The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

On the subject of this heresy that has been festering for many years amongst the faithful Orthodox, I know only that they believe that the world was not created by a living God, but rather by his evil brother, Satanael. This is why all manner of evil and death prevails upon the earth. This renegade Satanael assembled the world out of matter, but he was unable to breathe life into it, so he asked the good God to do that. God, in turn, gave souls to every creature, which is why they believe that matter is evil, while the soul is good.

do not recognize the sacrament of marriage, believing children born of such unions to be cursed. They do believe, meanwhile, in spiritual love between human persons, and when this occurs, corporeal communion is considered holy. Even in a group setting.

And so the women launder, cook, sew, feed.

The women of the true faith are confident and gregarious. They like to flirt, and what Jacob teaches pleases them: that they can forget the Turkish customs dictating that they should be shut up inside their homes.

Words are like lizards, able to elude all containment.

She shuts her eyes to the fact that in Ivanie everyone sleeps with everyone, even attaching great meaning to it. Hana does not understand why men place such importance on intercourse. There’s nothing so amazing about it.

She is bothered by the scent of other women on her husband’s skin.

Moliwda thinks how snow keeps life more honest: everything is somehow more distinct, and every rule applies more absolutely.

Moliwda used to wonder whether Jacob could feel fear. Eventually he decided that Jacob would not recognize the feeling, as though he’d simply been born without it. This gives Jacob strength: people can sense that absence of fear, and that absence of fear in turn becomes contagious.

Blessed are those who feel no fear.

Jacob has eased off the alcohol by this time. “I like it that way,” he says. “It’s more human. People who have intercourse get closer to each other.” “Because you can sleep with other men’s women, while no one sleeps with yours, they all know that you are the one in charge,” says Moliwda, “the way it works with lions.”

They will have a common secret, they’ll know each other better than anyone, and as you know well, the human spirit is inclined to love, to loving, to connection.

“Shut up,” says Jacob. “That’s none of your business.” “Oh I see,” says Moliwda, “now it’s not my business, but when you want a village from the bishop, then it is my business.” He reaches for the pipe as well. “It’s a good system. The child belongs to the mother, and thus to the mother’s husband, too. It’s mankind’s greatest invention. It means that only women have access to the truth that agitates so many.”

you, too, must be bound by the same justice you impose on everyone else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

You’re something greater than a family, because you are bound together by all the sins that are forbidden to a family. You’re bound by saliva and semen, not just blood. Those ties are strong.

I’ve seen too much of the world, Jacob, not to understand you all.

“But what would that mean?” asks Moliwda. “What does God have to do with this?” “It’s just that we’re on God’s side.” “It’s that God is on our side,” says Shlomo Shorr. Moliwda doesn’t really care for it, but he adds the hand of God, like Nahman wants.

Of course they’re not equals, thinks Moliwda. Back in the Bogomil village, they weren’t equals either. There were corporeal, psychic, and spiritual people. Somatics, psychics, and pneumatics, they called them, from the Greek. Equality goes against nature, however rightly one might strive toward it. Some are made of more earthly elements, and those people are thick, sensual, and non-creative. They are only good for listening. Others live with their hearts, their emotions, in bursts of the soul, and others still have contact with the highest spirit, distant from the body, free from affects, spacious inside. It is to this final group that God has access.

And why must a world created by God be saved in the first place? And, “Why is it so bad, when it could be so good?” wonders Moliwda, quoting to himself the good, innocent Nahman, and smiling.

This enemy is familiar, even close, which means the enmity is that much greater. Knowing your enemy well, you know exactly where to strike him, how to hurt him most.

There is in this struggle with a close enemy a strange sort of twisted pleasure, for it is like striking oneself, yet simultaneously dodging every blow.

Of the everlasting interconnectedness between divinity and sinfulness

The Polish language lacks the words for such questions. It has little experience with them, and knows little of theology. This is why every heresy in Poland has been unleavened and bland. In fact, no real heresy could ever come about in Polish. By its nature, the Polish language is obedient to every orthodoxy.

“Women sometimes have a greater wisdom.” “They are less attached to words.” “Hayah Shorr, too?” “She isn’t entirely a woman,” Nahman answers seriously. Moliwda starts laughing. “I wanted her, but Jacob wouldn’t let me,” he says.

The struggle is about leaving behind that point where we divide everything into evil and good, light and darkness, getting rid of all those foolish divisions and from there starting a new order all over again. We don’t know what’s past that point.

