The Books of Jacob Read online

  We need to be able to keep our balance. If the soul is too voracious or too porous, then too many different forms will get inside it and thereby distance it from the stream of the divine.

  After all it is said: “He who is full of himself has no space left for God.”

  Moliwda’s village consisted of some dozen small, neat houses made of stone and covered in slate, between which ran paths lined with pebbles; the homes stood at uneven intervals around the trampled little meadow, through which flowed a stream, creating a small pool. Higher up was the water catchment, a construction built of wood, which, like a mill wheel, propelled certain machines, no doubt to grind grain. Behind the homes stretched little gardens and orchards, thick, well-tended, and we could from our very entrance glimpse ripening pumpkins.

  On the grass, which was already dry by this time of year, gleamed great canvas rectangles that made it look as though the village had been decorated with white holiday collars. There was something strange about it, for a little village, and I soon realized that there were no fowl here, so that there was none of what leaps out at one in every town: the toddling ducklings, the incessantly honking geese, and the furiously attacking ganders.

  Our arrival caused a great deal of commotion, the little child sentries being the first to run out to us, having been the first to detect newcomers. Startled by the presence of outsiders, they clung to Moliwda as though they were his own children, and he spoke tenderly to them, in a croaking language we did not know. Then some men showed up from somewhere, bearded, squat, in shirts made of raw linen, and seemingly gentle, and only after them did the women run up, laughing. And everyone was dressed in white, and all in linen, and we could see that they made the cloth themselves, for across the common lands around the village there shone recently woven pieces of it everywhere, hung out to whiten in the sun.

  Moliwda took down the sacks of what he’d bought in the city. He told the peasants to greet the guests, which they gladly did, forming a circle around us and singing a short, joyful song. The gesture of greeting here was a hand placed over the heart, then transferred to the mouth. I was entranced by the appearances and manner of these peasants—though that word seemed to apply rather to some other form of person, for unlike the peasants I had seen before, in Podolia, these people were cheerful and welcoming, and evidently sated.

  We were completely astonished—even Jacob, whom nothing is able to surprise in general, seemed amazed by the extent of our welcome, and for a moment, he seemed to almost forget who he was. The fact that we were Jews did not bother them in the least; on the contrary, it was precisely because we were different from them that they showed themselves so well disposed toward us. Only Osman seemed not to be surprised by our reception; he kept on asking Moliwda about their provisions, their division of labor, their income from the vegetables they were cultivating, their weaving. But Moliwda didn’t seem comfortable answering all these questions, and to our astonishment, it turned out that the person who had the most to say on such matters was a woman whom they called “Mother,” although she wasn’t old.

  We were led into a large room, where the young people, girls and boys, waited upon us as we ate. The food was simple and delicious—aged honey, dried fruits, olives, and a baked eggplant spread they applied to a crust they baked directly on a hot stone—with spring water to drink.

  Moliwda behaved in a dignified and calm manner, but I noticed that although he was treated with respect, he was nonetheless not their master. Everyone called him “brate,” and he called them “brate” and “sestro,” which meant that they considered one another brothers and sisters, like one great family. When we had had our fill, the woman they called “Mother,” also dressed in white from head to toe, came to sit with us. She smiled warmly at us, although she scarcely spoke. It was clear that Moliwda held her in the highest esteem. When she started to gather herself, he stood, and following his example, we all stood and were led into the room where we were to spend the night. Everything was very modest and clean, and I slept splendidly, though I was so tired I had nary the strength to continue taking notes. For example, to record the fact that in my room the bed was merely bedclothes on the floor, and, instead of a wardrobe, I had only a stick suspended from strings on which to hang my clothes.

  On the second day, Jacob and I observed how well Moliwda had arranged things there.

  He surrounded himself with twelve brothers and twelve sisters—they made up the management of this village, on equal terms, women and men. When the time came to make some determination, they gathered on the little square to vote. When they agreed to something, they raised their hands. All of the huts and all their other holdings, like the well, the carts, the horses—belonged to everyone, to anyone who needed them, and he or she would take it as if on lease, would borrow it, and then, having done with it, give it back. There were few children, since they viewed procreation as a sin, but what young ones there were did not remain with their mothers, but were also communal, with several older women taking care of them, since the younger women worked in the fields or the home. We saw them painting the walls of the homes and adding to the whitewash a dye to make the houses light blue. The children were never told who their father was, and the fathers didn’t learn it, either; that could have given rise to injustices, partiality to their descendants. Because the women did know, they played an important role here, equal to that of the men, and it was apparent that for this reason these women were different from women elsewhere—calmer and more reasonable, sensible. The community’s accounts were kept by a woman, who could read and write and reckon. She was very learned, and Moliwda addressed her with respect.

  We all wondered about Moliwda’s role here: Was he in charge, or merely helping, or maybe even in the service of that woman, unless perhaps she was in his? But he just laughed at us and mocked us, saying we were still seeing everything in that old, worst way: insisting on ladders wherever we went, one person standing above another, forcing the lower one to do all kinds of things. This one more important, that one less. Whereas here in this village near Craiova, they had arranged things in a different way. Everyone was equal. Everyone had the right to live, eat, be happy, and work. Anyone could leave at any moment. Did anyone ever leave? Sometimes. Rarely. Where would they go?

