The Shorrs found him in the snow one harsh winter, as they were going home from market. They had only stopped because Elisha needed to answer nature’s call. There was another fugitive with him, dressed like him in a peasant’s sukmana, in shoes stuffed with straw, with a bundle in which only crumbs of bread and socks remained, but that one was dead. The bodies were already dusted with snow, and Elisha thought at first they were dead animals. The corpse the Shorrs left in the woods.
It took a long time for the runaway to thaw. Slowly he came back to life, day by day, as if his whole soul had been frozen and were now melting back to its normal temperature, just like his body. His frostbite didn’t heal fully; his skin festered, and kept falling off in sheets. Hayah washed his face; it is she who knows him best, is intimate with his robust and lovely body. He slept indoors all winter, up until April, while they debated what to do with him. They were supposed to report him to the authorities, who would have seized him and punished him severely. They were disappointed he didn’t talk; since he wasn’t talking, he had no history or language, and it felt as though he had no home and no country. Shorr took an inexplicable liking to him, and whatever Shorr did, so did Hayah. The sons reproached the father: Why would they keep someone who needed so much food and was in addition foreign to them, a spy in the hive, a bumblebee amongst the honeybees? If the authorities found out, it would bring no end of trouble.
Shorr decided not to mention it to anyone, and if anyone asked, to simply say he was a cousin from Moravia, a bit slow in the head, which was why he wasn’t speaking. The good thing about the runaway was that he never went out on his own, and he knew how to patch up the cart, hoop wheels, till the garden, thresh what he found in it, whitewash the walls—plus he did all sorts of little tasks around the yard in exchange for food and board, never asking for more.
Shorr sometimes observes him, his simple movements, the way he works—efficient, swift, mechanical. He avoids looking him in the eye; he is afraid of what he might see there. Hayah told him once that she had seen the golem crying.
Shlomo, his son, told him off for this display of pity, and for taking the runaway in.
“What if he’s a murderer?” he asked, raising his voice.
“Who knows what he is,” said Shorr. “Maybe he’s a messenger.”
“He is a goy,” Shlomo said.
That was true—he was a goy. Keeping such an interloper was a terrible transgression. If the wrong person found out, Shorr would really be in trouble. But the peasant doesn’t react when they pantomime for him to leave. He ignores Shorr and everyone else, turns around, and simply returns to his pallet near the horses.
Shorr thinks that it is bad to be a Jew, that Jews have it hard in life, but that being a peasant is harder. There really is no fate worse than theirs. In that respect, Jews and peasants are equals, in the sense that they share the lowest rung in the hierarchy of creation. Only vermin might be ranked beneath them. Even cows and horses, and especially dogs, get better care.
Of how Nahman winds up with Yente and falls asleep on the floor by her bed
Nahman is drunk. A couple of glasses sufficed, since he hasn’t had anything to drink for a long time, and he’s exhausted from his journey. The strong local vodka knocked him right off his feet. He wants to go out for some fresh air, but he wanders around in the labyrinth of corridors, searching for the courtyard. His hands grope along the rough wooden walls and finally find a handle. He opens this door and sees a tiny room, with just enough space for a bed. At the foot of the bed towers a pile of coats and furs. Someone with a pale, freckled, exhausted face emerges and looks at Nahman in a wary, unfriendly way, then passes him in the doorway and disappears. That must be the medic. Nahman staggers, places his hand on the wooden wall. The vodka they have plied him with and all that goose lard are really hitting him now. The only light here comes from a small oil lamp—a tiny flame that would need to be turned up to show any of the room at all. When Nahman’s eyes have grown accustomed to the darkness, he sees on the bed a very old woman in a crooked bonnet. For a moment, he isn’t sure who he is looking at. It’s almost like a joke—a woman on her deathbed in a home hosting a wedding. The woman’s chin is lifted, her breathing heavy. She rests against some pillows, her small, shriveled fists clenched atop the embroidered linen bedspread.
Is that Yankiele Leybowicz’s—Jacob’s—grandmother? Nahman is horrified and simultaneously cheered by the sight of this strange old woman; behind him, his hands feel for the hasp of the door. He waits for a sign from her, but Yente seems to be unconscious, or at least, she isn’t moving; beneath her lashes gleams a section of her eye, reflecting the lamplight. Drunk Nahman thinks she might be summoning him in some way, so he tries to master his fear and his disgust, and he squats beside the bed. But nothing happens. From up close, the old woman looks a little better, almost as if she were simply sleeping. Only now does Nahman notice how exhausted he feels. The tension falls away from him; his back hunches, and his lids grow heavy. He has to shake himself a few times so as not to fall asleep, and now he rises to leave the room but is sickened and frightened by the thought of the crowd of guests with their inquisitive looks and their endless rounds of questions. And so, certain no one will come in here, he lies down on a sheepskin rug by the bed and, like a dog, curls into a ball, dead tired now, for they have sucked all the life out of him here. “Just for a little while,” he says to himself. When he closes his eyes, he sees Hayah’s face—her intrigued, admiring gaze. He begins to feel blissful. He can smell the damp floorboards and the odor of rags, unwashed clothing and the smoke that is in everything here and that reminds him of his childhood, and he knows he is home.
If she could, Yente would burst out laughing. She sees the sleeping man as if from above, but definitely not with her closed eyes. Her new vision hovers over the sleeping man, and the strangest part is that from here, Yente can detect his thoughts.
In the sleeper’s mind, she sees another man. She can also see that, like her, the sleeper loves this man. To her, the man is still a child—a newborn, still covered in the dark fuzz found on children expelled into the world too early.