Judah the Pious

by Francine Prose

  “So,” he muttered, standing over the countess, “we are beginning our day with a fine game of hide and seek.”

  “Sit down,” she commanded, in a calm, serious tone, “and I will tell you of a puzzle which may help you understand.

  “When I was just sixteen,” she began, as her visitor reluctantly obeyed, “my mother died, and the count, my father, began his rapid descent into madness. That year, when the young men first came suing for my hand, he took it into his head to be like the lords of old, and to devise a small test by which the would-be suitors might prove themselves worthy of his only daughter.

  “The challenge was a hedge-maze made of tall hawthorns, much like those labyrinths which adorn the gardens of many wealthy homes. The contestant had only to reach its center, and inscribe his initials in the loose red clay.

  “I assure you that I was much lovelier in those days; my father’s fortune was enormous. For these reasons, many handsome nobles were willing to try their skill in a bit of harmless sport. But what they did not know was this: the maze was an impenetrable system of blind alleys, dead ends and vicious traps, through which a man might stumble aimlessly for the rest of his life.

  “And that is precisely what happened. Watching from my attic window, forbidden to offer a word of warning or advice, I watched them die, one by one. Of course, the brave aristocrats showed no fear until they discovered the remains of an unfortunate predecessor. Then, the fainthearted boys immediately sat down to await the onset of starvation and exhaustion, while the more spirited young men tore themselves to shreds as they attempted to crash through the unusually sharp and plentiful thorns.

  “By the time a distinguished delegation arrived to investigate the disappearance of their favorite sons, the corridors of the labyrinth were littered with drying bones. My father was condemned to an asylum; and, despite my protestations of innocence, I was exiled to the furthest reaches of the Carpathians, where merciful Providence delivered me at the Princess Maria’s doorstep.

  “Since then,” concluded the countess, with a pathetic sigh, “I have become so comfortable and familiar with all sorts of puzzles that I no longer fear the memory of that maze which did my father’s gruesome work. But, regardless of the princess’s constant persuasion, I have not yet been able to forgive the God of Love, who spurred those poor young men to pit themselves against a lock which had no key. And therefore, I must beg you to leave my home at once, before our hearts become entwined in the webs which our wits and bodies have been spinning.”

  “Before that happens,” snapped Judah ben Simon angrily, stalking from the house, “you will have more than enough time to solve your most baffling paradoxes.”

  XV

  “THAT AFTERNOON,” CONTINUED THE Rabbi Eliezer, “when the Baroness Sophia Majeski’s invitation was slipped beneath his door, Judah ben Simon crumpled the gilded parchment in his fist and threw it on the mattress. “I would sooner dine on blood with Satan’s favorite hellcat,” he muttered furiously, and resumed his preparations to leave Kuzman. But an hour later, as the mountebank considered the tattered garments, chipped bottles and leaking packets which half-filled his cotton sack, he suddenly realized that a man who had no idea when he would eat again might well take his last meal at the home of a baroness.

  “It must be possible,” he told himself, “to remain unaffected by these noblewomen’s tricks and enticements. Now that I am no longer seeking their money or their respect, why should I care if they think me a gentleman of wit or a bumbling idiot? I can simply avail myself of the baroness’s pantry, then be on my way.”

  “But once again,” sighed the rabbi, “all of Judah’s confidence and resolution vanished on the doorstep of his hostess’s dining room.

  “King Casimir,” said Eliezer, “considering how many years it takes for a man to amass a legion of ghosts behind him, a young fellow like yourself cannot often have experienced the uncomfortable sensation I am about to describe. Among men of my age, however, it is an almost daily occurrence to see someone on the street whom, for just an instant, we recognize as one of the most hated or beloved figures from our past. The knees grow weak; the heart begins to pound; and it seems scarcely possible to keep from fainting until that climactic moment when the long-lost star of our youth turns out to be a neighbor’s cousin, from the other side of town.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” nodded Casimir, who, in fact, had often glimpsed his mother in the faces of obscure relations and foreign ambassadors’ wives.

