Judah the Pious (26 page)

“Indeed, you were the only one among us who was devoted to the memory of that long-forgotten miracle. You alone gave it credence by hating it so bitterly, and by molding your entire life to contradict the principles on which you believed it to be based.”

“Then I am the most religious man of all,” laughed the young man bitterly.

“Exactly,” replied Judah the Pious.

Judah ben Simon lowered his head and said nothing for several minutes. “But why did you make my parents humiliate themselves that way?” he whispered at last. “How could a great saint stoop to such a petty sin, and devise such petty deceptions in order to conceal it?”

“I am not a great saint,” answered the Cracower rabbi, gently shaking his head. “I am merely a charlatan like yourself, a charlatan who has been lucky enough to perceive the miraculous warmth of God’s love.” The sage smiled genially, and reached out to pinch his son’s flushed cheek.

“I am still completely human, I assure you,” he went on. “Do not condemn me too harshly. Try to imagine, Judah ben Simon: suppose, in your declining years, you were suddenly tormented by a last temptation of the flesh, an unexpected, irresistible attraction to a lovely middle-aged matron. You fight it for a while, then give in: who can say how these things happen? But tell me this: could you possibly think of a better way to enable the woman, her husband, and her neighbors to continue their lives in untroubled contentment?”

“No, I could not,” agreed the mountebank, amazed to feel the tears well up behind his eyes. Despite himself, he was beginning to believe his mother’s tales of the sage’s boundless wisdom, and to experience a strong affection for this calm and powerful man.

When Judah ben Simon spoke again, all the arrogance and obstinacy had vanished from his voice and given way to a new tone of meekness and humility.

“I have come to ask you a question,” he said, then stopped. “No,” he corrected himself, “I have come to ask you to explain the meaning of my life, to reveal the significance of my experience among those three strange women, to interpret those weird coincidences, to describe the origin of that monstrous cat. And, most important of all, I am asking you to tell me whether these things might not be considered stranger than a child conceived in a dream.”

Judah the Pious laughed out loud, as if his son had told him a hilarious joke; but, when he realized that the young man was serious, a spark of irritation became visible in his burning eyes. “Clearly,” he muttered, “you mistake me for a boy with scientific notions, like yourself. Otherwise, you would never expect me to label and explain each event in your life as if it were some cog or wheel in a mechanical clock.

“I am neither a clockmaker nor a scientist, Judah ben Simon; I am a man of God. And frankly, considering all you have experienced, it disappoints and astounds me that you can still request a precise, orderly, and final explanation of His marvelous and mysterious plan.”

“No,” interrupted the mountebank hastily, “you misunderstand me. I am no longer searching for conclusive proof of anything. But I would be inexpressibly grateful if you would consent to shed just one ray of light on this dark mystery, if you would offer one possible—one remotely probable—method of solving this baffling puzzle.”

“That is something I can certainly agree to do,” smiled the sage. Grown cheerful once again, he paused for a moment’s reflection.

“I suppose,” he began, “that one might attribute the last ten years of your life to a careful plan of mine, a lesson aimed to disabuse my son of some overly scientific notions. With this end in mind, I entered the body of Dr. Boris Silentius—”

“Or disguised yourself as the ailing scientist,” Judah could not help interrupting.

“Whichever way you choose to see it,” sighed the old man patiently, “I attempted to teach you the truth with the aid of a few strange stories and moldy bones. Then, when this failed, I resumed my role as Jeremiah Vinograd, and sent you out on that greatest of all follies, the mountebank’s quest for success.”

“But really,” the young man broke in again, “all this must have been a great deal of trouble for you to undertake, even for the sake of a son.”

“Not at all,” replied the saint, smiling slyly and gesturing with his head towards the main tent outside his room. “I would have done the same for any of them out there.

“Indeed, to tell the truth,” he continued, “the worst bother was yet to come: let me assure you, it was no easy task to locate a woman who resembled your unique and extraordinary wife. And it took every bit of my political influence to have her installed in the hunting lodge of two dotty noblewomen, and to persuade them to let me refurbish one room with some evocative murals.”

