It certainly would seem that way. He has left Poland behind, a dark and gloomy country in spite of the snowy white that covers it. There is no longer a place for him here.
At first they listen to the messenger in disbelief, but soon their disbelief turns to anger, not toward Jacob, who escaped, but rather with themselves, because they should have known how things were going to turn out. The worst is the realization that nothing is ever going to change now. The excrement of the horse standing in front of Israel’s home steams in the frost, ruining the clean white sheet of snow, a sad proof of the weakness of all of creation; it rapidly transforms into a frozen lump of matter.
“God has released us from him and from the many temptations he represented,” says Sobla, going into the house, where she bursts into tears. She cries all evening. No one knows why she’s crying—she didn’t even like Jacob, his noisy retinue, those conceited lady guardians, shifty Nahman. She never believed a single word they said, and their teachings made her afraid.
Israel scolds her. But once they are lying under the goose-down duvet, breathing in the damp smell of feathers collected from several generations of geese, he awkwardly tries to hold her to him.
“I feel like I’m in prison . . . My whole life is a prison,” Sobla sobs, taking a lot of air into her lungs, but she is unable to say anything more. Israel doesn’t say anything, either.
Then an even more astonishing piece of news comes to them—that over there in Turkey, Jacob has converted to the Muslim religion. Now Israel, too, sinks into a chair, overcome. His mother is the one to remind him that it was the same with the First, Sabbatai. Did he not don a turban? Is this not also in the design for salvation? Their speculations go into the night. For some, this is an act of cowardice, an unimaginable act. For others, it is a clever political move. No one believes that Jacob really became a follower of Muhammad.
Even the most bizarre, most frightening thing can start to seem natural, familiar, when it becomes a part of the plan. This is what Israel says. He’s now in the lumber trade with Christians. He buys newly hewn trees from the forest from the local lord, then sells them onward. With the donations given to Yente he’s been able to purchase a well-built cart and two strong horses—powerful assets. Sometimes, as he is waiting for a load, he squats down with the lumberjacks and they smoke a pipe together. He has especially good talks with the magnate’s administrator, who has some idea of the mysteries of religion and other such things, unlike the lumberjacks. It is after one such conversation with the administrator that Israel discovers that the death of Jesus, the Christian Messiah, was also a part of God’s plan. Jesus had to be crucified, for otherwise the action of salvation could not have gotten under way. It is strange, but in some twisted way, it does make sense. Israel thinks about it for a long time, struck by the similarity to Sabbatai Tzvi, who had to let himself be imprisoned, had to put on a turban and be willing to go into exile. The Messiah has to fall as low as possible, otherwise he isn’t the Messiah. Israel returns with a heavy cart but a light heart.
The flow of pilgrims into Sobla and Israel’s yard has stopped completely now. People have begun to fear public miracles; better if they take place concealed somewhere. But Pesel and Freyna do not come to see Yente any less often, although Pesel is preparing for her wedding, the engagement ceremony having just taken place; the boy, like her, is thirteen years old. She saw him twice, and he struck her as pleasant, if a bit immature. She and her sister are embroidering tablecloths now; Freyna will be getting married soon enough, in any case. Sometimes Pesel, when it was still warm, would bring her sewing to her grandmother’s, as she calls Yente, and work near her. She would tell her all kinds of stories, confide her plans. That she would like, for example, to live in a big city and be a great lady. Have her own carriage and dresses embellished with lace, and a small silk bag where she would keep a perfumed handkerchief, because she doesn’t really know what else a person would keep in such a little bag. Now, however, it is too cold. Her fingers get so frozen they can no longer maneuver the needles. The dewdrops on Yente’s body transform into ice crystals, tiny and gorgeous. Pesel discovered this. She would pick them up on her finger, and before they melted, she would take them up to the window, into the sunlight. For a moment, she would behold those miracles. Whole palaces of crystals, whiter than the snow, glittering with glass, chandeliers, cut-glass chalices . . .
“Where did you see all that? In a snowflake?” Freyna wonders. But one day she carefully takes a snowflake onto her fingertip and looks at it under the sun. It is a miracle, exceptionally large, almost the size of a small coin like a grosz. Its crystal beauty disappears in a flash, a beauty not of this world, and thus destroyed by human warmth. But thanks to this one brief instant, it is possible to glimpse that other, higher world, to reassure yourself that it is there.
How is it possible that the frost doesn’t get the better of Yente? Israel checks a couple of times, especially in the mornings, when the trees are cracking from the cold. But Yente is barely even cool. Frost settles on her lashes and brows. Sometimes Sobla comes, too, covers herself up with sheepskin and dozes off.
“We can’t bury you, Grandma,” Pesel says to Yente. “But we can’t keep you here. Papa says that the times have gotten very troubled, and no one knows what will happen tomorrow.”
“Or if there will even be a tomorrow,” adds her sister.
“The end of the world is coming. We are afraid,” says Sobla, who is shaken. She thinks Grandma Yente’s eyelids are moving—they are, they really are, she can hear them. “What are we to do? Is this one of those hopeless causes you seem to be able to help with? Help us.” Sobla holds her breath so that she won’t miss even the tiniest sign. But there is nothing.
Sobla is afraid. It would be better not to have the grandmother of that cursed and Turkified Jacob in their barn. It invites disaster. When she found out they had imprisoned him, she had felt a sort of satisfaction—that’s where you belong, Jacob, for wanting more than your fair share. You always sat yourself upon the highest branch, you always wanted to be better than everyone. Now you’ll end up in a dungeon. Yet when she found out he was safe in Giurgiu, she felt relief. Before, so much had seemed possible, and now the cold and darkness had come back. In October the light retired past the shed and no longer peeked into the yard. The cold would scoot under the stones for the duration of the summer, but it would come back—it would always come back.