The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six

by Jonathon Keats

  On his way to fetch her, the grain merchant repeated what he’d heard to the miller, whose employees were too sick to work, and the miller mentioned it to the sawyer and the cooper’s wife and several journeyman carpenters, and soon the whole town shared the same secret. A crowd swelled around the apothecary’s door.

  Menashe had spent the past couple of days securing his building against the incurable sickness and those who carried it. He’d boarded over the windows and doors of his shop with lumber, and had little Zayin climb up into the chimney flue, to pack it tight with rags. Then he’d sent her down to the basement, to see what provisions they had, and what she could make from them in days and weeks to come.

  It was while she was down there that Menashe heard the clamor outdoors, louder than it had been in days, since the first tremor of the plague. For a moment he listened, but he didn’t hear people shouting his name. They were calling for Zayin.

  Menashe peered through the one attic window he hadn’t yet boarded and sealed. He saw burghers and tradesmen and peasants, many of whom carried saws and axes in their hands. He opened the casement and leaned out over the sill.

  — What do you want from me? I’ve told you this plague is deadly. I have no cure.

  — We want your daughter.

  — You want to kill her?

  — We want her to save us, Menashe.

  — Has the plague made you crazy? She’s just a little girl.

  — She revived Fayvel.

  — She didn’t. She couldn’t.

  — Zayin isn’t of this world.

  Menashe hurried down to the cellar. He grabbed his daughter, and demanded to know what she’d done. She told him that she’d tallied up all the carrots and beets, but not yet the onions.

  — That’s not what I mean. There are people outside saying that you revived Fayvel.

  — Is he really feeling better?

  — Is Fayvel your lover? I ordered you not to go outdoors.

  — I haven’t been out in days. Papa, I love only you. You taught me to care for others. How could I be true to you and let Fayvel suffer?

  — You stole my medicines. You faked my prescriptions.

  — I gave him no pills. I only stood by him awhile. I held his hands, in case he was in pain. I told him not to place such faith in demons. I said that I was there for him. I said that I had hope, and asked him if he’d believe in me. Then I was going to try to explain about the body being an apothecary, so he wouldn’t feel bad that I hadn’t brought him drugs, but he interrupted by proposing marriage to me.

  — You accepted?

  — Papa!

  — Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Zayin? Can you even try to understand? Folks think you’re some kind of Messiah.

  The girl couldn’t tell if he was proud or disgusted or simply incredulous. In silence, he led her to the attic, and pointed her to the window. More people had gathered below, and, when they saw her, their voices lifted up on her name and soared. Zayin looked at her father, and said she had to go to them. Menashe saw that it was true. If she didn’t, they’d tear the house down. He turned away, and let her leave him.

  For seven days and nights, Zayin did not sleep. Straight through the sabbath she worked, tending the sick, holding their hands and murmuring her hope, insisting that they could get better, begging them to believe in her. They did, one after another. They believed that this lightning girl in long golden braids and white gossamer slip was the savior. And, one after another, they were healed by her.

  Of course, religious authorities were skeptical. The head rabbi, undisputed leader of the community, several times sent his beadle to seize her, in order that there might be a proper inquisition regarding her irregular behavior, but the people wouldn’t let her go. Then the old rabbi got ill. He was put to bed by his wife, a zaftig woman half his age who all but breathed for him as he lay dying. At last she called for the beadle. Leading him into a room where nobody would hear, she asked the man to tell Zayin that the rabbi needed her.

  The beadle had no difficulty locating the girl: Even from the steps of the shul, he could see the crowd of tradesmen and farmers surrounding the shack where she was reviving a stricken beggar. Having one and all pledged themselves to her, they called themselves her followers—despite her efforts to send them away—and also considered themselves her protectors, earthly guardians of the miracle that had saved them and their families. They halted the beadle as he approached. He tried to explain why he’d come, how it wasn’t the same as the last time, but they shouted him down.

  Zayin emerged into the commotion. She asked what was wrong. The beadle held up a hand and called out to her. Fayvel and his brothers knocked him over. The mob prepared to lynch him. But as they closed in on their victim, they found that they were facing Zayin.

