Then, however, Mayer thought it fitting to remind her of the most important thing:
“Between the heart and the tongue lies an abyss,” he said. “Remember that. Thoughts must be concealed, particularly since you were born, to your great misfortune, a woman. Think so that they think you are not thinking. Behave in such a way that you mislead others. We all must do this, but women more so. Talmudists know about the strength of women, but they fear it, which is why they pierce girls’ ears, to weaken them. But we don’t. We don’t do that because we ourselves are like women. We survive by hiding. We play the fools, pretend to be people we are not. We come home, and then we take off our masks. But we bear the burden of silence: masa duma.”
And now, as Yente lies covered up to her neck in a Korolówka woodshed, she knows she has deceived them all.
8.
Honey, and not eating too much of it, or: Isohar’s school in Smyrna, in the Turkish land
In Isohar’s school, Nahman has perfected gematria, notarikon, and temurah. You can wake him up in the middle of the night and have him shuffle letters around and produce words. He has already considered and calculated the numbers of words in the prayers and blessings, to uncover the secret principles according to which they were written. He’s compared them with others, transformed the words, rearranged the letters. Many times, when he was unable to sleep during those sweltering Smyrna nights, when Mordechai had drifted off into silence, smoking his pipe, and in order not to give longing and anxiety access to his heart, he would relish this play until dawn with his eyes closed, creating out of words and letters completely new, unlikely meanings and connections. When the gray dawn would light up the little square with its few miserable olive trees, under which dogs slept amidst the trash, it would strike him that the world of words was much more real than the one his eyes could see.
Nahman is happy. He always sits behind Jacob. He loves to look over his shoulder. That is why he can relate to the Scriptures, it being written in the Book of Proverbs 25:16: “If you find honey, eat just enough—too much of it, and you will vomit.”
Meanwhile, aside from hakkarat panim (knowledge of physiognomy) and sirtutim (knowledge of chiromancy), selected students—now including Nahman and Jacob—are instructed in yet another secret thing under the guidance of Isohar and Reb Mordke. In the evenings, just two candles are left in the small room, and the students sit along the wall on the floor. Their heads are to be placed between their knees. In this way, the human body resumes the position it was in inside the mother’s belly, and therefore, when it stayed in close proximity to God. When you sit like this for a few hours, when your breath returns to your lungs and you can hear the beating of your own heart, that’s when your mind launches its journeys.
Jacob, tall and strong, always has the garland of an audience around him. He tells them tales of his youth in Bucharest, while Nahman mostly eavesdrops. Jacob tells how he stood up for a Jew when suddenly two janissaries sent by the agha attacked. Fighting with a rolling pin, he routed the Turkish guard. And when he was brought to court, not having done anyone any real physical harm, the agha so appreciated his bravery that he not only released him, but also presented him with gifts. Nahman obviously doesn’t believe him. Yesterday he told of a miraculous drill that, when coated in some magical herbs, could reveal treasure buried underground.
Seeing Nahman’s gaze intently focused upon him—ordinarily Nahman instantly glances away when Jacob looks at him—Jacob provokes him in Turkish:
“What’s your problem, feygele, looking at me like that?”
He says it with the intention of offending Nahman, who squints with surprise. Even more so for the fact that Jacob has used the Yiddish word feygele—little bird—but also a man who likes men more than women.
Jacob is pleased, for he has caused Nahman confusion, and he grins.
For some time they seek a common language. Jacob starts with what the Jews of Smyrna speak, Ladino, and Nahman, not understanding, responds in Hebrew. Neither of them feels right chatting in the street in the holy language, so they break off, and Nahman switches to Yiddish. But here again Jacob has a rather strange accent, so instead he responds in Turkish, fluently, joyfully, as though finding himself suddenly on home turf, though Nahman doesn’t feel completely at home here. In the end they speak a mixture, not worrying about the provenance of words; words are not nobility that want their genealogical trees retraced. Words are merchants, swift and useful, now here, now there.
What is the name of the place where people go to drink kahve? It’s a kahvehane, right? And a dark, stocky Turk from the south who goes home wearing goods bought at the bazaar is a hamal. And the stone market, where Jacob always goes during the day, that’s the bezestan, isn’t it? Jacob laughs. He has nice teeth.
Scraps: What we were doing in Smyrna in the Jewish year 5511 and how we met Moliwda, and also, how the spirit is like a needle that pokes a hole in the world
I took to heart what Isohar had taught us. He said that there are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out what is most important. The funnel takes in what he reads at one end, while at the other, everything he’s read pours out of him. The strainer lets through the wine and keeps the sediment; he ought not to read at all—it would be infinitely better if he simply dedicated himself to some manual trade. The sieve, on the other hand, separates out the chaff to give a result of only the finest grains.
“I want you to be like sieves, and to discard all that is not good or interesting,” Isohar would say to us.
Thanks still to his Prague acquaintances and a widespread high opinion of Reb Mordke, we both found employment—to our great fortune—helping out the Trinitarians, who were buying Christian war prisoners out of Turkish slavery. We earned good money for this, too. We took over for a Jew who died suddenly from some fever and who needed replacing quickly. Our task was to supply them during the time of their stay in Smyrna; since I was now fluent in Turkish, and, as I have said already, my knowledge of Polish was fairly good, they engaged me also for the purposes of translation, thanks to which I soon became, as the Turks say, a dragoman, or an interpreter.