Beyond the Sun

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  The doctors quickly diagnosed the problem as a case of heat prostration. They were discussing the sort of injection the Kunivar should receive when Joseph Avneri, breaking a silence that had lasted since Seul had fallen, announced his presence within the Kunivar’s body. Uri and Nahum had remained in the hospital room with me; not wanting this craziness to become general knowledge in the kibbutz, I took them outside and told them to forget whatever ravings they had heard. When I returned, the doctors were busy with their preparations and Joseph was patiently explaining to them that he was a dybbuk who had involuntarily taken possession of the Kunivar. “The heat has driven the poor creature insane,” Moshe Shiloah murmured, and rammed a huge needle into one of Seul’s thighs.

  “Make them listen to me,” Joseph said.

  “You know that voice,” I told the doctors. “Something very unusual has happened here.”

  But they were no more willing to believe in dybbuks than they were in rivers that flow uphill. Joseph continued to protest, and the doctors continued methodically to fill Seul’s body with sedatives and restoratives and other potions. Even when Joseph began to speak of last year’s kibbutz gossip—who had been sleeping with whom behind whose back, who had illicitly been peddling goods from the community storehouse to the Kunivaru—they paid no attention. It was as though they had so much difficulty believing that a Kunivar could speak Hebrew that they were unable to make sense out of what he was saying and took Joseph’s words to be Seul’s delirium. Suddenly Joseph raised his voice for the first time, calling out in a loud, angry tone, “You, Moshe Shiloah! Aboard the Ark I found you in bed with the wife of Teviah Kohn, remember? Would a Kunivar have known such a thing?”

  Moshe Shiloah gasped, reddened, and dropped his hypodermic. The other doctor was nearly as astonished.

  “What is this?” Moshe Shiloah asked. “How can this be?”

  “Deny me now!” Joseph roared. “Can you deny me?”

  The doctors faced the same problems of acceptance that I had had, that Joseph himself had grappled with. We were all of us rational men in this kibbutz, and the supernatural had no place in our lives. But there was no arguing the phenomenon away. There was the voice of Joseph Avneri emerging from the throat of Seul the Kunivar, and the voice was saying things that only Joseph would have said, and Joseph had been dead more than a year. Call it a dybbuk, call it hallucination, call it anything: Joseph’s presence could not be ignored.

  Locking the door, Moshe Shiloah said to me, “We must deal with this somehow.”

  Tensely we discussed the situation. It was, we agreed, a delicate and difficult matter. Joseph, raging and tortured, demanded to be exorcised and allowed to sleep the sleep of the dead; unless we placated him he would make us all suffer. In his pain, in his fury, he might say anything, he might reveal everything he knew about our private lives; a dead man is beyond all of society’s rules of common decency. We could not expose ourselves to that. But what could we do about him? Chain him in an outbuilding and hide him in solitary confinement? Hardly. Unhappy Joseph deserved better of us than that; and there was Seul to consider, poor supplanted Seul, the dybbuk’s unwilling host. We could not keep a Kunivar in the kibbutz, imprisoned or free, even if his body did house the spirit of one of our own people, nor could we let the shell of Seul go back to the Kunivaru village with Joseph as a furious passenger trapped inside. What to do? Separate soul from body, somehow: restore Seul to wholeness and send Joseph to the limbo of the dead. But how? There was nothing in the standard pharmacopoeia about dybbuks. What to do?

  I sent for Shmarya Asch and Yakov Ben-Zion, who headed the kibbutz council that month, and for Shlomo Feig, our rabbi, a shrewd and sturdy man, very unorthodox in his orthodoxy, almost as secular as the rest of us. They questioned Joseph Avneri extensively, and he told them the whole tale—his scandalous secret experiments, his post-mortem year as a wandering spirit, his sudden painful incarnation within Seul. At length Shmarya Asch turned to Moshe Shiloah and snapped, “There must be some therapy for such a case.”

  “I know of none.”

  “This is schizophrenia,” said Shmarya Asch in his firm, dogmatic way. “There are cures for schizophrenia. There are drugs, there are electric shock treatments, there are—you know these things better than I, Moshe.”

