Jacob the Mutant

by Mario Bellatin

  The Wait

  The forms remain in suspense. The men’s skin perpetually wet. A golem. A dozen boiled eggs. The Stroemfeld publishing house’s employee, trying to blot out the traces of the text. No mutation is produced. All that appears is the image of some sheep grazing among rocks.

  Explanatory Map, Number 1

  by Zsu Szkurka

  Could There Have Been a Reason for Writing Jacob the Mutant?

  by Mario Bellatin

  A note from the author: any contradictions that may be found in the preceding text may have been consequences of the fact that the text was not originally conceived of in the language in which you now find it presented (nor in the Spanish).

  One particular winter morning I remember finding myself standing next to my grandfather.

  We were at the zoo.

  Before us stood a series of camels.

  They were old animals. Sad. Even bored, perhaps.

  They had the usual ashen color that their backs show.

  My grandfather held my hand tightly.

  I never saw him again.

  Certainly he died a short time afterwards.

  At that time, I didn’t really find out if what had happened to him while he was sleeping had been his death—that is what they told me on that occasion and now I have my doubts—or if it had simply been another one of his numerous transformations.

  That confusion between death and transformation arose in me some years later, when certain interests of a personal nature brought me to yet again change my religion.

  It came back precisely when I was about to convert to a sort of apostate by nature.

  I remember that a few members of my family told me in no uncertain terms that my grandfather had suffered a transformation.

  Although I am sure that they never clarified what type, I supposed that he had died, as I think it’s normal for one to assume given an incident such as this.

  I choose to ignore the reasons for which, in that moment, I didn’t show a greater interest in what had happened to my grandfather.

  That scene—my grandfather standing next to the camels—reappeared in my life many years later.

  Fifteen years ago to be exact.

  I appreciated that scene in all its splendor as I found myself praying on a particular religious date.

  I had already remained in a pure state of prayer for many hours.

  I was praying in the precise way that the customs prescribe.

  The sheikha of the order I belong to had recommended that I dedicate two full days to repeating the ninety-nine names of God.

  To achieve this mission, she presented me with a tasbih—a kind of Muslim rosary—that I was to use just for those two days.

  After that time I was to keep the tasbih as a sort of relic.

  In the exact middle of the trance I submersed myself into with those prayers, the figure of my grandfather standing before the camels in that zoo suddenly appeared.

  Not only did I witness the scene unraveling before me in all its splendor, I also felt the emotional weight that the sudden disappearance of my grandfather had brought with it in its moment.

  I fell into a deep sadness.

  I also remembered—in that moment of spiritual retreat—a story: the story of Macaque, a woman of Slavic origins whom my grandfather often spoke excessively about.

  Along with the image of my grandfather and the story of Macaque, also appearing before me was a series of words spoken in another language: Yiddish, the language of my ancestors.

  I have never told anyone about that trance into such a particular state of perception.

  Nor do I have anyone that I may now ask regarding the relationship that might exist between the figure of my grandfather, the camels, the ninety-nine sacred names of God, and the story of Macaque.

  Nor do I have a precise awareness of where this zoo was located.

  The only thing that I am certain about regarding its location is that it stood near the sea.

  Some could inquire into the relationship that exists between the Yiddish of my ancestors and my current adherence to a mystical order—Sufism—of a marked Muslim spirit.

  To more than a few, that alone could be enough of a cause for mystery.

  Perhaps that’s the reason I now find myself writing these words.

  With the goal of clarifying a series of paths for myself, paths of an equally spiritual and social nature, paths that bear great influence on my life.

  Just like the writer Joseph Roth—who, as is well known, is the true author of this book—I also experienced, more than once, what is known as a religious conversion.

  But unlike Joseph Roth (who simply abandoned his Jewish faith to become a Catholic), I’ve gone through different transformations.

  I’ve participated in mutations of a spiritual nature, but I don’t believe any of them mirrored that of my grandfather, who, as I later came to understand while in a mystical trance in which I found myself completely submerged in water, transformed into another thing (whether animal, plant, or mineral—I’m not certain), so as to continue existing.

  Although it has never been clear to me what that new life following his transformation consisted of.

  In what pertains to me, my grandfather has never appeared before my eyes in any of his possible variations.

  I simply ceased, from one moment to the next, to have him next to me.

  I don’t want to make room for that widespread scientific idea that matter is not destroyed, but merely changes form. At least not here.

  In my family, they continued referring to my grandfather as if he were still right there with them.

