Judah the Pious

by Francine Prose

  Although he was only eleven years old, Judah ben Simon felt that his childhood had been stolen from him. Regardless of what he thought, however, the Rabbi Joseph Joshua firmly believed that childhood was a span of time which lasted until the precise moment when the sun set on the evening of a boy’s thirteenth birthday. Therefore, he paid no attention to Judah’s desire to be left alone. Even though the old man had no particular wish to see his most immature and unruly student again, he felt compelled by a sense of duty to waddle across town and inform the Polikovs that they might just as well be throwing their good tuition money down the privy.

  When Judah ben Simon came home for dinner on the evening after the rabbi’s visit, his father did not ask him the usual questions about what he had learned in school that day. The house was totally silent, except for the sound of the ladle rattling unsteadily against the tureen as Hannah portioned out the soup. At last, when the blessings had been said, Judah looked up from his plate and saw tears in Simon’s eyes.

  “For the first time,” said the old man quietly, “I am not sorry that my parents are dead.”

  “And why is that?” asked the boy, who knew exactly what was coming, although he had never met his grandparents.

  “Because if they were still alive,” the scholar answered, “they would die now of shame. It is very hard for me to believe that my own child would purposely keep himself away from books, away from all the beautiful things that have ever been thought and written down, and go out into the wilderness where there is nothing to see but magpies chewing worms.”

  Judah could not meet his father’s stare. “What good will books do me?” he mumbled, concentrating on his hands as he attempted to scratch the soft dirt from beneath his fingernails.

  “What good will they do you?” mocked Simon angrily. “They can make you wise, they can make you happy, they can bring you as close to heaven as it is possible for a living man to come; they can help you lead a life which will not look pitiful in God’s sight. Is that good enough for you, or do you want something better?”

  Judah ben Simon struggled to remain silent; but, despite himself, he was being carried along by his great desire to confront them with their own secret. “Will they make me so wise,” he whispered tentatively, “that I will not make a fool of myself in front of the entire village when I am an old man? Will they make me learned enough to keep a woman from lying down in the dirt for no reason, smart enough to stand and defend myself against a gang of harmless mercenaries firing bullets into the air?”

  Simon and Hannah looked at each other with amazement and reproach. They cursed themselves for all the fine scruples which had kept them from telling their son the truth, lest he be damaged by the pride of being singled out by God; they regretted their unrealistic attempt to raise him in ignorance of the circumstances of his birth.

  “Is that what put all those ideas about school into your head?” asked Hannah softly, when she could no longer stand the silence.

  “Yes,” answered the boy quickly, rushing to get the words out before he began to cry. “And another one of the ideas in my head is the notion that I can learn more by studying the animals and trees of the forest—which, at least, are real—than by reading books which try to make me believe in miracles which never happened, and spirits which never existed.”

  Then, with the tears of the argument still wet on his face, Judah ben Simon ran from his father’s house. From that night on, he began to pass more and more of his time in the forest.

  Naturally, the old scholar and his wife were disappointed and alarmed; eventually, however, they found a perfect means of weathering the crisis. First, they devised an explanation for the neighbors: their son was becoming a naturalist, which, as everyone knew, had always been considered a respectable pursuit for scholars. They boasted about Judah’s notebooks, his sketches, his collection of wildflowers, and the hours he spent following deer tracks through the deep snow. They marveled at the fact that he had learned to walk so softly that the shyest animals would let him observe their most intimate habits. In fact, as Simon often said, the boy already knew more about the flora and fauna of the area than he himself knew about the holy word.

  So genuine did their show of calm acceptance seem that Simon and Hannah almost came to believe in it themselves. They kept their son well-supplied with paper, inks, and pens, asked kindly about his progress, and never nagged or scolded him. But the fact was that most of their tranquillity rested on their conviction that there were many points left in Judah’s life at which he might still change into a normal human being.

  One of these expected crises was his thirteenth birthday; it came and went, apparently unnoticed by the boy himself.

  Another was marriage.

  Even before Judah ben Simon was fourteen years old, his parents had gone for a full discussion of the particulars with the village matchmaker. The broker was a stocky man with flowing white hair; he drank his tea very black, smoked huge cigars, and had the ability to change the tone of his laugh from a boom of unbelievable vulgarity to the most delicate, discreet, and confidential little chuckle. Expressing himself in a long series of ribald jokes, he assured the worried parents that such a highly respected scholar-father was a mark in Judah’s favor, and that, unless things had changed radically since his day, no daughter would ever let her parents refuse such a strikingly handsome fellow.

  No one mentioned the fact that Judah did not attend school.

  As it happened, the matchmaker was right. There were many Jewish families in town who shared the Polikovs’ faith that marriage could bring a boy to his senses—particularly such an attractive boy, from such a good family. And so, the invitations to tea began arriving at the scholar’s house.

  On the days specified in these carefully lettered notes, Simon dutifully trekked through the muddy woods to find his son and persuade him to come back. Realizing how few demands were made on him, the boy always agreed readily, and they stopped at home just long enough for Hannah to dry her tears and push a basin of soapy water towards her son.