“All this makes perfect sense,” pronounced Judah ben Simon slowly, “yet there are still too many things which cannot be explained in this manner. I refuse to believe that you would have slept with your own daughter-in-law, and fathered her dream child. I am unable to imagine how you could have created that enormous wildcat, nor do I understand the nature of its relation to the Baroness Sophia, and the creature which used to howl in my native woods. Finally,” he concluded, watching the old man carefully, “not even the most wicked villain would murder three young women just to prove an abstract philosophical point.”

“And so we have come to the very heart of the matter,” said the head of the Cracower court, smiling radiantly. “I am absolutely delighted to see that my only son is at last becoming the wise and perceptive young man I had always prayed he would be. For I will tell you, Judah ben Simon, you could not be more correct.

“As much as I hate to admit it, my miracle-working ability never progressed to a level which would permit me to fashion a child from the airy vapor of dreams, or a gigantic cat from the fears of a dark night. No, the plain truth is that these things happened, and I had nothing to do with them. What else can I say?

“All I can do,” he went on, after a while, “is offer you another possibility, an alternate explanation which completes and surpasses the one I proposed a few minutes ago. By now, Judah, you yourself must realize that these odd chances which have befallen you can only be interpreted as separate scenes in the strange and miraculous play of God.

“Despite my flawed understanding of His ways, I will still venture to guess that He was acting out of motives much like mine—shaping and molding your destiny in an effort to make one of His children see the truth. Right from the beginning, in fact, I knew that he was moving me to take the form of Jeremiah Vinograd—for I
do
possess the essentially simple power of being in two places at once—and to steer you to Danzig.”

The holy man fell silent for a long time, then shook his head in wonder. “When I heard about the dream-child,” he continued, “I realized that He had grown impatient with my feeble efforts, and had resolved to step in Himself. From then on, things were no longer in my control. I did my best to help out, with that business of the mountebankery, and the three women.

“But, in the end, he outdid me again: the black cat proved beyond a doubt that none of us mortal miracle-workers have achieved one-millionth of His divine skill and accomplishment.”

“So this God of yours would cheerfully wreck a man’s life just to teach him a lesson?” demanded Judah ben Simon, in a voice which quaked with fury.

Judah the Pious looked sharply at his son. “To tell the truth,” he said quickly, “I would never have thought so; but that is the way it appears to be. Indeed, I will have to give some consideration to this problem of God’s unpredictable nature. Yet, be that as it may, I must still maintain that the hand of God is the only force which could have directed your fate in this way. What other explanation can you give?”

Once again, the young man bowed his head. He suspected that his father’s words were true, but could not yet bring himself to accept them. “I can blame it on the laws of coincidence,” he answered weakly, unable to abandon all his convictions without some time to reconsider.

“Blame it on anything you want,” replied the saint placidly, aware that his son’s dilemma would not be instantly resolved. “As for your second question,” he continued, “I cannot possibly presume to tell you whether these phenomena are stranger than a child conceived in a dream; I do not often worry about one thing being stranger than another. Such fruitless and time-consuming questions of comparison can only be subjectively resolved. It does seem obvious, however, that there is sufficient doubt in your mind to merit a return journey home, and a few years of reflection.”

Conscious that the sage’s wisdom could not be faulted, Judah ben Simon felt so much excitement that he could no longer sit still. “You are right,” he said, beginning to pace the confines of the tiny room. “I am grateful for your advice. And now, if you will permit me, I will be on my way.”

Then, in an instinctive, almost involuntary gesture, Judah ben Simon fell to his knees and kissed the wrinkled palms which lay upturned in the old man’s lap.

“Farewell,” said the saint, grasping his son’s shoulders and staring deep into his eyes. “My heart is calmer now, for I feel quite confident that your troubles have come to an end. One thing is certain,” he went on, smiling wryly, “and that is the fact that
I
will no longer be tampering with your life. I am more than ninety years old; my time is almost over. But, if you should ever be in need,” he concluded, running his fingers affectionately through the young man’s long blond hair, “do not hesitate to call on me.”

“Thank you,” replied Judah ben Simon tearfully, and hastily preceded the rabbi through the entrance to the main tent. As the mountebank rushed breathlessly up the center aisle, and into the crowd of onlookers at the back of the assembly, he realized that the great wise man of Cracow had already begun to address his congregation.

