Judah the Pious (6 page)

“I am looking for Judah ben Simon,” the girl replied pleasantly.

“A plague on it,” sighed Hannah, speaking rapidly now in an attempt to suppress her growing anxiety. “I should have known that my good luck would not last forever. I suppose there’s no use trying to make you think I am dead again, the same trick never works twice. I must say, though, that it has taken you a long time to catch up with me; and I am grateful for all the years between now and the day I first managed to escape from your wicked surveillance.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” asked the astonished young woman.

“Are you not one of the demonesses who tried to prevent me from conceiving a child?” cried Hannah shrilly.

“No,” replied the stranger. “I most certainly am not—though I have often been called a witch by kind women like yourself, by people with so much faith in their God that they automatically interpret anything slightly odd as the work of the Devil.”

“Is that so?” murmured Hannah, raising one eyebrow suspiciously. “Well, if you are not an avenging spirit, what do you want with my son?”

“With any luck,” smiled the girl, “Judah ben Simon and I are going to be married.”

“Oh my God,” whimpered the old woman, hugging herself and rocking back and forth, “Oh my God. I have heard of this before, of the merciless succubi who marry human boys, drive them crazy with passion, then suck out their life’s blood through the kisses of love.”

For a few moments, Hannah trembled convulsively, then instantaneously grew calm. “Ah,” she sighed, “if God’s will demands that I have a demoness for a daughter-in-law, I guess I can bear it. At any rate, there’s no use standing out here and talking philosophy. Why not come inside and sit down?”

The truth was that this invitation owed less to Hannah’s kindness and pious resignation than to her sudden recollection of the fact that fresh eggs were reputed to be a particularly potent charm against spirits. “Just one look at a newly opened yolk,” she could almost hear her mother saying, “and even Beelzebub himself will go shrieking up the chimney like a singed cat.”

Hannah watched expectantly as the visitor sat down beside the flour-covered table; for good measure, the old woman cracked another egg into the bowl. But, instead of recoiling in horror, her guest only smiled. “It is good to be inside a home again,” she said.

The implications of this seemed obvious to the scholar’s wife: either her mother had been misinformed, or else the girl was not a demon at all. Now the ladies of Hannah’s family had always been famous for the accuracy of their supernatural information; therefore, the old woman decided to give the stranger the benefit of the doubt, and, as compassion gradually cleared her vision, she noticed that the girl looked tired and worn.

“What is your name, and where do you come from?” she asked, more kindly than before.

“Rachel Anna,” answered the other. “And I have just arrived from Cracow.”

“Cracow!” cried Hannah. “I myself traveled to Cracow just before my son was born, to seek the counsel of that great wise man Judah the Pious.”

“Oh yes,” nodded Rachel Anna. “I have seen him many times in passing.”

“I can hardly believe it!” gasped the old woman. “I can hardly believe that you too have seen him with your own eyes! Describe him to me, remind me what he looks like!”

Briefly, Rachel Anna spoke of the sage’s striking appearance, his powerful grace, the eyes which seemed to gleam and crackle like summer lightning. All this time, Hannah Polikov kept her arms crossed across her breast, as if to contain in her heart that one moment when greatness has passed so near; finally, shaking her head as if to dislodge a dream, she interrupted.

“I am sorry for having been so impolite,” she said. “It is clear to me now that no evil witch could have survived within a mile-radius of that holy saint.”

“It is quite all right,” replied the girl. “You are by no means the first person to confuse my eyes with those of a demoness.”

“I am sure,” smiled Hannah. “But listen: even if you were an angel of paradise, it would still be out of the question for you to marry Judah ben Simon.”

“Why?” asked Rachel Anna. “Rumor has it that you have been trying to find him a suitable wife for years, and that he has stubbornly refused each of the brides you proposed.”

“Listen,” pleaded the old woman. “Those were all girls who have been acquainted with my son since childhood, who would know, so to speak, exactly what they were getting into. But for you, this marriage would be like shooting blind into a crowd of men—aiming, for all you know, at a liar, a wife-beater, or a drunkard. Besides, what would people think? It is not really customary in these parts for a young lady to come out in her own behalf, without relatives to speak for her.”