  In the modest, uncomfortable, rarely used front parlors of the town’s middle class, the scenario always played itself out in the same way.

  Half-suffocated by their constricting Sabbath finery, the parents of the prospective brides invariably looked at the unkempt boy with concern and dismay, until they remembered how much honor they would gain by showing their neighbors that they could afford to marry virtue instead of money. Their daughters, on the other hand, needed only one look at the tall, blond, handsome boy in order to be thoroughly convinced. Immediately, they began to fumble with the ruffles on their prematurely ample bosoms, and to vow that they would never allow their fathers to let this one slip by.

  Naturally, the poor scholar and his wife had very little in common with the merchants and cornbrokers, so that the conversation over the tea often faltered. But, after a few of these visits, Simon and Hannah came to understand the strict conventions which governed these seemingly casual talks, and began to grow more relaxed.

  It was really quite simple: every subject, no matter how innocent and irrelevant, inevitably made the proud parents recall one of their daughter’s sterling qualities.

  Thus, the fact that the weather had turned chill reminded them that their girl could brew the best samovar of gingered tea in all of Poland. A warming in the air made them smack their lips in anticipation of the preserves she would soon be putting up for winter. If the price of grain had gone up that week, their child could still bake the lightest and most economical rye bread in the world. And the current upheavals in the kingdom of Prussia would by no means stop her from attending to her household duties, for it was well known that she could sweep the floorboards so clean that a man might eat from them without the slightest hesitation.

  On and on the parents went, listing virtue after virtue, praising and applauding their daughter’s superiority, stopping occasionally to apologize for the fact that their honesty was temporarily winning out over their
natural modesty. All this time, the would-be brides kept their heads lowered, bowed down partially by shyness and partially by the weight of their ribbons and ringlets, until at last they nodded, satisfied that their characters had been accurately and fairly represented.

  The Polikovs smiled politely, but hardly spoke. They had no idea what to say about their son, except to assure their hosts that naturalists would soon be taking their proper place among the great scholars of the world. But, when the conversation had finally passed beyond resuscitation, Judah ben Simon would sometimes speak for himself.

  “Your daughter is certainly a talented, beautiful woman,” he would say, his brown eyes glinting merrily. “But tell me: does she know how to build an open fire in the woodlands without setting the countryside aflame? And, when the snow is on the ground and there is nothing else to eat, do you think she will be able to catch, cook, and skin a wild squirrel?”

  The flustered parents remarked somewhat haughtily that their daughters would not cook anything prohibited by the dietary laws, and hastily went on to reiterate the specifications of the dowry. Still, try as they might, none of them could conceal the fact that something outrageous and irremediable had occurred. For, at these formal interviews, the boy was expected to appear as bashful as the girl. Even if he should be a garrulous type and have something to say for himself, who had ever heard of bringing a subject like the skinning of filthy squirrels into the terms of a marriage contract?

  Needless to say, none of the proposed weddings took place. The matchmaker tried to comfort Hannah by reminding her how long it had taken her own dear husband to appreciate the joys of wedlock, and advised the Polikovs to contact him again in thirty years.

  Eventually, Simon and Hannah gave up almost all hope. They no longer felt sure that they would live to see their son married, nor that they would ever succeed in reclaiming him from the forest, where he had begun to spend every night. “After all,” smiled the scholar, “it does seem unlikely that a boy who lies down on top of a million flowers should give them all up for the body of one woman.”

  Still, the Polikovs continued to love their son, who, despite his pride and obstinacy, remained as gentle and good-humored as he had been as a child. Judah ben Simon returned their affection, but the shame and pain he had felt on hearing the story of his conception had not diminished. Indeed, his hatred of their superstitiousness was intensified by his love for studying and classifying the calm, predictable order of the forest. And both these passions grew steadily more powerful until the spring of his twentieth year.

  “In other words,” broke in King Casimir, “you are telling me that, because Judah refused all the matches his parents proposed, he lived out his life an unmarried man, without the companionship of a good woman, or the love of children to comfort him in his age?” The king’s voice had grown tense and high-pitched, and his fair, smooth forehead was wrinkled with concentration and concern.

  “I mean no such thing,” replied Eliezer patiently. “If you will only calm yourself, I will explain more clearly.”

  But the boy’s outburst had disrupted his thoughts, so that he was forced to wait several minutes before beginning again.

  V

  “IT WAS A WARM May morning,” continued the Rabbi Eliezer. “The scholar’s house smelled of freshly cut flowers, honey, and toasted almonds. Hannah Polikov was just beginning to prepare a cake for her son’s twentieth birthday, when a knock on the door made her lose count of how many eggs she had broken into the batter. Glad that her husband had returned from the temple, she brushed off her hands, and raced towards the front of the house.

  But, when the door opened, Hannah’s smile of welcome cracked and fell from her lips; almost unconsciously, she wriggled her shoulders until she felt the protective cat’s-tooth amulet bounce between her heavy breasts.

