Nahman’s stories are not always to be believed—even less so when he writes them down. He has a propensity for exaggeration. He detects signs in everything; in everything, he seeks and finds connections. What happens is never quite enough for Nahman—he wants what happens also to have some heavenly, definitive meaning. He wants it to be meaningful, to have consequences for the future—wants even minor causes to provoke great effects. This is why he slumps so often into melancholy—has he not mentioned that himself?
When he gets back to Jacob, he tells him the old man fell down dead as soon as he handed over Nahman’s purchases, before he even had a chance to take his money. Jacob laughs at this, pleased. Nahman likes to bring him pleasure in this way. He likes his deep, hoarse laughter.
What is gleaned by the sharp gaze of every variety of spy
Since crossing the Dniester, Jacob has been followed by spies, although Yente sees them better than they see Jacob. She watches them scribble inept reports on dirty roadhouse tabletops, entrusting them to messengers who will carry them to Kamieniec and Lwów. There they are transformed in chancelleries, taking on a more refined character, becoming disquisitions, rubrics of events; they wind up on better paper and earn seals—and so, as official dispatches, they go by post to Warsaw, to the tired clerks of that collapsing state, to the papal nuncio’s palace that drips with so much luxury, and also, via the secretaries of the kahalim, to Wilno, Kraków, and even Altona and Amsterdam. They are read by Bishop Dembowski, who is freezing in his dilapidated mansion in Kamieniec, and by the rabbis of the Lwów and Satanów kahalim, Hayim haKohen Rapaport and David ben Abraham, who send each other frequent messages riddled with insinuations and vague hints, as this whole shameful matter is difficult to express in straightforward holy Hebrew words. Finally, they’re read by officials in Turkey, who need to know what’s happening in this neighboring country, especially since they’re in business with its noblemen. The hunger for information is great all around.
The spies, whether royal, ecclesiastic, or Jewish, report that Jacob has proceeded to Korolówka, where he was born and where a portion of his family still lives, in particular his uncle, Yankiel, the rabbi of Korolówka, with his son, Israel, and his wife, Sobla.
Here—according to the spies’ reports—some twenty people have come to join him; most of them are relatives, all have ceremoniously written down their names, in so doing vowing to keep their faith in spite of any threats of persecution and without fear. And if it becomes necessary to convert to another religion, they will follow Jacob in this. They are like soldiers, one of the spies writes in a flight of poetic fancy—ready for anything.
The spies also know about Yente in the woodshed by the house. They describe her as “one holy old lady,” “an elderly woman who doesn’t want to die,” and “a witch who is three hundred years old.”
It is to her Jacob goes first.
Sobla leads him to the woodshed, opens the wooden door, and shows him what he asked to see as soon as he arrived. Jacob stands transfixed. The woodshed has been transformed into an elegant room, kilims woven by the local peasants hanging on the walls, striped and colorful, the floor covered in the same. In the center of the room stands a wide bed with beautiful bedding, embroidered, now a little dusty—Sobla sweeps the blades of grass and cobwebs away with her hand. A human face, meanwhile, peeks out from under the covers; above them lie her arms and her pale, bony hands, so that Jacob, who has remained irreverent, who is still quick to make a joke, now finds his knees going weak. This is his grandmother, after all. Others, too—Nahman and Nussen, Reb Mordke and Old Moshe from Podhajce, who is also here to say hello to Jacob—come peer down at Yente. At first, Jacob just stands there petrified, but then he starts to sob, theatrically; the others follow. Sobla stands in the doorway, keeping out the curious; men have crowded into their small yard, pale and bearded under their fur hats, stamping their feet in the fresh snow to stay warm.
This is Sobla’s big moment, and she is proud that Yente looks so lovely.
She shuts the door and comes inside so she can show them how Yente’s eyelids tremble slightly, how her eyeballs move beneath them, traveling through unimaginable worlds.
“She’s alive,” Sobla reassures them. “Touch her, she’s even a little bit warm.”
Obediently, without hesitation, Jacob touches his finger to Yente’s hand. Then he jerks it back. Sobla giggles.
What, Wise Jacob, do you have to say about this?
It is known, of course, that Israel’s wife is opposed to these true believers, which is what they call themselves, twisting things around, since they are not true to the traditional faith at all. Like many women, she doesn’t like Jacob. Especially when she sees him praying without phylacteries! And when he contorts his body in strange ways, gritting his teeth. Up to his old tricks, thinks Sobla. Jacob tells her to go to the gentiles’ shop—higher up there is a village of goyim—to get some Christian bread. Sobla declines. Someone else fetches the bread, and Jacob starts to pass out pieces of it, and some are so in awe of him that they receive it, committing sacrilege. His behavior is bizarre, too; he suddenly stops to listen as though hearing voices only he can hear. He says nonsensical things in some strange language, repeating, for instance, “ze-ze-ze,” and trembling all over. What that is supposed to mean, Sobla has no idea—no one knows, but his disciples take it seriously. Moshe from Podhajce explains to Israel that what Jacob’s chanting is just “Ma’asim Zarim, Ma’asim Zarim,” that he’s talking about the “Strange Deeds”—in other words, that from which it would be necessary to begin. Foreign deeds, bizarre, strange things, incomprehensible at first glance, that would seem very odd indeed to the uninitiated—though the initiated, those closest to Jacob, would understand. They now have to do everything that was once prohibited. Hence that Christian bread, formerly impure.