Judah the Pious

by Francine Prose

  “So I have been tricked again,” muttered the mountebank disconsolately. Numb with disappointment, he lay beneath the blankets, trying to understand how he could have let himself be so completely deceived, wondering why the three women had gone to such great lengths just to torture him. He searched through his memory for some clue which might help him understand the meaning of the bedroom murals, and taxed his imagination to explain the strange reminders of the past which had disturbed him on the previous night. Again and again, the Baroness Sophia’s image appeared before his eyes. He re-examined every word of their conversation, and, each time he recalled the dreams and confidences with which he had so foolishly entrusted her, he heard himself utter an involuntary groan of shame.

  Eventually, however, as Judah tossed back and forth, he began to hear a dry, rustling sound beneath his head, and reached beneath his pillow to find a sheet of plain, gray paper, inscribed with a precise and delicate script.

  My dearest mountebank, read Judah ben Simon,

  If you are the man of intelligence and sensitivity which I believe you to be, you must know by now that my love for you is more profound than the deepest valleys of the Carpathians. Therefore, I have decided to escape from this prison of Kuzman and go away with you. Do not be afraid: the money I have saved from my parents’ remittances will support us for many years. After that, I will gladly learn your business, and assist you in the mountebank’s trade.

  Indeed, the only obstacles to our perfect happiness are the princess and the countess. Over the course of those long winter evenings, they have grown fond of my company, and would certainly oppose the idea of my departure. They are powerful, unpredictable women; I have seen them be quite mean to the unlucky men who have tried to cross them.

  For this reason, I suggest that we tell no one of our plans. Do not try to find me now, at this bright and public hour of day. But, if you have any love for me, come back at midnight, when I will be waiting, and prepared to go.

  Until then,

  I am,

  Your devoted mistress,

  THE BARONESS SOPHIA MAJESKI

  The mountebank read this note four times; then he put on his clothes, tucked the letter safely inside his robe, and left the house at once, without seeking to consult his hostess. Thoroughly preoccupied, oblivious to his surroundings, he passed blindly through the streets of Kuzman and returned to the inn. There, he sat down on his mattress, and scarcely moved all day as he considered the obvious advantages of accepting the baroness’s proposal.

  “My worries would be over,” thought the young man hopefully. “I will no longer need to scrape for pennies, sleep on the hard ground, and wander for days on end without a decent meal. With such a beautiful, adoring woman by my side, my loneliness would vanish. No one could accuse me of abandoning one woman for the sake of another just like her, for the baroness has told me with her own lips that she would never believe in anything so stupid as a child conceived in a dream. Should our union prove discordant, I can always redirect my path towards Kuzman and return the lady to her home. And, within a few short hours, I will be able to see if my mistress really has six fingers on her left hand, and to learn the name of that countryman of mine who painted those disturbing murals on her walls.”

  By the time the village clock showed half past eleven, Judah ben Simon had not yet been able to find one drawback in the lady’s plan. Who could have blamed him for the perfect confidence with which he gathered his belongings and headed towards the north edge of town? Indeed, as he turned up the road which led into the mountains, he could hardly keep himself from beaming with happiness.

  It was a lovely spring evening, bright with the glow of the full moon and the stars. The sky was clear, the air cool, the leaves full and fragrant on the trees.

  “On a night like this,” thought Judah excitedly, “it is almost shameful to keep to this barren and well-trodden path. It must surely be possible for me to cut through the forest, and reach the baroness’s home by a more pleasant route.”

  But, a few moments after he had turned from the highway, Judah ben Simon knew that he had made a mistake, for the heart of the forest reeked with the fetid smell of decomposing flesh. “I can hardly arrive at my mistress’s house stinking of the grave,” he murmured, and decided to return to the main road. As he attempted to retrace his steps, he found that the cobbled path was nowhere in sight.

  Having spent half the nights of his life in the woods, Judah was not particularly alarmed by this temporary disorientation. Certain that the highway must lie somewhere to his west, he resolved to take his bearings from the stars. Yet soon, he realized with anxiety that the heavens seemed to have changed their shape, and that, in place of the constellations he had known as a child, the bizarre, twisted forms of starry lizards, dragons, and horned toads filled the sky.

