The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  It seemed like an impasse.

  “Perhaps,” said Yehuda Leib, “we can cross together into the village and bring her payment back. Surely we can find something there.”

  “I can extend no credit,” said Mottke.

  “Well, then,” said Yehuda Leib. “What if I should cross over and return with payment on her behalf?”

  Mottke shook his head. “Though I am very glad to see you now, I will be gladder still if I need not see you ever again; it is no simple thing to cross over and return.”

  Yehuda Leib shook his head in frustration. “But then what is to be done?”

  “Without paying the fare, no one may cross,” said Mottke. “The rules are very, very old and very, very clear.”

  “Please,” said Bluma. “I wish to pay the fare. I wish to cross over. What can I give?”

  Now Mottke shrugged sadly.

  A long moment of tight panic passed in the grove, thick drops of meltwater falling all around them.

  What could be done?

  “I am afraid,” said Mottke presently, “that a fare has been paid. I must ferry my passenger across.”

  “Wait,” said Bluma.

  “No,” said Yehuda Leib.

  “Yes, yes,” said Mottke. “I know. But without a fare…” And he shrugged as if to say, What am I to do?

  This question hung in the air.

  “Here,” said Yehuda Leib, frantically unwrapping the scarf from his neck. “Here. This must be valuable. Take it.”

  “Yehuda Leib,” said Bluma. “No.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Yehuda Leib.

  Softly, carefully, Mottke reached out and took the scarf from Yehuda Leib’s hands.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, this is a very rich price to pay.”

  Yehuda Leib wanted to describe the qualities of the scarf: how his mother had made it to keep him warm, how it had saved him from capture, how it was stained with his father’s blood, how it had returned to him in the most unlikely place and had kept him warm and safe on the journey to Death and back.

  But none of this seemed to need speaking. Mottke seemed to know.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  Yehuda Leib nodded.

  “Very well,” said Mottke, and, running his hands slowly down the length of it from one end to the other, he took the red away, leaving behind a scarf of pure, uncolored wool, which he folded neatly and handed back to Yehuda Leib.

  And then, turning to Bluma, he spoke.

  “Your fare is paid.”

  * * *

  —

  “How foolish. How unutterably stupid.”

  Dumah and Mammon, ancient lords of demonkind, knelt before the Angel of Death.

  “In my defense, Most Reverend Regent,” said Mammon quietly, “I never believed he would succeed.”

  “Ah,” said the Angel. “Foolish, stupid, and cruel.”

  “And I do hope you’ll forgive me, Most Reverend Regent,” said Mammon. “But I can’t help but notice that Lady Lilith is absent from this meeting.”

  “Lilith,” said the Angel, “has gone into hiding.”

  “Ah,” said Mammon. “I didn’t realize that was an option.”

  The fiery black wings of the Angel of Death flared with fury. “Now as ever, Mammon, your impertinence fails to charm. I do not think you adequately comprehend the dire nature of your situation.”

  “Yes,” said Mammon. “Yes, I was hoping we could speak of that. After all, in the actual event, I opposed the boy. At great personal expense, I procured a large army to stop him from reaching you. If anything, I think you ought to consider reimbursing my—”

  “You brought him here,” said the Angel. “And if Dumah hadn’t taken him from you—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mammon. “But Dumah did take him from me.”

  “Enough!” said the Angel of Death. “It is my duty to maintain Eternal Order in this realm. I charge you with working to undermine that order, of which charge you are guilty.”

  “Now, now,” said Mammon. “Surely I am entitled to some advocacy, some defense?”

  “You are not,” said the Angel. “And even if you were, I would know better than to entertain it. You are banished immediately and for all eternity from this country, and none of your properties, titles, or possessions whatsoever may be taken with you.”

  “Let’s—uh—” stammered Mammon, “let’s not rush into anything here. What you’re suggesting would create a very dangerous power vacuum.”

  “Your concern is touching,” said the Angel of Death coldly. “You keep a steward, do you not? Tall fellow? Fancy trousers?”

  “Yes,” said Mammon, “but I don’t see—”

  “All your assets shall devolve upon him. That should keep the status quo.”

  “I see,” said Mammon, swallowing hard. “Yes. I have misjudged the situation terribly. Do forgive me. I shall strive to do better in the future.”

  “You have no future here,” said the Angel.

  “Surely,” said Mammon, “surely, we can reach some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Goodbye, Mammon,” said the Angel, and with an echoing, ragged scream, the little demon was gone.

  Turning to Dumah now, the Angel spoke in a tone far softer than before.

  “Brother,” he said, and Dumah, bloodied, bashed, and battered, looked up from the floor. “It grieves me to see you here.”

  Dumah made no reply.

  “I would find it a heavy thing indeed to send you away. But if the things I have been told are true…”

  Dumah was still.

  “I am told that you conspired to unseat me, to take my task for your own. Do you deny this?”

  Dumah was silent.

  “Please,” said the Angel. “If it is not so, you must correct me.”

  But Dumah was silent.

  “Very well,” said the Angel of Death. “You will stand.”

