Judah the Pious (20 page)

“No, my dear lady, I have no desire to harm you. Indeed, I am so concerned with your happiness and well-being that I am about to make you a remarkable offer: why not wander the country with me, as part of my act? I am a rich man now, I can afford an assistant. And my audience will doubtless appreciate the brilliantly allusive symbolism of your presence, for everyone knows that Simon Magus did not travel alone.”

“Simon Magus roamed the world with Helena, his whore,” whispered Rachel Anna, shutting her eyes in sudden recognition. “So you expected me to come with you all along?”

“You need not complicate matters with your coarse language,” replied the mountebank, ignoring her question. “I am inviting you to be my helper, my fellow showman, my business partner, and nothing more.”

“Then what will my duties be?” asked the surprised young woman.

“You will have no duties,” smiled Jeremiah Vinograd. “Only pleasures—the simple joys which are the thespian’s constant companion. You will have the satisfaction of a gracefully executed pirouette, of a song sung on key; you will know the pride of seeing tears roll down your listeners’ cheeks when you tell them how my miraculous plague cure pulled your community from the jaws of death. What could be easier? In fact, it would not surprise me if you turned out to have a natural talent for such things.”

Suddenly, the old man noticed the squirming lump beneath Rachel Anna’s cape, and, struck by a fresh and entrancing notion, he smiled. “For the benefit of those who are not sufficiently overwhelmed by your story, we will exhibit the leprous Baby Lazarus, whose hideous disease—a lumpy creation of flour and water—will be instantly and painlessly washed away by the aqueous medicine in my magic vial.”

The herbalist paused, his eyes gleaming with visions of untold wealth. “Rachel Anna,” he said, “we cannot fail to make a fortune. So come now, what do you say to the idea of food, clothing, shelter, and all the luxuries you desire?”

“I have no choice,” sighed Rachel Anna. “If I stay here in the wilderness, my baby will surely die before the winter ends.”

“Exactly,” boomed the mountebank jovially, and helped the young mother to her feet.

And so it happened that Rachel Anna came to practice the charlatan’s trade with Jeremiah Vinograd. Soon their partnership was working smoothly. Though dazed into numbness by the sudden changes in her life, the woman was nevertheless pleased by the respectful, almost formal courtesy with which the herbalist treated her, and by the kindness which he bestowed on her baby.

“Simon Magus” was positively delighted by the huge audiences which flocked around to stare at the beautiful hair and eyes of his “Helena of Tyre.” He enjoyed the tears of gladness which flowed over the recovery of the leprous Baby Lazarus, and basked in the murmurs of awe which greeted his assistant’s description of her neighbors’ salvation. But, most of all, he loved the endless rain of coins which showered at his feet, which could buy him gold rings, fur pillows, a painted wagon and embroidered robes without depleting his ever-deepening pool of silver.

Indeed, Jeremiah Vinograd’s fortune seemed to be improving each day. For several weeks after his meeting with Judah ben Simon, he noticed that Rachel Anna’s listeners appeared doubly moved by the trembling voice in which she told her tale of suffering, doubly inclined to recall their own miseries, and to buy the medicines necessary for their cure.

For the truth was that his assistant had become so bored and familiar with the lines of her act that she could repeat them mechanically, automatically, while her mind ranged elsewhere; eventually, out of confused, half-conscious motives of her own, she began to concentrate all her mourning for Judah ben Simon and Hannah Polikov into the few hours each day during which she performed.

Thus, it was this genuine sorrow, glimpsed through the tired sentences of Rachel Anna’s monologue, which brought her audience so low that they could think of nothing but their own bouts of melancholia; and it was the grief which the abandoned wife felt as she recalled the conversation in the Prince Zarembka’s estate which invariably convinced her listeners that only a good purgative could save them from the deadly sin of despair.

“Ah,” sighed King Casimir, interrupting the rabbi, “if only Judah ben Simon had been wiser,
he
could have been the one to make use of Rachel Anna’s talents, to combine true love and happiness with financial success.”

“Perhaps,” murmured Eliezer thoughtfully, “though one might well inquire whether a contented woman is likely to sell as much patent medicine as a sad one. Nevertheless, one is tempted to assume that Judah ben Simon could have benefited from any assistance, no matter how trifling. For, as Jeremiah Vinograd was climbing toward the peak of his success, his former student was slipping further and further into poverty and failure.”