  It was then that Judah ben Simon first began to perceive how different this wilderness was from the comfortable forest in which he had passed his youth. The foliage was thicker and blacker than any he had ever seen; gnarled branches, overhanging ferns, and moss-covered vines were knit into a canopy which screened out all but the faintest rays of moonlight. The loud, incessant chirping of the crickets had a forced, discordant sound, like an orchestra obliged to play the death march of a tyrant; tense, frantic animals scurried through the underbrush with sharp noises, and high-pitched shrieks.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, the mountebank noticed the shadow of a monstrous, black shape, passing across a clump of dead-white birches. “These fancies of mine are absurd,” he said to himself, experiencing a faint, fluttering sensation at the pit of his stomach. But, no sooner did he utter these words than he realized that he had somehow wandered into a section of the forest so overgrown and dense that he could no longer see.

  Tripping over a fallen tree, the traveler lost his balance and fell to the ground; moving on all fours, he began to grope his way through the blackness. The stench of decay grew steadily more powerful; roots and sharp stalks scratched at Judah’s arms; a bank of dank, sticky moss gave way beneath his knees. As he attempted to keep himself from slipping further into the mud, his right hand clawed through the damp, spongy layers of leaves, and came to rest on the wet, putrefied fur of a dead rodent.

  Judah ben Simon jumped to his feet and stumbled forward, walking more and more quickly as the unending darkness intensified his fear. He did not stop when the thick brush caused him to lose his footing in the dark, nor even when he crashed against the trunks of half-grown pines. Some branches scraped the side of his face; the mountebank reached up to feel the warm blood trickling down his neck.

  In a blind panic, he started to run, and did not pause for breath until he had reached a patch of sandy ground, where the sparse foliage permitted a few rays of light to filter down. There, in a grove of tall, spindly firs, was an abandoned wooden shelter, not unlike the one which Judah had shared with Rachel Anna.

  Panting with exhaustion, the young man crept stealthily towards the hut. He peered in through the chinks between the logs and saw one small room, filled with cobwebs and a greenish, phosphorescent mist. Although several beams had fallen from the ceiling, the frame of the structure seemed sufficiently reliable and sturdy. Therefore, despite the shelter’s unprepossessing appearance, the mountebank decided to take refuge there until dawn.

  But, when he reached the opposite side of the house, Judah ben Simon was presented with a sight which made his knees grow weak with terror.

  The door of the hut fronted on a large, barren clearing. On the floor of this meadow was a thick carpet of bones—sharp-toothed, hollow-eyed rat skulls, gleaming stark white in the moonlight.

  Once again, Judah started to run, trembling with nausea as the bones snapped and crunched beneath his feet. Just beyond the far edge of the clearing, stabbing pains in his chest obliged him to slacken his pace. He stood doubled over, struggling to regain his strength. Then, when the blood had stopped pounding in his ears, he began to notice that the forest
had fallen perfectly silent.

  The crickets had ceased their chirping; the animals nestled close to the ground and remained motionless. Even the cool spring wind had stopped rustling the leaves. The young man took a few tentative steps forward, watching for the slightest movement, listening warily to the silence.

  At that moment, Judah ben Simon realized that he was being stalked.

  He had distinctly heard the footsteps, moving in rhythm with his own, pacing behind him, stopping when he stopped. “My imagination,” he whispered tensely, and started to walk faster. The footsteps sped up. Judah broke into a run, and heard the animal running after him.

  For almost an hour, the mountebank eluded his unseen pursuer. He knelt in dense thickets, ducked behind trees, crouched in the icy hollows of damp boulders. At times, he attempted to quiet his terror by scheming to discover his hunter’s identity, for he could not imagine what sort of creature could combine such an earthshaking tread with such agility and poise. But, despite all Judah’s efforts, the animal held back in the shadows, lurked behind in hidden corners of the woods, teasing its prey, awaiting its chance. As he tried to lure his enemy into showing itself, the young man grew calm and clearheaded, distracted from his fear by the notion that he was involved in a clever game of wit and instinct. Yet gradually, as he came to understand that he would soon be overtaken, sweat began to wash down his forehead, and spasms of panic ripped through his chest.