  “In that case,” continued the rabbi, “you will certainly be able to imagine the shock which coursed through Judah ben Simon’s body when he saw Rachel Anna walking towards him across the room.

  “Of course,” the old man went on hastily, “Judah soon perceived that the baroness’s resemblance to his wife was limited to her orange hair and her thin, graceful figure. The noblewoman’s face was fuller, her features more regular; both her eyes were a cool, pure blue. But,” mused Eliezer, “who can say how much that faint likeness influenced the young man’s judgment and helped convince him that the Baroness Sophia Majeski was the most beautiful woman he had seen since the start of his travels?

  Indeed, this beauty so disarmed him that several minutes passed before he began to notice the strangeness of her home, which seemed more like a woodsman’s hunting lodge than the palace of an aristocratic lady. Everything was plain and bare. A blaze in the granite fireplace and a few dim candles provided the only light. There were no tapestries on the walls, no chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, no fine cloth covering the oaken table. The dishes were made of heavy peasant ceramic, the utensils of polished wood; the tin mugs contained clear, cold water.

  “I never expected such chasms of style to separate a baroness’s apartments from those of her nobler sisters,” marveled Judah ben Simon. “Perhaps this woman will be able to prattle of nothing but needlework, horticulture, and the rising price of mutton.” But, as the young man sat patiently at the table, waiting for his hostess to initiate the conversation, he began to understand that the difference between the baroness and her neighbors was far greater than her decorative tastes had led him to suspect:

  Unlike the Princess Maria and the Countess Catherine, the Baroness Sophia Majeski did not favor her guest with a single word.

  “Perhaps she is afflicted with a stammer,” thought the mountebank, in a sort of panic after ten minutes of uninterrupted silence had gone by. Yet, when the servants carried in the platters of simple, plentiful food, Judah heard the lady issue a series of firm, sharp commands, and realized that her speechlessness was not the consequence of some natural disability.

  “I will not be the first to speak,” he resolved warily, recalling his humiliation at the homes of the other noblewomen. “Surely, this unnatural reserve is just another trap, another trick designed to deceive and betray me. As far as I am concerned, neither of us need say anything all night; I will be perfectly happy to keep my mouth closed except when I am stuffing it with food.”

  As the meal progressed, he stubbornly kept his peace; yet, despite his efforts at detachment, he found himself struggling to discern the meaning of this new game, and thus outwit his hostess. The silence between them grew as tense and strained as that of two old lovers, grown restless in each other’s company. Judah became steadily more unnerved, until at last, just as he was finishing his second helping of strawberries and clotted cream, all his patience vanished.

  “So,” he whispered angrily, leaning across the table so that the baroness could not evade his eyes, “are you going to disclose your sad history now, or do you plan to wait until tomorrow morning, like the others? Why not save us both some time and trouble, and reveal the mysterious relation between your behavior tonight and the miseries of your youth. Tell me: were you enamored of some dashing deaf-mute? Did ten thousand men take vows of eternal silence in return for one smile from your pretty lips?”

  Startled, the Baroness Sophia glanced up from her plate, then laughed, as if delighte
d by some unexpected pleasure. “My only story,” she said, “is that I alone among the three of us have had no tragic drama in my past.”

  “What kind of story is that?” demanded Judah ben Simon, dismayed by the girl’s refusal to acknowledge his insult. “What kind of noblewoman are you, without a bandit lover, or a hedge-maze in your childhood home?”

  “A sad one,” she replied, answering both his questions at once.

  “I do not believe it!” cried the mountebank. “Life here in the mountains must be paradise for a lovely young woman with no fear of poverty, hunger, or cold. And, if there really are no monsters looming out of your past, then you are even luckier than those two friends of yours.”

