Judah the Pious (15 page)

Judah ben Simon stopped several feet from the bed; his head felt empty, dizzy, he could think of nothing to say. He and Rachel Anna stared at each other in silence until the baby ceased its yowling and permitted them to speak.

“Welcome home,” she said at last, smiling uncertainly. “How was your stay in Danzig?”

“Useless,” he answered grimly, “utterly useless.”

“I cannot believe that,” teased his wife. “By now, you must know more about the ways of nature than God himself.”

“The only thing I learned,” replied Judah, deadly serious, “was the importance of trusting my own judgment.”

“Then I am sorry your time could not have been more profitably spent,” said Rachel Anna. “I myself learned exactly the same thing, and I did not need to travel all the way to Danzig.”

He knew that she was challenging him to resume the conversation he had begun downstairs, to express the same disbelief and scorn he had been heaping on his mother. But he simply could not bring himself to start so soon; his second wind had gone, and had left him with an aching desire for a few moments of peace.

“So this is your baby,” he said, smiling, sitting on the edge of the bed and hesitantly running one hand over the child’s head.

“Yes,” she replied, relaxing slightly.

“Good strong lungs,” murmured Judah ben Simon.

“Of course,” Rachel Anna said pointedly, looking hard at her husband.

But still, Judah could not begin asking the obvious questions. “Tell me,” he said, trying to approach the subject indirectly, “have they made it very difficult for you in this town?”

“After the departure of the Cracower court,” she answered, without taking her eyes from his face, “the people were very kind. I like to think that they actually accepted the scholars’ authority, and at last believed my word; but perhaps it was only the money they made during the sages’ visit which sweetened their doubts. At any rate, the village women soon began besieging me with friendly advice about pregnancy and childbirth, and well-intentioned warnings about the deformed infant they feared might result in my particular case. The apothecary’s wife confidently predicted that I would follow in the unfortunate path of the famous Frau Elisabeth of Bremen, who, in the space of one night, gave birth to twelve children, three dogs, two roosters, and a spotted boar.”

“But none of their predictions came true?” asked Judah anxiously. “The baby is completely normal?”

“As far as I can tell,” replied Rachel Anna. “But, nevertheless, everyone in town has been terrified of me since the birth.”

“Why should that be?” murmured her husband, almost afraid to hear her answer.

“Because,” she replied softly, “I did not make a single sound during the entire eighteen hours of my labor.”

“How could you have done that?” Judah ben Simon asked in amazement.

“The answer to that is simple,” said his wife. “It was not so terribly painful. After all, women have been giving birth for centuries, in places where a single cry might ruin the hunt and so starve their whole tribe. But the question of
why
I did it is far more difficult to answer. Maybe I did not want the townspeople listening to my suffering like a concert, telling each other that I was finally being punished for all my shameful pleasures. Maybe it was the fault of the village midwife, who advised me to shriek as loud as I could, telling me that tears were a woman’s lot, that they would help me ease the agony.

“Yet, whatever my reason, the outcome could not have been more certain: ‘Animals and witches give birth this way,’ pronounced the midwife solemnly, ‘not human women.’ And, ever since, our neighbors have avoided the house, and have taken to saying that this innocent baby is the offspring of an enchantress and her demon lover.”

As Rachel Anna spoke these last words, Judah could no longer meet her gaze; he shut his eyes, and knew that the time had come. “Rachel Anna,” he whispered, “who is the father of the baby?”

“You are,” she replied deliberately. “You came to me in a dream.”

“Whose child is this?” repeated her husband.

“Yours and mine,” she said.

“But that is impossible,” he exploded. “I cannot imagine,” he continued, when he had regained his self-control, “how you could have forgotten the years we lived together, and all the things we believed in. Rachel Anna”—Judah’s voice took on an almost pleading tone—“listen to me: I swear that I love you still, I swear that I will forgive you for this and raise the child as if it were my own. I will not even ask you to reveal your lover’s name. Just tell me the truth, tell me that you do not really subscribe to this lie, to this superstitious nonsense about fantasies and visions.”

“What can I say?” sighed his wife. “I conceived this child by you and no one else, one December night, in the midst of a dream.”

