The purchases took place at the port. The Trinitarians went down to the temporary cells where the prisoners were kept and conversed with them, to learn where they were from and whether they had families that could underwrite their ransom, repaying the Trinitarian brothers the money they’d put up.
There were sometimes amusing stories, like that of the peasant woman from near Lwów. Her name was Zaborowska, and her little son, born in captivity, was called Ismail. This woman nearly ruined the transaction by insisting that she would not give up the Muhammadan faith and that she would not baptize her son, which, for the Trinitarian brothers, was a difficult potion to swallow.
There was another translator who worked for the Trinitarians, a man who intrigued me immediately, for I heard him conversing with someone in Polish, though he was dressed according to the Turkish style. He had hair lightened by the sun and a close-cropped reddish beard. He was of a stout and sturdy stature—it seemed safe to assume he’d be enduring and hale. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, but I did not wish to bother him until the proper occasion arose. At some point, he noticed that I was trying to explain something in Polish to newcomers from Lesser Poland who had come all the way here in order to buy back their relative, and he came up to me and, patting me on the back, embraced me as one of his own. “Where are you from?” he asked without ceremony, which moved me to my core, as no nobleman had ever treated me with such sincerity before. And then he addressed me in good Hebrew, as well as in Yiddish, our native tongue. He had a deep voice; he could orate. I must have made a stupid face, for he burst out laughing—loud, tipping his head back, so that I could practically peer down his throat.
Some mysterious business dealings, about which he did not wish to speak, had brought him to Smyrna, though he did claim to be the prince of an island in the Greek sea, which was named the same as he: Moliwda. But he told us this as if casting us a fishing line—would we believe him, would we allow ourselves to be caught? He spoke as if he did not fully believe himself, as if he had in his possession several other versions, equally true. In spite of this, we stuck together somehow. He assumed a sort of fatherly role with respect to me, though he was but a few years older. He asked us all about Poland—I had to tell him of completely ordinary things, which visibly cheered him: how the nobility and the bourgeois get along in Lwów, what the shops are like, whether you can find good kahve there, what the Jews do to earn their living, and what about the Armenians, what people eat, what type of alcohol they drink. To tell the truth, I was not much acquainted with Polish affairs. I told him of Kraków and Lwów, described Rohatyn in detail, as well as Kamieniec and my hometown, Busk. I must admit that neither of us was able to avoid those sudden waves of homesickness that strike travelers when they find themselves distant from their native lands. But it seemed to me that he had not seen his home in a very long time, as he asked after such trivial and mundane things. Instead, he told of his adventures at sea with pirates, and he so described the marine battles that even the Trinitarians in their white habits and crosses squatted down beside us in order to hear. With the brothers he switched to Polish, and from the way they spoke together (I did not yet understand everything then), it was evident they valued him very much and treated him in an exceptional manner, as a true nobleman. They called him “Count Kossakowski,” which in some strange fashion took my breath away, since I had never looked upon a count from such proximity, even though he was quite a bizarre sort of man.
The longer we knew Moliwda, the more he surprised us. As though it weren’t enough that he read and spoke fluent Hebrew, he also knew the foundations of gematria! He quickly demonstrated knowledge that far surpassed the horizons of any ordinary goy. He spoke Greek, and could write in Turkish so well that he could issue quittances in it.
One day Tovah from Nikopol showed up at Isohar’s. We had not yet met him, but we had heard only the highest praise of him, and had even studied his book and his poetry. He was a modest and reserved man. Everywhere he went, he took his thirteen-year-old son with him, a beautiful boy; together they gave the impression of an angel looking after a sage.
The disputations that began with his arrival led us into completely uncharted territories.
Isohar said:
“There is no sense in awaiting major events anymore—solar eclipses, floods. The odd process of salvation is going on right here,” and he beat his breast so that it thundered. “We are rising from the deepest depths, just as he has risen and has fallen in that unrelenting battle with the forces of evil, with the demons of darkness. We will free ourselves, we will be free on the inside, even if we are to be slaves here, in the world . . . Only when we are free will we raise up the Shekhinah out of the dust, we the ma’aminim, the true believers.”
I wrote down these words with a joyous sense of satisfaction. That was how to understand Sabbatai’s actions. He chose freedom in his heart, rather than freedom in the world. He had converted to Islam in order to be faithful to his mission of salvation. And we fools expected him to show up before the sultan’s palace with a thousand armies bearing shields of gold. We were like children wanting wonderful toys, ahaya aynayim, illusions, magic for those with limited minds.
Those of us who think God addresses us by means of external events are wrong, as naive as children. For he whispers directly into our innermost souls.
“It is a great mystery and an extraordinary one that he who is most beaten down shall become our redeemer—he who has reached the bottom of the abyss of the most horrendous darkness. Now we await his return; he will come back in various guises, until the mystery is fulfilled in one—when God incarnates as a man, when the Devekut occurs, and the Trinity prevails.” Isohar pronounced the word “trinity” more quietly, so as not to rile those who believed that such a weak Messiah would be too Christian. But does not every religion have some truth to it? All of them, even the most barbaric, have been permeated by the holy sparks.
Then, from within his haze of smoke, Reb Mordke spoke:
“Or maybe the Messiah gave us an example, that we, too, would follow him into that darkness? Many in Spain converted to the faith of Edom.”
“God forbid,” said Tovah. “It is not for us insignificant persons to imitate the Messiah. Only he is capable of venturing into mud and filth, submerging himself fully in it, and coming back out in one piece, completely clean, unsullied.”
Tovah thought that it would not do to get too close to Christianity. When later, excited, we discussed the Trinity with others, he claimed that the Christian teachings on the Trinity are a distorted version of an older understanding of the divine mystery, which no one can remember anymore. It is but a pale shadow, riddled with mistakes.