  “I would gladly trade everything I own for one of those monsters,” the baroness said calmly. “Listen: for the past three years, I have spent every evening in the company of two women whose lives once overflowed with wildness, magic, and the most delicious suffering. Night after night, when my companions stare into the fire and begin to brood on their glorious sorrows, I am reminded that I have no tragic story to offer in return, that nothing grand or heroic has ever happened to me. How could I presume to trouble them with anecdotes from my rebellious girlhood, with tales of how I slapped my sisters, slept with the grooms, and finally provoked my parents into sending me away? And, without a buried grief on which to blame my frailties, how can I dismiss all those empty-headed suitors after they have warmed my bed?”

  “I suppose you can tell them the same things you are telling me,” suggested the young man sarcastically.

  “I swear that I have never spoken this way before,” declared the baroness, her blue eyes shining with tears. Then, she giggled. “Usually, I rid myself of bothersome men by remaining silent as the grave for days on end.”

  “Then why have you chosen me for this singular honor?” asked her guest, torn between his old distrust and the growing conviction that the lady was sincere.

  “Because,” she replied, smiling boldly, “I am grateful that you did not try to spoil my meal with boring chatter. I am eager to test the reports I have heard concerning your superior wit. And I am utterly delighted by your beautiful blond hair.”

  But the mountebank could not repay his hostess’s gracious compliments, for he was too disturbed by a vague echo of the past which had sounded in her words. Unable to identify the source of his distress, he attempted to drive it away by introducing some clever new topic of conversation. Thus, when he heard the voice of a solitary cat, howling in the darkness, it was with a deep sense of relief that he seized upon the opportunity which this noise appeared to offer.

  “If that is the Princess Zarembka’s kitten,” he laughed, “it would seem that my medicines have failed to cure its melancholy.”

  “That is a story I can tell you!” exclaimed the Baroness Sophia happily, recovering from her dismay at the young man’s cold response to her flattery. “The Princess Maria’s cat!

  “The princess and the countess found that wildcat long before I came here,” she began, moving her chair closer to Judah ben Simon’s and affecting a conspiratorial whisper. “By now, it is a full-grown beast, and only foolish sentiment allows them to speak of it as their kitten. But listen, and I will tell you what they do with that unfortunate animal:

  “Sometimes, in the midst of January, when our lives have become more monotonous than the deserts of hell, the two ladies comb their mansions for a plump, healthy rat. Then, they shut themselves in a room with their pet and its natural prey, and, laughing merrily, watch the cat tease and batter its victim until the walls are streaked with blood.”

  “So that is how genteel ladies pass their time,” said Judah ben Simon with a hearty laugh, though the image of the women at their sport had caused him to feel an unpleasant chill.

  “These January games are only the beginning,” said the baroness. “May I remind you that our winters last until the end of April?” And, winking slyly, she began to entertain her guest with a series of scandalous anecdotes, rendered doubly delightful by the fact that they seemed to please the teller as much as her listener.

  The stories intoxicated Judah ben Simon more than all the princess’s wine and the countess’s champagne; giddy and lightheaded, he heard himself repeatedly clapping his hands and shouting with laughter. Two hours later, when the lady collapsed in giggles and leaned her carrot-colored head on the table, the young man realized that he had not felt so carefree and happy since his first years in the forest.

  “Now it is my turn to apologize for having nothing to offer in return,” he said, after his hostess had raised her head and dried her eyes. “For how can I possibly repay you for the pleasure you have given me this evening? But, if you promise that you will not allow your disapproval of my base, mercenary motives to poison our friendship, I will try to make do with the tale of how I came to visit Kuzman, and of the eccentric mountebank I encountered in the estate of the Princess Maria’s father.”

  The Baroness Sophia Majeski swore to the indestructibility of her affection, then laughed appreciatively as Judah ben Simon spoke of Corporal Svoboda, Jeremiah Vinograd, and the preposterous gypsy cart. When he had finished, however, she stared at him with the confused, quizzical expression of someone who still awaits the end of a joke long after the clown has fallen silent.

  “Now that I have heard the conclusion of your story,” she explained after a while, “I am doubly curious about its beginning. For I have a strong suspicion that the events which preceded your arrival at the princess’s ancestral home were far more interesting than the circumstances of your journey to Kuzman.”