  Dumah rose quickly to his feet, and with a sigh, the Angel of Death rendered judgment.

  “Dumah, Messenger of Decay, you have strayed from your task. You have erred, and you are unrepentant. The Eternal Order must be upheld. Therefore, as regent in this country, in the Infinite Names of the One, I strip you of your office and relieve you of your task. You, too, are banished. Go and sojourn among mortal men until such time as you die and begin, yourself, to decay.”

  Nodding silently, Dumah raised his hand in a final salute.

  And then he was gone.

  * * *

  —

  Yankl the schlepper brought news of the Rebbe’s death back from Zubinsk the day after it occurred.

  Many in Tupik sighed and shook their heads sadly, but Issur Frumkin could not seem to release his grief. He had long relished stories of the Rebbe and his great miracles, long harbored secret ambitions of making his way out through the forest to study at the Rebbe’s feet.

  But now this could never be. Now he would end up just like his father: a small-town butcher with more learning than he had use for.

  This thought was intolerable.

  It did not help that Issur’s father had always been dismissive and skeptical of the Rebbe’s holiness. Now that he had died, Moshe Dovid Frumkin had hardly grown more reverent, and a cluster of sharp little arguments broke out between the butcher and his son in the day following the Rebbe’s passing. It was as much for this reason as out of a desire to bid the Rebbe a proper farewell that Issur once again resolved to sneak out into Zubinsk.

  That night, he went to bed fully dressed for the road, his open boots and full pack laid at his bedside. As soon as the sun began to peek out over the trees, he would go. He would make his way to the Rebbe’s shivah, where he would pay his appropriate respects, and then he would return home again and face his father’s
wrath.

  But that night, lying dressed in bed, he had a dream that changed his plans forever.

  In his dream, he was sitting in the Tupik synagogue fervently reading from a prayer book with dry autumn leaves where the pages ought to have been.

  Suddenly, a voice spoke to him. It was the Rebbe, seated beside him where a moment ago there had been no one.

  Issur had never personally laid eyes on the Rebbe, and so he could not have known, but the image of the old man that appeared in his dream was precisely accurate—every wrinkle and hair in its place.

  The Rebbe apologized to Issur that they had never managed to meet—he was sure that he would’ve been enriched to have Issur as a Hasid.

  Issur protested furiously, of course: he would’ve been the one to benefit, not the Rebbe.

  But here the Rebbe cut him off: it was very important—very important—for Issur to understand that while a Hasid might benefit from the teachings of his Rebbe, it was the Rebbe who received the greater enrichment. For a Hasid entrusts a fragment of his soul to the Rebbe for safekeeping and enlightenment, and it is these shards that give the Rebbe his power. Issur, said the Rebbe, had a worthy and beautiful soul, and the Rebbe he would entrust it to would be very lucky indeed.

  This comment surprised Issur. He’d never before considered pledging himself to another Rebbe, but the Rebbe of Zubinsk insisted that he must: it was his duty and his destiny.

  A parade of imagined sages began to swim through Issur’s mind, all curling sidelocks, dark black jackets, long gray beards. How was he to know which Rebbe he ought to follow?

  Here the Rebbe of Zubinsk smiled and lowered the cowl of his prayer shawl. Somehow, all the while, he’d been wearing Moshe Dovid’s battered, dirtied shtreimel—the hat that Yehuda Leib had knocked into the muck and ruined.

  “The first person, whomever it may be, to mention Everything and Nothing to you,” he said, “shall be your Rebbe.”

  “Everything and Nothing,” repeated Issur.

  The Rebbe of Zubinsk nodded. “Whomever it may be.”

  Now there was a sound like wind, and Issur looked down to see that the autumn leaves in his prayer book had all crumbled and blown away.

  When he looked up again, the Rebbe was gone.

  And with that, Issur woke.

  The sun was just beginning to rise.

  Swiftly, softly he made his way out of the house, up the cemetery road, and into the forest.

  By the time Issur reached Zubinsk, he’d forgotten all about his dream. The crowds there were thick—there had been many Hasidim in town to attend the wedding of the Rebbe’s granddaughter Rokhl, and even more had crowded in as news of the Rebbe’s passing had spread.

  This was why it was so strange to Issur that, when he arrived at the end of the Zubinsk road, there was a girl standing there, dressed for travel, peering down into the forest behind him.

  “Hello,” she said. “Do you come from Tupik?”

  Issur nodded. “Yes.”

  “What’s beyond?”

  Issur shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  The girl shook her head. “That can’t be true.”

  “Well, it is,” said Issur. “There’s a river and a ferry, but there’s no road on the other side. It’s just a swampy mess.”

  The girl gave a frustrated sigh. “That’s a shame.”

  “Why?” said Issur.

  “Because,” said the girl, “Zubinskers almost never pass that way.”

  At this, Issur chuckled. “What are you, on the run?”

  The girl shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

  “How can you be a little on the run?”

  The girl smiled. “By being mostly somewhere else to begin with.”

  Issur smiled back. “And what are you running from?”

  “Oh, everything,” said Rokhl, the Rebbe’s granddaughter, “and nothing.”

