There wasn’t any money, which is why I will remember that Salonika winter as being ravenous and thin. In order to fill our stomachs, we would often go begging for alms, as many of the learned have done here before. I always tried to ask people calmly and politely for spare change, but Jacob would use very different methods. Once, just before Passover, we stopped by to see a certain Jew who kept funds for the poor. I spoke to him first, for in such situations it worked to our advantage that I spoke well and could make the types of arguments that would make a good impression, as a learned man, and trustworthy. So I said that we were from a cursed land, where Jews have suffered the greatest misfortunes as a result of terrible persecutions and where the direst poverty prevails, where the climate is hostile, though for all this the people there are honest and wholly dedicated to the faith . . . And so I spoke, trying to awaken pity in him, but he didn’t even look at me.
“We’ve got enough domestic alms-collectors here, we can’t be maintaining foreign ones on top of this.”
So I replied:
“In our country, even a foreigner can find support.”
This treasurer gave me a spiteful smile and looked me in the eye for the first time:
“So what did you come wandering in here for, leaving behind that magnificent country, since things were going so well for you there?”
I was about to come back with a clever retort when Jacob, who until that moment had been standing calmly behind me, shoved me aside and shrieked at him:
“How dare you ask why we left our country, you little scumbag?!”
The other man took a step backward, frightened by Jacob’s tone, but he didn’t answer, and in any case he would have been unable to, for Jacob was already leaning in to him and shouting:
“Why did Jacob the Patriarch leave his country and go to Egypt? Isn’t that where Passover comes from? If he had stayed in his country, you would have no holiday now, you scoundrel, and we would have no need for holiday meals!”
The man was so frightened he instantly gave us a few levs and, apologizing profusely, showed us to the door.
Perhaps it was all for the best, since our deprivation that winter ultimately focused us and sharpened our senses. There was no force capable of extinguishing Jacob’s flame. He—as was shown in a variety of situations—was able to shine like a precious stone even in the worst of conditions. Even in rags, as we begged for alms, there was a kind of majesty that emanated from him, and everyone who met with him knew that he was encountering an extraordinary being. And was afraid. It’s strange, but in that poverty, instead of perishing, we began to understand. It was as if we had only disguised ourselves in that cold, that pain, and that destitution. Jacob in particular—freezing and tattered, he inspired even greater compassion, but also greater respect than any self-satisfied, wealthy hakham.
And then another miracle occurred: Jacob’s fame so increased across Salonika that in the end, Konio’s true believers showed up, for now they wished to buy him off. They offered him a considerable sum of money to either join with them or leave the city.
“Now you come?!” he cried bitterly. “Now you can kiss my ass! You’re too late.”
In the end, hostility toward him became so severe that Jacob stopped sleeping at home. He had a Greek gentleman sleep in his bed, a man hoping to get into the stone trade with us. Jacob went to sleep in the kitchen, or so he told us all. I knew very well that he went to see a widow who often provided him with financial support as well as with the comforts of her body. One night, someone broke into the house and stabbed the Greek under his blanket. The murderer vanished like a shadow.
This event alarmed Jacob to such an extent that for some time he left Salonika for Larissa, while we pretended he’d remained. On the very first night of his return, they prepared an ambush for him.
From then on, Jacob spent every night in some new place, and we began to fear for our lives and for our health, so—there was no alternative—we determined to leave Salonika to the mercy of its evil and go back to Smyrna. The worst thing was that it was our own people who so desired Jacob’s demise. Now even he had nothing good to say about them. He spoke of them with contempt, calling them effeminate and saying that of everything Baruchiah had taught them, all that had stayed with them was a fondness for sodomy.
Scraps: Of the curse of Salonika and Jacob’s molting
As soon as we had made the decision to flee Salonika and started to ready ourselves for the road, Jacob fell ill. One day his body became covered in abscesses, and his skin came off in bloody sheets as he howled in pain. What sort of illness comes on so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and takes on such symptoms as these? The first thing that came to everyone’s mind was that this must be a curse. Jacob believed it, too. Those Koniosos must have hired some sort of sorcerer, although among their own they had several who might well have the skill to cast such a curse upon their rival.
At first, Reb Mordke applied the bandages himself, swathing Jacob in amulets he had prepared, mumbling spells, while he filled the pipe with dark resin for the patient, since smoking it alleviated his pain. But helpless in the face of his beloved Jacob’s continued suffering, he called up a certain woman, old and trembling, reputed to be the finest healer. They said she was a witch, and extremely famous, one of those Thessalonians who have lived just outside the city for centuries and know how to disappear. She coated his wounds in a foul-smelling liquid that stung and burned, and Jacob’s howling could be heard all over town. As he moaned in pain, she chanted some kind of spells over him, in a language no one could recognize, so bizarre it was. She patted him on the buttocks like she might a child, and when it was over, she wouldn’t accept any payment, saying it hadn’t been an illness at all, that Jacob had merely been molting. Like a snake.
We looked at one another in disbelief, and Reb Mordke burst into tears like a little boy.
“Molting like a snake!” Overcome, he raised his hands to heaven and cried, “Our Lord, to the ends of the earth—thank you!” And then he pulled on everyone’s sleeves and repeated, thrilled, “The serpent is the savior, nahash. Is this not evidence of Jacob’s messianic mission?” His dark, teary eyes shone, reflecting the little flames of the lamps. I soaked the bandages in a warm herbal decoction, as the old woman had instructed, in order to be able to lay them upon the crusted-over wounds. It wasn’t that the wounds themselves were terrible, though the pain they caused was real and acute—but it was mainly the fact that they were there. Who did this? Who cast this curse? I thought at first with anger and bitterness. But now I knew that no one would be able to do anything bad to
Jacob. When the spirit enters a human being, everything must change in his body, start up afresh. A man leaves his old skin aside and covers himself in a new one. Yes, this is what we talked about through the night before we left.