the few shreds of tact which they had inherited from their parents prevented them from impugning Hannah Polikov’s honor before her son.
The subject was never mentioned in the classroom again. Somewhat remorsefully, the students realized that Judah would not soon forget the private history lesson they had given him that afternoon, and decided to leave him in peace; this noble resolution proved surprisingly easy to keep, for Judah ben Simon had stopped coming to school.
Each morning, he left his parents’ house just as before, but instead of taking the road to the rabbi’s home, slipped off through the muddy, garbage-filled back alleys; he did not stop running until he reached a sweet, pleasantly shaded grove in the forest—a spot not far from the site where Hannah’s mock-burial had taken place.
There, day after day, he sat and thought, carefully rehearsing what the others had told him, trying to imagine the way it had really been. Closing his eyes, he could almost see his mother stuffing herself into the small, shoddy crate, struggling to reduce her ample body into a solid cube of flesh. He saw the mourners winking broadly at each other as they humored the old couple’s pathetic folly. And, each time he pictured Simon Polikov jerking his skinny yellow shanks up and down in an effort to escape a bunch of drunken soldiers, Judah found himself shouting out loud to drive the image from his mind.
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