The news of Sabbatai’s apostasy left them thunderstruck. It happened on the 16th day of the month of Elul of 5426, or the 16th of September, 1666, but they only found out about it once they were home. That day an unexpected early snow fell, covering the crops that had not yet been collected from the gardens: pumpkins, carrots, and beets that were still living out their ripeness in the earth.
The news was delivered by messengers in robes ripped in woe at their chests, their faces dirtied from their ceaseless travels. They walked through village after village without respite, wailing. The evil sultan of the infidels had threatened Sabbatai with death if he did not convert to Islam. He had threatened to behead him. And so the Messiah had agreed.
At first, their homes were taken over by sobbing, and disbelief reigned. Then a silence fell. For a day, or two, or three, no one really wanted to talk. What was there to say? That once more we were the weakest, having been deceived—that God had abandoned us? Our Messiah, crushed? How could that be, when we expected him to dethrone the sultan, take power over the whole world, and exalt the humiliated? Once more over the poor Podolian villages great gray fustian clouds gathered; the sky looked like the roof of a ruined tent. To Mayer, it seemed the world had begun to rot, that gangrene had set in. Sitting at their heavy wooden table with his youngest daughter, tiny as a pea, poised on his lap, he wrote out, like everyone, gematrical columns. It was only when the cold set in that letters and explanations began to circulate, and not a week went by that some traveling merchant did not bring them some new tidbit. Even the milkman, who delivered milk and butter around the neighboring villages, became during that period a wise man, drawing systems of salvation with his finger on whatever surface he could find.
From these shaky, broken reports and tales it was necessary to assemble a whole, reach for the books, consult with the wisest of men. And gradually that winter a new knowledge began germinating, which come spring was strong and powerful like the new shoot of a plant. How could we have been so wrong? The sadness had blinded us, sunk us in despair unworthy of good men. Yes, he had converted to the faith of Muhammad—but not really, only on the surface, only his image, his goal, meaning his shadow, donned the green turban, while the Messiah concealed himself to wait for the better time that was about to come, that was a matter of days away, that was very nearly here already.
Yente can still see the finger that drew the sefirotic tree in the flour strewn across the table, while at the same time she finds herself in the countryside, near Brze?any, eighteen years before. It is the very day she was conceived. Only now can she see it.
In this strange state in which she finds herself, is Yente able to launch some little changes? Influence the course of events? Can she? If she could, she would change this one day.
She sees a young woman walking through the fields with a basket in her hand, and in it, two geese. Their necks move to the rhythm of her steps, their beady eyes look around with the trust common to domesticated animals. A mounted Cossack patrol comes galloping out of the forest, getting bigger as she watches in approach. It is too late to run away, the woman stands astonished, covers her face with the geese. The horses surround her, closing in. As if on command, the men dismount, and now everything happens very fast and in silence. They push her down softly onto the grass, the basket falls, the geese get out of it, but they stay close, hissing a little, quietly, threatening, warning, bearing witness to what’s going on. Two of the men hold the horses, while one of them unfastens the belt of his broad, wrinkled trousers and lies down on top of the woman. Then they trade, the next one faster than the first, as though they have to perform these few movements in haste—there is no sign of their enjoying it, in fact. Their seed pours into the woman and then drips out onto the grass. The last one presses down hard upon her neck, and the woman starts to resign herself to the fact that she will die, but the others hand him his reins, and the man gets back on his horse. He looks at her for a moment longer, as if wanting to remember his victim. Then they quickly ride away. It all takes just a few minutes.
The woman sits with her legs akimbo, the indignant geese looking at her, honking their disapproval. With a bit of her petticoat she wipes between her legs, then rips up some leaves and grass. She runs to the stream and raises her skirts high and sits down in the water, pushing out all the semen from inside her. The geese think this is an encouragement to them, and they scamper up to the water’s edge. But before they can quite make up their minds to get in, overcoming their usual anserine reserve, the woman stuffs both of them back in the basket and returns to the path. She slows as she comes to the village, going slower and slower, until finally she stops, as if she has reached an invisible border.
This is Yente’s mother.
And this must be the reason that she always watched her daughter so closely; eventually, Yente grew accustomed to the looks, to the suspicious gaze cast from where her mother sat working on something at the table, stood cutting vegetables, peeling hard-boiled eggs, scrubbing pots. Her mother watched her all the time. Like a wolf, like a dog getting ready to sink its teeth into your shin. With time, a slight grimace began to appear in connection with this watching: a light rise in the upper lip, pulling it up toward her nose—not an expression of animosity or revulsion, just barely visible, insignificant.
She remembers how, as her mother was braiding her hair one day, she found a dark mole over little Yente’s ear and rejoiced in it. “Look,” she said to Yente’s father, “she has a mole in the same spot as you, but on the other side, like a reflection in the mirror.” Her father listened only absentmindedly. He never suspected a thing, for his whole life. Yente’s mother died with the secret clenched in her fist. She died in a kind of convulsion, in a fury. She’ll no doubt come back as a wild animal.
She was the eleventh-born. Her father named her Yente, which means: she who spreads the news, and she who teaches others. Her mother didn’t have the strength to take care of her by then—she was fragile of both mind and body. Yente was dealt with by the other women who were always bustling around the house—cousins, an aunt, and, for some time, her grandmother. She remembered her mother sliding off her cap in the evenings—then Yente would see from up close her wretched hair, cut short and sloppily, growing over her unhealthy, flaking skin.