  For me, he only continued to be present when I recalled the stories he had the habit of telling me during our walks through that zoo.

  As I repeated the sacred names in my cell, I came to understand something that had truly previously confused me.

  I came to understand that my grandfather was not just that body that had been interred in a grave bearing his name in the city’s Jewish cemetery.

  I also don’t think I fully understood the story of that woman, Macaque, which my grandfather tended to repeat in a way that was almost compulsive.

  On some occasions, Macaque was a woman who, like the one who appears in Joseph Roth’s texts, was also of Slavic origins.

  The existence of this book of Joseph Roth’s is peculiar.

  Precisely the main theme of that text could be considered conjecture on the art of transformation.

  It is possible for it to be read as if it were a tractate on the Sacred Sephirot, with which Jewish tradition, in some way, attempts to quite unsatisfyingly preserve the idea of monotheism and uniqueness.

  There is no God but God and nothing exists outside of Him, might be a summary of what it attempts to purport.

  Jacob, Joseph Roth’s character, was also a rabbi, and one of his missions—which made sense in those times and in those regions—was to educate the children of his village.

  What stands out in Joseph Roth’s text is that someone who is a rabbi would also obligate his wife to manage a tavern by night, one complete with men in alcohol-induced stupors.

  To achieve such a goal—that his wife be willing to carry out a job of that nature—Jacob thought up an attraction: the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo. It was made up of a series of wild animals that he kept in cages and only showed to the public at night.

  I chose not to include that element—the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo—in the text known as Jacob the Mutant.

  The fact that the animals were seen at night doesn’t imply that they were necessarily specimens of nocturnal habits, but they served as a pretext for the rabbi to continue operating the tavern.

  I ought to clarify that my grandfather never mentioned Joseph Roth or a rabbi named Jacob whose wife worked by night.

  Nevertheless, I find it curious that in Joseph Roth’s book (which in reality isn’t a complete book but rather diverse fragments found over the years in the archives of certain German publishi
ng houses) a character named Macaque also appears, with characteristics similar to those that my grandfather used to mention during our walks near the camels.

  Perhaps the coincidence—the name Macaque—was nothing but the manifestation of a collective imagination in the places that my grandfather certainly passed through in his childhood.

  According to Joseph Roth, Macaque helped Jacob arrange the escape of groups of Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms that had been unexpectedly brought back in that era.

  The tavern also then served as a meeting point, so that the survivors of those pogroms might flee to safer lands.

  Macaque helped Jacob ensure that the fugitives continued their flight up until she herself ended up fleeing. Upon reaching New York, Macaque transformed into a famous actress that Joseph Roth named Norah Kimberley.

  I am not certain, but I think my grandfather even used, in the same way that Joseph Roth had, both names to refer to that woman—Macaque and Norah Kimberley.

  The Macaque that my grandfather always described while standing before those camels was also a woman of Slavic origins. But unlike the woman who helped those fleeing from the pogroms, this Macaque was herself fleeing a horrific marriage, and in a restaurant where she stopped to rest on her way she came across a martial arts expert.

  According to my grandfather, this Macaque needed to do nothing more than exchange certain looks, just a few words, to continue the escape from her marital home along with the martial arts fighter.

  My grandfather even went so far as to tell me, standing there before those camels, that the fighter ended up being murdered some years later by the police.

  The incident with the police occurred after the fighter was accused of making rat-skin shoes.

  These things my grandfather tells me can’t be true, I remember having thought to myself more than once as a child.

  As an adult—in the midst of the mystical process I was going through at the time—I repeated that very phrase again.

  But in that moment I also remembered that each time that my grandfather told his stories, I heard—as though they came from almost fathomless distances—something like a chorus of voices articulated in Yiddish.

  Do you hear them? my grandfather would say to me, raising his index finger.

  All this time I have chosen not to consider the reasons why I was always certain that the words were being said in that language.

  Where could they have come from?

  How could I have known that they belonged to a language that I didn’t even know existed?

  After my grandfather would corroborate the existence of these voices (I don’t know how he gave such reassurance), he would then explain that Macaque was a woman who referred tirelessly to her lover who had been assassinated so many years prior.

  As I already knew from my grandfather’s first strolls with me in tow, that man had been a martial arts fighter who, at a certain point in his life, had to flee an international vendetta.

  He needed to escape from the Chinese mafia, which at that time had taken over the kung fu filmmaking industry, a genre that reached a certain level of success in the United States.

  After the crime, Macaque became a single woman.