  And yet, we had the strong impression that Moliwda and that woman with the gentle smile were the ones in charge. At first we all wondered, quietly, whether she was his wife, but he soon corrected our mistake: she was his sister, just like every woman here. “Do you sleep with them?” Jacob asked him straight out. Moliwda just shrugged and showed us the big, carefully tended vegetable gardens, which yielded crops twice a year, and he said that it was off these gardens that the community lived, off the gifts of the sun, because if you looked at it the way he did, it all came from the sun, from the light, which was of course for free and for all.

  We took our repast at the long tables where everyone else was sitting, too, first loudly reciting a prayer in a language I could not recognize.

  They didn’t eat meat, just plant foods, occasionally cheese, when someone had given them some. They were disgusted by eggs just the same as they were by meat. Of the vegetables, they did not eat broad beans, since they believed that souls might reside there before being born, in those little grains laid out in a pod like in some coffer. On this we agreed: Some plants contained more light than others—the most light being held by the cucumber, and also the eggplant and all types of long melons.

  They believed in the transmigration of souls, as we did, and in addition Moliwda said he considered that this belief was once universal, until Christianity came along and buried it. The Bogomils valued the planets and considered them their rulers.

  What most astonished us, although Jacob and I did not betray it, was the fact that there were so many similarities to what we ourselves believed. The Bogomils believed, for example, in the so-called holy speech to be used during rites of initiation. It was holy because it was the opposite: it w
as shameless. Everyone who passed through initiation had to hear out a story offensive to common decency, and this came from a very old tradition in their faith, from a time when it was pagan mystery plays in honor of the ancient goddess Baubo or the unbridled Greek god Dionysus. I was hearing the names of these gods for the first time, Moliwda pronounced them quickly and as though ashamed, but I made a note of them right away.

  After lunch, we sat down over sweets, traditional Turkish baklava, in Moliwda’s little home; a dash of wine was served with it, made here—I had seen the little vineyard behind the gardens.

  “How do you pray?” Jacob asked him.

  “That is the simplest thing of all,” said Moliwda. “It’s the heart’s prayer: ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.’ You don’t have to do anything special. God hears you.”

  They told us marriage was sinful, too. That was the real sin of Adam and Eve, since it should be as it is in nature—people should connect with one another through their souls, not through some dead convention. Those who join together in spirit, spiritual brothers and sisters, can physically commingle, and the children of such unions are gifts. Those born of married couples are “children of dead law.”

  In the evening, they stood in a circle and began to dance around a woman in the center who was a virgin. At first she appeared in white robes, then after the sacred act she changed into a red robe, and in the end, when all were greatly weakened by the frenzied rhythm of their dance around her and fell down from their exhaustion, she donned a black coat.

  All of this felt strangely familiar to us, and returning to Craiova, to Jacob’s office, we spoke in such excitement that for a long time that night we were unable to fall asleep.

  A few days later, Nussen and I set out for Poland with goods and with news. For the whole of the journey our heads were filled with scenes from Moliwda’s village. Nussen especially—he dreamed, entranced, as we were crossing the Dniester again, that such villages might be established back home in Podolia. What I liked most about it was that it was not important there whether we were mother or father, daughter or son, woman or man. There was no great difference between us. We were all just forms that took on light whenever it so much as glistened over matter.

  12.

  Of Jacob’s expedition to the grave of Nathan of Gaza

  Whoever behaves as irrationally as Jacob en route to the grave of Nathan the prophet must be either a madman or a saint, Abraham writes his brother Tovah.

  My business has suffered from having hired your son-in-law. There were more people and more conversations in my shop than ever before, but the monetary gain from that has been slight. If you ask me, your son-in-law is ill-suited to shop life. I don’t say that as a reproach, for I know the expectations you have for him. He is a restless and agitated man, not a sage but a rebel. He abandoned everything, and, having been dissatisfied with the money I’d been providing him in exchange for his work, he gave himself a severance payment when he left by stealing several valuable things. I am including an accounting of it on a separate sheet of paper. I hope you will prevail upon him to pay me back the amount I have tallied. They got it into their heads, him and his followers, to visit the grave of Nathan of Gaza (of blessed memory). And although it was a noble purpose, because of their hot heads they did it too abruptly, forsaking everything in their haste to depart—though they had just time enough to offend any number of people, and to borrow money from those whom they hadn’t yet offended. There is no place for him here now, even if he wanted to come back, although I suspect he will not want to return.

  I deeply want to believe that you knew what you were doing, giving Hana to someone like him. I believe in your wisdom and your deep prudence, which often ventures far beyond ordinary understanding. I will only tell you that I felt after he left such great relief. Your son-in-law is not suited for this office. I think there are a lot of things he isn’t suited for.

