The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [37]
"Imagine! They study wisdom on crushed wood pulp smeared with blotches of ink. And their ideas come from a slimy matter which they carry in a bony skull on their necks. They can't even run the way animals can: their legs are too feeble. But one thing they do possess in great measure: insolence. If God the Omnipotent did not have so much patience he would have destroyed such rabble long ago."
Kuziba, who had listened intently to his mother's words, was not reassured. He stared at his mother feverishly.
"I'm afraid of them, mother. I'm afraid."
"Don't be, Kuziba. They can't come here."
"In my sleep I dream about them." Kuziba trembled.
"Don't shake so, my darling little devil." Shiddah caressed her son. "Dreams are silly. They too come from the surface where chaos rules."
II
Kuziba, who had lain for some time in a deep sleep, suddenly cried out. His mother awakened him.
"What's the matter, my son?"
"I'm frightened."
"Again?"
"I was dreaming about a man."
"What did he look like, my child?"
"So fierce. He made a noise that almost made me go deaf. And he had a light that was blinding me. I would have died from fear if you hadn't waked me."
"Be still, my son. I will chant a spell for you."
And Shiddah murmured:
Lord of the Depths
Curse the evil surface.
Lord of all Silence
Destroy the Din.
Save us great Father
From Light, from Words,
From Man his Deceit.
Save us, Lord God.
For a while it was quiet. Kuziba dozed off. Shiddah cradled her only son, swaying rhythmically above him. She thought of her husband, Hurmiz, who did not live at home. He went to the Yeshivah of Chittim and Tachtim which was thousands of yards deeper, nearer the center of the earth. There he studied the secret of silence. Because silence has many degrees. As Shiddah knew, no matter how quiet it is, it can be even quieter. Silence is like fruits which have pits within pits, seeds within seeds. There is a final silence, a last point so small that it is nothing, yet so mighty that worlds can be created from it. This last point is the essence of all essences. Everything else is external, nothing but skin, peel, surface. He who has reached the final point, the last degree of silence, knows nothing of time and space, of death and lust. There male and female are forever united; will and deed are the same. This last silence is God. But God himself keeps on penetrating deeper into Himself. He descends into his depths. His nature is like a cave without bottom. He keeps on investigating his own abyss.
Kuziba had fallen asleep. Shiddah, too, rested her head against a stone pillow. She imagined dreamily how Kuziba would grow up and become a big devil; how he would marry and become a father, and how she, Shiddah, would serve her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. The babies would begin to call her grandma; and she would delouse their heads. She would braid the girls' hair, clean the boys' noses, take them to Cheder, feed them, put them to sleep. Then the grandchildren themselves would grow up and be led under black canopies to marry the sons and daughters of the most reputable and well-established demons.
Her husband, Hurmiz, would become a rabbi of the netherworld, giving out amulets, reciting incantations. He would teach imps the chapter of curses on Mount Ebal, and the curses which Balaam should have used on the Israelites; he would teach them the prophecies of the false prophets, the words of temptation which the primeval snake used in the Garden of Eden; he would teach them the cunning of the fallen angels, the confusion of tongues of those who built the tower of Babel; he would instruct them in the perversities of men at the time of the flood, in the vanities of Jeroboam and Ahab, Jezebel and Vashti. Then Hurmiz would become King of the Demons. He would be offered the throne in the Abyss of the Great Female, a thousand miles away from the surface where no one had ever heard of man and