Into the minds of those assembled in those cramped quarters, in that lowceilinged room, comes a thought that reassures them. Everyone is connected to everyone else. The world is simply the multiplication of this room in the Shorrs’ Rohatyn home above the market square. Through the slits in the curtains and the haphazardly nailed door starlight seeps in, which means that even the stars are close acquaintances, that some forebear or cousin must certainly have had some close contact with them. Say one word in a room in Rohatyn, and soon it will be carried all around the world, on the paths and roads taken by commercial expeditions, with the help of the messengers who roam the earth incessantly, bearing letters and repeating gossip. Like Nahman ben Levi of Busk.
Nahman knows what to talk about now, giving every detail of the bride’s garments, of the beauty of her twin brother, Hayim, the two as alike as drops of water. He describes the dishes served at table, and the musicians and their exotic instruments, never before seen here in the north. He describes the figs ripening on the trees, the stone house situated so that you can see the great Danube from it, and the vineyards, where clusters of grapes have already formed; soon the grapes will look like Lilith’s nipples as she nursed.
The groom, Jacob Leybowicz, is muscular and tall, says Nahman; dressed after the Turkish fashion, he looks like a pasha. He’s already spoken of as “wise Jacob” even though he’s only thirty. He studied in Smyrna with Isohar of Podhajce (here once more the admiring smacks of the lips of his listeners). In spite of his youth he has already amassed a considerable fortune, trading silk and precious stones. His bride is fourteen years old. They make a handsome couple. During the wedding, the wind stops blowing.
“Then,” says Nahman, and he pauses again, though he is in a hurry for this story to be told, “then Jacob’s father-in-law went under the huppah and whispered something into Jacob’s ear. Even if everyone had been perfectly silent, if the birds had stopped singing and the dogs had stopped barking, if all the carriages had come to a halt—even so, no one would have overheard the secret Tovah told to Jacob. Because it was the Raza deMehemenuta, the secret of our faith, although few are the men who are wise enough to hear it told. The secret is so powerful that they say your body starts to shake all over if you learn it. It can only be whispered into the ear of the person closest to you, and on top of that only so that no one can see, so that no one guesses either by reading the lips of the teller or by the changes in the listener’s awestruck face. It can only be whispered into the ear of the chosen, who have sworn they will never repeat it to anyone lest a curse bringing illness or sudden death befall them.
“How can this great secret be contained in a single sentence?” Nahman anticipates the question. “Is it a simple assertion, or perhaps the opposite—a negation? Or perhaps it is a question?”
Whatever it is, he who learns this secret will forever be at peace and certain of his actions. From this point forward, the most complicated thing will seem simple. Perhaps it’s something complex, because complexity is always closest to the truth, a sentence that acts as a cork that closes off the mind to thought while opening it to truth. Maybe the secret is a curse, a dozen syllables that seem to be without meaning, or a string of numbers, the numerical values of corresponding letters that reveal a completely different meaning: gematric perfection.
“It was in search of this secret that Hayim Malach was sent from Poland to Turkey many years ago,” says Shorr.
“Did he bring it back?” asks Yeruhim skeptically.
A murmur goes around the room. Nahman’s story is enticing, but it’s hard for people to believe that what he’s describing has to do with someone from around here. Holiness? From here? “Jacob Leybowicz” sounds like the name of every butcher. There’s a furrier from Rohatyn with exactly the same name.
Late in the evening, when everyone’s gone home, Old Man Shorr takes Nahman by the arm, and together they walk out in front of the store.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says, gesturing toward the muddy Rohatyn market square and the dark, hurtling clouds, so low you can almost hear them tearing as they catch on the church tower. “We’re not allowed to buy land, settle down permanently. They chase us off in all directions, and in every generation there’s some disaster, some gezerah. Who are we, and what awaits us?”
They take a few steps away from each other, and in the darkness there is the sound of streams of urine striking the boards of the fence.
Nahman sees a little cottage, stooped beneath a cap of straw thatch, with tiny little windows, rotted boards; beyond it loom others with the same stoop, stuck together like the cells of a honeycomb. And he knows that there is a whole network of passages and walkways and nooks and crannies where carts of wood sit, waiting to be unloaded. And there are courtyards bordered by low fences, atop which during the day clay pots heat up in the sun. Beyond that lie passages that lead to other courtyards so small you can barely turn around in them, each faced with three doors that lead to three different homes. Higher up are attics linking the tops of these little homes, full of pigeons that mark out time with layers of droppings—living clocks. In gardens the size of an overcoat spread out on the ground cabbage leaves struggle to coil, potatoes swell, carrots cling to their beds. It would be wasteful to devote space to flowers other than hollyhocks, which grow straight up. Now, in December, their naked stalks seem to support the houses. Along the little streets the trash heap extends to the fences, guarded by cats and feral dogs. And so it goes through the whole village, along the streets, through the orchards and the bounds of the fields to the river, where the women busily rinse out all the filth of the settlement.
“We need someone who will support us in everything, someone who will sustain us. Not a rabbi, not a hakham, not a rich man, not a warrior. We need a strong man who looks like a weak man, someone with no fear. That man will be the one to get us out of here,” says Elisha Shorr, smoothing down his heavy coat. “Do you know anybody like that?”
“Where?” says Nahman. “Where would we go? To the Land of Israel?”
Elisha turns around and starts back. Nahman catches a whiff of his scent for a second, tobacco not completely dried.
“Into the world.” Elisha Shorr makes a gesture with his hand as if to indicate some area above them, out over the roofs of Rohatyn.
When they are back inside, Elisha Shorr says:
“Nahman, bring him here. This Jacob.”
Isohar’s School, and who God really is: The next installment in the story of Nahman ben Levi of Busk