“Wonder of wonders!” boomed the saint, causing smiles of warmth and affection to appear on his listeners’ faces. “Today, I have met a most interesting fellow, a brilliant young naturalist who has taken the trouble to study every line and detail in nature’s magnificent plan. And, at the end of all the mazes and labyrinths which he has explored in the course of his painstaking research, he has discovered yet another testament to the miraculous power of God.”

“A
ND RACHEL ANNA?” ASKED
King Casimir, so eager that he could hardly keep himself from squirming on the carpeted steps. “How long did it take Judah ben Simon to find her and persuade her to forgive his sins?”

“I am afraid that it took him an eternity,” replied Eliezer sadly, and fell into a long, melancholy reverie.

“When my hero returned to his rebuilt, relocated village,” continued the rabbi at last, “he found his entire family reduced to one small boy, the two-year-old dream-child who had been placed in the care of Joseph Joshua’s young and liberal replacement.

Several weeks passed before Judah was able to extract any information from his old neighbors; in the beginning, the townspeople turned their faces from him in fear and embarrassment, as if his anxious, questioning expression was the symptom of some fatal illness. Gradually, however, he managed to piece together certain fragments of overheard gossip, and began to understand about the plague and its cure; as the villagers grew accustomed and oblivious to Judah’s presence in the tavern, they slowly returned to their favorite conversational topics, and once again spoke of Rachel Anna and her departure with Jeremiah Vinograd.

Finally, in the midst of winter, as the townspeople grew more and more desperate for amusement, a few loquacious citizens could no longer resist the temptation to tell Hannah Polikov’s son about the rumors which had filtered back from Warsaw.

It was then that Judah ben Simon began to hear how Rachel Anna had entered the capital city in the mountebank’s employ, and how her remarkable performing ability had transformed her into a local celebrity. He learned how Reb Daniel of Warsaw had haunted her tent, driven by a fierce desire which had plagued him ever since the days of the dream court, and how bitterness and exhaustion had made her take the ugly old rabbi as a lover.

“Then,” concluded the villagers, “she left the mountebank’s service, despite the violent protests of Jeremiah Vinograd.”

“And after that?” demanded the distraught young man, again and again. “Where is she now?”

But even the most dedicated gossips would fall silent and refuse to reply, until, one night, Judah met the apothecary’s daughter, who had inherited all her mother’s good humor. Frowning dourly, she told the anguished husband how his son had been mysteriously sent home from Warsaw, with an anonymous letter explaining his orphaned state.

The boy’s mother, said the letter, had died in childbirth, as she struggled to bring forth Reb Daniel’s stillborn baby. But Rachel Anna’s was no ordinary maternity death; there was no infection, no uterine hemorrhage, no puerperal fever. Instead, the strains of labor had somehow opened an old wound on her neck, and caused the young woman’s blood to flow in torrents down her breast.

“And what does it mean!” cried Casimir passionately. “What does it mean that Rachel Anna, the Baroness Sophia, and the monster wildcat all died in the same way?”

“In the words of Judah the Pious,” shrugged Eliezer, “‘These things happened. What can I say?’”

During the full, thoughtful silence which ensued, King Casimir of Poland rubbed his eyes until the rims were red and teary. “Rabbi Eliezer,” he began at last, regaining a shaky hold on his composure, “it is true that I feel no regret at having taken your advice and sent my courtiers away.”

“Casimir,” interrupted the old man brusquely, “I am going away soon, and you will never see me again. Say what is on your mind.”

Shocked by the boldness of Eliezer’s request, the king hesitated for several minutes. Then, he felt overwhelmed by a sense of tranquillity and relief.

“Before you came this morning,” he murmured tentatively, “I was in a most unsettled state; I had lost almost all my faith, for I had begun to scorn it as a worthless system of injustices and improbabilities. But I will confess that your story has shown me the dangers of such a narrow and scientific view. I am nearly tempted to repair to my royal chapel, to see if I can recapture any of the old emotion. Perhaps nothing will happen,” his voice trailed off. “It is impossible to tell….