“It is not customary anywhere,” said the girl. “And as for Judah ben Simon being a stranger, everything I have heard of him has convinced me that he is just the husband I am seeking. Anyway, it does not seem that you are being quite truthful—what are your real objections to the marriage?”

Hannah Polikov remained silent, reluctant to say that Rachel Anna did not at all appear the sort of woman who would tame her son’s wild habits.

“Well,” smiled Rachel Anna at last, “if you will not be honest, I will, and tell you this: not only is this marriage going to take place, not only will I win your son’s love, but some day I will also gain yours. And now, I would be grateful if you would tell me where to find Judah ben Simon, for I do not wish to feed the idle curiosity of your neighbors by embarking on a public search.”

Aware that she had no choice, Hannah Polikov sank limply into a chair and began to describe that part of the forest where her son stayed. So bewildered that she hardly noticed when Rachel Anna left the house, the old woman felt her head spinning as she tried to decide what to do, and how to explain the situation to Simon.

After a while, however, she recalled the rude manner in which she had first greeted Rachel Anna, and her face flushed with an odd mixture of embarrassment and hope. “Obviously,” she told herself, “a woman who is always mistaken for a witch cannot remain ordinary for very long. And perhaps this singular girl will be able to influence our son in some unpredictably positive way.”

This thought cheered her so much that, an hour later, she was able to present her husband with a sensible and by no means gloomy version of the morning’s events.

But, later that day, as she straightened up the house for the evening meal, something in the general disorder of the kitchen caught her eye, and made a spark of doubt flicker across her mind:

There, on the floury surface of the table, where the girl had rested her left hand, were the sharp, unmistakable imprints of six fingers.

“I thought you were going to talk about a perfect beauty,” broke in Casimir, his face clouded by disappointment.

“I am sorry,” apologized Eliezer, “but the truth is more important. Anyway, you must admit that an extra digit is not nearly so terrible a deformity as a missing arm or a crooked spine. And indeed, just as Hannah Polikov was clucking in dismay beside her kitchen table, Judah ben Simon was calmly commiserating with the girl over the amount of superstitious nonsense to which her sixth finger had exposed her.

In the beginning, it had not seemed that Rachel Anna and Judah ben Simon would ever be holding such a civil conversation. For that morning Judah had been completing a painstaking sketch of a blue jay when his model was startled into flight by the sound of footsteps crashing through the brush. He wheeled around, saw the girl running towards him, and scowled with angry surprise; throughout his years in the forest, no one but his father and a few curious village boys had ever dared disturb his work.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted, his voice crackling with hostility.

“Making noise,” laughed Rachel Anna. Then, closer, she stopped and stared at the young man who towered over her like the giant elms which surrounded them; she stood motionless, looking at his brown eyes, his generous mouth, his reddish-gold beard which flowed in waves down his broad chest, and she struggled to retain the composure which had never before threatened to desert her. “The truth is,” she said finally, forcing up a small chuckle which died immediately at the back of her throat, “the truth is that I have heard a great deal about a man named Judah ben Simon, and I have come to see for myself.”

“And what are all these wonders you have heard about me?” sneered Judah.

“I have heard that you already know more about the forest than the animals who can find their way through it in the dark. I have heard that you are becoming a great scientist who will someday be able to explain why the salmon swim upstream and die, and why the pine trees can laugh at their naked neighbors all through the winter. And,” she added with a smile, “I have heard that you have blond hair.”

“You have heard some exaggerations,” replied the young man, pleased despite himself, “but no outright lies. And now that you have satisfied your curiosity, you can go back home.”

“On the contrary,” answered Rachel Anna. “Now I am less satisfied than ever, for all these things have only strengthened my desire to become your wife.”

Suddenly, it was Judah’s turn to stare, as he tried to understand why a complete stranger would come all the way out into the wilderness just to ridicule him.

“King Casimir,” said the rabbi, “I would like you to stretch your memory until you can recall the time when you were younger, and still slightly uncomfortable in the presence of beautiful women.”

“I will try,” replied the boy grandly, wrinkling his forehead and puffing out his chest.

