milk. Nechele even reckoned her barrenness a virtue. Weekdays she wore silk headkerchiefs and gold earrings. Her lean fingers were cluttered with rings. Thin, flat-chested, with an aristocratic figure, unhealthily red cheeks, and eyes weak from crying, Nechele never ceased complaining of how she had fallen into a vulgar house; her thin lips mumbled constantly, and her nose crinkled as though she suffered from the nasty Goray smells. She decorated lavishly the room given to her and her husband. The walls were hung with various canvasses: representations of The Sacrifice of Isaac, Moses Holding the Tables of the Law, The High Priest Aaron in Breast-Plate and Vest. The bed was strewn with small pillows. A thick embroidered curtain hung over the windows, keeping the conjugal chamber in semidarkness. Nechele, lady-like in an embroidered blouse, a feather duster in hand, sought out dust and cobwebs, and addressed her husband with melancholy sighs that kept alive the fire of discontent. Ozer's wife and children, on the other hand, dressed in crude clothing, lived in crowded quarters, and ate in the large kitchen with the servant girl. In addition to them, Rabbi Benish's household included several orphans left behind by his daughters who had died in Lublin during the cholera, and one daughter who had been divorced. All these individuals conducted a silent campaign against Levi and his wife, transferring their resentment to the rabbi's wife, who they considered had succumbed to Levi. The various parties also were at one another's throats, and told stories behind one another's backs, the following being adversaries: Nechele and the rabbi's wife; Nechele and her sister-in-law; the two brothers; the orphans and their grandmother. Of Nechele it was said that she had bewitched her husband, causing him to remain in love with her and follow her false ways. Ozer's wife swore that Nechele went out to gather herbs every Sabbath eve. Someone also once met her going in to see the witch, Kunnigunde, who lived beyond the town, near the gentile cemetery. In the past, Rabbi Benish had tried to bring peace to his household. The rabbi feared the sin of controversy, knowing that every visitation inflicted on a house sprang from this transgression. But now the old rabbi no longer had the strength to make peace. His years were numbered and there was much to put in order. He had several works to complete. Moreover, the bitter persecutions of the years 1648 and 1649 had re-awakened in him the old paradoxes regarding faith, predestination and freedom of will, and the suffering of the virtuous. Rabbi Benish sat alone, locked in, and no longer visited his wife Friday nights in her bedroom. On the rare occasions when a member of his family came into his room to begin tattling and informing, Rabbi Benish would rise to his full height; his beard leaping like a living thing, one hand beating on the oaken table, the other pointing to the door. "Get--out!" he would shout. "I've heard enough. Pests!"
3
Extraordinary Rumors
For a number of years now, extraordinary rumors had swept through Poland. During the time Rabbi Benish still dwelt in Lublin he had heard amazing things. All men were discussing the Jerusalemite rabbinical emissary, Baruch Gad, who, in journeying through a desert, had blundered across the other side of the river Sambation; he had brought back with him a parchment letter from the Ten Lost Tribes, supposedly written by the Jewish king, Achitov, the son of Azariah. According to this letter, the end of days was near. Copies of the writ were in the hands of a few Land of Israel Jews who journeyed from country to country collecting money. The greatest cabalists in Poland and other lands uncovered numerous allusions in the Zohar and in antique cabalistic volumes proving that the days of the Exile were numbered. Chmelnicki's massacres were the birth-pangs of the Messiah. According to a secret formula, these pangs were destined to begin in the year 1648 and extend till the end of the present year, when the full and perfect redemption would come. All