  In a flash, the Rebbe’s words returned to Issur:

  Everything and Nothing.

  But how could this be? Every Rebbe Issur had ever heard of had been an old man.

  And yet the Rebbe’s words were in Issur’s ear again:

  Whomever it may be.

  By the time he came to his senses, she had already turned to go.

  “Wait!” cried Issur after the girl who was his Rebbe. “Wait!”

  THE DANTALION

  Prophet Margins

  Hall QB, row 94, case K, shelf 7, volume H, page 390:

  …and in those days, there shall come into the Farthest Land, up unto the very House of Death, a Pair of Eyes That Cut and a Pair of Lips That Lock, and theirs shall be a terrible peril.

  On all sides they shall be assailed by Scavengers: the Trading Beast, Avaricious, whose weapon is the need of the Living co-opted; the Silence of the Grave, Bellicose, whose weapon is the fear of Man misdirected; and the Bitter Queen, Furious, whose weapon is Woman’s righteous anger misappropriated.

  And if they heed the Tempters, then they shall lose themselves forever, tumbling from their Appointed Path into the churning scum below the world, where they shall serve only their captors.

  But if their feet carry them through the snares of the Scavengers unharmed, then, joining together, they may find themselves equal to any task: to the breaching of impenetrable walls; to the navigation of impassable ways, yea, even unto the overthrow of Death Itself.

  And theirs will be the choice—the Nameless, Faceless Girl who was called Bluma; the warlike Lion of Judah, Yehuda Leib—whether they shall topple the Great Mottled Tower, or choose to walk the Way Back.

  For the Death of Death is the End at the End—no wound may be healed, no injustice remediated when the Great Wheel has ceased its turning.

  But if the Eyes That Cut can learn to knit together, the Lips That Lock to live, then, side by side…

  Here ends page 390.

  The rain began to fall on snowy Tupik as Mottke pulled the ferry across the river. Yehuda Leib sat quietly at the edge of the small barge, watching drop after drop after drop after drop slam down into the surface of the water.

  How little time it took before they became part of the surface.

  Beside him, Bluma drew the folded page of Dantalion from the pocket of her apron and read, but, midway across the river, the letters on the page began to squirm and blur.

  By the time she realized what was happening, the rain had washed the page completely blank.

  Bluma and Yehuda Leib clambered up and off the moment the ferry barge made contact with the landing, their boots squelching in the mud. Yehuda Leib turned back to thank the ferryman, but he was gone: not on the barge, not on the bank—nowhere. Only when they finally came level with the shack at the height of the rise did they see Mottke there inside, dead drunk and reeking, fast asleep by the stove.

  But this was impossible—they should’ve seen him climbing past them.

  Bluma turned back to the opposite bank and scanned the emptiness between the trees for any sign of life.

  All was still.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, and beside her, Yehuda Leib said, “Thank you.”

  Dusk was descending on Tupik, and between the late hour and the quickly worsening weather, they found themselves climbing the muddy streets alone. By the time they were halfway into town, they’d begun to notice the differences wrought by passing time: a certain run-down cart that had finally broken, a certain outhouse mended and improved. In Tupik’s front rooms they saw familiar faces lined just a bit further with worry, familiar heads chased just a bit thicker with gray.

  They had passed an entire year backing away from Death, and the year had left its mark.

  Now the darkness was falling as insistently as the rain, and, one by one, bright lights began to jump up in the windows of the town.

  It d
idn’t take them long to realize what night it was.

  In the front window of every house, a Chanukah menorah was set to burn, eight strong, straight candles, raising their warm light up against the darkness outside, and beside each octet a ninth light: the helper candle. Yehuda Leib could not stop himself from thinking of this lone candle—separated, removed—as a sort of herding dog: keeping the others together, keeping the others alight.

  From house after house, light shone forth into the street, and as Bluma and Yehuda Leib made their way farther and farther toward their end of town, the anticipation began to grow. How sweet it would be to come back to their own houses, to see the bright lights shining out from their own front windows, to be finally home.

  But when they arrived at the house of Yehuda Leib’s mother, the window was dark.

  Nonetheless, Yehuda Leib pushed eagerly through the front door, tracking wet boot prints across the dusty floorboards, calling for his mother.

  But she was not there. Neither were most of her things.

  The house had been empty for some time.

  They had been gone for a year; Death moves as swiftly as the ticking clock.

  Bluma tried to hold back her tears at least until Yehuda Leib showed his own sorrow, and if he hadn’t been so dogged, so hopeful, perhaps she would’ve managed it.

  “Here,” he said, taking down the rusty old Chanukah menorah from its place at the top of the bookcase. “She wouldn’t want us to wait.”

  With some scrounging, Yehuda Leib managed to find nine mismatched candle ends among the oddments left in the house and fit them into the heavy candelabra. Softly, he chanted the blessings and lit each one in turn.

  For a short time, they stood in the empty front room of the dusty gray house, watching the light of the candles blaze and flicker and jump, listening to the pounding of the rainfall on the roof, until: “All right,” said Yehuda Leib. “Let’s go.”