  She was standing over the rabbi’s man. She wouldn’t move until the mob lost its will to be one. Then she knelt down, and let the beadle speak.

  He repeated what the rabbi’s wife had said to him, and implored her, on his own behalf as well, to save the holy man. She took a deep breath. She vowed to do what she could, and, against the advice of her self-appointed disciples, who predicted that it was a trap, accompanied the beadle to the rabbi’s private quarters behind the shul.

  Several feverish acolytes, men with eager beards, were praying there, but stopped short when they saw Zayin standing, radiant, at the door. Into the sudden silence rose the rabbi’s wife, embracing the girl and saying, loud enough for all to hear, that she believed in her. Then she brought Zayin to the bed where the rabbi lay sleeping, and, chasing away the acolytes like vermin, left the two of them alone.

  For the first time, Zayin faced the great man unseparated by the distance of ritual, the ordained space between altar and balcony. Up close he appeared more ancient than the patriarchs. Had she not seen him leading the town in worship just a few weeks before, she’d have believed that he’d been dug from the ground like an antediluvian fossil. His skin was the cast of dust, his flesh as cold as clay. She clasped his hands anyway, and, kneeling over him, laid her head on his chest.

  Her words came unprepared. In her mouth, the language softened, melting into song she couldn’t comprehend. The sick man began to hum. Zayin lifted her head. Her lips were no longer moving. It was always this way when her work was done: Her song was being sung by him.

  The rabbi opened an eye, and regarded her.

  — How do you know these words, child of Menashe?

  — I don’t know them, rabbi. They just come to me.

  — You don’t know them? They aren’t known to me either, but when you chant them . . . they must be sacred.

  — They come to me when I heal someone. Folks live when they accept my words as their own.

  — You speak this way to a rabbi? I suppose that you have the right. But please answer me this: Why does the savior come here in the body of a girl?

  — With all due respect, rabbi, I don’t think I’m the savior. I’m just good at letting people get better.

  — You are the Messiah, then. This is how you test us. You come without priestly lineage or learning, and in the flesh of the flawed sex. I’d have ordered you dead for sacrilege. You choose to revive me. What is your reason, Zayin? Won’t you please tell me?

  He’d closed his eyes while he spoke, to hold in the emotion. When he opened them, to look at her again, the little girl had fallen asleep, folded up at his feet.

  It is said that the Messiah has been here before, more times than any mortal can imagine: Every day, the Messiah comes and goes again, and always will, until the world is fit for redemption. This phenomenon is not arcane. It has been observed by everyone who has witnessed a sunrise, when the Messiah’s heavenly robe drapes the earthly threshold, or seen a sunset, as the last vestiges pass, haltingly, overhead.

  As Zayin’s name became known across the land, people observed that the sky was different. Dusk wasn’t as vivid with color as they remembered, nor was dawn as intense. A cosmic change
had taken place. Folks no longer looked up for grace, but began to search in their own midst.

  They were looking for a girl with golden braids and a gossamer slip. They were looking for a girl whose feet didn’t touch the earth and whose voice didn’t stir the air. Synagogues and yeshivas sent envoys imploring her to pass through this village or that city, for every place touched by plague suffers in myriad ways.

  Zayin didn’t want to go. Already she hadn’t seen her father in many days, and, with the pestilence exorcised at last, she knew that he’d soon be needing her in his shop, to sweep the floors and deliver balms for ordinary aches and pains. Yet when she told the rabbi this, he demanded to know what business the Messiah had pushing a mop. He was willing to accept that the savior had breasts, but wasn’t it a bit much for her to test folks’ faith by keeping house for misanthropic Menashe while the whole world struggled? Uncertain as she was that she was who he believed her to be, she had to admit that, on the chance that he was right, she was wrong to behave so selfishly. Late at night, while her disciples slept, she left.