  Of how Nahman follows in Jacob’s footsteps

  Finally, at the beginning of summer, having settled matters in Poland, collected letters and merchandise, Nahman and Nussen set out for the south. Their road leads toward the Dniester, through the fields, a beautiful sun shining, the sky enormous. Nahman has had enough of that Podolian filth, of village smallness, envy and simplemindedness, he yearns for figs on the trees and the smell of coffee. But most of all, for Jacob. To Isohar he carries gifts from Shorr; for Reb Mordke, he has an amber tincture all the way from Gdańsk, a medicine to help him with his aching joints.

  The banks of the river are now covered with brown grass, dry as bone, which under human and animal footsteps crumbles into dust. Nahman stands on the bank looking south, toward the other side. Suddenly he hears a rustling in the scrub nearby, and a moment later, a black-andwhite dog comes out of it, skinny and dirty, with swollen teats. Puppies scramble after her. The dog passes him, not even noticing the man standing motionless, but one of the puppies spots him and stops, perplexed. For a moment, they size each other up. The puppy looks at him curiously, trusting, but then, as though someone has just informed it that it’s standing face-to-face with its greatest enemy, it darts off after its mother. Nahman interprets this as a bad omen.

  In the evening, they cross over the Dniester. On the shore, peasants burn bonfires, and along the water, wreaths float with lit candles. Shrieks and giggles resound. Near the shore, girls wade into the water up to their knees, in long white shirts hitched halfway up their thighs. Their hair is down, and they wear wreaths on their heads. They look at them, these Jews on horseback, in silence, until Nahman starts to think they’re not really village girls bidding them farewell at all, but rather water spirits who float up to the surface by night to drown whatever humans they encounter. Suddenly one of them leans over and starts splashing them, and the others join in, laughing. The men urge their horses on across the river.

  News of some new holy man comes to them more often and more colorfully, the deeper they venture into Turkish territory. For a time, they ignore it. But it is impossible to keep this up for long. At the stops they make, where Jewish travelers usually swap gossip picked up on the road, they find out more and more details, for example that this holy man is in Sofia with some vast company and is working miracles there. Many take him for a con man and a swindler. In the stories it’s an old Jew from Turkey, or sometimes a young man from Bucharest, so that it takes them a while to realize that all these people, all these travelers, are talking about Jacob. Once that sinks in, Nahman and Nussen don’t sleep the whole long night, trying to figure out what has happened in their absence. And instead of feeling happy—for is this not exactly what they’d hoped for?—they begin to be afraid. The best medicine for fear and anxiety is the writing box. Nahman takes it out at every stop and writes down what is being said of Jacob. It goes like this:

  In one of the villages, he spent half a day jumping on horseback over a certain hole, a deep hole into which it would be dangerous to fall. The horse, tired, began to resist with its hooves, but Jacob kept insisting. Soon the whole village was standing around him and that hole, and the Turkish guards came to see what the cause of the throng was and whether it wasn’t by any chance an uprising against the sultan.

  Or:

  Jacob went up to one wealthy-looking merchant, reached into the man’s pocket, took out of it something like a snake, and waved it around, shouting over people’s heads. A terrible tumult arose, and the horrible screech of women spooked the horses of the Turkish guards, while Jacob burst out laughing, and he laughed so hard he lay down and rolled in the sand. Then the crowd, embarrassed, saw that it was no snake, but rather just a string of wooden beads.

  Or:

  In some great synagogue he went up onto the bimah, and when it was time to read the Law of Moses, he ripped off the top of the pulpit and started to wave it around, threatening to kill everyone, and everyone ran right out of the temple, thinking him a madman, capable of absolutely anything.

  Or even:

  Once on the road he was attac
ked by a highwayman. Jacob simply shouted up into the sky, and in the blink of an eye, a storm gathered, with lightning that so frightened the highwayman and his associates that they fled at once.

  Now, in smaller letters, Nahman adds:

  We rushed to Sofia, but we didn’t manage to catch him there.

  We asked all of our own everything we could about him, and they told us in animated tones of his exploits in that city, saying, too, that when he had done, he and his whole group had set off for Salonika. And now, they said, he rode like a tzaddik in a cart at the head of the caravan, behind him all the other carts and carriages, horses and people on foot, taking up the whole road and sending up a cloud of dust over everyone’s heads. Wherever he stopped, people wanted to know who this was, and when it was explained to them, they dropped whatever it was they had been doing and wiped their hands on their kapotas and then joined in with this caravan out of curiosity, if nothing else. So they told us. And they would hold forth further on the handsomeness of the horses and the quality of the carriages, assuring us that there were hundreds of people now involved.

  Then I saw this “company” myself—paupers and mendicants, the kind who will never have a place to hang their hats. Sick and broken people desperate for some small miracle, though desirous still of scandal and sensation. Youngsters who had run away from their homes and their heavy-handed fathers; merchants who, out of lack of equilibrium, had lost everything, and now, full of bitterness and spite, were seeking any kind of satisfaction; all types of madmen and those who had simply fled their families, having had their fill of dull obligations. Add to this, too, female beggars and ladies of light virtue, sensing the advantages of being in such a big group. Not to mention the abandoned women, widows no one wants, children in hand, as well as Christian ragamuffins, and vagrants without any sort of occupation. This was the element that began to follow Jacob, and if you were to ask them what was happening and in whose wake they were following, none of them would know how to respond.