Judah the Pious

by Francine Prose

  “Now our Holy Books tell us plainly that God never sends happiness where there is no virtue; furthermore, even my beginning students could cite that section of the Mishnah in which it is categorically stated that Lucky and Blessed Dreams are forever denied to wicked sinners. All of which leads us to our second conclusion: there is absolutely no way that Rachel Anna could be guilty of the filthy, sluttish crimes of which you accuse her.

  “And now, just to clarify this point, I must beg permission to ask your esteemed rabbi one question.

  “Tell us,” inquired Reb Daniel, leaning over the dais towards the front row, “whom you and your neighbors have found to be the natural father of this woman’s child.”

  The entire audience was amazed to see the anger and determination in the scholar’s eyes—which, because of their slight cast, had always worn a somewhat whimsical and abstracted expression. Beneath their steady gaze, the Rabbi Joseph Joshua appeared to melt like a lump of butter. “We are still searching for the culprit,” he stammered.

  “This is a very small town,” sneered the acting head of the Cracower court. “Such a treasure must be difficult to keep buried in a village of this size—particularly when everyone is digging for it.

  “Let me put it more simply,” continued the chief disciple, without removing his attention from the rabbi. “Unless you have some actual evidence to supplement your narrow-minded suspicion, there is no way we can declare this woman guilty of fraud. Therefore, I suggest that you allow her and her mother-in-law to remain in your village, and, next time, be less hasty to accuse someone of trying to stain your spotless virtue.”

  As another rush of murmurs sounded through the hall, Rachel Anna smiled at Hannah Polikov. “You were right about this man’s wisdom,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” sighed the old woman. “But, compared to Judah the Pious, he is like the dimmest star beside the sun.”

  “As for our purposes,” Reb Daniel began again, turning to the members of his court, “we are still faced with the question of whether or not a child has been conceived in a dream. And now that we have thoroughly exhausted all our knowledge and our powers of debate, we can only look at the plain facts. We see before us a woman who is obviously honest, and just as obviously pregnant. She claims she has not known a man for two years except in one dream; we have no evidence to the contrary. What can we do but take her word? After all, if everyone agrees that the chief rabbi of Coblenz’s life ended in the course of a vision, why cannot the life of another be so begun? And finally, who among us can read the Pentateuch without realizing that more wondrous things than this have been known to happen in the Kingdom of God?

  “I am sorry,” Reb Daniel said, after a brief pause, “that we could not have arrived at this decision through brilliant turns of logic, feats of scholarship, and bursts of impassioned discussion. But, nevertheless, the judgment seems clear. Let it be written in the ledgers of the court of Judah the Pious: at this time, in this place, a woman conceived a child by her husband, who appeared to her in a dream.”

  For just an instant, as the verdict was pronounced, Rachel Anna had the strange sense that it had been issued a long time ago, perhaps even before the Cracower court had arrived in her village. But the impression was a fleeting one, and vanished quickly in the deafening uproar which filled the synagogue. A few townspeople, of the sort who automatically accept any official judgment, were already cheering; as in any crowd, there were many who simply enjoyed the feeling of joining in the general applause. Still seated in the front row, Rabbi Joseph Joshua was snorting angrily and tapping his foot; a few of his close associates were shouting in outrage. And the Cracower scholars only added to the chaos by standing up and calling across the room to their servants, ordering them to begin preparations for the homeward journey.

  Encircled by the warm, embracing arms of Reb Daniel, the two women hugged each other and wept. The old woman blessed the chief disciple a thousand times for having made it possible for her to remain in her home. Rachel Anna thanked him too, but the truth was that her gratitude had little to do with the actual verdict. Only after the three of them were almost alone in the emptying synagogue did Rachel Anna begin to understand that all her relief and happiness stemmed from one source: Reb Daniel’s interpretation of her dream, and its promise of a long, happy life for herself, her unborn child, and Judah ben Simon.

