Along the way, he runs into some people he knows, old merchants who, huddled together and looking excited, are having a noisy debate. Joining them, he hears again the thing that has had the whole town in an uproar since yesterday.
Two Jews from Kamieniec Podolski, disguised as peasants and armed with spades, tried to kidnap one of their daughters, who had married Leyb Abramowicz and had already prepared to be baptized, along with her child. The pair beat both of them badly, daughter and husband. Even killing her would have been better than letting her be baptized.
Thus Pinkas doesn’t really understand why the rabbis’ discussion takes a different turn. They refer to a certain letter that says they have to simply cut off these heretics, get rid of them as they would a gangrenous extremity, kick them out of the holy community for all time, condemn them and, so doing, ultimately cause them to vanish into oblivion. May their names be forgotten. He knows this letter by heart, for he has written it out hundreds of times:
Abraham haKohen of Zamo?? to Jacob Emden in Altona
The holy community of Lublin has paid a great deal for medicine to treat this plagued world. Our wise men who gathered in Konstantynów to confer about this matter determined that there is no way to proceed in this case other than to use cunning to force those afflicted by the plague to be baptized, for it is written: “People will live separately.” Let, then, this particular plague be cut off from the children of Israel for all time. Let us thank God that some of them have already been baptized, among them the cursed Elisha Shorr, may his name be erased. With respect to those who have not yet converted and are still donning Jewish attire and attending services in our houses of prayer, we shall be diligent in informing the Christian authorities as soon as we have discovered these supposed Jews’ hidden intentions. That is why we have already sent our messenger to Lwów, that he might arrive there before the sect of these villains does, to meet with the papal nuncio and present him with our report. May there be a chance to put these destroyers, these dogs, these heretics working against God in prison and to place upon them the curse we placed several years ago on one Moshe of Podhajce and on their evil leader, Jacob Frank.
Pinkas is profoundly convinced that the old tradition of their forefathers was the right approach, to pass over all matters connected with Sabbatai Tzvi in silence; nothing good, nothing bad, no cursing, no blessing. A thing that is not talked about ceases to exist. He contemplates that wisdom as he sits on a quaking cart that is covered in a fustian sheet. So great is the power of the word that wherever it is lacking, the world just disappears. Next to him sit some peasant women dressed up as if they are going to a wedding, along with two older Jews, a man and a woman. They keep trying to talk to him, but Pinkas resists their attempts at conversation.
Why talk? If you want to rid the world of someone, it does not take fire and sword, nor any type of violence. You just have to pass over that person in silence and never call him by name. In this way, he will gradually recede into oblivion. If another person insists on inquiring into the matter, you must threaten him with herem.
He stays in Borszczów with the rabbi, as the messenger of Reb Rapaport. He has brought with him a whole bag of writings and letters. Including the one about the heretics. They read it in front of all of the members of the kahal in the evening, in a cramped room where little bits of soot fly up toward the ceiling from the smoking candles.
The next day, Pinkas goes to the Borszczów mikvah. It is a shack with boarded-up windows and a sunken roof. Inside, it is split in two—on one side, the bony bath attendant, black with soot and in a cloud of smoke, throws beech logs into the stove and heats water in a pot. On the other side, in semidarkness, are two wooden baths for the women. Farther along, a reservoir with a capacity of forty buckets is dug into the ground. Its perimeter is strewn with the remnants of candles, an uneven rim of stearin and tallow, slippery, smelly, littered with black wicks. Pinkas submerges himself in the lukewarm water seventy-two times, then squats so that the water comes up to his beard. He examines the mostly gray cloud of beard as it floats on the surface. Let me find her, he thinks, and he repeats those words in his mind: Let me find her, find her, let me just find her in one piece, I will forgive her, let me find her, that child, that child with the delicate soul, please, let me find her.
It takes a long time, this anxious prayer said in secret, for no one knows of Pinkas’s intentions. He realizes that it is late when he starts shivering. The bony, grimy bath attendant has gone off somewhere, and the fire under the pot has gone out altogether. Pinkas is alone in the mikvah. With a rough linen towel he dries himself until his skin hurts. The next day, pretending to be returning to Lwów but trusting in God, he hires a terrible driver and his terrible cart and heads for Ivanie.
The closer they get to Ivanie, the more traffic there is. He sees carts loaded with equipment, then a whole cart of potatoes covered with a big old horse blanket and a big basket of nuts, and beside it two men chatting, not paying attention to anyone else. He sees a family with several children and all their belongings on the cart, on their way somewhere from Kamieniec. These are they, he thinks. He feels disgust toward them, they seem dirty to him—their kapotas, their stockings, for some of them dress like the Hasidim do, while others dress like peasants, in peasant sukmana. How he must have sinned, for his daughter to be among these people.
“And who are you?” some bruiser asks in a hostile tone, from his post by the gate, which is nailed together from pieces of wood and adorned with spruce branches. The needles have crumbled off, and the bare branches look like spikes, like barbed wire.
“I’m a Jew just like you are,” Pinkas says calmly.
“Where from?”
“From Lwów.”
“What do you want from us?”
“I’m looking for my daughter. Gitla . . . She’s tall . . .” He doesn’t know how to describe her.
“Are you one of us? Are you a true believer?”
Pinkas doesn’t know what to say. He wrestles with it, then finally answers:
“No.”
The bruiser seems to feel respect for this older, well-dressed man. He has Pinkas wait, and after a long while, he brings up a woman. She is wearing a light-colored apron and has keys in her richly ruffled skirt. Her face, in a bonnet like the Christian women wear, is focused and sensitive.
“Gitla,” says Pinkas, and his tone unintentionally turns pleading. “She left last year, when . . .” Pinkas doesn’t know what to call him. “. . . when he was going around the villages. She was seen in Busk. Tall, young.”
“I know you from somewhere,” the woman says.
“I am Pinkas Abramowicz of Lwów, her father.”