“But you are asking me to believe in a miracle!” the young man cried desperately.

“No,” she answered, “I am asking you to believe in a scientific fact, but you are simply too close-minded, too stubborn, too narrow in your notions of science. Suppose you had never seen a bird, Judah ben Simon, and I told you there were large animals capable of coasting and gliding on the breeze. Certainly, you would accuse me of talking miracles, and scorn me for telling superstitious fables about things which have never happened in nature. And yet—”

“That is exactly the point,” Judah broke in. “With my own eyes, I have seen wrens flying through the air. Therefore, I know that they exist. But I have never yet seen a child conceived in a dream.

“I can accept only what I know for myself, Rachel Anna; the only meaningful fact I learned at Dr. Boris Silentius’s home was the etymology of the word ‘science,’ which comes from the ancient root meaning ‘eyes.’ I have seen children born from the mating of men and women, not of women and dreams. Unless you tell me that you slept with a living man, nine months ago, you are asking me to believe in a miraculous work of God.”

“All right, then,” snapped Rachel Anna. “Hold on tight to those unshakeable truths of yours. If you insist on thinking that the conception of our child was a miracle, then I am talking about a miracle.”

“But you are lying,” he shouted.

“I am telling the truth,” she replied, without the slightest tremor of doubt.

Judah ben Simon rested his head in his hands. “In just a few days,” he said quietly, “I could have overcome my jealousy of another man; I could have resumed living with you as happily as before my journey. But I could never adjust to sharing my life with a woman who believed in miracles. I would rather exile myself from the entire region, far away from all memories of you.”

Rachel Anna said nothing as he rose from the bed and walked slowly from the room; an instant later, her voice rang out so loud that the chickens in the outer courtyard woke up and fluttered their wings.

“Wait!” she screamed, in a manner which allowed her husband no choice but to turn back. “I knew,” she began, as soon as she saw his face again, “that I had married a stubborn man, but I was unaware that I had married a stubborn fool. I am disappointed, I would have expected better from you. But I cannot make up lies to keep you, not even though I know you are about to leave the house and depart from the village forever.”

Rachel Anna paused for a minute, and, when she spoke again, her voice was thick with tears. “You are so obstinate,” she whispered, “there is no way I could ever convince you that I am right. I can only ask you to promise me this. Swear to me, Judah ben Simon, that you will return to me immediately if you should ever see, with your own eyes, something stranger than a child conceived in a dream.”

“I promise to come back with the story of my first miracle,” he muttered, and left the room for the second and final time.

“I
N THE WORDS OF
Judah the Pious,” said Eliezer, aware that the young king was attempting to conceal some new anxiety, “‘Speak your heart and rob the physician of his fee.’”

“All right, then,” sighed Casimir at last. “What bothers me is this: I believe that I can now foresee the outcome of your narrative; and I am wondering how I can sustain my interest when I already know that Judah ben Simon must eventually encounter some great miracle and return home to seek his wife.”

Rabbi Eliezer of Rimanov laughed out loud, then raised his eyes in an expression of suffering patience which the boy had last seen on the painted martyrs in his royal chapel. “Even if you are right,” he said, “what then? I can assure you, there is no reason to fear boredom or disappointment. It is true that my hero will discover untold wonders as my story nears its finish—but why should that upset you? Do you think that a single one of your subjects finds his enjoyment of the Easter plays diminished by the knowledge that they must necessarily conclude in the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Life?”

The king was too stunned by Eliezer’s presumption to reply.

“You see,” continued the old man, interpreting his listener’s silence as a sign of agreement, “it is not such a terrible thing to know the end. Indeed, I am proud of you for having perceived it so soon, and I would hate to punish your foresight and perspicacity by interrupting my narrative in the middle. Therefore, with Your Majesty’s permission, I will resume my tale again.

“Soon after Judah ben Simon left his mother’s house,” continued the Rabbi Eliezer, “he found himself roaming the deserted streets and alleys of his village. He passed by the Rabbi Joseph Joshua’s schoolroom, by the town bakery, the market, and the empty lots in which he had dug for treasure as a boy. He walked out towards the woods, then, thinking better of it, merely skirted the edges of the forest; he revisited the cemetery where his mother had been briefly interred so long ago, and where his father now lay for eternity. Judah did not cease his wandering until daybreak, when the shopkeepers who came out to open their shutters began to whisper and point at him. Then he broke into a run, and instinctively headed back towards the highway from which he had come the previous night.