  Finally, Judah reached the middle of a wide meadow, and knew that he would never reach the other side. He could no longer outrun his pursuer; there was nowhere for him to hide. He turned around, took out his knife, and prepared himself for battle.

  At that moment, Judah ben Simon saw an enormous, coal-black cat emerging from the edge of the forest. Its huge, gleaming eyes shone like blue-green lamps; its pointed yellow teeth dripped with spittle. Its back arched and rubbed against the lower branches of the pines, and, as more and more of its body appeared from out of the trees, Judah realized with horror that the creature was more than ten feet long.

  “I am dreaming this,” thought the terrified young man. “Such monsters do not exist in nature.” But, as the cat shook its hindquarters and leaped towards him across the plain, he knew that it was no dream.

  With a shrill, piercing scream, the animal pounced on its prey. Locked together, Judah and the wildcat rolled over and over through the high grass. The cat spat, and clawed at the young man’s neck; the mountebank slashed at the thick, glossy fur. There was screaming, snarling; Judah felt the beast’s teeth bite into his hand, and the sharp nails tear at his breast. The struggle grew fiercer, more intense and vicious.

  At last, too exhausted to continue fighting, Judah ben Simon relinquished his hold on the creature, lay quietly on his back, and felt the cat begin to bat his helpless body from side to side. “So this is what death is like,” he thought in the instant before he spent his last strength in a desperate stab at the wildcat’s throat, and slipped into unconsciousness.

  XVII

  KING CASIMIR OF POLAND stared at the Rabbi Eliezer with round, mystified eyes. “What is happening?” he cried, running his chubby fingers through his pale blond hair.

  “I assure you,” nodded the old man, “that is exactly what Judah ben Simon wondered when he awoke the next day to find himself covered with cuts and bruises, flat on his back in the midst of an open meadow. His flesh felt raw and tender, as if it had been scraped with bristles; twinges of pain shot through every nerve and muscle. Slowly, with great difficulty, he turned his head, and saw the carcass of the gigantic black cat, lying dead in a pool of blood which had apparently flowed from the jagged wound in its thick, furry neck.

  Only then did Judah remember the events of the previous evening. “So I have met the Princess Maria Zarembka’s kitten,” he thought, with a shudder of revulsion. A few moments later, he began to recall the mission which had led him from his comfortable room at the inn to this cold and dewy meadow.

  “The baroness has been awaiting me all night,” he whispered excitedly, scanning the sky and realizing that it was almost noon. “By now, she must be half-dead with fear.” And so powerful was Judah’s concern for his mistress that it enabled him to gather all his strength and stagger to his feet.

  In the cheerful morning light, the woods appeared lovely and benign, without a trace of danger or malevolence. The ferns were a deep, rich green; the vines drooped with colorful spring flowers; nowhere was there any sign of the abandoned hut or the field of bones. The warm sun acted as a salve on the mountebank’s wounds, so that he was gradually able to quicken his pace. The eager lover soon found the road, and, after kneeling briefly at a wayside stream to wash the caked blood from his face, set off for the Baroness Sophia Majeski’s home.

  But as Judah approached the steep carriageway, he discovered that the stone walls of the mansion had been draped with somber black and purple bunting. “So there has been a death in my lady’s family,” thought the young man uneasily, aware that this unexpected turn of events would surely place new obstacles in his path. “No servant would ever allow a man of my bedraggled appearance to enter a house of mourning. Besides, it is certain that the princess and the countess will have come to offer their condolences, and will not be particularly delighted to see me.” For these reasons, Judah ben Simon resolved to wait beside the gate until he could find some surreptitious means of announcing his presence to the baroness.

  “As luck would have it,” smiled the Rabbi Eliezer, “the first person to happen along the road was the Princess Maria Zarembka’s goggle-eyed servant girl—who, by then, had taken to wearing a crude, hand-painted portrait of the mountebank in a locket on her breast.