When Moliwda looks at Nahman, this small, freckled man who speaks so quickly that he starts to stutter, it surprises him that such a great intelligence would be used for the plumbing of such wholly useless depths.

“Because they were unable to legalize their sect within the framework of their Jewish religion, now they’re trying out some new trickery.”

The comet resembles a scythe aimed at humanity, a naked glistening blade that might slice off millions of heads at any moment, and not only the ones on the craned necks in Ivanie, but also city dwellers’ heads, Lwów heads, Kraków heads—even royal heads. There is no doubt it is a sign of the end of the world, a harbinger of angels rolling up the whole show like a rug. The play is evidently over, armies of archangels already gathering on the horizon. If you pay attention, you can hear the clanking of the angelic arsenal.

Strange as it is, remarkable though it may be, on Yente the comet makes little impression. From her vantage point, of greater interest are the countless humble human things that make up the warp of the world. The comet? Why, that’s just a single gleaming thread.

People take one another’s hands, then let go to eat from a single bowl, halving their bread. Steam rises from the kasha that fathers tenderly spoon into the mouths of the children sitting in their laps.

The fact that they all have to go through the motions of accepting the Nazarene faith and acting more Christian than the Christians themselves strikes Yankiel as dishonest. It is fraud. He likes having to live piously, humbly, not saying much, keeping his thoughts to himself. The truth should be in your heart, not on your lips. And yet: converting to Christianity!

Nahman knows what Wajgełe cares about most. Everyone asks about the same thing, everyone wants to know about intercourse, as if that were the only thing that mattered; they don’t ask about virtue, about the struggles of conscience connected with higher matters—everyone only ever asks about intercourse. That disappoints Nahman a great deal—people are not so different from animals. When you talk to them about copulation, about all those things that go on from the waist down, they turn bright red.

Is not copulation good? You just have to give yourself over to it without thinking, and eventually pleasure will come of it, and this pleasure is a blessing of the act. Yet even without pleasure it is good, maybe even better, for then you are aware of crossing the Dniester and entering into a free country—just imagine, if you so desire.” “But I don’t want to,” says Wajgełe. Nahman sighs: the women always have a bigger problem with it. The women seem to cling more to the old laws; they are, after all, more frivolous

and shyer by nature. Jacob has said that it is the same as with slaves—for women are to a considerable extent slaves of this world, knowing nothing of their freedom, having not been taught how to be free.

In fact, isn’t ridiculousness what we want, isn’t ridiculousness on our side? thinks Nahman,

Briefly spared is the life of the rooster from which today’s broth is supposed to be prepared.

No bird chirped, no bee flew, there were no waves in the sea, people did not speak—it was so quiet you could hear the heartbeat of the smallest animal.

“How can you believe in all of this, Nahman? What do you need it for? The truth is simple. Isn’t it?” Wajgełe says sleepily.

In this world of dead husks, nothing has been given once and for all.

When a person has a piece of land, he becomes immortal.

What is our real task if not the establishment of equilibrium between the unity of God and the multiplicity of the world created by him?

Jacob stops and angrily extinguishes the candle in one blow. From then on, things take place in darkness. For what they are to do next, that darkness is a balm.

“Who was Francis?” they ask him. He tells them about saints, the Catholic hakhams. “This was the name I liked best,” he says. “And you, too, should choose carefully, and take your time. But do not get too attached to your new names. Nor to the country, nor to the language, although you have to speak it. Names must come about before nations do;

The names we carry on the street, on the other hand, around the market, traveling in a carriage on a muddy road, or those others use to call us—all that is just tacked on. Those names are useful like the clothing you put on to go to work. There’s no sense in getting attached to them.

Yente sees all of this from above, watches names peeling off the people who have carried them. For the time being, no one notices,

This loss of names in the Ivanie grass might be alarming, as the sight of disposable things, of transient and fleeting beings, always is, but Yente sees at the same time many things that repeat. Yente herself is repeating.

Why talk? If you want to rid the world of someone, it does not take fire and sword, nor any type of violence. You just have to pass over that person in silence and never call him by name. In this way, he will gradually recede into oblivion.

it is a dangerous thing to try to show that we have a better understanding than those whose opinions must be held to be infallible.

How could they not be welcomed into the bosom of the Christian church—that capacious, comfortable, Catholic bosom?

Jacob Frank is like a small plant that vegetates in the kitchen, on the windowsill, and that Gitla is constantly watering. Asher considers that this is something people who have been abandoned do. Until eventually the plant withers and dies.