Just outside of town, Judah ben Simon gazed absent-mindedly towards the hill where he had last met Jeremiah Vinograd—and spotted the embroidered brown velvet cloak and the red turban. Making his way up the incline, Judah noticed the familiar matted hair and streaked beard; but this time, he saw, the mountebank seemed so alert and cheerful that his face appeared to glow with merriment in the pale dawn light.

“Hello!” shouted the herbalist, recognizing the young man at once. “Did you ever succeed in killing that wretched cat?”

“What cat?” asked the other.

“The last time I saw you,” explained Jeremiah Vinograd, “you were leaving the apothecary’s, where you had just bought some poison for a wildcat whose screams were annoying your wife.”

Staring down into the mountebank’s maniacal, ice-blue eyes, Judah ben Simon suddenly realized that he no longer wanted revenge for the years he had wasted in Danzig. “Ah, the she-cat,” he sighed, so exhausted that he could not refrain from sinking to the ground beside the old man, “the poor she-cat seems to have been forgotten by everyone. At any rate,” he continued, unable to resist an urge to reproach the charlatan, “I must remind you that our last conversation did not take place outside the apothecary’s, but here, on this very spot, as I was on my way to visit your friend Dr. Boris Silentius.”

“Oh yes,” murmured Jeremiah Vinograd, tapping his forehead, “perhaps we did exchange some words about the good doctor. But I regret to say that I cannot remember meeting you here on this lovely hill. I hope you will pardon my forgetfulness; that summer was a particularly stormy time in my career, during which I was much given to brief trances and sudden fits of aphasia. But now I am completely recovered, thank you, and absolutely overjoyed to remake the acquaintance of a fellow scientist.” The old man paused. “And a former student of the great Dr. Boris Silentius?” he added questioningly.

“Yes,” nodded Judah, “a former student of the great Dr. Boris Silentius.”

“How wonderful!” exclaimed Jeremiah Vinograd. “Since you have studied with Silentius,” he said, watching to ascertain the young man’s reaction, “you may be interested in an article I have in my possession, an object which may have a certain—shall we say—sentimental value for you. But before I exhibit this treasure, let me first explain the reasons why I bother to drag this souvenir of Boris Silentius around with me from town to town.

“In addition to being a man of science and a thespian,” declared the mountebank proudly, pulling himself up straight and brushing some sand from the front of his robe, “I am also something of a collector and a connoisseur. But I am not at all like your typical collector: I refuse to be classed in the same league with those misguided old women who squander their leisure hours and spare pennies just to cram their cupboards full of glass bottles, bits of old lace, tea cosies, balalaikas, and butterflies.

“No,” he continued, “
I
am a collector of collections—or, to be more exact, a pilferer of selected objects from the collections of others, from the most meticulously assembled and catalogued collections in the world. I can neither understand nor explain why this hobby should so fascinate me; the trickery and theft involved are truly my only vices. But whenever I behold the prize of a lifetime’s effort, or the one perfect specimen necessary to complete an entire series, I find it impossible to resist.

“For that reason,” said the herbalist, reaching into the enormous canvas bag which lay on the ground beside him, “I have here, direct from the Paris thieves’ market, the one pair of pincers which the Marquis de Lyons needed in order to possess all the favored instruments of Torquemada. I am also the proud owner of the jawbone of Saint Isidore, specially obtained for me from the vaults of Toledo by a greedy young friar. This piece of tattered cardboard is The Ruined Tower from an ancient tarot deck—assembled, card by card, by a penniless Syrian widow. And this torn parchment is the final page from an Anglo-Saxon law book, which I collected from a British scholar, whose life’s work involved the completion and repair of this very manuscript. Nor am I overly scrupulous about borrowing from my fellow mountebanks; otherwise, I would never have gotten Genghis Khan’s pillbox from a colleague of mine who chanced to save such things.