Zaddik, page 29
“I must say,” said Napoleon, “and I mean no offense, Adam, that yours is an impossible language. It sounds like you are being sick after having bitten into a bad oyster. I simply cannot understand a word you’re saying. I presume this is your brother. He does speak French, doesn’t he?”
Josep Czartoryski stood staring.
“Ah, yes,” said Napoleon. “My disguise. I have grown so used to it.” He removed the false beard. “Now, Count Czartoryski, do you recognize me?”
“I apologize, mon empereur,” said Josep, bowing.
“Allow me to present my brother, Count Josep Czartoryski,” said Adam.
“Charmed,” said Napoleon, extending his hand. Josep bowed again and kissed it.
“The emperor will be staying with us tonight and tomorrow,” said Adam Czartoryski. “I have instructed that his room be prepared. You understand, of course, that no one is to know. No one. And that includes Nikola. As far as she and the servants are concerned, the emperor is a holy man who has come to Lublin to celebrate the Jews’ holiday, and we are honoring him.”
“I have met your wife, Nikola, Count,” said Napoleon. “You and your brother must be married to the two most beautiful women in Poland.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said Josep. “But, Adam, I must tell you that since you left, a Jew killed a peasant—he bit off his foot—and the people have killed a few Jews. Tomorrow the peasant is being buried. If it gets out that we’re keeping a Jew in our home, they’ll be angry. I don’t know what could happen.”
“I want no pogrom,” said Adam. “Any peasant who interferes with the Jews’ celebration tomorrow will be lashed fifty times. I’ll do it myself, Josep. You let them know that. It’s very important to the emperor that there be no trouble tomorrow. Do you understand?”
“Yes. But why should we care about the Jews’ holiday? My lord,” Josep said to Napoleon, “I don’t understand your interest in these matters.”
“Don’t be rude,” said Adam. “When and if the emperor wishes to inform you of his plans, he will do so. Until then, he relies upon your discretion. You won’t disappoint him, will you?”
“Of course not,” said Josep.
“Good,” said Napoleon. “Excellent. We all understand each other. And that reminds me, Count Josep. Your French is rather poor. Really quite, quite execrable. Your brother’s is much better. So, for that matter, is your wife’s. You should practice. I would suggest speaking with them in French at all times. In that way, in time, you may improve.
“And now, Adam,” Napoleon said, rubbing his hands together, “I’m positively faint with hunger. Would you believe it, Count Josep? Since we left Warsaw on Friday, I’ve literally had nothing but bread and water. So, Adam, shall we eat?”
Chapter 46 The Great Shul
Lublin
Monday, October 18
Simkhas Torah
HIRSH LEIB was to meet the Seer on his hill at sunset, but now, really for the first time, the Zaddik of Orlik was enjoying Lublin.
All through the day, from the morning prayers on, the mood in Lublin’s great wooden shul on Synagogue Street had become progressively more playful. Children ran up and down the temple’s aisles as their mothers, leaving the balcony reserved for women, chased them. Men who normally would have become enraged by such riotous behavior, who normally would have scolded the children and berated the women, smiled indulgently. Some even produced dried and candied fruits from their pockets as treats for the children.
Not even on the High Holy Days, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, was the shul so crowded. On those days many Jews went to their own shtibls, leaving the great shul for the big shots. But on Simkhas Torah everyone went to the great shul, not only because it had more Torahs than any five shtibls combined—thereby increasing one’s chances of getting to carry a Torah around the bimah and out into the streets—but because it was an opportunity to revel in their numbers, to be surrounded, engulfed, and succored.
On Simkhas Torah it felt good to be a Jew.
As the sun sank lower in the sky, the hazzan’s singing had also become more playful, more outlandish, more theatrical. By the afternoon service he was singing the closing Aleinu to the tune of a popular Polish folk song while the congregation clapped and laughed and sang along.
In the market square, Berel the drunkard’s tavern was so crowded that Goldeh, Berel’s long-suffering wife, had set up a table out on the street with bottles of sweet wine and brandy. The day was warm, and men lined up three deep, as they did at Neshe’s soup kitchen, and in the dining rooms of Reb Leyzer and Reb Moyshe’s inns.
