Of the Polish princess Gitla Pinkasówna
Lovely Gitla is the only daughter of Pinkas, secretary to Rapaport, rabbi of Lwów. There’s something wrong with her—her mind is not altogether sound—and she’s caused her father no end of trouble, which is why he sent her to be raised by his sister in Busk, so that she might take in the healthy country air there and cease making scenes back in Lwów.
Her beauty is a concern, though it’s a trait that often pleases parents. She is tall, slender, with a dark, oval face, prominent lips, and dark eyes. She walks around in an unfaltering state of disarray, always wearing eccentric clothing. All summer she traversed the damp meadows outside town, reciting poems, going to the cemetery by herself, always with a book in hand. Her aunt thinks that’s what happens when you teach a girl to read. Gitla’s careless father did as much, and this is the result. An educated woman is the cause of many misfortunes. And in a way, here is proof of this. What normal person spends her time in a cemetery? The girl is nineteen, she should have been married long ago, and while boys and men are attracted to her, no one wants to get married to somebody like that. They say she let some boys feel her up. They did that just past the cemetery, where the road enters the forest. Who knows whether it led to anything more?
Gitla’s mother died when the girl was just a few years old. For a long time, Pinkas was a widower, but a few years back he took a new wife who could not stand her stepdaughter. The feeling was mutual. When the stepmother gave birth to twins, Gitla ran away from home for the first time. Her father found her in a tavern on the outskirts of Lwów. Young as she was, she was sitting and kibitzing with the card players. Yet they did not take her for a traveling whore. She spoke good Polish and was obviously well-educated and well-mannered. She said she wanted to go to Kraków. She was attired nicely, too—in the finest dresses—and she behaved as if she were waiting for someone. The tavern keeper thought she was some great lady who had found herself in a dire situation. She told everyone she was the great-granddaughter of the king of Poland, and that her father had found her in a basket lined with swan’s down, and that a swan had even nursed her with its milk. Her listeners laughed more at the swan’s milk than at the basket. When her father burst into the tavern, he slapped her hard, in front of everyone. Then he dragged her to his cart, forced her into it, and drove off in the direction of Lwów. Poor Pinkas still hears the echoes of the guffaws and bawdy jokes he heard in the tavern that day. That’s why he decided to find his daughter a husband as soon as possible, to marry her to the first man who might want her, while—so he hoped—she was still a virgin. He hired the best matchmakers, and soon there were willing candidates from Jezierzany and Czortków. Then she started going into the hay with the boys, so that everyone could see. She did it on purpose so that there wouldn’t be a wedding. And there was no wedding. Both suitors retracted their proposals, the one from Jezierzany and the one from Czortków—news traveled fast. Gitla moved into a room in an annex to the main house, like a leper.
In the winter of that disastrous year, however, Gitla got lucky, or maybe unlucky, who knows. A caravan of sleighs appeared at the inn, and the newcomers dispersed across the town. Gitla’s aunt, who was also hosting Gitla’s stepmother with the twins, two boys, voracious and hirsute as Esau, locked the whole family inside, closed the shutters, and told them all to pray so that the voices of the heathen might not reach their innocent ears.
Gitla, ignoring her stepmother’s admonitions, threw on the little Hutsul sheepskin coat her father had given her and went out into the snow. She stomped through the village to the redheaded Nahman’s home, where the Lord had stopped in for a bit. She waited by the door with the rest of them, their faces covered by the clouds of vapor from their breath, shifting from one foot to the other to keep warm, until the Lord known as Jacob finally exited with his entourage. Then she grabbed his hand and kissed it. He tried to wrest it from her grasp, but Gitla had already uncovered her thick, beautiful hair, and now she said what she always said: “I am a Polish princess, the granddaughter of the Polish king.”
The others burst out laughing, but it made an impression on Jacob. He looked her up and down and then stared straight into her eyes. What he saw there no one ever learned. But since then, Gitla has never left his side, not for a moment. People say the Lord has been exceedingly pleased with her. They say that his strength has increased on account of her, and that she, too, has been granted great power from heaven, has felt it in herself. When once some tatterdemalion came to attack the Lord, she used that power to take the rogue down, throwing him into the snow so forcefully that he couldn’t get up for a long while. By Jacob’s side, she has been like a she-wolf, right up until that calamitous night in Lanckoroń.
Of Pinkas and his shameful despair
As Pinkas toils for Rapaport, he tries not to stand out, flitting sideways, huddling over his writings; now, as he copies out documents, he can barely be seen. But the rabbi with the eternally narrowed eyes can see better than even most young people. He seems just to be passing by, but Pinkas can feel his gaze on him as though he were being stung by nettles. Finally the moment comes—Rapaport calls for him when he’s alone. He inquires about Pinkas’s health, his wife, the twins, politely, mildly, as is his wont. Finally, he asks, not looking at his secretary:
“Is it true that . . .”
He doesn’t finish, but nonetheless Pinkas feels flushed, as if a thousand infernal white-hot needles pierced his skin.
“I’ve met with some misfortune.”
Rabbi Rapaport simply nods his head sadly.
“Do you understand, Pinkas, that she is no longer a Jewish woman?” he asks mildly. “Do you understand that?”
Rapaport says that Pinkas should have done something a long time ago, back when she started saying she was a Polish princess, or even earlier, when everyone could see something was going wrong with her, that some dybbuk had possessed her and turned her dissolute and mouthy and vulgar.
“When did she start behaving strangely?” asks the rabbi.
Pinkas thinks for a long time. Since the death of her mother, he says. Her mother was a long time in dying, in agony, from a tumor in her breast that spread throughout her body.