  X

  “AND IS THAT WHAT happened?” asked the King of Poland, trying to sound delighted that the lovers’ troubles had come to such a prompt and painless end. “Did Judah ben Simon return home from Danzig, claim his wife, accept his child, and settle down to a life of modest contentment?” In fact, the boy was bitterly disappointed, certain now that Eliezer’s story was just another of those worthless legends about princes and princesses who must overcome the requisite obstacles in order to reign happily ever after—those fairy tales which had always infuriated Casimir, who knew the truth about kings and queens, about his father’s trembling hands, and the terrible silence in his mother’s wing of the palace.

  “Unfortunately,” replied the rabbi curtly, interrupting the boy’s reverie, “that is not what happened at all. It would seem, King Casimir, that your fondness for my hero and heroine has led you to form an unduly optimistic image of their future. Or perhaps you are merely being facetious, perhaps you have decided that it is your turn to accuse me of being commonplace and unimaginative?”

  “Oh, no,” protested Casimir, terrified lest the old man take offense and refuse to reveal the remainder of his tale, “your story could not be more fascinating and delightful!”

  “Then maybe you have let your fascination carry you away,” suggested Eliezer of Rimanov. “Maybe that explains your unrealistic prediction. Maybe your delight has kept you from listening with enough concentration and care.”

  “I swear,” cried the young king indignantly, “that I have been paying closer attention to your words than to anything my advisors have said in—” He stopped in mid-sentence, blushing deep scarlet, aware that he had finally overstepped the last bounds of decorum. Yet, in doing so, he had spoken the truth. For the last sections of Eliezer’s narrative had made Casimir feel pliant, witless, torn between his natural romanticism and his inherent practicality, until he no longer knew which side of his personality dominated, nor by what standards he might assess and judge the old man’s story. For this reason, he had been hanging on the rabbi’s every word, searching frantically for some clue which might help him solve the intricate puzzle.

  “I am grateful for your receptive ear,” smiled Eliezer, ignoring the king’s embarrassment, “I only pray that your heart may remain just as open, always ready to change your position on the possibility of impossible things, and to declare me the winner in our bargain.”

  “Our bargain,” murmured Casimir, in the cold, abstracted tone of a wealthy lover suddenly recalling the old fear that his mistress’s ardor may derive from some ulterior motive. “I had quite forgotten our bargain. Well, I will tell you, you have not made a true believer of me yet. So you had better continue with your fable.”

  “That is exactly my intention,” replied the rabbi, and began again.

  “Three weeks after Rachel Anna’s child was born, Judah ben Simon returned to his village. It was a chilly September midnight; Judah had been traveling steadily for over two months, constantly pushing himself forward as if the time he saved going home would somehow make up for all the hours he had wasted at Dr. Boris Silentius’s mansion. And perhaps, King Casimir,” said the Rabbi Eliezer, “you will comprehend the extent of my hero’s exhaustion when I tell you that the presence of a light in Hannah Polikov’s window convinced him to pause for a while on his way out to find Rachel Anna in the forest.

  Of course, he never doubted that Rachel Anna was still standing before the woodland shelter where he had last seen her. Being a normally self-centered young man, Judah ben Simon firmly believed that, during the two years in which he had stopped thinking of his wife and mother, thei
r lives had also stopped, remained unchanged and static, like a play which cannot resume until its audience returns from intermission. Therefore, when he opened the door to find Hannah sitting at the kitchen table, all he could see were the new wrinkles in the old woman’s face, and the two small changes which had altered the room’s appearance since his last visit. He noticed the memorial candle flickering beside Simon’s old armchair, and saw that all the books had been put away, piled in neat stacks, in a cupboard formerly reserved for his great-grandfather’s finest prayer shawls.

  All at once, Judah ben Simon understood why his mother was up alone so late at night. “How long ago did it happen?” he cried, striding across the room and pulling the old woman out of her chair in a tight embrace.

  Hannah’s first reaction was to thank God for having returned her son; her second was to brace both hands flat against his broad chest and push him roughly away. “You mean Simon’s death?” she shouted, her voice shrill with outrage. “Your father died nineteen months ago, and, for all I know, his spirit is still floundering around in limbo for lack of a son’s prayers.”

