Yente, always present, sees the curse like something blurred, like those strange monsters that float before our eyes, twisted scraps, tiny, translucent organisms. And the curse will now hold on to Jacob as the white clings to the yolk.
But in fact, there is nothing about this that is concerning or even surprising. Look—there are many such curses all around, lesser, weaker, perhaps, more insignificant. Many are hounded by these, as they orbit the human heart like slimy moons—all those to whom someone has ever said, “I hope you croak,” when their cart went off the road into the cabbage fields, its wheels crushing fully grown heads, and the girls cursed by their own fathers because they went into the bushes with a farmhand, and the man in the beautifully embroidered ?upan cursed by his own serf over yet another day of serfdom, and then that same serf, who’s been cursed by his wife when he allowed their money to be stolen or drank it away at the tavern. To him, too, the words “May you keel over and die” have been said.
Those able to see the way Yente sees things would realize that in fact the world is made of words that, once uttered, lay claim to every order, so that all things seem to occur at their behest. All things belong to them.
Every curse, even the slightest, has an effect. Every single word that’s said.
When Jacob finds out about the herem a few days later, he is sitting with his back to the light, so no one sees the expression on his face. The candles cast a sharp light onto his rough, uneven cheek. Is he going to get sick again, like he did back in Salonika? He has Nahman summoned, and together they pray, standing up, until morning. They pray to protect themselves. The candles burn, and the room becomes stuffy and hot. Just before dawn, as their legs are getting almost too weak to hold them, Jacob carries out a secret ritual, and then Mordechai pronounces words just as powerful as the curse and points them in the direction of Lwów.
In Lwów, Bishop Dembowski wakes up one morning and feels as though his movements have grown slower, as though they now require of him a greater effort. He doesn’t know what this could mean. But when a possible explanation for this strange, unexpected indisposition comes to him, he begins to feel afraid.
Yente lies in the shed and neither dies nor awakens. Her grandson Israel, meanwhile, goes around the village telling of this marvel with a degree of terror and distress that only vodka is capable of assuaging. He presents himself as the good grandson who dedicates whole days to his grandmother and has no time left for work. Sometimes the contemplation of it brings him to tears, and sometimes to fury, and then he gets into fights. But in reality, the ones who take care of Old Yente are Pesel and Freyna, his daughters.
Pesel gets up at dawn and goes to the shed, which is after all an annex to their cottage, and there she checks that everything is still all right. It is always all right. Only once did she see a cat sitting on the old woman’s body, a strange cat. She chased it off, and now she always makes sure the door is very tightly closed. Sometimes Yente is covered in something like dew, drops of water on her skin and on her clothing, but it’s strange water that doesn’t evaporate, that can only be dispersed with a feather duster.
Then she gently wipes Yente’s face. Her hand always hesitates before touching the skin, which is cool, delicate and soft, but supple. Sometimes it seems to Pesel that it crackles slightly, or, perhaps more precisely, that it creaks, like a new leather shoe, like a harness bought at market. Once Pesel, intrigued, asked her mother, Sobla, to help her, and very carefully they lifted up the body to check if there were any bedsores. They pulled aside the dress, but there was nothing.
“Her blood no longer flows,” Pesel says to her mother, and it sends chills down both of their spines.
But she isn’t a dead body, either. When she is touched, the slow motion of her eyeballs under their lids quickens. There can be no doubt.
To satisfy her curiosity, Pesel tried one other thing, but this she did alone, without witnesses. She took a sharp little knife and nicked a bit of skin at Yente’s wrist. She was right: no blood emerged, but Yente’s eyelids quivered uneasily, and something like a long-held breath escaped her lips. Was that possible?
Pesel, carefully observing the life of this one laid to rest, if she could be described as such, does see certain changes occur, very subtle ones. She repeatedly tells her father that Yente is shrinking, for instance.
Meanwhile, outside, a tired crowd is waiting. Some of them have been walking the whole day to get here, while others have rented a room with someone in the village, having come from farther away.
The sun rises over the river and travels quickly up into the sky, casting long, wet shadows. Those waiting warm themselves in its sharp rays. Then Pesel lets them inside, where she allows them to remain for some time. At first, they stand shyly, not daring to go up to this thing that’s like a bier. She does not permit them to pray out loud—have they not troubles enough already? So they stand and pray in silence, conveying to Yente their pleas. She seems to fulfill those requests that have to do with fertility and infertility, as the case may be—the ones that have to do with women’s bodies. But men come, too; they say that Yente helps with hopeless causes, after a person has lost everything.
That summer, as Jacob Frank flits from town to town with his havurah, teaching and inspiring so many good and evil thoughts, the biggest crowds come here, to Korolówka, to see his grandmother.
Israel’s yard is in a state of disarray. Horses are tied to the fence, it smells of their dung, and there are flies all around. Pesel admits the pilgrims in small batches. Some of them are God-fearing Jews, poor people from around here, and some are travelers who deal in buttons or sell wine by the mug. Others come guided by their curiosity. They arrive in carriages and leave Sobla cheese, a chicken, or a bark basket filled with eggs. Good: that will go to the family. When the guests have gone, the girls have to spend their evening cleaning, clearing the yard of trash, sweeping the shed, and raking the trodden ground. When it is rainy, Sobla brings sawdust and covers the floor of the shed with it, to absorb the moisture.
Now, in the evening, Pesel has lit a candle and covered the body of the departed with handknitted socks, children’s shoes, little caps, embroidered kerchiefs. She mutters under her breath. At the sound of the door creaking, she starts. It’s just Sobla. She breathes a sigh of relief.
“Mama, you scared me.”
Sobla stares in astonishment.
“What are you doing? What is this?”
Pesel is undeterred; she doesn’t stop taking socks and kerchiefs out of the basket and laying them on the body. She just shrugs.