Jacob looks at the text and at Hershel, who is fairly panic-stricken, with mock seriousness. Then he bursts out laughing. Jacob laughs as he is wont to do, that deep, sonorous laughter, from the belly itself, infectiously, and he can probably be heard all over Craiova, until Hershel starts to join in with him in spite of himself; at first he only smiles, but then he starts to giggle. Then Jacob pulls him in by the hand and, shocking him, kisses him on the lips.
Hershel wonders if the young husband might not miss his wife, whom he left with her father; she sends him love letters, entreating him to come home or asking him incessantly when he’ll take her with him. Hershel knows because he reads these letters in secret, while Jacob isn’t watching. Sometimes he imagines the white hand that wrote those letters. This brings him pleasure. Jacob doesn’t file the letters away, his documents are in a jumble, orders lie scattered over the table; Hershel tries to pick them up and organize them somehow. He accompanies Jacob when he goes to see clients, mostly women clients, wealthy townswomen whose husbands have left, captains’ wives and widows who send for Jacob, asking for him in particular, so he can show them what he’s selling. They arrange it so that when Jacob drops his purse, as if accidentally, Hershel takes it as the signal to make his excuses and leave. Then he waits for Jacob on the street, not taking his eyes off the door to the woman’s home.
When Jacob steps out, he does so at a vigorous pace. He always walks like this, splaying his legs a little, straightening his galligaskins, his Turkish pantaloons. He looks at Hershel in triumph and claps his hand over his own crotch in Turkish fashion. Hershel wonders what attracts women to this man. There is something women can always discern, a thing they always recognize a man by, even Hershel understands this. Jacob is beautiful, and wherever he shows up, everything takes on a meaning, comes together like it has been tidied up.
Jacob promised Tovah that he would study, but Hershel sees that reading tires him, that the period of fervor into which Reb Mordke and Nahman once thrust him has passed. The books lie fallow. Sometimes he doesn’t open the long letters Nahman sends him from Poland for several days. Hershel collects these letters, reads them, and puts them in a pile. Jacob is much more interested in money right now. He has deposited with Abraham’s cousin all that he has earned this year. He would like to have a home and vineyards in Nikopol or Giurgiu. The kind where you can see the Danube from the window, and the vines could climb up a set of wooden supports and make green walls and a green roof. Then he’ll bring Hana. For the time being he frolics with the clients, or he leaves midway through the day and disappears somewhere. He must be running a side operation, which Abraham does not much care for. He asks Hershel about it, and the boy, whether he likes it or not, must cover for Jacob. He wants to cover for Jacob. So he comes up with unbelievable stories. Says that Jacob goes and prays over the river, that he borrows books, that he is making sales, that he is checking on a shipment that is being unloaded right now. The first time Jacob invites Hershel to his bed, Hershel does not protest. He gives himself to Jacob completely, blazing like a torch; were it possible, Hershel would give him more—his life, even. Jacob calls this Massa Zar, or the Stranger’s Journey—an act of reversal, the opposite of the written law, which in the face of the purifying fire of the Messiah has spluttered out like an old wet rag.
Of a pearl and Hana
Jacob is determined to give Hana the most precious pearl. For a few days, he and Hershel have wandered jewelers’ shops. With great pomp Jacob has extracted the pearl from the little box where it rests on a piece of silk; whoever takes it in his fingers squints in ecstasy, smacking his lips. It’s a miracle, not a pearl. It’s worth a fortune. Jacob relishes their ecstasy. But then what tends to happen is that the jeweler returns the pearl as if it were a shred of light that’s caught between his fingers—no, no, he would not dare drill into it; the miracle might break, and the loss incurred would be enormous. Please try somewhere else, maybe someone else will do it for you. Jacob is angry. At home, he sets this pearl on the table and stares at it in silence. Hershel gives him a bowl of the olives Jacob so adores. Later he’ll have to pick up the pits strewn all over the floor.
“There’s no one left. These cowards who are frightened of a pearl,” says Jacob.
When Jacob is angry, he moves faster than he usually does, and more stiffly. He furrows his brow, drawing his eyebrows down. Hershel fears him then, although Jacob has never done him any harm. Hershel knows that Jacob loves him.
In the end, he tells the boy to get ready, and they put on their oldest clothes, the most worn ones, and they go to the port and take the ferry across the river. There, on the other side, they go up to the first decentlooking stand they find that does polishing. With firm conviction in his voice and gestures, Jacob tells the man to take this fake trinket, which is worth almost nothing, he says, and just make a hole through it. “I’ve got a girl I want to give it to.”
Now the pearl is produced directly from Jacob’s pocket; he tosses it onto the scale pan, making small talk; the man takes the pearl boldly, without any ecstasy or sighs, puts it in his vise, and, still chatting with Jacob, drills a hole through it; the gimlet goes through the pearl like it’s passing through butter. The man takes a modest fee and goes back to his interrupted tasks.
Back on the street, Jacob says to an astonished Hershel:
“That’s how you’ve got to do things. Don’t ever make a fuss about them. Make a note of that.”
These words make an enormous impression upon Hershel. From that moment forward, he wants to be like Jacob. And being close to Jacob evokes in him some incomprehensible excitement, produces a warmth that flows all through his small body, so that the boy feels safe and powerful.
Over Hanukkah they go to get Hana in Nikopol. The young wife runs out to meet them, before Jacob has even scrambled out of the cart with presents for the whole family. They greet each other in an official way, a little stiffly. Everyone here treats Jacob like someone more significant than an ordinary merchant, and he in turn takes on a gravity of tone Hershel has never heard from him before. He kisses Hana on the forehead, like a father. He greets Tovah as though they are both kings. He’s given his own room, but he quickly disappears into Hana’s in the women’s part of the home. Hershel still leaves him the made bed, while he sleeps on the floor by the stove.