  “I am sorry,” muttered Judah, releasing her and stepping backward. “But there was somewhere I had to go.”

  “Where?” cried the widow. “To Danzig, to study orchids and tigers?”

  “Yes,” nodded her son.

  “So what now?” demanded his mother. “Can you sell those orchids in the market place? Can you ride there on the back of those tigers? Are you one step closer to making a living and supporting your poor abandoned wife than on the day I bore you?”

  Judah ben Simon bowed his head and kept silent, waiting for the flush to leave his mother’s cheeks, and her chest to cease heaving. “So you have seen Rachel Anna,” he said quietly, when she seemed calmer.

  “Rachel Anna!” screamed Hannah, rising to a new crest of fury. “How can you pronounce that unfortunate girl’s name without glancing over your shoulder for the thunderbolt about to strike you down? Of course I have seen her, she has been living with me ever since your father’s death. Day after day I have seen her, pining away for love, waiting for one word from you, just one word to tell her you were still alive. And now—now, after all that, you drop in her lap like manna from heaven; you expect to pick up everything exactly where you left off, to resume that crazy hand-to-mouth life in the forest, as if nothing had happened? Frankly, I will be surprised and disappointed if your woman takes you back, for even I am having trouble forgiving you—even I, your own mother, who let you suck the milk from my breasts and leave me with these two dry bags of wrinkles!”

  “Is that why you are crying?” asked Judah ben Simon. “Because you cannot find it in your heart to pardon me?”

  “No,” replied the old woman, sinking back into the chair and burying her head in her arms. “I am crying because I cannot find it in my heart to remain angry.”

  Watching his mother weep, Judah realized that the moment for reconciliation had arrived. He knew how easy it would be to grasp her thin shoulders, to confess all the sorrows of his journey, to make her recall the joys of having a loving, dutiful son. But, just as he approached her bent form, Judah ben Simon heard a noise which made his heart begin to pound at the pit of his stomach.

  From the attic loft, ringing out in unison with the widow’s sobs, came the sharp, insistent cries of a newborn infant.

  “Whose child is that?” he scowled.

  “Yours, may the Lord keep it from harm,” answered Hannah Polikov, so cheered by the thought of her beautiful grandchild that she was able to smile through her tears. “How could I have gone on so long without telling you, unless I assumed that everyone in Poland knew by now. But I see that you are as innocent as that babe upstairs, so I will explain.

  “One night, not long after your wife came to stay with me, she dreamed of you. You know the sort of dream I mean; God forbid, a woman should discuss such things with her own son. Now listen closely: nine months later to the day, Rachel Anna gave birth to your spit and image, a fine, healthy boy, just what one would expect from the child you fathered in the course of that vision.”

  Too stunned to reply, Judah ben Simon struggled to perceive the meaning which, he believed, must lie hidden beneath his mother’s explanation. Again and again, he considered each of her words, as if they were elements in a code he could somehow decipher, but all his efforts only intensified his confusion, and his despair. “So,” he murmured sadly, after a long time, “I sired a baby in a dream. Surely that must have been counted as something of a miracle?”

  “Of course,” nodded his mother brightly. “But the greatest wonder was yet to come. For, when those plodding drayhorses who call themselves our neighbors refused to believe Rachel Anna’s story, the entire court of Judah the Pious traveled all the way from Cracow just to convince them that she was telling the truth.”

  “I see,” muttered Judah, his eyes narrowing in fury, “the holy beloved saint has seen fit to play with my life once again. And indeed, it would seem that his judgment has remained admirably consistent over the years. Really, one cannot help but agree: a child born of a dream is no more improbable than an infant fathered by the filthy worms and maggots of the village graveyard.”

  Stung by the unexpected cruelty of her son’s reply, Hannah felt all the energy drain from her body, so that she could not prevent her shoulders from sagging, nor her frame from assuming the brittle angles of a tired old woman. Searching her mind for a suitable reply, she raised her smarting eyes to see Judah climbing the ladder which led to the attic. In her agitation, Hannah Polikov could only echo a phrase which she had often heard Simon use in reference to their child. “With all your knowledge,” she called after him, “you still know nothing.”

