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At her age, people start to smell like children again. He knows there is nothing wrong with this woman—she’s simply dying.
Asher feels as if that reflection were reaching him from very far away, from the unfathomable depths that all human beings hold within them.
Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges.
Elisha alone has nine grandchildren already. He believes that children should be kept on a tight leash. Studying, reading, and prayer until noon. Then they work in the store, help around the house, and learn to do practical things, like bills and commercial correspondence. But also working with the horses, chopping wood for the stove and making even stacks of it, performing little household repairs. They have to know how to do everything, because any and all of it could come in handy.
He also has to have one real skill that will allow him to make a living when he needs to—this is to be determined according to talent. You have to pay careful attention to whatever the child becomes really attached to and fond of—this is a method that can’t lead astray.
he can see clearly which of the girls will make a clever pupil. On those with less aptitude, those more frivolous, there is no sense in wasting time, as they will still make good wives and will bear many children.
he is filled with a tenderness he tries to conceal.
All these children are of his blood, there is a part of him in each of them,
“What are the names of the four rivers that flow from Eden?” he asks another boy, one with big ears that stick out from his diminutive face. That’s Hillel, his sister’s grandson. He responds at once: Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Phrath.
“Ben Asai, well, he saw it, and he died.”
“Well, it means that he got into the River Pishon, a name that can be translated as: lips that learn the strict sense.”
“Ben Soma, well, he saw it, and he lost his mind.”
That means he got into the River Gihon, a name that tells us that the person is only seeing the allegorical meaning.”
“Elisha ben Abuyah,” he goes on, “looked and became a heretic. That means that he got into the River Hiddekel, and he got lost in the great many possible meanings.”
“Only Rabbi Akiba went into paradise and came back out unscathed, which means that having plunged into the River Phrath, he got the deepest meaning, the mystical one.
Fog is turbid water, and all sorts of evil spirits travel in it, spirits that cloud the minds of animal and man.
“Is there ever really a good time to die?” Elisha said, philosophically, at last.
Yente has never liked Elisha Shorr. He is someone whose insides are like a home with all sorts of different rooms—part of him is one way, other parts of him are another. From the outside, it looks like one building, but on the inside you can see that it is many.
Elisha Shorr is always unhappy. There is always something he is missing, something he misses—he wants what others have, or the opposite, he has something others don’t, and he considers it useless. This makes him a bitter and dissatisfied man.
Hayah brings her treats, gives her chicken broth to drink, adding a spoonful of goose fat, and Old Yente smacks her lips for a long time
She’s afraid the old woman will pass something on to the child in her belly, some dark madness, indomitable.
Yente can see that a separate soul has taken up residence in Sheyndel’s belly, a soul still indistinct, hard to describe because many; these free souls are everywhere, just waiting for the opportunity to grab some unclaimed bit of matter.
The souls consist of streaks: of images, and recollections, memories of acts, fragments of sentences, letters.
gets uncomfortable sometimes, for she, too, can feel their presence—as if dozens of strangers’ hands were pressing on her, as if she were being touched by hundreds of fingers.
The women tell terrible stories—about ghosts, lost souls, people buried alive, ill omens. “If you only knew how many evil spirits were lurking in a single droplet of your beloved blood, you would all turn over your bodies and your souls at once to the Creator of this world,” says Tzipa,
What to do in a home about to host both a wedding and a funeral?
“When a person takes part in a wedding celebration, he rejects the witch Mahalath with her 478 demon companions, while when a person mourns someone close, he overcomes the witch Lilith with her 480 demon companions. This is why we find in Kohelet 7:2 that ‘it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.’ ” Which means: They should call off the wedding and wait for the funeral instead.
Everyone wants the wedding, and they want it now. They can’t wait, everything is ready.
Wind is the vision of the dead as they gaze upon the world from where they are. Haven’t you ever noticed the fields of grass, she wants to say to Hayah, how the blades bow down and are parted? That has to be because there is a dead person watching. Because if you counted all the dead you’d find that there are many more of them than there are of the living.
not because of the border that has colluded with the river and that divides two great countries from each other.
Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk has a serious problem. Even prayer, deep and sincere prayer, can’t wash away his thoughts.
Twenty-four cards. Each player receives six, and then a thirteenth is turned up to indicate the trump suit, meaning the one that will beat every other. The bishop can only calm down once he has been seated at the table, or perhaps once the trump card is lying there, exposed. Then a feeling like a blessing comes over him. His mind finds its proper balance, a wondrous equilibrium, his eyes focus on the table and on the aspect of the cards, taking everything in with just a glance. His breathing evens out, the sweat releases its hold over his forehead, his hands become dry, certain, quick, his
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it feels like everyone is playing, the whole world, and like cards unite people better than faith or language. You sit down at the table, you fan out your cards, and there follows an order that is understandable to anyone.
It is a more honest game—all in the hands of the Lord. How could anyone possibly cheat? As the bishop’s card debts grow, he calls upon God to shield him from a scandal when it all comes out. He demands divine cooperation—after all, he and God are on the same side of this battle. But God acts somewhat sluggishly, and sometimes it seems like He wants to make another Job out of Bishop Sołtyk.
the fire evidently feels unsure of itself in such damp air.
Ex nihilo orta sunt omnia, et in nihilum omnia revolvuntur: From nothing came everything, and to nothing will everything return, reads Drużbacka, and suddenly a shudder passes through her, both from the cold and from that caption, somewhat awkwardly engraved into the stone. So what was the point of it all? she wonders.
Drużbacka, meanwhile, is slowly coming back to life. Blessed be that stout lady savior. The soup is thick, vegetable, with potatoes and noodles swimming in it.
Drużbacka looks at Father Chmielowski and suddenly understands how very lonely this aging, neglected man is, bustling all around her, wanting to impress her as a little boy might.
She doesn’t know why, but Drużbacka finds it exceptionally touching to see all this, and she has to look away.
“Beautiful title. It’s so hard to give a work a good title.”
he would like is to create a compendium of knowledge of the sort that could be found in every home. And in it a little about everything, so that a person might reach for such a book whenever there is something he does not know, and there he might find it. Geography, medicine, human languages, customs, but also flora and fauna and curiosities of all kinds.
there’s a collapse of all the things that haven’t yet been named, and chaos is created,
The story of the priest’s life is the story of the books he read and wrote. A true writer has no biography.
she was Dymitr’s mother and his employer’s wife (which the priest tried not to think about). Head over heels in love, dazed by the strength of his feeling, absentminded, weak, he waged a terrible battle with himself in his efforts to reveal nothing, dedicating himself entirely to his work and writing a book of devotions for his beloved.
he felt as if he had married her, entered into a union with her, and that he was now giving her the child of that union. The course of one whole year—a prayer book. In this way, he discovered that writing saves.
Joanna was at that age, so dangerous for so many men, between the age of the mother and the mistress. This made the erotic allure of motherhood less obvious and made it therefore possible to luxuriate in it at leisure.
he remembers the delicate softness of her cool cheek when—out of his mind with love—he dared to kiss her once.
This had disconcerted him considerably—that Drużbacka turned out to be a messenger from the past.
The priest doesn’t fully understand it, but he also doesn’t really want to understand. People who write books, he thinks, don’t want to have their own stories. What would be the point? In comparison with what is written, life will always be boring and bland.
The very idea that the intelligent and educated Drużbacka might take him for an ignoramus and an idiot now torments him.
