The weather was foggy and somber when we left the church. The wind lifted the muddied yellow leaves from the ground, and they flew at us like a strange species of bat. Even I, always attuned to the signs God gives us, did not understand what He was trying to tell us then. I beheld Jacob’s tearstained face, and this sight made such a strong impression on me that my knees got weak, and I was unable to go on walking. I had never seen him cry before.
When it was time to go back after the funeral, Jacob told us to grab the sides of his Turkish robe and keep them up, like wings. And so we did; we concentrated on holding up the sides of his robe like blind men, in spite of our sadness and the driving rain that lashed down upon us. We held fast to that coat of Jacob’s that everyone now wanted to have in his hand, if only for a moment, so that we all took turns, the whole way from the cemetery to the palace. The crowds parted for us, and to them we must have looked like strange insects, our faces drenched in rain and tears. “Who is that?” they’d whisper, as down the narrow streets of the town we made our way back to the palace, still holding on to Jacob’s robe. The more surprised they seemed, the stranger the looks they gave us, the better. Our despair, and our grief, pulled us apart from them. Once more we were other. And that was how it was supposed to be. There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as candy. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens—an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren’t obvious. Cleverness and acumen come about. A person who is a stranger gains a new point of view, becomes, whether he likes it or not, a particular type of sage. Who was it who convinced us that being comfortable and familiar was so great? Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work.
The day after Reb Mordke’s funeral, Hershel died. Quick and quiet as a rabbit. Jacob locked himself in his room and did not come out for two days. We had no idea what to do. I scratched at the door and begged him to at least say something. I knew how much he loved Hershel in particular, like he did Her Ladyship, even though he was just an ordinary, well-intentioned child.
During the funeral, Jacob went right up to the altar, knelt there, and suddenly began to sing at full volume “Signor Mostro Abascharo,” or “Our Lord Is Coming Down,” the song people sing in times of duress. Instantly our voices joined in powerfully with his, and we knelt behind him. And as the last words were broken off by sobs, someone—I believe it was Matuszewski—began our holy song, “Yigdal”:
The Messiah will reveal the splendor of Your Kingdom
To the poor, the beaten, the demeaned,
You shall reign forever, our sacred refuge.
“Non ai otro commemetu,” or “There is no one but you,” added Jacob in the old language.
Our voices sounded desperate, filling the church, rising up to the vault and coming back down multiplied, as though an entire army were singing in this strange Eastern language that no one here knew, that contained sounds that were not of this place. I remembered Smyrna, the port, the salty sea air, and I could smell the spices that people here, in this Lublin parish church, had never even dreamed of. The church itself seemed arrested in shock, and the candle flames stopped quavering. The monk who had been laying flowers by the side altar now stood by a column and looked at us as if he were beholding ghosts. Just in case, perhaps, he crossed himself discreetly.
At last, together, so loud that the stained glass seemed to shake in the church’s windows, we prayed in Yiddish that God might lend us a helping hand in this foreign country, Esau’s country, help us, Jacob’s children, lost in the fog, the rain, and this terrible autumn of 1759, which would be followed by an even worse winter. That evening I came to understand that we had taken our first step into the abyss.
The day after the funeral, Jacob and Moliwda went to Warsaw, while the rest of us remained in Lublin, as Krysa had filed a court case claiming assault and battery, and demanding a considerable settlement from the local Jewish kahal. Since everyone was on our side, the trial was to be held quickly, and the ruling would certainly be in our favor. I didn’t care about any of that very much. I went around to the churches of Lublin, sitting in their pews to think and reflect.
Mostly I considered the Shekhinah. I felt that at this terrible time it was the Shekhinah that was emerging from the darkness, struggling among the husks and giving signs, and I remembered my trip to Stamboul with Reb Mordke. It, that Divine Presence, had settled in our rotten world—it, or she, an inconceivable formlessness that nonetheless existed in matter, a glimmering diamond in a lump of black coal. And now I remembered everything, for after all it had been Reb Mordke who introduced me to the mysteries of the Shekhinah. It was he who took me into different holy places, free from the prejudices that are so common among Jews. As soon as we made it to Stamboul, we went to the Hagia Sophia, to the great shrine to that Christian Mary, the Mother of Jesus, of whom Reb Mordke spoke as being close to the Shekhinah. That had astonished me then. I would never have gone into a Christian church myself, and even in that one—which had, after all, been turned into a mosque—I felt uncomfortable, and would have gladly skipped that part of my education. My eyes could not get used to all the paintings. When I spied on the wall a huge likeness of a woman who was furthermore brazenly staring in my direction, I was overcome by a kind of breathlessness I had never experienced before, and my heart started pounding so that I wanted to get out of there, but Reb Mordke grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back. We sat down on the cold hard floor, by the wall under some Greek inscriptions, no doubt engraved there centuries before, and slowly I regained my senses so that my breath became regular again, and I was able once more to behold this wonder:
The woman emerges from the wall, positioned high in the dome’s vault, over our heads, powerful. She is holding a child in her lap, as if she is holding a piece of fruit. But it is not the child that is important. Her mild face betrays no human affect except that which lies at the foundation of everything—a love that is absolutely unconditional. I know, she says, without moving her lips. I know everything, and nothing escapes my understanding. I have been here since the dawn of time, hidden in the smallest particle of matter, in the stone, in the shell, in the wing of an insect, in this leaf, in this drop of water. Split a trunk in two, and you will find me; part a rock, and I will be there.
This is what that enormous figure seemed to be saying to me.
It seemed to me that this majestic person was revealing a painfully obvious truth, yet I remained unable to understand it.
22.
The inn on the right bank of the Vistula