“Then it was wrong for him to think that his fortune would improve in distant lands?” asked the king, who had often been attracted by the same notion.

“Yes, he was,” nodded the rabbi. “So wrong, in fact, that it took him less than a month to understand the extent of his error. Judah ben Simon needed only to cross the Hungarian border and hear the strange yawp of the Magyar tongue in order to realize that he would probably starve before he could learn how to advertise his products. He cursed himself for having overlooked this obvious obstacle, for having failed to consult his teacher about the rudiments of other languages.

Still, hoping for some burst of enlightenment which might suddenly enable him to solve the puzzle of Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Italian, he continued with his foreign journey, sleeping in the unfamiliar forests, and barely subsisting on his dwindling resources. Finally, at the end of a long, frozen winter, the traveler found himself at the foothills of the southern Alps—penniless, hungry, asking in sign language for the road back to Poland.

It was then that Judah ben Simon resolved to conquer his pride, and to try his luck among the aristocratic ladies of Kuzman.

“T
HE MORNING OF JUDAH
ben Simon’s arrival in Kuzman,” began the Rabbi Eliezer, “was filled with sunlight and the scent of May flowers, all the clarity of winter and all the sweetness of spring. The traveler stood in the outskirts of the settlement, feeling the cool, fresh wind on his face, gazing up at the pine-covered mountains, and wondering if he had actually stumbled in upon his future home in paradise.

But, as his glance moved downward, he soon realized that heaven would never quarter its celestial hosts in a town which had made such a pitiful attempt to hide its squalor beneath a thin veneer of quality and comfort. The ramshackle huts were plainly visible behind their false fronts, paneled doors, and carved shutters; even a shell of new masonry could not conceal the crumbling wooden shingles of the ancient Orthodox church. Everything in Kuzman seemed new, unused. The trees which lined the market place were spindly and half-grown; the cobblestones had not yet been worn smooth.

Despite all his knowledge of human nature, the mountebank found it hard to evaluate this evidence of new wealth, and difficult to comprehend how so many of the local inhabitants could afford to deck themselves in caracul caps, silk scarves, and ivory buttons. For, though it was almost noon, the villagers hunkered sluggishly outside the teahouses, grinning lazily and puffing on their hookahs as if the day had not yet begun. Indeed, the stranger might never have understood the town’s evident prosperity, if some sporadic activity along the dusty side streets had not given him a clue:

Two porters bearing crates of fragrant Mandarin oranges staggered through an alley. A trapper squatted on the ground, surrounded by heaps of russet-colored pelts. In the shade of a doorway, a cobbler stitched delicate embroidery on a soft, leather slipper, so small that it could only have been intended for the foot of a queen.

These sights convinced Judah ben Simon that Jeremiah Vinograd had finally given him some good advice. “Even the air smells of rich women,” he thought excitedly, as he passed a perfume-maker’s stall. And, eager to take advantage of this perfect opportunity, he rushed to the center of the market place, set down his bench, and began to shout at the top of his lungs.

Suddenly, Eliezer lowered his head, and, for just a moment, King Casimir glimpsed the traces of a blush on the old man’s wrinkled cheeks. “To speak the truth,” murmured the rabbi, looking up, “I am reluctant to narrate this scene, which portrays my hero in a somewhat unflattering light. Therefore, I will merely summarize the events which transpired after the mountebank ascended his platform.

“For almost two hours,” he continued hastily, “Judah ben Simon delivered a thoughtful, sincere, learned, and unimaginably boring dissertation on pharmaceutical medicine. Most of the village men assumed that only a fool could be so humorless, and did not even bother to leave their seats at the edge of the market place; no one came forward except the most desperate old grandfathers, who, after thirty years of indigestion, were willing to try anything.

But the response of the local women was not nearly so lukewarm. Too thunderstruck to comprehend one word of Judah ben Simon’s speech, they stood motionless until he had finished; then, coughing, spitting, holding their heads and moaning in pain, they stormed the platform with a battery of ailments. The mountebank treated their ills with smiles and placebos, but found himself unable to concentrate on their tales of meddling in-laws, thankless children, and insensitive husbands; for he was too busy seeking the lady whose fancy clothes and chronic neurasthenia would brand her as a member of the upper class. However, when night had come without bringing any sign of such a woman, Judah sighed, picked up his bench, and squandered his last few coppers on a room at the grimy village inn.