  “On the contrary,” mumbled Judah ben Simon. “Nothing could be duller than my early history.” Yet slowly, unwillingly, he let himself be persuaded to speak of his parents, his neighbors, and his native village. Urged on by the baroness’s pertinent questions, he confessed to the charade which Simon and Hannah had enacted to bring about his conception. Encouraged by her sympathetic smiles, he began to talk of his marriage, and saw the noblewoman wince with jealousy and embarrassment when he recalled those years of happiness in the woods. At last, he described his final visit home, mentioned the promise which Rachel Anna had extracted from him, and, attempting to dispel the tears which had started to thicken his speech, ended his narrative with a sharp, bitter laugh.

  “Something stranger than a child conceived in a dream!” he snarled hoarsely. “Can you imagine anything stranger than that?”

  For several minutes, the baroness stared intently at her guest, then apparently discarded the answer she had first intended to give.

  “Yes,” she murmured, gesturing vaguely towards her open window. “If the moon were to slip down the sides of those mountains and roll through the fields, that would be much stranger than a child conceived in a dream.”

  Once again, however, the young man could offer no suitable response, for the fact was that he had not heard one word of the lady’s reply. Instead, he had been stunned and distracted by the distinct impression that one of her eyes was shining with a vivid green light. The mountebank did not stop trembling until he had succeeded in tracing this hallucination to his ill-advised foray into the past. Resolving to prevent the recurrence of such alarming delusions, he hastened to steer their conversation towards the safer and more navigable realm of the present.

  Speaking in low, soft voices, Judah ben Simon and the Baroness Sophia began this phase of their talk by sharing their occasional joys. The noblewoman smiled as she attempted to recapture the brilliance of the Countess Catherine’s midsummer dances; her guest described the satisfaction of curing an infant’s colic. But, within five minutes, they had exhausted their entire store of happy experiences, and were obliged to confess the essential dreariness of their lives. Judah complained of his constant hunger, his pointless journeys, and his total inability to satisfy the crowds of jeering strangers. The baroness nodded understandingly, and spoke of the nights spent alone in her icy bedroom, trying to fall asleep with the pathetic sou
nds of six-month-old aristocratic gossip still echoing in her ears.

  The intimate nature of this last image caused a portentous and somewhat nervous silence to fall over the couple. Neither the mountebank nor the lady uttered a word until the brassy and painfully discordant bells of Kuzman tolled five times. Then, Judah ben Simon and the Baroness Sophia laughed, joined hands across the bare wooden table, and, with all the unembarrassed haste of new lovers, rushed upstairs to the young woman’s bedchamber.

  “I am afraid,” said the Rabbi Eliezer, “that I now find myself faced with the necessity of making a rather rude and brash intrusion into my hero’s privacy. For I must tell you that, during his night with the Baroness Sophia, the young man began to remember the difference between true pleasure and the tired battles he had fought in the other noblewomen’s beds. Indeed, he was so overwhelmed by passion that quite some time passed before he noticed that the princess’s cat had resumed its raucous yowling. It was this unexpected distraction which momentarily cooled his ardor and allowed him to perceive a most disturbing sensation.

  “In the instant before the force of his desire returned and obliterated his detachment, Judah ben Simon felt the familiar touch of a hand with six fingers, pressing against his back.”

  XVI

  “THE NEXT MORNING,” SAID the Rabbi Eliezer hastily, before his listener could interrupt, “Judah ben Simon awoke in a drowsy, pleasant mood. But this sense of well-being gradually disappeared as he became aware that the walls of the baroness’s bedroom were covered with illusionist murals, depicting the elm grove in which he had first met Rachel Anna. He recognized the arrangement of the trees, the shrubs, the flowers; even the shelf-mushrooms were in their accustomed places on the trunks. Yet, before the young man could even attempt to comprehend this unsettling discovery, his uneasiness and confusion were multiplied by the realization that the Baroness Sophia Majeski had already gone from the room.