For the first time in days, the Hasidim from Pshiskhe and Lodz, from Khelm, Kosk, Apt, and Ger, stopped arguing, stopped bragging about the relative merits of their respective rebbes, and joined in spontaneous song and dance. Soothed and excited by drink, by their teeming numbers, and by the surprising warmth of this sunny day—surely a sign of God’s pleasure—Lublin’s Jews began to forget the terrors of the previous nights. As they looked around them at the crowded, festive streets, as they stood on the steps of the great shul listening to the singing, the very idea of a pogrom seemed ludicrous, like a bad dream from which they had finally awakened.
Hirsh Leib, as he had on his first day in Lublin, approached the Seer’s hill and saw Rabbi Yakov Yitzhak sitting on a tree stump, smoking his pipe, his eyes closed. Beneath Hirsh Leib’s feet the pine needles made a soft cushion. He could hear birdsong, and from far off he could hear the voices of the Jews of Lublin.
He knew that to the Seer the diamond, in itself, was of little importance. It was nothing more than a snare to bring Napoleon to Lublin. As the Seer had explained to him, what was important was to see the emperor, to look at his forehead and read there the history of his soul, backward and forward. Then and only then would the Seer really know if he was the one who would bring about the final battle between good and evil on the plains of Armageddon.
As a boy Yakov Yitzhak had been remote, withdrawn, and melancholy. His teachers had recognized his swiftness of mind, but they worried about his heart. He seemed to take no joy from the games of the other boys, and his prayers seemed to hover low to the ground, not fly up as they should have. So they sent him to Rabbi Zusya, who quickly divined that when Yakov’s soul had been created, it had been endowed with the power of seeing from one end of the world to the other. But that power, for which so many men would have schemed and even murdered, tortured the young boy.
Wherever he looked, young Yakov saw pain. Wherever he looked, he saw evil. Only by keeping his eye fixed on the holy words could he escape his dark visions. He told Zusya that seeing every man’s sins lessened his love for Israel. So he had begged him to do something to take away that power. But Zusya reminded him that the Lord did not take back His gifts.
So Zusya taught Yakov how to rein in his visions, how to limit them so he was not continuously assaulted by all the world’s horrors. He taught Yakov how to use music and song to defeat, or at least hold at bay, his melancholy. He encouraged Yakov to go into the woods, to listen to the birds and mice and deer, because their lives were untouched by evil, because they were perfect, just as Hashem had made them.
Zusya had even given Yakov his pipe and told him to smoke it whenever he grew too sad. And by the time Yakov Yitzhak had founded his own school in Lublin, his heart had been healed. After Zusya, he gave his wife, Khaye, some of the credit for healing him, and for the rest he thanked Hashem.
But now, as Hirsh Leib climbed up the hill toward him, the Seer summoned his vision. Now he opened his gray-blue eye, the large one, and his heart sank. He saw the shame that burned inside Hirsh Leib, and he saw him reaching out for wine to extinguish the flames. Tears filled the Seer’s eyes.
The Seer blinked and looked from the sky to the town lying beneath him and back again, bringing the heavens and the earth together, binding them so that the clouds became the floor upon which Lublin stood. Now it seemed to the Seer as if all the buildings had turned to crystal, and he could see into every room. The people, too, had turned to glass, and he could see into every heart.
Now, above the city, he could see Castle Czartoryski, and in its many rooms he could see the blond prince, his dark brother, and the man he had glimpsed so many years before, leading a great army outside Jerusalem. Now the man looked like a Jew, a Hasid, and even though the Seer knew it to be a disguise born of a twisted vanity, he prayed that it was a sign.
Rabbi Yitzhak, the Seer of Lublin, saw the prince and the emperor leave the castle together, and he stood up. He looked around him, banishing his vision by concentrating on what was in front of him. The last rays of the sun were painting the leaves red. Night was coming on. It was time to go. With the lighting of the stars, the evening prayers would begin.
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He touched the diamond in his pocket and began walking down the path toward Hirsh Leib, down the path to Lublin.
