Under the huppah Tovah said something to Jacob, one short sentence, a few words, its beginning and end getting tangled in his ample beard. Jacob had to lean in to his father-in-law for a moment, and then serious surprise, even astonishment appeared on his face. Then Jacob’s face set, as though he were trying to master a grimace.
The guests ask after the groom, they want to hear once more those stories that Mordechai, Reb Mordke, who now sits with them at the table, is glad to tell. He is always either filling up his pipe or emerging at regular intervals from within a cloud of smoke, to say how he and Nahman ben Levi brought Jacob to Tovah. He tells the story in his croaking voice:
“‘This is the husband for your daughter,’ we said. ‘Only him.’ ‘But why him?’ asked Tovah. ‘He is exceptional,’ I said, ‘and she, thanks to him, will attain the highest honors. Look at him. Don’t you see? He is great.’” Reb Mordke breathes in the smoke from his pipe, which smells of Smyrna, Stamboul. “But Tovah hesitated. ‘Who is he, this boy with the pitted face, and where are his parents from?’ he asked. Then I, Reb Mordke, and Nahman of Busk here—we patiently explained that his father is a famous rabbi, Yehuda Leyb Buchbinder, while his mother, Rachel of Rzeszów, comes from the finest home, that she is a relative of Hayim Malach, whose cousin was given in marriage to Dobrushka in Moravia, the great-grandson of Leybele Prossnitz. And there are no madmen in his family, nor sick people, nor cripples. The spirit only goes into the chosen. Oh, if only Tovah had a wife he could go to for advice, but he doesn’t, since she died.”
Reb Mordke doesn’t say anything for a moment, reminded of Tovah’s hesitation, how it annoyed them, seeming like the hesitation of a merchant fretting over wares. This was Jacob they were talking about!
Nahman listens to Reb Mordke, but how does he know that Jacob is Jacob? He watches him now, sitting across from his father-in-law in silence. Jacob has lowered his head and is gazing at his shoes. The heat makes it so that words can’t reach pronouncement, grown heavy and slow. Jacob won’t take off his Turkish costume now—the new, brightly colored turban on his head, the same one he wore at the wedding, the color of fig leaves. He looks nice in it. Nahman sees his soft Turkish leather shoes with the toes curled up. Then the hands of both men rise in the same moment as they take sips of coffee from their little cups.
Nahman knows that Jacob is Jacob because when he looks at him as he is doing now, from afar, without Jacob being aware, Nahman feels a pressure in the vicinity of his heart, as though some invisible hand were holding him by it, hot and wet. This sense of being squeezed makes him feel good, calm. His eyes fill up with tears. He could just look and look and look in this way. What further proof could he want? It’s the heart that knows such things.
Jacob has begun to introduce himself not as before, not as Yankiele Leybowicz, but as Jacob Frank. Frank is what Jews from the west are called in Nikopol; that’s what they call his father-in-law and his wife, Hana. Frank, or Frenk, means foreign. Nahman knows Jacob likes this—being foreign is a quality of those who have frequently changed their place of residence. He’s told Nahman that he feels best in new places, because it is as if the world begins afresh every time. To be foreign is to be free. To have a great expanse stretch out before you—the desert, the steppe. To have the shape of the moon behind you like a cradle, the deafening symphony of the cicadas, the air’s fragrance of melon peel, the rustle of the scarab beetle when, come evening, the sky turns red, and it ventures out onto the sand to hunt. To have your own history, not for everyone, just your own history written in the tracks you leave behind.
To feel like a guest everywhere you go, occupying homes just for a while, not bothering about the garden, enjoying the wine without forming any attachment to the vineyard. Not to understand the language, and therefore to register gestures and faces better, the expressions in people’s eyes, the emotions that appear on faces like the shadows of clouds. To learn a foreign language from scratch, a little bit in every place, comparing words and finding orders of similarity.
This state of foreignness must be carefully guarded, for it gives enormous power.
Jacob had told him one thing, as if in jest, Jacob being Jacob, as if for laughs, an unclear thing that instantly made a permanent home in Nahman’s memory, for it was Jacob’s first teaching, though perhaps he did not know that yet. The thing was that you have to practice saying no, every single day. What does that mean? Nahman promises himself he will ask, but when? There isn’t any time left now. He has grown sad and irritable—maybe there was something wrong with the wine. He couldn’t say when he began to turn from a master to a friend, and then, imperceptibly, into a student. He let it happen, somehow.
Jacob never talks like the tzaddikim do, in long, complicated sentences brimming with rare and precious words, always harking back to quotes from the Scriptures. He speaks concisely and clearly, like someone who earns his living at the market or drives a cart. He’s always joking, but you can’t tell if he’s actually joking in what he says or being serious. He looks you straight in the eye, says a sentence like he’s firing a shot, and then waits for a reaction. Usually his persistent gaze, like that of a bird—eagle, falcon, vulture—flusters his interlocutors. They look away, they falter. Sometimes he’ll start laughing, apropos of nothing, to everyone’s relief. He can be rude; he can be outrageous. He often mocks. If you get on his bad side, he’ll grimace, and his eyes will become like knives. He says wise and stupid things. No man should trust him too much, for he will make fun of anyone—Nahman has seen him do so, though Jacob has not yet turned his vulture’s gaze on him. Because of all of this, Jacob seems at first glance like someone familiar, a peer, but soon, after a little conversation, people realize that there is nothing familiar about him—that he is peerless.