The Glatstein Chronicles (46 page)

“This filled me with wonder. I raised my head and looked about me. I saw at once that I had lost my way. The trees looked like trees in a dream, the sky was like a very thick crust, it was as if a last film had been removed from it, I could see the most marvelous things. I heard birds fluttering and twittering, but I could not see them. Dusk had fallen, but it was not very dark yet—the light was pink, not a bit frightening.

“On a bench two men sat talking. I could see very well that they were talking, I could see their lips moving, I could even hear what they were saying, but each word just flickered and faded out at once, like a falling star.

“One of the men had a royal appearance. In the twilight it was hard to say what clothes he had on, but there was an air of royal dignity about him. The other man too looked like one of the great, though of a lower rank. It is hard to say how I distinguished between the two—the light above the second man was almost the same as that above the first, but with something a little more common, less rich, about it.

“I was devoured by curiosity. I began to weep aloud, but the two men did not even look over at me. I came up closer and closer to them, until I was right in front of them, and then I passed through them as if they were nothing but thin air.

“Suddenly a veil dropped from before my eyes, and things took on firmer outlines. The dusk had lost its pink glow, it was darker now, but this didn’t bother me. In fact I could see much more clearly than before.

“There was still another change. Instead of one bench I now saw two benches. Each of the men sat on a separate bench, silent, as if waiting for me. I bowed deeply before the royal figure of higher rank. I clearly saw his sad face and I knew everything.

“‘Sabbatai Zvi,’ I said to him, ‘what are you trying to tell me? What is the vision you have granted me?’

“‘It is not I who granted you the vision,’ he said. ‘It is you who came upon it when you lost your way. Well, so be it, it’s your choice. May it be to your benefit.’

“‘Sabbatai Zvi,’ I cried, ‘you false Messiah! Is this the world of deception in which you are living?’

“He looked at me with so much genuine sorrow that I realized at once there could be no question of deception. I became confused.

“‘And are not the true Messiahs also false?’ he asked, smiling sadly. ‘For what have all of us accomplished? Just because we dreamed, do we deserve to be branded as false and stoned? And it is you of all people who say such things, you who know so well how we hoped, how stubbornly we hoped, desperately bent upon bringing about at least one hour of happiness. Even the truest Messiah would have become false if he really sought redemption. Indeed, the true Messiahs are those who do nothing but wait patiently. Or should they be called the wise and practical Messiahs, whereas we should be called foolish Messiahs, failures? But
false
Messiahs? How can you of all people say that?’

“In my sorrow I turned to the other man. ‘Jacob Frank,’ I said. His eyes were so sad that it was painful to look at him.

“‘I have spent a long time in sorrowful silence,’ he said, sighing. ‘What’s the use of talking? Occasionally I talk to Sabbatai because we understand each other easily, but … ’

“I interrupted him. ‘All I want to know,’ I said, ‘is why you changed gods. I wanted to ask Sabbatai the same question, but the other had at least a kind of excuse—Ishmael, our kin, the Crescent. But what possible excuse is there for the Cross?’

“At this moment a little Jew came running up to me as though brought by a wind. The two benches were now wrapped in complete darkness, but the silvery beard of the little Jew gleamed and glistened. ‘What’s the idea of hassling these two men?’ he said to me. ‘What business is it of yours to make them give account of themselves? For God’s sake, don’t you see that these two Jews, for all their falseness, served the cause of truth? They wanted to make the truth so irrefutable that they turned it inside out. They went into the very abyss of Sheol, just to show whither untruth can lead—and you call them to account?’

“He smiled then and gave me a friendly pat on the back. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘let’s recite late-evening prayers and forget all this!’

“I was about to pray with fervor when I realized that the little man was reciting a weird set of prayers: ‘Greetings, dear Father, I have come in to your vestibule to bid you good evening. This is an ordinary Wednesday, Jews are toiling and trading, not for themselves, God forbid, but for their wives and children, for their families. They are up to their necks in all kinds of worries and troubles, yet all the same they take time off to say their evening prayers, to turn their faces to the east, to raise their eyes to You, God our Father. So I ask You, dear God, is it fair that You should always be throwing it up to us that You have chosen us as Your people? Whom else could You have chosen? Whom? Do You know of a better people?’

“He vanished as suddenly as he had come. I realized that I was in a dark alley, and I set out looking for the main road. I ran into my older brother and I was about to tell him what I had just seen, but then I decided I wouldn’t—I know him well, he likes to argue, a real Litvak. But I told it to you since we’ve been talking anyway. You’re a stranger here, you’ll go away soon, across the ocean. You will think that a confused young boy has been talking to you. But don’t be too sure. You might take another look at the whole thing. For even if I had a thousand heads on my shoulders, I couldn’t invent such a thing. And anyhow inventions aren’t as difficult as all that. Why should I make up stories when real life is so full of wonders?”

