A Curable Romantic (28 page)

A strange smile illumined his face, and soon his entire countenance was glowing. He sipped his tea, seeming to delight in the simple drink. “The year was 5336, the month Adar, and I, a young rabbi in Genoa, was summoned to the bedside of a maiden by the name of Bianca. Oh, children, you have never seen a maiden as beautiful as this Bianca. She lay perfectly still in her bed, as though in a trance, her eyes shut, her mouth slightly parted, not moving, barely breathing. And yet, as soon as I entered her room, she turned her face from me.

“ ‘Who are you?’ I commanded instantly.

“ ‘No, I shall not speak to you,’ she cried.

“As with Vladek the Wagon Driver today, she addressed me in a voice not belonging to herself. A low-pitched growl, it was deeper in timbre than a woman can properly make. She spoke to me in Italian, of course, my language at the time. Ah, children!” the rebbe said, interrupting himself. “How I loved those Petrarchan sonnets! I composed literally
thousands of them. Ah,” he sighed, “life to life, so much is lost. In any case, I was not to be put off.

“ ‘Look at me!’ I insisted.

“ ‘I cannot,’ she demurred. ‘I cannot gaze upon the holy light shining from your face.’

“Ah, a flatterer, I thought.

“ ‘Spirit, do not flatter me,’ I said.

“ ‘But I don’t,’ said she or he or whoever it was inside of her. ‘Everyone knows of Rabbi Leonardo Emanuel. Beyond the Heavenly Curtain your name is whispered with reverence and trembling.’

“ ‘Look at me,’ I commanded again, ‘and tell me your name.’ But he did not. ‘I order you to obey me,’ I said, and not then and not later, but eventually the dybbuk obeyed. His name was Bernardo Messina. I had known him in my youth, and I knew him for what he was: an apostate who’d been hanged as a horse thief.

“ ‘Also,’ he confessed, ‘I sired many bastard children, their mother the wife of my tutor. I’ve lain as well with my stepmother’s daughter and with my stepbrother as well.’ Brazenly, he added: ‘Or even better.’

“ ‘Vile creature!’

“ ‘Oh, Leonardo, if you only knew the half of it!’

“ ‘Still, death has undone you,’ I reminded him.

“ ‘As it will us all,’ said he.

“Now, children, listen to me, this Messina had repudiated the One True God and His Holy Torah, and had embraced the Trinity as part of a scheme to defraud a brotherhood of monks who’d hoped to redeem him from his evil ways, but who, under his influence, had succumbed, instead, like him, to pederasty and to other such abominations. How he met his death is too gruesome a story to recount. Embittered over his fate, he made it his business to mock both of the faiths he had traduced. Accordingly, every morning and every evening, when the church bells rang, Messina forced Bianca to recite the customary Christian prayers, which she did with alarming fluency. When her parents witnessed this for the first time, they were aghast, and they sent for me. Though time was of the essence — I knew not how long the maiden could endure alive
with Messina inside of her — I realized that there was much to learn from him, from studying him, before releasing him from her mortal coil.

“To begin with,” the rebbe said, “his voice. I’d noted that it seemed to emanate from the young girl’s neck. Now, this was a curiosity to me and, to resolve the puzzle, I asked him many questions concerning the nature of his form.

“ ‘I know not,’ he replied.

“I asked about its volume: ‘Is it like a goose egg, or the egg of a hen or maybe a dove?’

“ ‘More like a dove, I think.’

“ ‘Where are you inside the young woman’s body?’

“ ‘Between the rib cage and her waist on the left side.’

“Her lips never moved during the course of this interview, and when I’d exhausted my line of questioning, I pleaded with Messina to let the young woman speak on her own behalf, so that I might interview her as well. Naturally, he was reluctant to do so, hungry for attention, as all such sinners are, but I appeased him. How, you wonder? An excellent question! I flattered him, my dear children! Yes, I flattered his bravery, his intelligence, his cunning. I laughed with him over the fools he’d made of those dunderpated monks. Eventually believing I was his friend, he complied, and agreed to release the poor girl from his power.

“Along with my students (whom I’d summoned to me), I watched in alarm as the egg-sized protuberance that had been visible near the girl’s throat began to move from where it had stationed itself in order to speak out more clearly. It moved first across her chest, then down to her side and finally to the place beneath her rib cage where it normally lodged. It resembled nothing so much as a small mouse moving beneath the blanket of her skin. The young woman appeared in extreme pain during this procedure. She writhed, dampening her sheets with bucketsful of perspiration, and when finally she opened her eyes, she stared at us in wonder

“ ‘Can you see me, child?’

“ ‘I can.’

“ ‘And you can hear me?’ I asked.

“ ‘Yes, although you are speaking as though from a great distance away.’

“ ‘I will come closer now, my dear,’ said I, moving nearer to her bedside.

“Someone, a relative, her mother perhaps (I no longer recall who) brought me a chair, and I sat in it, pondering what to do next. After a fervent, though necessarily brief prayer, I decided on a course of action. I ordered the room emptied, except for my most trusted pupil, Benyamin Navarro, whom I stationed by the door. Knowing that from there, he would not be able to hear us, I returned to the maiden.

“ ‘Daughter,’ I said softly.

“ ‘You speak so calmingly, Rabbi.’

“ ‘I’m here to aid you, my dear child.’

