We all wondered about Moliwda’s role here: Was he in charge, or merely helping, or maybe even in the service of that woman, unless perhaps she was in his? But he just laughed at us and mocked us, saying we were still seeing everything in that old, worst way: insisting on ladders wherever we went, one person standing above another, forcing the lower one to do all kinds of things. This one more important, that one less. Whereas here in this village near Craiova, they had arranged things in a different way. Everyone was equal. Everyone had the right to live, eat, be happy, and work. Anyone could leave at any moment. Did anyone ever leave? Sometimes. Rarely. Where would they go?
And yet, we had the strong impression that Moliwda and that woman with the gentle smile were the ones in charge. At first we all wondered, quietly, whether she was his wife, but he soon corrected our mistake: she was his sister, just like every woman here. “Do you sleep with them?” Jacob asked him straight out. Moliwda just shrugged and showed us the big, carefully tended vegetable gardens, which yielded crops twice a year, and he said that it was off these gardens that the community lived, off the gifts of the sun, because if you looked at it the way he did, it all came from the sun, from the light, which was of course for free and for all.
We took our repast at the long tables where everyone else was sitting, too, first loudly reciting a prayer in a language I could not recognize.
They didn’t eat meat, just plant foods, occasionally cheese, when someone had given them some. They were disgusted by eggs just the same as they were by meat. Of the vegetables, they did not eat broad beans, since they believed that souls might reside there before being born, in those little grains laid out in a pod like in some coffer. On this we agreed: Some plants contained more light than others—the most light being held by the cucumber, and also the eggplant and all types of long melons.
They believed in the transmigration of souls, as we did, and in addition Moliwda said he considered that this belief was once universal, until Christianity came along and buried it. The Bogomils valued the planets and considered them their rulers.
What most astonished us, although Jacob and I did not betray it, was the fact that there were so many similarities to what we ourselves believed. The Bogomils believed, for example, in the so-called holy speech to be used during rites of initiation. It was holy because it was the opposite: it was shameless. Everyone who passed through initiation had to hear out a story offensive to common decency, and this came from a very old tradition in their faith, from a time when it was pagan mystery plays in honor of the ancient goddess Baubo or the unbridled Greek god Dionysus. I was hearing the names of these gods for the first time, Moliwda pronounced them quickly and as though ashamed, but I made a note of them right away.
After lunch, we sat down over sweets, traditional Turkish baklava, in Moliwda’s little home; a dash of wine was served with it, made here—I had seen the little vineyard behind the gardens.
“How do you pray?” Jacob asked him.
“That is the simplest thing of all,” said Moliwda. “It’s the heart’s prayer: ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.’ You don’t have to do anything special. God hears you.”
They told us marriage was sinful, too. That was the real sin of Adam and Eve, since it should be as it is in nature—people should connect with one another through their souls, not through some dead convention. Those who join together in spirit, spiritual brothers and sisters, can physically commingle, and the children of such unions are gifts. Those born of married couples are “children of dead law.”
In the evening, they stood in a circle and began to dance around a woman in the center who was a virgin. At first she appeared in white robes, then after the sacred act she changed into a red robe, and in the end, when all were greatly weakened by the frenzied rhythm of their dance around her and fell down from their exhaustion, she donned a black coat.
All of this felt strangely familiar to us, and returning to Craiova, to Jacob’s office, we spoke in such excitement that for a long time that night we were unable to fall asleep.
A few days later, Nussen and I set out for Poland with goods and with news. For the whole of the journey our heads were filled with scenes from Moliwda’s village. Nussen especially—he dreamed, entranced, as we were crossing the Dniester again, that such villages might be established back home in Podolia. What I liked most about it was that it was not important there whether we were mother or father, daughter or son, woman or man. There was no great difference between us. We were all just forms that took on light whenever it so much as glistened over matter.
12.
Of Jacob’s expedition to the grave of Nathan of Gaza
Whoever behaves as irrationally as Jacob en route to the grave of Nathan the prophet must be either a madman or a saint, Abraham writes his brother Tovah.
My business has suffered from having hired your son-in-law. There were more people and more conversations in my shop than ever before, but the monetary gain from that has been slight. If you ask me, your son-in-law is ill-suited to shop life. I don’t say that as a reproach, for I know the expectations you have for him. He is a restless and agitated man, not a sage but a rebel. He abandoned everything, and, having been dissatisfied with the money I’d been providing him in exchange for his work, he gave himself a severance payment when he left by stealing several valuable things. I am including an accounting of it on a separate sheet of paper. I hope you will prevail upon him to pay me back the amount I have tallied. They got it into their heads, him and his followers, to visit the grave of Nathan of Gaza (of blessed memory). And although it was a noble purpose, because of their hot heads they did it too abruptly, forsaking everything in their haste to depart—though they had just time enough to offend any number of people, and to borrow money from those whom they hadn’t yet offended. There is no place for him here now, even if he wanted to come back, although I suspect he will not want to return.
I deeply want to believe that you knew what you were doing, giving Hana to someone like him. I believe in your wisdom and your deep prudence, which often ventures far beyond ordinary understanding. I will only tell you that I felt after he left such great relief. Your son-in-law is not suited for this office. I think there are a lot of things he isn’t suited for.
Of how Nahman follows in Jacob’s footsteps