  But her son was no longer listening. On every rung of the ladder, he was busily inventing another suspicion, another accusation, another method of extracting the truth from Rachel Anna. He felt quite certain that no one but his mother and the fools of Cracow could possibly believe this fable about babies conceived in visions. Briefly, he allowed himself to speculate on the identity of his wife’s lover: had he been cuckolded by a gray-whiskered merchant, or by one of the young men with whom he had attended Rabbi Joseph Joshua’s school?

  What disturbed him most, however, was the question of why Rachel Anna had lied to the villagers—lied in a manner designed to contradict all the principles which the two of them had always held most sacred. Perhaps she had done it out of spite, in the hope that her outrageous claim would reach him in Danzig. Perhaps the months of loneliness had disturbed her reason, shaken her wits. Perhaps she has gone mad, thought Judah ben Simon, and suddenly, the memory of Dr. Boris Silentius’s glittering eyes made him almost afraid to reach the attic.

  Yet as soon as the young man entered his childhood room, Silentius’s eyes dimmed and vanished from his mind like two fireflies extinguishing their lights. Dumbly, Judah stared at Rachel Anna, who was sitting up in bed, dandling the tiny pink infant to make it stop crying; even in the pale candlelight, he saw at once that his wife was far more beautiful than he had remembered. Her red hair, grown longer and thicker over the two years, fanned out against the pillow and down over her shoulders; the tears of anger in her blue-green eyes only made them shine more brilliantly. She was dressed in a lace-trimmed nightgown of fine, yellowing silk, which had once been the pride of Hannah’s trousseau, and which—the old woman had once confessed over a third glass of wine—she had never found any reason to wear to bed with Simon Polikov.

  Judah ben Simon stopped several feet from the bed; his head felt empty, dizzy, he could think of nothing to say. He and Rachel Anna stared at each other in silence until the baby ceased its yowling and permitted them to speak.

  “Welcome home,” she said at last, smiling uncertainly. “How was your stay in Danzig?”

  “Useless,” he answered grimly, “utterly useless.”

  “I cannot believe that,” teased his wife. “By now, you must know more about the ways of nature th
an God himself.”

  “The only thing I learned,” replied Judah, deadly serious, “was the importance of trusting my own judgment.”

  “Then I am sorry your time could not have been more profitably spent,” said Rachel Anna. “I myself learned exactly the same thing, and I did not need to travel all the way to Danzig.”

  He knew that she was challenging him to resume the conversation he had begun downstairs, to express the same disbelief and scorn he had been heaping on his mother. But he simply could not bring himself to start so soon; his second wind had gone, and had left him with an aching desire for a few moments of peace.

  “So this is your baby,” he said, smiling, sitting on the edge of the bed and hesitantly running one hand over the child’s head.

  “Yes,” she replied, relaxing slightly.

  “Good strong lungs,” murmured Judah ben Simon.

  “Of course,” Rachel Anna said pointedly, looking hard at her husband.

  But still, Judah could not begin asking the obvious questions. “Tell me,” he said, trying to approach the subject indirectly, “have they made it very difficult for you in this town?”

  “After the departure of the Cracower court,” she answered, without taking her eyes from his face, “the people were very kind. I like to think that they actually accepted the scholars’ authority, and at last believed my word; but perhaps it was only the money they made during the sages’ visit which sweetened their doubts. At any rate, the village women soon began besieging me with friendly advice about pregnancy and childbirth, and well-intentioned warnings about the deformed infant they feared might result in my particular case. The apothecary’s wife confidently predicted that I would follow in the unfortunate path of the famous Frau Elisabeth of Bremen, who, in the space of one night, gave birth to twelve children, three dogs, two roosters, and a spotted boar.”

  “But none of their predictions came true?” asked Judah anxiously. “The baby is completely normal?”