Judah the Pious (25 page)

In the cheerful morning light, the woods appeared lovely and benign, without a trace of danger or malevolence. The ferns were a deep, rich green; the vines drooped with colorful spring flowers; nowhere was there any sign of the abandoned hut or the field of bones. The warm sun acted as a salve on the mountebank’s wounds, so that he was gradually able to quicken his pace. The eager lover soon found the road, and, after kneeling briefly at a wayside stream to wash the caked blood from his face, set off for the Baroness Sophia Majeski’s home.

But as Judah approached the steep carriageway, he discovered that the stone walls of the mansion had been draped with somber black and purple bunting. “So there has been a death in my lady’s family,” thought the young man uneasily, aware that this unexpected turn of events would surely place new obstacles in his path. “No servant would ever allow a man of my bedraggled appearance to enter a house of mourning. Besides, it is certain that the princess and the countess will have come to offer their condolences, and will not be particularly delighted to see me.” For these reasons, Judah ben Simon resolved to wait beside the gate until he could find some surreptitious means of announcing his presence to the baroness.

“As luck would have it,” smiled the Rabbi Eliezer, “the first person to happen along the road was the Princess Maria Zarembka’s goggle-eyed servant girl—who, by then, had taken to wearing a crude, hand-painted portrait of the mountebank in a locket on her breast.

Recognizing Judah’s form, she gasped, as if amazed to discover that the dearest figure of her dreams still existed in reality. Immediately, she raised her meaty fingers to cover the lower half of her face; but, when the necessity of answering Judah ben Simon’s request obliged her to remove her hand, the young man saw that her cheeks were even more mottled than before, and that her bulbous nose was red from weeping.

“No,” she replied mournfully, “there’s no way I could get a message to any of them now, unless I had wings to fly with.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the mountebank hoarsely, grasping the maid’s plump shoulders.

“Oh, sir,” stammered the girl, in a breathless, choking whisper, “last night, just before twelve, my mistress and the Countess Catherine took it into their heads to go for a short drive in the mountains. After a long stop at the baroness’s house, all three of them set out in a single coach. When they had not returned by dawn, we servants became alarmed, and took the liberty of forming a search party.

“Three miles to the east of here,” she continued, as the tears began to flow down her bumpy cheeks, “we came upon a horrible mess. At the base of a high, rocky cliff, lay the beautiful painted carriage, reduced to a heap of splinters. And the ladies’ bodies were sprawled on the boulders, all broken and crooked, like a baby’s rag dolls. As soon as we could bear it, the maids and kitchen girls came home to dress the corpses, while the butlers and grooms went on to hunt the culprit.”

“The culprit?” cried Judah ben Simon. “Then that devil of a drunken coachman abandoned them to die?”

“No, sir,” replied the girl, “the princess’s driver never drank. God rest him, he was killed along with the others; indeed, the whole affair was quite peculiar, considering how well he knew those mountain roads.

“No, sir,” she repeated, sobbing softly, “there was something else, which I have forgotten to mention—something horrible, which led us to raise the cry of banditry and murder. For, as we approached the Baroness Sophia’s poor, twisted frame, it became clear to us that her lovely white throat had been sliced straight across, laid wide open from ear to ear.”

All at once, the maid appeared to notice Judah’s bloodstained, tattered garments, and recoiled in horror and suspicion. But, as she hesitated, torn between her heart’s infatuation and her sense of public duty, the young man started to move away; then, grown suddenly oblivious of his painful wounds, Judah ben Simon ran headlong up the mountain road.

“For almost two months,” sighed the Rabbi Eliezer, “my hero roamed the hills like a wild man, sleeping beneath the trees, subsisting on mushrooms, berries, and raw greens. The sweeping vistas which the Carpathians offered him were far more dramatic than any he had ever experienced, but now the naturalist took no notice of his surroundings. Instead, he squandered all his energy in an effort to puzzle out the riddles which had begun to plague him, to understand the mysteries and strange patterns of coincidence which had shattered his peace of mind.

Each day, however, he grew more confused and uncertain, increasingly inclined to doubt all his principles and convictions. Finally, at the beginning of August, Judah ben Simon realized that he had neither the knowledge nor the wit to answer his own questions, and that there was only one man who might be able to help.