  “This is not schizophrenia,” Moshe Shiloah retorted. “This is a case of demonic possession. I have no training in treating such maladies.”

  “Demonic possession?” Shmarya bellowed. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Peace, peace, all of you,” Shlomo Feig said, as everyone began to shout at once. The rabbi’s voice cut sharply through the tumult and silenced us all. He was a man of great strength, physical as well as moral, to whom the entire kibbutz inevitably turned for guidance, although there was virtually no one among us who observed the major rites of Judaism. He said, “I find this as hard to comprehend as any of you. But the evidence triumphs over my scepticism. How can we deny that Joseph Avneri has returned as a dybbuk? Moshe, you know no way of causing this intruder to leave the Kunivar’s body?”

  “None,” said Moshe Shiloah.

  “Maybe the Kunivaru themselves know a way,” Yakov Ben-Zion suggested.

  “Exactly,” said the rabbi. “My next point. These Kunivaru are a primitive folk. They live closer to the world of magic and witchcraft, of demons and spirits, than we do whose minds are schooled in the habits of reason. Perhaps such cases of possession occur often among them. Perhaps they have techniques for driving out unwanted spirits. Let us turn to them, and let them cure their own.”

  *

  Before long Yigal arrived, bringing with him six Kunivaru, including Gyaymar, the village chief. They wholly filled the little hospital room, bustling around in it like a delegation of huge furry centaurs; I was oppressed by the acrid smell of so many of them in one small space, and although they had always been friendly to us, never raising an objection when we appeared as refugees to settle on their planet, I felt fear of them now as I had never felt before. Clustering about Seul, they asked questions of him in their own supple language, and when Joseph Avneri replied in Hebrew they whispered things to each other unintelligible to us. Then, unexpectedly, the voice of Seul broke through, speaking in halting spastic monosyllables that revealed the terrible shock his nervous system must have received; then the alien faded and Joseph Avneri spoke once more with the Kunivar’s lips, begging forgiveness, asking for release.

  Turning to Gyaymar, Shlomo Feig said, “Have such things happened on this world before?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the chief replied. “Many times. When one of us dies having a guilty soul, repose is denied, and the spirit may undergo strange migrations before forgiveness comes. What was the nature of this man’s sin?”

  “It would be difficult to explain to one who is not Jewish,” said the rabbi hastily, glancing away. “The important question is whether you have a means of undoing what has befallen the unfortunate Seul, whose sufferings we all lament.”

  “We have a means, yes,” said Gyaymar, the chief.

  The six Kunivaru hoisted Seul to their shoulders and carried him from the kibbutz; we were told that we might accompany them if we cared to do so. I went along, and Moshe Shiloah, and Shmarya Asch, and Yakov Ben-Zion, and the rabbi, and perhaps some others. The Kunivaru took their comrade not to their village but to a meadow several kilometers to the east, down in the direction of the place where the Hasidim lived. Not long after the Landing, the Kunivaru had let us know that the meadow was sacred to them, and none of us had ever entered it.

  It was a lovely place, green and moist, a gently sloping basin crisscrossed by a dozen cool little streams. Depositing Seul beside one of the streams, the Kunivaru went off into the woods bordering the meadow to gather firewood and herbs. We remained close by Seul. “This will do no good,” Joseph Avneri muttered more than once. “A waste of time, a foolish expense of energy.” Three of the Kunivaru started to build a bonfire. Two sat nearby, shredding the herb
s, making heaps of leaves, stems, roots. Gradually more of their kind appeared until the meadow was filled with them; it seemed that the whole village, some four hundred Kunivaru, was turning out to watch or to participate in the rite. Many of them carried musical instruments, trumpets and drums, rattles and clappers, lyres, lutes, small harps, percussive boards, wooden flutes, everything intricate and fanciful of design; we had not suspected such cultural complexity. The priests—I assume they were priests, Kunivaru of stature and dignity—wore ornate ceremonial helmets and heavy golden mantles of sea-beast fur. The ordinary townsfolk carried ribbons and streamers, bits of bright fabric, polished mirrors of stone, and other ornamental devices. When he saw how elaborate a function it was going to be, Moshe Shiloah, an amateur anthropologist at heart, ran back to the kibbutz to fetch camera and recorder. He returned, breathless, just as the rite commenced.