  In the first village she reached, everyone was mourning the dead. That’s all they did, day and night, since the plague had churlishly taken away parents and children and sisters and brothers and wives and husbands and lovers and friends, leaving the lives of those who remained desperately incomplete.

  Rain was falling when Zayin arrived, so much that the streets were flooded, yet, as soon as she spoke, scores of people came outside, arms outstretched, to greet her through their tears: While ceaseless hours of saline sorrow had washed away their vision—a mercy for those who no longer had family to see—her unwavering voice told them that the Messiah was in their midst, to answer their prayers by ending their anguish. They wanted to bring her into the great hall, where they’d prepared a banquet with the last of their harvest, but she declined. For a while she stood, silent and still, in the town square. Rain flowed through her cotton frock, and down her pale skin, as she waited until everyone was quiet, and a voice came to her.

  She asked if folks didn’t notice the water pouring down from the sky. They did, and again urged her to come inside. She shook her head, and then, because they were blind, she said:

  — Don’t you people know what it is, this storm above, and why it won’t end? Don’t you recognize the cry of your dead?

  — What have they got to be upset about?

  — They’re mourning.

  — Mourning who?

  — Mourning all of you.

  — We’re still alive.

  — You don’t look it, from their point of view. You don’t farm. You don’t trade. Today is one of your festivals but you don’t dance or feast. The dead are gone, and cannot return. How can they know if you live, that all is not lost, when you pass your lives in secret? If you want this downpour to stop, be done with your own tears first.

  She led them to their great hall. The banquet began. Hesitantly at first, folks drank and ate. Timidly at first, they sang and danced. Gradually their revelry filled the night, poured over into the new day. In sunlight, they found that they could see again. They saw that there was no more rain. They looked for Zayin, savior of the living and dead. They searched everywhere for a girl with golden hair, but their Messiah, good work done, was gone.

  She arrived that day in a city where everyone constantly fought. They’d been warring ever since the plague had decimated their population, taking away the powerful and rich, leaving a wealth of opportunity for those who endured, and, with it, an epidemic of greed.

  Folks didn’t pick up on Zayin right away—incessant bickering had deafened them—but from the moment that she was noticed, every man and woman demanded a private appointment. Each claimed personally to have invited her to the city, in order that she might resolve their conflict before the shouting crumbled buildings. Beholden to her faithful as a king is to his subjects, she did as she was bidden. She met with each person alone, and by everyone was told why opportunity couldn’t be shared by the many, and what uniquely gave him or her—and not another soul—exclusive claim to the chance at hand. She listened with sympathy, and was unsettled to find that everyone was in agreement. Were the men and women correct, one and all, that chance didn’t divide evenly, and opportunity, unless exploited individually, was just an empty promise? Wise Menashe would have known the answer, but of course Zayin couldn’t rely on her father anymore: A Messiah is sui generis. She straightened her shoulders, took a breath, and, as ever, let the words swell within her. You’re right, she told each claimant, slowly so her lips could be read, but the opportunity is not yours to take.

  — Whose is it, then?

  — You must listen: It belongs to the first person whose words you hear.

  Folks shut their mouths after that. They cleaned their ears. There were advantages to be had simply by knowing who’d been chosen, opportunity within occasion, like the seeds inside an orange. And so it came to pass, after many months of quiet calm, that people heard again.

  Yet it didn’t happen all at once, to the sound of a single voice. On the contrary, each person heard opportunity in somebody different: Everyone was chosen by someone. Epidemic greed gave way to contagious cooperation. They rebuilt the city. They built to honor Zayin.

  By then, she was long gone. She had been to a hundred cities and towns. Folks reported miracles wherever her gaze fell. Her voice made plague-ruined villages flourish. Old ghosts were vanquished. Mothers had new children.

  People sought to worship Zayin, and she permitted it, as long as it was done by grazing livestock or tilling the soil. Some grumbled that such profane activities had nothing to do with her eternal glory. Patiently, she reminded them that the world was the Messiah’s twin, born of the same creation, and to treat either well was to honor the other. They did what she asked. They tended the earth, and, when they prospered, they knew that Zayin had blessed them in turn.