“Judah the Pious?” whispered the King of Poland tentatively.

“King Casimir,” grinned the rabbi, so obviously delighted that the young sovereign could not restrain himself from smiling with pride, “I can see that I have not been telling you this story in vain. And, if I have taught you to repair your own errors as well as you mend my hero’s, then my mission will have been a total success.

“Three weeks later,” continued the old man, “Judah ben Simon entered the famous gates of Cracow and soon found himself even more ill-at-ease than he had been in Danzig. For the bustling, preoccupied city dwellers had little time or goodwill to waste on an ill-clad stranger who had clearly come to swell the already unwieldy ranks of municipal beggars.

As the ragged mountebank wandered through the twisting alleys, children taunted him with insults, dogs nipped at his heels, and adolescent boys, draped casually across their doorways, pelted him with rotten fruit. Gradually, however, the stranger began to notice an odd phenomenon: each time he asked directions to the court of Judah the Pious, the stern, icy faces of the Cracovites grew momentarily open and warm. Matrons smiled on him as if he were complimenting their favorite daughters; young girls blushed prettily; old men could not have been happier to discuss the talents of their newest grandchildren.

But it was not until Judah ben Simon finally entered the court itself that he began to understand why the religious assembly occupied such a favored place in the citizens’ hearts.

Although the interior of the crowded canvas tent wore not the slightest frill of man-made luxury, it still appeared clothed with all the trappings of paradise. Sweet music and flowery incense filled the air; mountains of oranges, dates, and pomegranates were heaped on the long tables which lined both sides of the enormous enclosure; above them, ropes of gardenias and chrysanthemums hung from placards engraved with the most beautiful verses of the Torah and the Song of Songs.

Seated on hard wooden benches in the center section of the tent were the same shabby students and exotically-dressed foreign scholars whose presence had so thrilled Hannah Polikov and her neighbors. But it is doubtful whether the spectators at Rachel Anna’s trial would have recognized their argumentative visitors—whose faces now seemed perfectly tranquil, like those of men presented with a vision of eternal bliss.

All their attention was riveted on a single point at the front of the assembly; and, as Judah followed their gazes, he began to blink his eyes in amazement: on the small, raised dais was a man bathed in splendor, surrounded by a brilliant, many-colored radiance, not unlike the northern lights which the mountebank had seen in Danzig.

“So that is Judah the Pious,” thought the young man, as all his confusion of the last months was peculiarly intensified by the expectant hush of religious awe within the tent. “I will stand quietly for a few minutes and hear what this fellow has to say for himself.”

As it happened, Judah the Pious was telling his congregation about the meaning and power of miracles.

“There are thousands of miracles in the air above my head,” said the holy man, “but I have no desire to reach up and grasp them.

“So I said to that unfortunate unbeliever who came to me many years ago, offering to embrace our faith if I would only show him one of the marvels for which I was then so famous.

“‘Go look at those violets on my table,’ I told him. ‘Notice the deep purple color of the petals, their velvety softness and sweet fragrance. Then, if you still have no understanding of miracles, I will know that no wonder in the world can make you a religious man.’

“And that very day,” concluded the saint, “I decided that my own miracle-working career was over.”

During this speech, Judah ben Simon edged slowly through the large crowd at the back of the tent. Despite the mass of spectators blocking his view, he was able to catch several brief glimpses of the sage. Little by little, the mountebank began to perceive that the head of the Cracower court was a thin man of gigantic stature, with strong shoulders and a massive chest; his huge hands were dusted with liver spots and curling reddish hairs. Beneath a broad-brimmed black felt hat, his yellow-white hair flowed in a thick mane down his back; together with a pale, waist-length beard of extraordinary wildness, it seemed to form a cape which cloaked the upper half of his body. His face was bony, broad, and swarthy, dominated by a huge beaked nose. Yet the saint’s most impressive features were indisputably his great blue eyes, which seemed to glow and crackle with the energy of thunderbolts, and which were apparently responsible for the weird, luminous aura which encircled their owner.