“ ‘How could you minister kindness to a girl as wicked as I?’ she said. The strain of the ordeal overwhelmed her, I’m afraid, and she began to cry. I handed her my kerchief, and she wiped away her tears. She brought the kerchief to her mouth, bunched up, like a rag, you see? But beneath it, unbeknownst to me, she was drawing the waters of her saliva together in her mouth. ‘Rabbi Leonardo,’ she said tenderly.

“ ‘Yes, my daughter?’

“ ‘May I tell you what I think of your kindness?’

“ ‘Certainly, my child.’

“With a great hawking sound, she coughed up the phlegm and, using her mouth and tongue as mortar and pestle, mixed it into a gelatinous mass, which she unceremoniously spat into my face!

“ ‘Messina!’ I roared.

“ ‘Look, Leonardo,’ Messina spoke again, but this time using the face and mouth of the young girl, his deeper voice issuing, as naturally as it could, from her lips. ‘Do you think she’s as innocent as she pretends? Do you think she’s so meek and mild, this daughter of Israel?’ Using her own hands against her, he began to rub her private places, grinding her hips in an unbecoming manner. ‘Take me, Rabbi Leonardo!’ he howled. ‘Come to me like a lover!’

“Now, this perfidy wasn’t enough, but he ripped at her bodice and, exposing her young breasts, picked one up in each hand and pressed them
together like two pumice stones, whispering lasciviously: ‘Spill your seed across my chest so I’ll remain a virgin.’

“ ‘Dastardly creature!’ I screamed at him. ‘Desist immediately! Or I’ll — ’

“ ‘Or you’ll what?’ He flung the question back at me as though it were a slur. And when I stammered mutely, wiping his spittle from my beard, he let out another long and maddening laugh. ‘This is what she dreams of every night, Leonardo, I promise you,’ he said. ‘And not only that but this.’

“And here, he turned her over, exposing her bare rump to the cold air of the room. ‘Enter her from behind, like a dog. Or a monk,’ he laughed. ‘That’s what she wants.’ Forcing her head down onto her pillows, he lifted her backside and, with his hands grasping each cheek, spread them far apart.”

At that moment, the rebbe looked at Shaya and me quizzically, as though, until then, he had forgotten to whom he was speaking.

“Yes. Well” — he coughed — “perhaps these are not the sorts of details I should be sharing with small boys, but I want you to understand the gravity of the situation.”

“But Rebbe,” I asked him, “what did you do?”

“What did I do?”

“How did you help Bianca?”

“And Bernardo,” he said.

“And Bernardo?” Shaya asked.

“Why, of course.”

“But why would you ever help Bernardo?” I said.

“Now, don’t forget, my dear children, I’d been summoned to Bianca’s bedside to aid and assist not one lost soul, but two, his as well as hers. No matter how much he had blackened the shroud of holiness that was his birthright, no matter how many blasphemies he’d recited, no matter how many sins he’d committed, his was still a soul in dire straits, and I had commended myself, years before, to its aid.”

“So what did you do?”

“Exactly! What did I do? What could I do?” he said. “ ‘Be still, Messina!’ I shouted. ‘Dress the maiden and desist from your vile rogueries.’ Of
course, he didn’t listen to me, and so I had no other choice. I stared into the young girl’s eyes and recited a verse from the Psalms of King David:
Set a wicked one over him and stand the Satan at his right!
I recited it three times. Then three times backwards:
Then three times reversing all the letters:
Until the poor devil could withstand no more.

“ ‘Enough!’ Messina yowled, quickly buttoning up the girl’s blouse and covering her knees. I took the opportunity to intone the kavones proscribed by the most secret of our holy books and called upon the aid of certain angelic forces.

“ ‘Leave her,’ I commanded again, and again the young girl began to writhe in pain, her hands clutching at her sheets, her head jerking backwards and forwards. Vomit frothed from her mouth, and I was alarmed to see that her throat had swollen dangerously.

“ ‘She seems to be choking!’ I called to my student, and again I recited the formula.

“ ‘Leave, I order you, without harming her in any way!’

“Quickly I called in the rest of my students and set them to reciting all the Psalms from their beginning. That did the trick — aha! — and I had him on the run!

“ ‘Promise me …’ Messina choked out, but the girl’s thrashings were so terrible, he could barely get a word out.

“ ‘Promise you what?’ I roared over the din.

“ ‘I will not harm her if …’

“ ‘Yes? If? If what?’

“Every word was a torment for him: ‘If you … will promise … to … recite …’

“ ‘Recite? Recite what, Messina?’

“ ‘… Kaddish …’

“ ‘Aha! The Kaddish prayer?’

“ ‘… on my behalf!’ ”

The rebbe folded his arms. “Though they desire nothing but the good, still their ways are crooked from long habit, and one must negotiate with these wretched souls as one would with a shtreimel-maker in midwinter.

You must be precise about all foreseeable conditions and occurrences. I reiterated the bargain he proposed to strike: ‘You promise to leave this poor girl without harming her in any way, neither physically or spiritually, and you will cease your wanderings and submit to the righteous judgments of the Heavenly Court, if I promise to recite the prayer for the dead on your behalf?’

“ ‘For the full eleven months!’ he cried. He, too, was being careful, indeed exquisitely so, with the terms of our agreement, as much hung in the balance.

“ ‘For the full eleven months!’ I agreed.