  Standing on the threshold was a young woman, completely unlike anyone who had ever passed through the village. Tall, thin, delicately built, she carried herself with a graceful dignity which the local matrons would certainly have criticized as a sign of stuck-up notions. She was dressed in a purple wool shawl and a simple, bright green linen gown, which, despite the stains and creases of a long journey, still showed the fine quality that marked her as a city-dweller. Yet not even in the great city of Cracow had Hannah seen such a beautiful face, such flawless skin, such cleanly modeled features—”

  “And tell me,” interrupted the King of Poland, for whom certain images held special resonance, “did not this woman have firm, full, yet fragile lips, the color of red raspberries at the peak of their season?”

  “Thank you for reminding me,” smiled Eliezer. “Yes, she did indeed have a lovely mouth, though I am afraid that summer raspberries might have seemed a bit dull in comparison. Obviously, however, none of these traits would in themselves have made Hannah Polikov reach inside her blouse to check again for the amulet, were it not for a few other details which I have neglected to mention:

  The young woman had a wild, unruly, waist-length mane of carrot-colored hair, which gleamed in the sunlight like a veil of fire.

  From certain angles, her face appeared to have an exotic, foreign, almost gypsy cast.

  And, when the stranger finally raised her heavy lids, the old woman suddenly perceived that her right eye was an incandescent sapphire blue, and her left a brilliant, emerald green.

  These features offered Hannah Polikov conclusive proof that she was in the presence of a witch. Immediately, reason warned her to keep silent; she knew that any conversation with spirits was a trap which imprisoned one in their spell. Yet instinct forced her to speak, for, to Hannah, death itself seemed less fearsome than the shame of appearing inhospitable.

  “Probably you have come to the wrong house,” she stammered. “But what can I do for you?”

  “I am looking for Judah ben Simon,” the girl replied pleasantly.

  “A plague on it,” sighed Hannah, speaking rapidly now in an attempt to suppress her growing anxiety. “I should have known that my good luck would not last forever. I suppose there’s no use trying to make you think I am dead again, the same trick never works twice. I must say, though, that it has taken you a long time to catch up with me; and I am grateful for all the years between now and the day I first managed to escape from your wicked surveillance.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” asked the astonished young woman.

  “Are you not one of the demonesses who tried to prevent me from conceiving a child?” cried Hannah shrilly.

  “No,” replied the stranger. “I most certainly am not—though I have often been called a witch by kind women like yourself, by people with so much faith in their God that they automatically interpret anything slightly odd as the work of the Devil.”

  “Is that so?” murmured Hannah, raising one eyebrow suspiciously. “Well, if you are not an avenging spirit, what do you want with my son?”

  “With any luck,” smiled the girl, “Judah ben Simon and I are going to be married.”

  “Oh my God,” whimpered the old woman, hugging herself and rocking back and forth, “Oh my God. I have heard of this before, of the merciless succubi who marry human boys, drive them crazy with passion, then suck out their life’s blood through the kisses of love.”

  For a few moments, Hannah trembled convulsively, then instantaneously grew calm. “Ah,” she sighed, “if God’s will demands that I have a demoness for a daughter-in-law, I guess I can bear it. At any rate, there’s no use standing out here and talking philosophy. Why not come inside and sit down?”

  The truth was that this invitation owed less to Hannah’s kindness and pious resignation than to her sudden recollection of the fact that fresh eggs were reputed to be a particularly potent charm against spirits. “Just one look at a newly opened yolk,” she could almost hear her mother saying, “and even Beelzebub himself will go shrieking up the chimney like a singed cat.”

  Hannah watched expectantly as the visitor sat down beside the flour-covered t
able; for good measure, the old woman cracked another egg into the bowl. But, instead of recoiling in horror, her guest only smiled. “It is good to be inside a home again,” she said.

  The implications of this seemed obvious to the scholar’s wife: either her mother had been misinformed, or else the girl was not a demon at all. Now the ladies of Hannah’s family had always been famous for the accuracy of their supernatural information; therefore, the old woman decided to give the stranger the benefit of the doubt, and, as compassion gradually cleared her vision, she noticed that the girl looked tired and worn.

  “What is your name, and where do you come from?” she asked, more kindly than before.

  “Rachel Anna,” answered the other. “And I have just arrived from Cracow.”

  “Cracow!” cried Hannah. “I myself traveled to Cracow just before my son was born, to seek the counsel of that great wise man Judah the Pious.”

  “Oh yes,” nodded Rachel Anna. “I have seen him many times in passing.”

  “I can hardly believe it!” gasped the old woman. “I can hardly believe that you too have seen him with your own eyes! Describe him to me, remind me what he looks like!”

  Briefly, Rachel Anna spoke of the sage’s striking appearance, his powerful grace, the eyes which seemed to gleam and crackle like summer lightning. All this time, Hannah Polikov kept her arms crossed across her breast, as if to contain in her heart that one moment when greatness has passed so near; finally, shaking her head as if to dislodge a dream, she interrupted.

  “I am sorry for having been so impolite,” she said. “It is clear to me now that no evil witch could have survived within a mile-radius of that holy saint.”