“Perhaps these noblewomen have no need of mountebanks,” thought the young man, tossing on his lumpy straw pallet. “Perhaps they are so lovely that they scorn cosmetics, so wealthy that they need not fear the loss of youth and beauty, so prudent that they never suffer from female complaints.”

As it happened, however, Judah ben Simon’s prospects were not nearly so dim as he imagined. Early the next morning, he answered a timid knock on his door to discover a fat, teen-aged girl, gazing at him with great moon-eyes and trembling from head to foot. Unlike the majority of dark-skinned, strong-boned mountain women, Judah’s visitor had the pale, blotched, unhealthy look of adolescents who have spent too much time fretting indoors.

The girl watched him expectantly for several minutes; her chubby face crumpled in disappointment. “You do not remember me?” she whispered.

“I most certainly do not,” replied Judah ben Simon.

“I was there in the market place when you spoke yesterday,” she explained, beginning to fiddle with a few strands of oily hair. “I was standing in the front row, the entire time. I was sure that you looked straight at me.”

“Then why did you not consult me then?” demanded the mountebank, angrily comparing his dreams of graceful aristocrats with the reality of this lumpish peasant.

“Oh, no, sir!” protested the young woman, curtseying frantically as the words became jumbled in her mouth. “I am not here on my own behalf, sir, but on that of my mistress, the Princess Maria Zarembka. Yesterday, when I returned from town, I told the ladies how handsome you were, how learned, how cultured, how sophisticated and genteel. And I asked them if there was anyone in their households who needed the services of a mountebank.

“The three ladies only laughed,” continued the maid; but, before she could utter another word, Judah had taken her elbow and ushered her into his room, as gallantly as if she had been the Queen of Sheba, come on a royal visit. “And what do these ‘ladies’ of yours call themselves?” he asked.

“Aside from the Princess Maria,” she replied, giggling hysterically when she realized that there was nowhere for her to sit but the rumpled mattress, “there is the Countess Catherine and the Baroness Sophia. But, here in Kuzman, people speak of them only as ‘The Three Sisters.’”

“Then they are related?” inquired the mountebank.

“That would be as rare as apples, plums, and peaches growing on a single tree,” answered the maid, beaming as if she herself had invented the simile which had long ago made the rounds of local wits. “No, they call them that because the ladies keep so closely to themselves, and rarely come to town, not even to attend the Easter mass.”

“Then your mistresses are shy?” said Judah. “Slow in adjusting to a new place. Still ill-at-ease in a town full of strangers?”

“No, sir,” said the girl, curtseying again, “that is not it at all. During the many years they have lived here, they have had a thousand opportunities to meet their neighbors. And perhaps they would have done so if it had not been for the rude and curious stares which follow them through town, and the vicious lies which gossips spread concerning their unmarried state.”

“What lies?” asked the young man, thanking heaven for having sent him such a cooperative informant.

“They are not worth the trouble of repeating,” declared the servant, with a note of genuine outrage in her voice. “I will only assure you that they are false and wicked. Of course, I cannot claim to understand why such lovely women should remain unmarried; at certain times of year, their homes are full of handsome suitors, meandering from room to room and complaining of the ladies’ heartlessness.”

“Ah,” sighed the mountebank sympathetically, “with no husbands to protect and amuse them, your mistresses must lead insecure and lonely lives.”

“It is not so bad in summer,” answered the maid, “when noblemen from all over Poland flock to their balls and parties. But from the first of October to the end of June I do believe their isolation must be almost unbearable.”

“Is that so?” murmured Judah ben Simon, scarcely able to suppress an excited grin. “In that case, they must surely have welcomed the news of a cultivated young stranger, newly come to town.”

“Not at all,” she mumbled, staring uncomfortably at the floor. “As I started to say before, they only laughed at me, and accused me of all sorts of wicked things. Then, when I persisted, the Baroness Sophia became annoyed, and swore that she would not dose her lowest servant with the poisons of a wandering charlatan. But late last night, my own lady came into my room, and confessed that her pet kitten had indeed seemed out of sorts lately, in need of a suitable tonic.”