Rabbi Rapaport is a tall, sturdily built man with a gray beard that splits in two and flows down over his chest as though in two icicles. He speaks in a quiet voice, and in this simple way, he subordinates people, since they must make an effort in order to understand his words, which forces them to pay attention. Wherever he appears, he always inspires respect. It will be the same again today, and Hayim haKohen Rapaport, head rabbi of Lwów, will soon be here; he will come in quietly, and yet all eyes will turn to him from around the tables, and everyone will fall silent. Then Pinkas will show him one of the first pamphlets, already put together and sewn, with perfectly evenly cut pages. Although he is slightly older than Rapaport, Pinkas often has the impression that the latter is his father, or even his grandfather. The truth is that holy people have no age; they are born old. Rapaport’s praise means more to Pinkas than any gold ingot. Every word the rabbi says Pinkas commits to memory, and in his mind he plays out any scenes of praise over and over. The rabbi never scolds. When he does not praise, he is silent, and his silence is heavy as a stone.
In the rabbi’s house now there is a kind of extended chancellery. Tables are arranged around the room, and stools, and writing stands, and at them the most important document in existence today is being copied out. His text has already gone to the printer’s, and the first proofs have been returned. Some of the men here are cutting them, others are folding the pages into the small brochure format and gluing onto each pamphlet a thicker cardboard cover that displays the long and complicated title that flows over half the page: Documenta Judaeos in Polonia concernentia ad Acta Metrices suscepta et ex iis fideliteriterum descripta et extradicta. Pinkas played a part in this, by organizing the office here, and, since he also speaks and reads Polish, aiding in the translation. He contributed a great deal to the cause of a certain Zelig, who escaped execution in ?ytomierz and walked to Rome to demand justice of the Pope. For the Holy Office in Rome they had to translate into Polish and Hebrew what this Zelig had managed to obtain on his mission, and also to translate into Latin and Hebrew what King Zygmunt III had written in the records of the royal crown in 1592. As well as a letter on behalf of Zelig to the Warsaw nuncio issued by the prefect of the Holy Office, in which it is clearly stated that the Holy Office, after a thorough examination of the question of the accusations of the use of Christian blood in ?ytomierz and the alleged ritual murder, asserts that the same are utterly without foundation. And that all further accusations of this kind are to be dismissed, as the letting of Christian blood has no basis in the Jewish religion, nor in the Jewish tradition. Finally, Rapaport, through the intercession of his friends, managed to get a letter from Visconti, the papal nuncio, to Baron Brühl, in which the nuncio confirms that the Jews turned for help to the highest office of the Church, to the Pope, and that the Pope took up their defense against this dire libel.
And it is almost exactly how Pinkas had earlier imagined it, although it rarely happens that imagination so corresponds to reality. (Pinkas is old enough to understand how it works: God only gives us situations we couldn’t have come up with ourselves.)
Rapaport comes in, and Pinkas hands him the newly bound pamphlet. The shadow of a smile passes over the rabbi’s face, though there is one thing Pinkas did not foresee: that the rabbi, out of habit, would open the book from the other side, in the Jewish manner, and that instead of the title page, he would see the very end of it first:
The Holy Office has recently considered all available testimonies that Jews use human blood to prepare their bread, called matzah, and that for this reason they murder children. We firmly state that there are no grounds for such accusations. If such accusations ever arise again, a decision must be made not on the basis of witness statements, but on convincing criminal evidence.
The rabbi looks over these words but doesn’t understand what he is reading. Pinkas, after waiting for a moment, approaches, leans toward him, and starts translating fluently, in a light, quiet, but victorious voice.
Who Pinkas runs into at the market in Lwów
Pinkas is looking at a certain person at the market in Lwów. Dressed like a Christian, with shoulder-length hair that is thin, feathery. He has a white stock tie at his neck, his face is shaved, and aged. Two wrinkles cut vertically down his still-young forehead. Sensing that he is being observed, he gives up the purchase of woolen stockings and tries to disappear into the crowd. But Pinkas sets off after him, brushing aside the vendors. He bumps into a girl with a basket of nuts, but finally he manages to grab the man by the side of his coat.
“Yehuda? Is it you?”
The man turns around reluctantly and looks Pinkas up and down from head to toe.
“Yehuda?” asks Pinkas, with more doubt in his voice this time, and lets the kapota go.
“It is I, Uncle Pinkas,” the man says quietly.
Pinkas’s throat closes up at this. He covers his eyes with his hands.
“What has happened to you? Are you no longer a rabbi in Glinno? What are you wearing? What have you done?”
But his nephew seems dead set against this talk.
“I cannot speak with you, Uncle,” he says. “I have to go—”
“What do you mean, you can’t speak to me?”
The erstwhile rabbi of Glinno turns around and makes to leave, but his path is blocked by peasants leading cows. Pinkas says:
“I’m not letting you get away. You owe me an explanation.”
“There is nothing to explain. Don’t touch me, Uncle. I have nothing to do with you now.”
“No.” Pinkas suddenly understands, and staggers back in horror. “Do you know that you have condemned yourself for all eternity? You’re with them? Have you been baptized, or are you waiting your turn? If your mother had lived to see this, it would have broken her heart.”
Pinkas suddenly, in the middle of the market, begins to cry; his lips curl back into a horseshoe, and sobs shake his skinny body, and tears flow out of his eyes and flood his small, wrinkled face. People look on in curiosity and no doubt think this poor soul has been robbed—that now he’s weeping over some lost groszy. The erstwhile rabbi of Glinno, now Jacob Goliński, glances around uncertainly. He must feel sorry for his relative then, because he goes up to him and gently takes him by the shoulder.
“I know you cannot understand me. I am not a bad person.”
“Satan has laid claim to you, to all of you, you are all worse than Satan himself, never in all my days . . . You are no longer a Jew!”
“Uncle, let’s go over to the gate there . . .”
“And do you know that I lost Gitla, my only daughter, because of all of you? Do you realize?”
“I never saw her there.”
“She’s not there. She’s gone. And you will never find her.”
Then, suddenly, violently, he hits Goliński in the chest, with all his strength, and although he’s big, and strong, Goliński staggers on receiving such a blow.
Pinkas stands on his tiptoes and hisses straight into his face:
“Yehuda, you have plunged a knife into my heart today. But you will come back to us. One day you will come back.”
Then he turns and hurries off between the stalls.
A mirror and ordinary glass