since you are such a perceptive young man, I will reward you by showing you my prize possession, my favorite work of nature—which I found, oddly enough, not far from our own Danzig.” While speaking, he kneeled over a carved wooden chest, and began to take out wrapped objects, which he uncovered and assembled carefully on the figured carpet.
“This,” he said proudly, when the skeleton was fully assembled, “was the body of a beautiful young woman, the most magnificent of all nature’s creations. If only it had not taken me eighty-five years to learn that.”
“Thank you for showing me,” nodded Judah politely.
“You are very welcome,” replied Silentius grandly. “You may go on your way now, and give my regards to your mother and father.”
Early the next morning, Judah ben Simon headed back towards the city of Danzig.
VIII
“U NFORTUNATELY,” SAID ELIEZER HASTILY , before the king could interrupt, “Judah never had a chance to give Simon Polikov the scientist’s regards. For, by the time the young man left Silentius’s home, the grass had been growing on his father’s grave for eighteen months.
“On the night of Simon Polikov’s death,” continued the rabbi after a brief, somewhat melancholy pause, “Hannah had awoken to find him sitting bolt upright in bed. ‘Wait!’ he was screaming. ‘Wait! I have something to tell you!’ Only after lighting the candles did she notice how his breath sprayed the air with blood, and that his face was twisted in a look of unimaginable desperation.
The memory of this expression remained before Hannah’s eyes for several days, and kept her from accepting any comfort from the neighbors, who advised her to thank God for Simon’s sudden and painless end. “Nothing is painless,” she had snapped, and it was truer than she could have known.
For what even Hannah did not realize was this: every night, for the past eight months, Simon Polikov had dreamed the same dream; every night, he had relived each moment of his son’s last visit, dwelling on each of their words, their glances, their smallest gestures. In the mornings, he had awoken in a fog of discontent. Though pleased to discover that he was not wasting the sleep of his old age by inventing romantically distorted pictures of his youth, Simon still knew that God would not be sending him such meticulously accurate dreams if not to rebuke him for having let the boy leave without a final blessing. At the evening services, the old man always prayed for a happier ending to his fantasy; he never shut his eyes without hoping to see himself place one arm around his son’s shoulders and fill his ear with sweet benedictions. Indeed, so badly did Simon want this vision that, at the moment of his death, he spent all his remaining strength in a struggle against the terrible muteness of dreams, and screamed after Judah’s disappearing form.
The next morning, Hannah Polikov put on her husband’s overshoes and slogged through the muddy forest to fetch Judah back for the funeral. Since Simon had never remarked on the odd finality of their son’s last good-by, Hannah had naturally assumed that his failure to visit them for six months represented a clear cut victory for the redheaded demoness. This idea so infuriated the old woman that, when she finally discovered the girl lying on a heap of brownish pine needles in the half-dark wooden shelter, it was all she could do to keep from throttling her.
“Where is my son?” she demanded angrily, in a tone which implied that she expected to hear nothing but lies.
Rachel Anna, who had been studying a yellow spider spin its silvery web across the ceiling, was so startled by her mother-in-law’s arrival that she was unable to respond for several minutes. “In Danzig,” she whispered at last.
“In Danzig!” cried Hannah suspiciously. “Swear it on your mother’s soul!”
An entire range of emotions passed across Rachel Anna’s face before it assumed a somewhat
“This,” he said proudly, when the skeleton was fully assembled, “was the body of a beautiful young woman, the most magnificent of all nature’s creations. If only it had not taken me eighty-five years to learn that.”
“Thank you for showing me,” nodded Judah politely.
“You are very welcome,” replied Silentius grandly. “You may go on your way now, and give my regards to your mother and father.”
Early the next morning, Judah ben Simon headed back towards the city of Danzig.
VIII
“U NFORTUNATELY,” SAID ELIEZER HASTILY , before the king could interrupt, “Judah never had a chance to give Simon Polikov the scientist’s regards. For, by the time the young man left Silentius’s home, the grass had been growing on his father’s grave for eighteen months.
“On the night of Simon Polikov’s death,” continued the rabbi after a brief, somewhat melancholy pause, “Hannah had awoken to find him sitting bolt upright in bed. ‘Wait!’ he was screaming. ‘Wait! I have something to tell you!’ Only after lighting the candles did she notice how his breath sprayed the air with blood, and that his face was twisted in a look of unimaginable desperation.
The memory of this expression remained before Hannah’s eyes for several days, and kept her from accepting any comfort from the neighbors, who advised her to thank God for Simon’s sudden and painless end. “Nothing is painless,” she had snapped, and it was truer than she could have known.
For what even Hannah did not realize was this: every night, for the past eight months, Simon Polikov had dreamed the same dream; every night, he had relived each moment of his son’s last visit, dwelling on each of their words, their glances, their smallest gestures. In the mornings, he had awoken in a fog of discontent. Though pleased to discover that he was not wasting the sleep of his old age by inventing romantically distorted pictures of his youth, Simon still knew that God would not be sending him such meticulously accurate dreams if not to rebuke him for having let the boy leave without a final blessing. At the evening services, the old man always prayed for a happier ending to his fantasy; he never shut his eyes without hoping to see himself place one arm around his son’s shoulders and fill his ear with sweet benedictions. Indeed, so badly did Simon want this vision that, at the moment of his death, he spent all his remaining strength in a struggle against the terrible muteness of dreams, and screamed after Judah’s disappearing form.
The next morning, Hannah Polikov put on her husband’s overshoes and slogged through the muddy forest to fetch Judah back for the funeral. Since Simon had never remarked on the odd finality of their son’s last good-by, Hannah had naturally assumed that his failure to visit them for six months represented a clear cut victory for the redheaded demoness. This idea so infuriated the old woman that, when she finally discovered the girl lying on a heap of brownish pine needles in the half-dark wooden shelter, it was all she could do to keep from throttling her.
“Where is my son?” she demanded angrily, in a tone which implied that she expected to hear nothing but lies.
Rachel Anna, who had been studying a yellow spider spin its silvery web across the ceiling, was so startled by her mother-in-law’s arrival that she was unable to respond for several minutes. “In Danzig,” she whispered at last.
“In Danzig!” cried Hannah suspiciously. “Swear it on your mother’s soul!”
An entire range of emotions passed across Rachel Anna’s face before it assumed a somewhat
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