  One day, Menashe fell ill. Several years had passed since he’d last seen Zayin, and the burden of running his shop had become wholly his own. They’d not been easy years. Folks had forgiven his churlishness during the pestilence only because the Messiah was—at least according to birth records—his own daughter. Even so, he sold far fewer elixirs than before. For the state of his business, he’d a bitter diagnosis, from which he drew a sort of long-suffering comfort: Zayin’s little savior shtick had cured the land of hypochondria, patron ailment of his trade, by drugging people silly with hope. Abandoned by his prodigal daughter, unable to afford help, he had to go out, an old man, in the chill of winter, peddling balms no one wanted anymore. He caught cold. He took to bed. He would have no medicine. Drugs were as false to him as Zayin.

  On the third day of Menashe’s illness, the old rabbi came to his house. The apothecary was sleeping, and couldn’t be roused. The rabbi tried to recollect the benediction that Zayin had given when he’d been sick, words as certain yet unfamiliar to him as his own birth. How could a scholar who was able to recite the entire Kabbalah not retain those few simple sounds? And why did the effort to remember them make him forget, for a trembling moment, even how to breathe? If he kept up the attempt, he knew he’d be lost to it. Forgetting birth is the price of life; were it not forgotten, nothing else would make an impression.

  He surrendered. Instead of playing prophet, he wrote a letter imploring Zayin, wherever in the world she was, to come home before her father—the one who had raised her—was dead and gone. He copied his missive ten times, and sent it to ten other rabbis. He requested that each do the same. Then he returned to Menashe, and waited while his words radiated across the continent.

  There wasn’t yet any snow on the ground that winter, but, within days, the countryside was white with paper. Whole forests fell as letters begat letters, cascading from town to town, touching down in urgent flurries, rising up in a storm front.

  Zayin had been in the same village for several days, the longest she’d spent in one place since she began her sojourn. The town wasn’t especially si
ck or damaged, in want of complicated miracles, and she might not have spent a single night there were it not for a man she’d seen on the street and been unable to forget. He was a peddler, young yet well worn like his old copper wares, a wanderer like she’d become, except that, while she was celebrated by folks who had yet to meet her, he was anonymous even among people to whom he was familiar.

  Zayin could not stop looking at him. She wondered if she’d met him before, if she’d saved him and was drawn to him protectively, as mother to son. She wondered if she was somehow related to him, if they shared the same blood, a continent apart, as distant cousins. She wondered a hundred wonders, but nothing she had known, or even imagined, could explain the intensity of his presence, his absolute singularity in a marketplace crowded with men and donkeys: A glimpse of him made her lose sight of all humanity. In his dawn-blue eyes, the girl Messiah perceived all that she had never thought to desire.

  The first time that she saw the man, she tried to approach him, but found that many dozen of her devotees stood between them, awaiting her care. For a moment she didn’t—care, that is—wouldn’t have been bothered to see them slaughtered, if only they weren’t in her way. She attempted to push past the hordes, yet couldn’t move a limb. She looked down. She couldn’t even see her legs and arms, so fiercely were folks grasping them, in want of her ministrations. Their troubles overwhelmed her. Their expectations overcame her. She yielded. Zayin was a good girl. Did it matter that she hadn’t asked to be the Messiah? Her followers hadn’t asked to suffer.

  She returned to the marketplace the next day and the day after. Folks gathered around her with small aches and abrasions, but she couldn’t find her peddler among them. She wanted to ask about him, wished she had his name. What could she say? She worked and she waited.

  It was on the fourth day that news of Zayin’s father at last found her, early morning in the marketplace. In the time that it took her to read the letter, ten more came, and then a hundred, a thousand. Before the blizzard of paper could smother her, the fastest horse was fetched from the mayor’s stables, and saddled. A man lifted her up by the waist. In his grip, she felt a shimmer, like first light, within her. She caught his dawn-blue eyes, their blaze. His cheek brushed hers. He whispered some words in her ear. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he said, I’m here for you, Zayin.