  And a glorious rite it was: incense, a grandly blazing bonfire, the pungent fragrance of freshly picked herbs, some heavy-footed quasi-orgiastic dancing, and a choir punching out harsh, sharp- edged arrhythmic melodies. Gyaymar and the high priest of the village performed an elegant antiphonal chant, uttering long curling intertwining melismas and sprinkling Seul with a sweet- smelling pink fluid out of a baroquely carved wooden censer. Never have I beheld such stirring pageantry. But Joseph’s gloomy prediction was correct; it was all entirely useless. Two hours of intensive exorcism had no effect. When the ceremony ended—the ultimate punctuation marks were five terrible shouts from the high priest—the dybbuk remained firmly in possession of Seul. “You have not conquered me,” Joseph declared in a bleak tone.

  Gyaymar said, “It seems we have no power to command an earthborn soul.”

  “What will we do now?” demanded Yakov Ben-Zion of no one in particular. “Our science and their witchcraft both fail.”

  Joseph Avneri pointed toward the east, toward the village of the Hasidim, and murmured something indistinct.

  “No!” cried Rabbi Shlomo Feig, who stood closest to the dybbuk at that moment.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “It was nothing,” the rabbi said. “It was foolishness. The long ceremony has left him fatigued, and his mind wanders. Pay no attention.”

  I moved nearer to my old friend. “Tell me, Joseph.”

  “I said,” the dybbuk replied slowly, “that perhaps we should send for the Baal Shem.”

  “Foolishness!” said Shlomo Feig, and spat.

  “Why this anger?” Shmarya Asch wanted to know. “You, Rabbi Shlomo, you were one of the first to advocate employing Kunivaru sorcerers in this business. You gladly bring in alien witch doctors, Rabbi, and grow angry when someone suggests that your fellow Jew be given a chance to drive out the demon? Be consistent, Shlomo!”

  Rabbi Shlomo’s strong face grew mottled with rage. It was strange to see this calm, even-tempered man becoming so excited. “I will have nothing to do with Hasidim!” he exclaimed.

  “I think this is a matter of professional rivalries,” Moshe Shiloah commented.

  The rabbi said, “To give recognition to all that is most superstitious in Judaism, to all that is most irrational and grotesque and outmoded and medieval? No! No!”

  “But dybbuks are irrational and grotesque and outmoded and medieval,” said Joseph Avneri. “Who better to exorcise one than a rabbi whose soul is still rooted in ancient beliefs?”

  “I forbid this!” Shlomo Feig sputtered. “If the Baal Shem is summoned I will—I will—”

  “Rabbi,” Joseph said, shouting now, “this is a matter of my tortured soul against your offended spiritual pride. Give way! Give way! Get me the Baal Shem!”

  “I refuse!”

  “Look!” called Yakov Ben-Zion. The dispute had suddenly become academic. Uninvited, our Hasidic cousins were arriving at the sacred meadow, a long procession of them, eerie prehistoric- looking figures clad in their traditional long black robes, wide- brimmed hats, heavy beards, dangling side-locks; and at the head of the group marched their tzaddik, their holy man, their prophet, their leader, Reb Shmuel the Baal Shem.

  *

  It was certainly never our idea to bring Hasidim with us when we fled out of the smoldering ruins of the Land of Israel. Our intention was to leave Earth and all its sorrows far behind, to start anew on another world where we could at last build an enduring Jewish homeland, free for once of our eternal gentile enemies and free, also, of the religious fanatics among our own kind whose presence had long been a drain on our vitality. We needed no mystics, no ecstatics, no weepers, no moaners, no leapers, no chanters; we needed only workers, farmers, machinists, engineers, builders. But how could we refuse them a place on the Ark? It was their good fortune to come upon us just as we were making the final preparations for our flight. The nightmare that had darkened our sleep for three centuries had been made real: the Homeland lay in flames, our armies had been shattered out of ambush, Philistines wielding long knives strode through our devastated cities. Our ship was ready to leap to the stars. We were not cowards but simply realists, for it was folly to think we could do battle any longer, and if some fragment of our ancient nation were to survive, it could only survive far from the bitter world Earth. So we were going to go; and here were suppliants asking us for succor, Reb Shmuel and his thirty followers. How could we turn them away, knowing they would certainly perish? They were human beings, they were Jews. For all our misgivings, we let them come on board.