“Thank you,” smiled Eliezer. “For perhaps you will be able to understand all the jumbled emotions which spun through my hero’s mind, and perhaps you will not condemn him too harshly for the ungentlemanly way in which he received Rachel Anna’s proposal. For it is unpleasant, but necessary, for me to admit that he snarled like a bulldog, hunched his shoulders, and asked the lovely young woman why in the world he should want to marry her.

“Because,” smiled Rachel Anna calmly, “I am more obstinate than any woman you have ever met. And more beautiful.”

Startled into seeing her fiery hair and jewel-like eyes as if for the first time, Judah ben Simon grew even more uneasy. “I have seen prettier women,” he mumbled defensively, thinking of the boyhood hours he had spent speculating about the anatomy and love habits of a flirtatious, dowdy village washerwoman. “And the town is full of high-spirited girls,” he added, remembering the bashful merchants’ daughters whom, during those interminable afternoon teas, he had imagined lying in his bed, as foreign and repulsive to him as the carcasses of dead cows. Suddenly, he realized that this strange girl was speaking the truth, and confusion weakened his knees.

“Well,” he muttered, “I can see that, having no intermediaries to speak for you, you have already begun singing your own praises. Then tell me: can you embroider pillowcases with so much skill that a man might mistake them for trappings from the temple altar? Tell me: can you brew a steaming samovar of sweet coffee with cardamoms? And can you polish a silver spoon so brightly that I might look into it and see my entire past and future?”

“I can do none of those things,” answered the girl.

“Then if you cannot perform these simple household chores,” persisted Judah ben Simon sarcastically, “how do you expect to learn all the complicated duties which might prove necessary for the wife of a woodsman?”

“I am not an idiot,” snapped Rachel Anna. “Do you really think that I could not have learned to brew coffee if I had ever so desired? And I assure you, the minute I put my mind to building an open fire or making a mattress from pine needles, I will soon be doing these things better than you yourself.”

Now the idea of a pine-needle bed had never occurred to Judah ben Simon, and the thought of it softened his heart. “So,” he laughed, “I can see that I have got myself a nasty one. But, just for my personal information, I would like to know where in this country they allow a young lady to pass through her teens without knowing any of the domestic arts?”

“I come from the city of Cracow,” replied the girl.

“So my reputation has reached all the way to Cracow?” asked Judah warily.

“Oh yes,” nodded Rachel Anna. “Indeed, I first heard your name in connection with the great rabbinical court of that beloved saint Judah the Pious. All the sages there are fascinated by the reports which have reached them concerning your knowledge of the forest, for they truly believe that such a scholar may one day help them unravel the knots and intricacies of God’s mysterious pattern.”

“Then you can go straight back,” hissed Judah ben Simon furiously, “and tell them that I already know God’s plan, which has ordained that the so-called wise men of Cracow be exiled to the slimiest pits of hell.”

And, before the astounded young woman could say another word, Judah ben Simon had turned his back and stalked off into the forest. He picked up his pens and brushes, and tried to work, but found it so hard to concentrate that, later in the afternoon, he headed slowly back towards the elm grove, telling himself all the while that he was only looking for the blue jay he had been sketching earlier.

Rachel Anna was sitting on the ground with her back propped against a tree, so that her orange hair fanned out against the rough bark; her purple shawl lay beside her, thrown carelessly on the grass. Hearing his footsteps, she raised her head and smiled; but, when he began to speak in the same angry tone, her expression turned to a look of wonder, as she marveled that his stubbornness was even greater than the rumors had led her to believe.

“I forgot to ask you,” he muttered, “whether Judah the Pious also mentioned that brilliant piece of advice which he gave my family twenty years ago.”

“No,” answered Rachel Anna. “But your mother spoke of it this morning.”

“Then you can surely understand my position,” sighed Judah, sinking down onto the grass, exhausted by the battles he had fought with himself that day. “You can see why I wish to avoid all contact with superstitious, religious people, why I have come out here to bury my shame in the logical order of the forest. And you must realize that I could never pass my days with a woman—even such a beautiful woman—who has been to the court of Judah the Pious, and become the handmaiden of the world’s greatest impostor.”