“Know what? Come and pay us a visit. For once, obey your virtuous impulse. No one will harm you at our house.” He added, “I will show you some essays I have written, which no other living soul has seen. I have a fiery pen, and I teem with ideas. You’re sure to be rewarded for your trouble. Only it’s a pity my father is away. It’s too bad because he is a remarkable man. It would be a shame to miss meeting him, for there won’t be many more like him.”

I walked with him across the narrow board over the little stream. The board bent under our feet, as if it were made of rubber. No one was anywhere around. From down there the hill looked as though it had been stored away, but just for the night. My companion led the way, turning around frequently to make sure that I was following.

We passed through a garden, and he led me quietly to his room, as if he were sneaking me in. He closed the door and lit a small lamp in addition to the large chandelier. The small lamp was like a searchlight—I felt that it must be used to discover things undiscoverable with the help of the large lamp alone.

“What do you prefer—to have things read to you or to read them yourself? Naturally it depends on whether your eyes or your ears are the sharper. But it also depends on the things I will show you. Some of them are for the eye, others for the ear.”

He handed me some long, thin strips of paper. I realized that the manuscripts, written in a tiny hand and full of blots and erasures, were not something I’d care to puzzle out myself. The ink was watery and the strips of paper looked like unrolled mezuzahs with letters missing.

“I hope you’ll forgive me, but I must say a few words to introduce each piece I’ll read to you. First I’ll treat you to a letter. Letters are important. You take a sheet of paper and you write to someone because you can’t see him and speak to him face to face. A letter must be short and to the point. I composed a dozen letters as models for a modern book on how to write good letters.

“And now I’ll show you a sample of a prayer. You must realize, prayers have to be recreated in each generation. But a prayer must also have an old-fashioned quality, if it is to be agreeable to recite.

“I have written countless poems, but I am not satisfied with them. My poems seem empty vessels. They sit there like carafes, with long embarrassed necks, waiting to be filled. But I’ll read you a short one, for a sample:

“If you care for that sort of thing. But the fact is I am strongest in discursive thought. At that I am hard to beat. I’ll let you hear an excerpt from one of my essays.

“Well, what do you think of it? Did you grasp my point? I develop the argument further, and I prove that our inventions rebel against us and make their own way back to the miracle, to the primeval mystery. The human hand must learn to regain wonder directly, without taking the long way around so-called invention. I don’t expect you to grasp that at once. It is an idea that requires a lot of reflection.

“It is my opinion,” he went on, eyes flashing, “that we do indeed have to learn the seven sciences and the seventy languages, but that they must all be raised to a higher power. The sciences, too, are bodies, are concrete things. When someone speaks French to a Frenchman, he merely uses a means to make himself understood by the Frenchman. He is applying knowledge which he has acquired, but between him and the Frenchman the French language is no longer a language, it is a spiritual affinity. They are no longer speaking a language, they
speak.
The same is true of mathematics. If a man were to walk around constantly keeping in mind the full content of the art of calculation, he’d be a fool. Calculation must vanish and be transformed into pure wisdom. From this it follows that there must be a point where all the sciences meet, where they dissolve and become like one another. There, in some no man’s land of human sublimity, all the sciences flow together to become a unified wisdom, which is no more than one infinitely tiny flicker of light from the Great Source. A man must not flaunt his knowledge. When we know what knowledge is, we see that it is no more than imitation. It is only when the various sciences meet and become spiritual, that knowledge becomes a reality. Until that occurs, it is a deadweight that drags you down and drowns you.

“What I’ve just been saying has come to me all of a sudden.” He picked up a pencil and began to write. “I must note it down, for this is a golden thought. Such a thing mustn’t get lost.”

When we went into the other room, there were people sitting, almost as though waiting for us. There were things to eat on the table, and I was touched by the warm glow that shone in everyone’s eyes.

The American son-in-law, who was wearing a skullcap, smiled at us, as though putting a question mark after everything I had just heard. He asked me, “Well, how do you like my little brother-in-law? He’s got a lively head on his shoulders, hasn’t he? Don’t worry about him, he’ll get somewhere.”

“Well, I don’t think so highly of my little brother.” The man who said this had a broad face with large fleshy lips and a fleshy nose; even his eyes and his large rectangular beard looked fleshy. He too sat there as if waiting for me and the chance to get in a word. “No, I don’t. The American thinks he is very original, but I stick to my belief that a man must know how to control his thoughts, to bring them to a halt before they run away with him. Ideas must have system, order, a beginning and an end. I do believe that horses think, that all the dumb animals think, but in a confused way, without order. I think that’s why they don’t produce thoughts that can be understood. My brother’s mind is like a coiled spring. When you wind it up it thinks, but in the end it goes right back to the same position it was in before.”

“I could answer you, but what I’d say would not be for your systematic ears,” the thinker said heatedly. “I’ll let it go.”

The American brother-in-law burst into a little fit of laughter, but there were tears in his eyes. “Ah, brothers, brothers,” he finally said. “Why must you always quarrel?”

“I? Quarrel with him?” the older brother said. “Why, he never even gets in my way. All I want to do is to give him guidance, but he won’t let me.”

“Some guidance. What he wants to do is to put blinkers on my mind.”