  And then we wandered across the heavens year after year, and then we came to a star that had no name, only a number, and then we found its fourth planet to be sweet and fertile, a happier world than Earth, and we thanked the God in whom we did not believe for the good luck that He had granted us, and we cried out to each other in congratulation, Mazel tov! Mazel tov! Good luck, good luck, good luck! And someone looked in an old book and saw that mazel once had had an astrological connotation, that in the days of the Bible it had meant not only “luck” but a lucky star, and so we named our lucky star Mazel Tov, and we made our landfall on Mazel Tov IV, which was to be the New Israel. Here we found no enemies, no Egyptians, no Assyrians, no Romans, no Cossacks, no Nazis, no Arabs, only the Kunivaru, kindly people of a simple nature, who solemnly studied our pantomimed explanations and replied to us in gestures, saying, Be welcome, there is more land here than we will ever need. And we built our kibbutz.

  But we had no desire to live close to those people of the past, the Hasidim, and they had scant love for us, for they saw us as pagans, godless Jews who were worse than gentiles, and they went off to build a muddy little village of their own. Sometimes on clear nights we heard their lusty singing, but otherwise there was scarcely any contact between us and them.

  I could understand Rabbi Shlomo’s hostility to the idea of intervention by the Baal Shem. These Hasidim represented the mystic side of Judaism, the dark uncontrollable Dionysiac side, the skeleton in the tribal closet; Shlomo Feig might be amused or charmed by a rite of exorcism performed by furry centaurs, but when Jews took part in the same sort of supernaturalism, it was distressing to him. Then, too, there was the ugly fact that the sane, sensible Rabbi Shlomo had virtually no followers at all among the sane, sensible secularized Jews of our kibbutz, whereas Reb Shmuel’s Hasidim looked upon him with awe, regarding him as a miracle worker, a seer, a saint. Still, Rabbi Shlomo’s understandable jealousies and prejudices aside, Joseph Avneri was right: dybbuks were vapors out of the realm of the fantastic, and the fantastic was the Baal Shem’s kingdom.

  He was an improbably tall, angular figure, almost skeletal, with gaunt cheekbones, a soft, thickly curling beard, and gentle dreamy eyes. I suppose he was about fifty years old, though I would have believed it if they said he was thirty or seventy or ninety. His sense of the dramatic was unfailing; now—it was late afternoon—he took up a position with the setting sun at his back, so that his long shadow engulfed us all, and spread forth his arms and said, “We have heard reports of a dybbuk among you.”

  “There is no dy
bbuk!” Rabbi Shlomo retorted fiercely.

  The Baal Shem smiled. “But there is a Kunivar who speaks with an Israeli voice?”

  “There has been an odd transformation, yes,” Rabbi Shlomo conceded. “But in this age, on this planet, no one can take dybbuks seriously.”

  “That is, you cannot take dybbuks seriously,” said the Baal Shem.

  “I do!” cried Joseph Avneri in exasperation. “I! I! I am the dybbuk! I, Joseph Avneri, dead a year ago last Elul, doomed for my sins to inhabit this Kunivar carcass. A Jew, Reb Shmuel, a dead Jew, a pitiful sinful miserable Yid. Who’ll let me out? Who’ll set me free?”

  “There is no dybbuk?” the Baal Shem said amiably.

  “This Kunivar has gone insane,” said Shlomo Feig.

  We coughed and shifted our feet. If anyone had gone insane it was our rabbi, denying in this fashion the phenomenon that he himself had acknowledged as genuine, however reluctantly, only a few hours before. Envy, wounded pride, and stubbornness had unbalanced his judgment. Joseph Avneri, enraged, began to bellow the Aleph Beth Gimel, the Shma Yisroel, anything that might prove his dybbukhood. The Baal Shem waited patiently, arms outspread, saying nothing. Rabbi Shlomo, confronting him, his powerful stocky figure dwarfed by the long-legged Hasid, maintained energetically that there had to be some rational explanation for the metamorphosis of Seul the Kunivar.