Chapter 47 The Great Shul
Lublin
Monday, October 18
THE EIGHTEEN BLESSINGS for Simkhas Torah were beginning. Inside the shul every seat was filled, and sweating men, standing beneath the smoking candles, lined the walls three deep. Behind the bimah, along the eastern wall, in their white holiday robes, sat Rov Chaim, Lublin’s official rabbi, the puffed-up members of the kahal, and the cosmic conspirators, Rebbes David and Naftali, who, with their eyes tightly shut, sent their words up to heaven and prayed for the coming of the Messiah. No one had seen Rebbe Menachem Mendel.
The hazzan sang the first blessing—You have learned to know that the Lord is God; there is none else besides Him—and the congregation repeated it at the top of its lungs. The joists of the wooden shul—built, like the legendary temple in Jerusalem, without a single nail—vibrated and hummed with the sound of a thousand voices. The roar spilled out into the street, where men holding prayer books stood shoulder to shoulder in the gathering dusk and rocked and prayed.
Hirsh Leib repeated the second blessing under his breath—To Him who alone does great wonders; His mercy endures forever—and darted through the crowd that pressed around the steps of the shul and spilled out and down all the streets of the town. Pushing, shoving, craning his neck, and standing on his toes, he searched the dark throng for the Seer, from whom he had become separated.
Hirsh Leib felt sick. The heat, the press of people, and the wine he had drunk to calm himself had combined to make him dizzy. He cursed himself for his weakness.
The third blessing rose from a thousand throats around him: There is no God like Thee, O Lord; there are no deeds like Thine.
The prayers went on, washing over Hirsh Leib while he strained to find his teacher, his master.
The Lord is King; the Lord was King; the Lord will be King forever and ever.
Hirsh Leib felt time collapsing.
I have searched through such a crowd before. I have rushed through such a press of men. Not once, but twice. But when did this happen? Whom was I looking for? How can this be?
Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endures throughout all generations.
Suddenly, standing in front of him, was the man he knew as Yekl.
“I know who you are,” said Hirsh Leib.
“ ‘Thy dominion endures throughout all generations,’ ” Yekl said, repeating the words of the prayer, translating the Hebrew into Yiddish. “Did you hear that, Hirsh Leib? Do you understand what that means?”
“Where is the Seer?”
“Don’t worry about the Seer. Think about what I told you before. You are not lost; there is still time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hirsh Leib. “I must find the Seer.”
“But here he is,” said Yekl, stepping aside, his face breaking into a broken-toothed smile.
Hirsh Leib looked past Yekl, and there, his head covered by an enormous blue-and-white tallis woven through with silver threads, was Rabbi Yitzhak.
Merciful Father, may it be Thy will to favor Zion with Thy goodness; mayest Thou rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Truly, in Thee alone we trust, high and exalted King and God, eternal Lord.
“Amen” roared through the streets, and there was a sudden rush toward the temple. The shemonai esrei were concluded. Next would come the hakkafot, as all the tribes of Israel—first the priests, the kohanim, then the Levites, their cup bearers, and finally the Israelites, the common folk—would carry the Torahs out of the ark, carry them seven times around the temple and then out into the streets. It was an honor to carry the Torah. It was a blessing to kiss one, and nobody wanted to miss his chance.
“Elijah is here,” Hirsh Leib said to the Seer.
“Where?” the Seer asked urgently. “Let me see him. I have seen him but once, and that only briefly. And I have never seen him in my visions.”
Hirsh Leib looked around. “He’s gone.”
Men rushing up the temple steps collided with Hirsh Leib and the Seer; they struggled to keep from being swept off their feet. Hirsh Leib held the Seer’s arm to anchor him to the ground.
“How will we find Napoleon in this madness?” asked Hirsh Leib.
“He is almost here. Czartoryski will bring him to the steps of the shul. I have seen it,” said the Seer.
A shout came from the throng, and Hirsh Leib turned to see the silver crown of one of the Torahs emerge from the shul’s doorway, glittering and shining in the light cast by a dozen torches. Then it was swept up as if by a huge wave, first washed down the shul steps, then spun in widening gyres as the crowd danced, singing the first hakkafah: O Lord, save us; O Lord, prosper us; O Lord, answer us when we call! God of all souls, save us; Examiner of hearts, prosper us; mighty Redeemer, answer us when we call!