The mountebank was unable to obtain a complete, uninterrupted view of the holy man until he had pushed his way through the mob to the back of the scholars’ benches. Standing at the edge of the crowd, he endeavored to make a detached, careful study of the sage’s unique and striking presence. Yet this attempt was soon disrupted; for, at that instant, the Cracower rabbi fell silent, and startled his audience with a deep, booming command.

“Judah ben Simon!” he called out, staring directly at the newcomer. “I have been awaiting your arrival all day; I had even chosen a topic for today’s discussion which I hoped might interest you. Move closer. Come here and tell us what your scientific research has taught you!”

“I-I am not yet certain,” stuttered the astonished young man, feeling himself being drawn down the center aisle as helplessly as if he were possessed of a dybbuk. With each step, he saw the sage’s features from a new perspective, a different angle; and slowly, very gradually, he began to apprehend a most astounding fact.

Included in the rabbi’s rich, complicated physiognomy were the unmistakable, unforgettable faces of Jeremiah Vinograd and Dr. Boris Silentius.

This discovery so stunned the mountebank that his head began to swim with a nauseating dizziness; his knees almost buckled beneath him. Propelled steadily forward, he did not stop walking until he stood within inches of the wise man, where he saw that his impression had been correct.

“So,” he whispered, in a voice which quavered with anxiety, “you are also a master of disguises.”

“Or a great miracle worker,” replied Judah the Pious softly, deliberately imitating the thin, reedy giggle of the Danzig doctor. Then, his voice resumed its naturally deep and mellow tones.

“We have here a shy and retiring young naturalist,” he began, addressing his congregation. “Accustomed to the privacy of the deep woods, he is understandably hesitant to reveal his most cherished theories before a crowd of strangers. Therefore, if you will excuse us, we will retire to my private chambers.”

As the audience buzzed with wonder and excitement, Judah the Pious ushered his guest through a tattered black curtain beside the stage, into a bare room containing two hard wooden chairs.

“Why did you do it?” demanded the agitated visitor, barely giving the rabbi a chance to sit down. “Why did you put on all those disguises just to ruin my life?”

“I am sorry if that is how you interpret it,” replied the saint, smiling tranquilly. “All I can say in my own defense is that it is not such a terrible thing for a father to try and teach his son a worthy lesson.”

Judah ben Simon collapsed into the other chair, and began to breathe deeply. Overcome by panic and confusion, he felt as if he were suddenly discovering his whole life to have been a deceptive and senseless story, invented just to indulge the whims of one man. “So you are my father,” he murmured in a low, tired voice. Then, he sighed. “With all due respect for my mother,” he continued, after a while, “I must admit that I suspected something like that all along.”

“My son,” replied the holy man earnestly, “if only you had been open-minded and patient enough to perceive the logical implications of your suspicion, you could surely have spared yourself a lifetime of misery and error.”

“What do you mean?” asked the mountebank uneasily.

“Let me tell you a story,” said Judah the Pious, “a tale which I heard from a Hindu brother on one of my first pilgrimages to the East. According to that worthy sage, his countrymen firmly believe that unfailing devotion to God insures one’s entry into heaven. In order to illustrate the meaning of such devotion, their wise men love to quote the fable of King Sisupala.

“This powerful sovereign, it is said, was born with a fierce and implacable hatred for all religion, a passion which caused him to spend every moment of his life cursing God. He scorned and abused the Lord from his cradle, his marriage bed, and even his funeral pyre. He chastised the heavens for each drop of rain which fell, each thunderbolt which disturbed his sleep; he shrieked at the deities whenever one of his subjects sickened and died.

“Naturally, all those who loved the king also dreaded the hour of his death, for they were certain that his soul would be condemned to roast in the hottest ovens of hell. But, as it happened, Sisupala’s soul was admitted to heaven the very instant it departed from his body.

“For all the celestial judges swore that they had never seen a man who kept the name of God so constantly in mind.

“So it was with the miracle of your conception, Judah ben Simon. Clearly, your mother never believed in it; neither did I. And, from everything I have heard about Simon Polikov, I would imagine that he was clever enough to have soon guessed the truth.