Then he added:
“I no longer believe that anything will change. No one knows the name of that little town. I had thought it was something like Sambor, Sampol . . .”
We went out with Jacob in front of the little house, where a river flowed downhill. Jacob said that all of their homes had looked like that: they stood on a river and every evening the geese would come out of the water, one after the other, that’s how he recalled it from his childhood. By some miracle, the family had always settled on a river just like this one—flowing between the hills, shallow, sunny, swift. They would race into it and splash water all around; in places by the shore where the whirlpools had washed away the sand, you could learn to doggy-paddle from one side to the other. Suddenly Jacob remembered that once, when he and the other children were engaged in their usual games, he had decided to play the starosta, and since he had to exercise his authority, there also had to be a thief. So they cast a little boy in that role, tied him to a tree, and burned him with a metal bar heated in their campfire, wanting to get him to confess where he’d hid the horses. The little boy begged them to stop, reminding them they were just playing, that there were no horses. But then the pain became too great, and the boy nearly passed out, and then he screamed out that he had hidden the horses here, and there. Then Jacob let him go.
I had no idea what to say to such a story. When it had come out, his father had beat him with birch switches, said Jacob after a moment’s silence. As he spoke, he was pissing on his father’s nearly collapsing fence.
“He was right to do so,” I answered, for that cruel story had astonished me. The wine was hitting me now, and I wanted to go back inside, but he grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me to him.
He told me always to listen to him, and that when he told me I was the thief, then I was to be the thief. And when he told me I was the starosta, then I was to become the starosta. He said this straight to my face, and I could smell the fruity wine on his breath. I was frightened of his eyes, darkened with anger, and I dared not oppose him. When we went back inside, both of the older men were crying. Tears ran down their cheeks and soaked into their beards.
“What would you say, Yehuda, if your son were to go to Poland on a mission and teach there?” I asked him as we were leaving.
“God forbid.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged.
“They’ll kill him. There are lots of folks that could kill him there. They’re just waiting for someone like him.”
Two days later, in Czernowitz, Jacob got the ruah haKodesh again in the presence of many of the faithful. Again he was thrown to the ground, and for the whole rest of the day he said nothing other than something like “ze-ze-ze,” which as we listened we realized was “Ma’ase Zar, Ma’ase Zar,” or “Strange Deed.” He was shaking all over, and his teeth were chattering. Then people went up to him, and he laid his hands on them, and many went away healed. Some of ours from Podolia were there, men who crossed borders openly or illegally to work small trades. They sat around in front of the shack like dogs, despite the cold, waiting for Jacob to come out, wanting to just touch his coat. I recognized several among them, including Shyle from Lanckoron′, and talking with them I got homesick, with my home being so nearby.
One thing was for sure—our people from Czernowitz supported us, and it was clear that the legend of Jacob had a wide range already, and knew no borders. And it was as though everyone had been waiting for him, as though there were no longer any way of saying no.
At the end we spent another night with Jacob’s father, and I told him that story about the starosta and the thief.
Then Leyb said:
“Watch out for Jacob. He really is a thief.”
Of Jacob’s dance
People gather in a village on the Turkish side, since the guards won’t let them into Poland. They have reports of a plague there. Some musicians returning from a wedding have sat down, exhausted, on the logs ready to be floated across the river. They have drums, flutes, and ba?lamas, little instruments with strings they pick with cherrywood bark.
Jacob comes up to them and removes his overcoat, and his tall figure begins to move rhythmically. At first he stomps his foot, but in such a way as to speed up the player, who reluctantly accepts this rhythm, faster than he’d wanted. Now Jacob rocks from side to side and, stepping faster and faster, he shouts at the rest of the players, and they understand that this strange man is demanding that they start playing, too. An older man arrives from somewhere with a santur, a Turkish zither, and when he joins in with the players, the music becomes complete, perfect for dancing. Then Jacob puts his hands on the shoulders of two onlookers jerking from side to side, and they begin to take little steps. The drums beat out a clear rhythm, which carries over the water to the other side and down the river. Soon others join in—Turkish cattle herders, merchants, Podolian peasants all toss aside their traveling bags, discard their sheepskin coats. A row of dancers forms, and its ends curl in until eventually a circle is made, which instantly begins to spin. And those whom the ruckus and hoopla draw in also begin to sway, and then, as if in desperation, as if they’ve had enough of waiting, as if they’ve decided to go for broke right here and now, they join the circle. Jacob leads the dance around carts and surprised horses, set apart from the rest by his tall hat, but when the hat falls off, it isn’t clear anymore that he is the one who is the leader. Behind him goes Nahman, ecstatically, like a saint, with his hands raised up, his eyes closed, a blissful smile on his face. Some beggar, despite his limp, transforms into a dancer, grinning, wideeyed. Women laugh at the sight of him, but he just makes faces back. After a moment’s hesitation young Shlomo Shorr joins in; he has come with his father to wait for Jacob, to safely convey him over the border. The flaps of his wool overcoat fluttering around his thin figure, Nussen behind him with the scar on his face, and then a somewhat stiff Hershel. Children and servants link up with this procession and a dog barks at them, running up to their stomping feet and jumping back. Some girls set down the carrying poles they’ve brought to get water, and lifting up their skirts, tentatively step with their bare feet, so petite they don’t even reach Jacob’s breast. A fat peasant woman in wood-soled shoes stuffed with straw is also starting to move now, and the Turkish vodka smugglers begin to dance, playing innocent. The drum goes faster and faster, and the dancers’ feet move faster and faster. Jacob starts to whirl like a dervish, the dance circle breaks off, people fall down on the ground in heaps of laughter, sweaty, red with effort.
That’s how it ends.