  Recognizing Judah’s form, she gasped, as if amazed to discover that the dearest figure of her dreams still existed in reality. Immediately, she raised her meaty fingers to cover the lower half of her face; but, when the necessity of answering Judah ben Simon’s request obliged her to remove her hand, the young man saw that her cheeks were even more mottled than before, and that her bulbous nose was red from weeping.

  “No,” she replied mournfully, “there’s no way I could get a message to any of them now, unless I had wings to fly with.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded the mountebank hoarsely, grasping the maid’s plump shoulders.

  “Oh, sir,” stammered the girl, in a breathless, choking whisper, “last night, just before twelve, my mistress and the Countess Catherine took it into their heads to go for a short drive in the mountains. After a long stop at the baroness’s house, all three of them set out in a single coach. When they had not returned by dawn, we servants became alarmed, and took the liberty of forming a search party.

  “Three miles to the east of here,” she continued, as the tears began to flow down her bumpy cheeks, “we came upon a horrible mess. At the base of a high, rocky cliff, lay the beautiful painted carriage, reduced to a heap of splinters. And the ladies’ bodies were sprawled on the boulders, all broken and crooked, like a baby’s rag dolls. As soon as we could bear it, the maids and kitchen girls came home to dress the corpses, while the butlers and grooms went on to hunt the culprit.”

  “The culprit?” cried Judah ben Simon. “Then that devil of a drunken coachman abandoned them to die?”

  “No, sir,” replied the girl, “the princess’s driver never drank. God rest him, he was killed along with the others; indeed, the whole affair was quite peculiar, considering how well he knew those mountain roads.

  “No, sir,” she repeated, sobbing softly, “there was something else, which I have forgotten to mention—something horrible, which led us to raise the cry of banditry and murder. For, as we approached the Baroness Sophia’s poor, twisted frame, it became clear to us that her lovely white throat had been sliced straight across, laid wide open from ear to ear.”

  All at once, the maid appeared to notice Judah’s bloodstained, tattered garments, and recoiled in horror and suspicion. But, as she hesitated, torn between her heart’s in
fatuation and her sense of public duty, the young man started to move away; then, grown suddenly oblivious of his painful wounds, Judah ben Simon ran headlong up the mountain road.

  “For almost two months,” sighed the Rabbi Eliezer, “my hero roamed the hills like a wild man, sleeping beneath the trees, subsisting on mushrooms, berries, and raw greens. The sweeping vistas which the Carpathians offered him were far more dramatic than any he had ever experienced, but now the naturalist took no notice of his surroundings. Instead, he squandered all his energy in an effort to puzzle out the riddles which had begun to plague him, to understand the mysteries and strange patterns of coincidence which had shattered his peace of mind.

  Each day, however, he grew more confused and uncertain, increasingly inclined to doubt all his principles and convictions. Finally, at the beginning of August, Judah ben Simon realized that he had neither the knowledge nor the wit to answer his own questions, and that there was only one man who might be able to help.

  “Judah the Pious?” whispered the King of Poland tentatively.

  “King Casimir,” grinned the rabbi, so obviously delighted that the young sovereign could not restrain himself from smiling with pride, “I can see that I have not been telling you this story in vain. And, if I have taught you to repair your own errors as well as you mend my hero’s, then my mission will have been a total success.

  “Three weeks later,” continued the old man, “Judah ben Simon entered the famous gates of Cracow and soon found himself even more ill-at-ease than he had been in Danzig. For the bustling, preoccupied city dwellers had little time or goodwill to waste on an ill-clad stranger who had clearly come to swell the already unwieldy ranks of municipal beggars.

  As the ragged mountebank wandered through the twisting alleys, children taunted him with insults, dogs nipped at his heels, and adolescent boys, draped casually across their doorways, pelted him with rotten fruit. Gradually, however, the stranger began to notice an odd phenomenon: each time he asked directions to the court of Judah the Pious, the stern, icy faces of the Cracovites grew momentarily open and warm. Matrons smiled on him as if he were complimenting their favorite daughters; young girls blushed prettily; old men could not have been happier to discuss the talents of their newest grandchildren.