“Blessed be He; He has answered us,” said the Seer.
In front of them, holding a torch, stepping forward like a ray of sunlight breaking through a storm-tossed sky, was Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, tall, blond, erect. Beside him stood a short, stout Hasid.
Prince Czartoryski leaned toward the Seer. “The emperor greets you, Rabbi Yitzhak,” he said.
The Seer took his tallis off his head and, draping it over his shoulders, stood silently gazing at Napoleon’s broad forehead in the torchlight. On it he saw ambition, an appetite that would never be satisfied. He saw the mark of Cain, the bloody sign of fratricide. How many deaths has this monster been responsible for? the Seer wondered. Millions? Yes, millions.
“Is this what you wanted?” Czartoryski shouted.
Is it? wondered the Seer. May the Lord preserve us.
Hirsh Leib, still holding his master’s arm, felt the Seer tremble. The Torah was slowly making its way to where they stood. It seemed to Hirsh Leib as if a glass jar had been dropped over the four of them. He could still hear the singing and shouting; he could still feel the press of the thousands; but it all seemed far off, unreal. Then he saw three or perhaps four rough-looking peasants moving among the Hasidim.
Napoleon was speaking. “What does he say?” Hirsh Leib asked Czartoryski.
“He says he can look at him for as long as he likes. He says he’s not afraid. He means he’s not afraid of Rabbi Yitzhak. But, please, Rabbi,” Czartoryski said to the Seer, “it’s not good to tarry here. We’re conspicuous. At least, I am.”
The Seer continued to stare at Napoleon.
He saw him on the battlefield, roaring amidst carnage, delighting in slaughter.
He saw him riding in his carriage, wrapped in blankets, speeding through the frigid Russian night while his army starved and froze in the icy fields.
He saw the huge head. The fat beneath the flesh.
A creature of chaos. A thing from the abyss.
Well, what did you expect? the Seer asked himself.
He tried to force his vision beyond this meeting. He tried to see himself leaving, returning to his study, the diamond still in his pocket. He could not.
So? Let it be done.
The Torah was coming closer. Hirsh Leib could see the silver bells on its crown bouncing up and down, but he could not hear them ring. He felt himself being pushed from behind as first one man, then another, tried to approach the Torah, reaching out to touch it with their prayer books, leaning over Hirsh Leib, shouldering him aside. Suddenly Hirsh Leib’s hand was no longer on the Seer’s arm.
Pushing back, trying to regain his position by the Seer’s side, Hirsh Leib saw the Seer reach into his pocket and then extend his right hand toward Napoleon. At that moment he saw the peasants, shouting, knocking people aside with clubs, throw themselves on the Seer. He heard Prince Adam Czartoryski shout also, flinging himself on the peasants, and then, standing behind them, he saw the cruel face of Josep Czartoryski.
A voice screamed in Hirsh Leib’s ear. “Look out!” A body crashed into him and knocked him off his feet, knocked him to his knees.
There, lying on the ground in front of him, was a beardless yet familiar-looking man his own age wearing a brown coat of strange cut. The man’s white shirt was stained black with blood. His head was resting in Yekl’s lap.
“This policeman has redeemed you,” Yekl said calmly. “Now you must comfort him.”
“What?” shouted Hirsh Leib, trying to get his feet beneath him as bodies tumbled over and around him. He felt as if he were being held under water by a strong current. He felt as if he were drowning.
“This man has won your battle with wine,” said Yekl. “It was hard. You owe him your soul.”
“The Seer,” said Hirsh Leib, panicking. “Czartoryski. The diamond. I must get up.”
“You must leave all that to this man,” said Yekl.
“But what can he do?” Hirsh Leib asked.
“He is already doing it,” said Yekl.
Can this be? wondered Hirsh Leib. Yes, he answered himself. Yes, it can. What does Hashem care for time?
“Blessed be God,” Hirsh Leib said to the bleeding man. “Easy,” he said to him. “You’ll be all right.”
