The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

her breathing sets the delicate lace around her throat in motion, like anemones in a temperate sea.

Ex nihilo orta sunt omnia, et in nihilum omnia revolvuntur: From nothing came everything, and to nothing will everything return,

The word disappear comes from the root word elem, and the site of that disappearance is known as olam: world. Thus even the name for the world contains within it the story of God’s departure. The world was able to arise solely because God was not in it. First there was something, and then that something was gone. That is the world. The world then, in its entirety, is lack.

“The world doesn’t come from a kind or caring God,” Reb Mordke told me, when he decided I had seen enough. “God created all of this by accident, and then he was gone. That is the great mystery. The Messiah will come quietly when the world is submerged in the greatest darkness and the greatest misery, in evil and in suffering. He will be treated like a criminal. So the prophets have foretold.”

“You’re telling us the sun has no use!” cries Yeruhim. “If the hands of the greedy could only reach it, they would slice it into pieces, lock it in a vault, and sell it off when the right time rolled around.” “And yet the earth is carved up like the corpse of an animal, taken over, watched, guarded,”

Yente’s mother died with the secret clenched in her fist. She died in a kind of convulsion, in a fury. She’ll no doubt come back as a wild animal.

You could develop a taste for this sorrow in the same way that some grow fond of vodka.

Book of Proverbs 25:16: “If you find honey, eat just enough—too much of it, and you will vomit.”

Those of us who think God addresses us by means of external events are wrong, as naive as children. For he whispers directly into our innermost souls.

But does not every religion have some truth to it? All of them, even the most barbaric, have been permeated by the holy sparks.

Do not the teachings and the Scriptures show us clearly that this was precisely why Israel was scattered over the face of the earth, so that every spark of holiness could be collected, even at the farthest reaches of the world, and from its deepest depths? Has not Nathan of Gaza also taught us that at times those sparks have lodged deeply and shamefully inside matter, like jewels that have become lodged in shit?

Nahman pretends to be sleeping, but he takes secret peeks at Hana. He doesn’t really like her—she seems a little bland to him. Who is this girl who has been given to Jacob?

fecund

only united are the siblings complete. Should man in fact not be like this, double? What would it be like if we all had twins, boys for girls, girls for boys? We could all talk without words.

To have the shape of the moon behind you like a cradle, the deafening symphony of the cicadas, the air’s fragrance of melon peel, the rustle of the scarab beetle when, come evening, the sky turns red, and it ventures out onto the sand to hunt.

To feel like a guest everywhere you go, occupying homes just for a while, not bothering about the garden, enjoying the wine without forming any attachment to the vineyard.

He looks you straight in the eye, says a sentence like he’s firing a shot, and then waits for a reaction. Usually his persistent gaze, like that of a bird—eagle, falcon, vulture—flusters his interlocutors.

This world is terrible, it is true, but perhaps it can be spruced up a little here and there.

“Bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” And

Then Jacob pulls him in by the hand and, shocking him, kisses him on the lips.

God created the world, and the effort of doing so killed him.

Moliwda doesn’t know yet that in every language Jacob speaks you can detect a foreign accent.

strange creature from the antipodes.

It was really more like two orphans joining forces.

“If one accepts that the idea of the created world is one of an infinite number of ideas in the infinite mind of God, then it is, without any doubt, marginal and insignificant. It is possible that God didn’t even notice he had created something.”

What is life, after all, if not dancing on graves?

Nahman has had enough of that Podolian filth, of village smallness, envy and simplemindedness, he yearns for figs on the trees and the smell of coffee.

On the shore, peasants burn bonfires, and along the water, wreaths float with lit candles. Shrieks and giggles resound. Near the shore, girls wade into the water up to their knees, in long white shirts hitched halfway up their thighs. Their hair is down, and they wear wreaths on their heads. They look at them, these Jews on horseback, in silence, until Nahman starts to think they’re not really village girls bidding them farewell at all, but rather water spirits who float up to the surface by night to drown whatever humans they encounter.

Add to this, too, female beggars and ladies of light virtue, sensing the advantages of being in such a big group.

What the majority assume will be a solemn, noble moment turns out to be more like a flogging, or a birth.

There is one God in three figures, and the fourth is the holy Mother.