The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

time is taken up by the business of God; investing time in formulating questions, in thinking—these are expenses. And since every answer raises new questions, the expenses relentlessly increase, and their interests founder. There is always a shortfall when they do the accounts, more on the “owed” side than on the “received.”

Suddenly he turned to me, and that’s when I recognized him. He was me!”

“That’s a bad omen.” “That is an omen of death, Nahman.”

“Every place has two characters—every place is double. What is sublime is also fallen. What is clement is at the same time base. In the deepest darkness lies the spark of the most powerful light, and vice versa: where omnipresent clarity reigns, a pit of darkness lurks inside the seed of light. The Messiah is our doppelgänger, a more perfect version of ourselves—he is what we would be, had it not been for the fall.”

for who are the Jews to him? As a peasant, he surely holds them in contempt, hates them as the reason for many of his own misfortunes—they lease out the nobles’ holdings, they collect the taxes, they intoxicate the peasants in their taverns, and as soon as one of them starts to feel a little more confident, he takes to acting like a serf-owner.

Hayah washed his face; it is she who knows him best, is intimate with his robust and lovely body.

They were disappointed he didn’t talk; since he wasn’t talking, he had no history or language, and it felt as though he had no home and no country.

Shorr thinks that it is bad to be a Jew, that Jews have it hard in life, but that being a peasant is harder.

When he closes his eyes, he sees Hayah’s face—her intrigued, admiring gaze. He begins to feel blissful. He can smell the damp floorboards and the odor of rags, unwashed clothing and the smoke that is in everything here and that reminds him of his childhood, and he knows he is home.

To her, the man is still a child—a newborn, still covered in the dark fuzz found on children expelled into the world too early.

There are few who do not know that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but that since she didn’t want to be obedient to Adam, or to lie beneath him as God decreed, she fled to the Red Sea.

God sent three fearsome angels after her,

They accosted her in her hiding place, tormented her, and threatened to drown her. But she didn’t want to go back. Even if she had wanted to, she would no longer have been able; Adam would have been forbidden to accept her, for according to the Torah, a woman who has lain with another must not ...

God had to create a second, more obedient woman for Adam. This one was gentle, if rather stupid. The unfortunate creature ate the fo...

But Lilith and all beings similar to Lilith belong to a world from before the Fall, which means that human laws do not apply to them, that they’re not bound by human rules or human regulations, and that they don’t have human consciences or human hearts, and never shed human t...

beings belonging to that world may pass through walls and objects, and each other, back and forth—between them,

for in their world you can converse soundlessly with animals, and they will understand you, and you them.

Suddenly he is afraid. She has seen his thoughts. She’s watched him dream.

She had thought time flowed! Now she finds it funny. It’s obvious that time spins around like skirts whirling in a dance.

“The Jews have lost a child! The Jews have lost a child!” the goyim call in both Polish and Ukrainian. They take up clubs and sticks and pitchforks, and they set out as if mobilizing against some werewolf army, against the underground kobold kidnappers, against the cemetery’s devils.

Narrow and terrifying, it is shaped like a woman’s private parts; going inside is akin to climbing back into the womb. No one wants to go.

a group of adolescents united by a common goal begins an exploration of Jacob’s cave, shrouding it in the great secrecy to which children that age are prone.

“Yente?” she asks quietly. “You alive?” But what is Yente supposed to say to that? Is that even the right question? Hayah ought instead to ask: Do you see, do you feel? How does it work, you moving rapidly as thought across the rippling ruffles of time? Hayah should know how to ask.

Isn’t it possible to live, think, and do what you like, but in such a way that no one finds out? Yente wonders. For that is what they have been taught: we will quietly lead a double life, following in the footsteps of the Messiah.

Should she go inside his dream? Why does she see everything at once, all times swirled together, and on top of that, people’s thoughts? Yente can see thoughts.

that news from the world arrives with a delay, belated, for here someone has already dreamed of the Messiah—that

In the new world, there will be a different alphabet, different symbols, other rules.

The coming Messiah is a suffering, aching Messiah, trodden down by the evil of the world and the misery of people.

he names all of their neighbors and remembers everyone he came into contact with that day and says good night to them as well, until Yente starts to be afraid that if he keeps going like this, he’ll never finish, because the world is so enormous, and even reflected back by such a tiny little mind, it is still endless,

here this child is, talking and talking, softer and softer, but into his words now creep strange mistakes and slips, and there is no one left awake to correct him, so slowly this litany contorts bizarrely, becomes a magic spell, incomprehensible, spoken in an old, forgotten tongue.

It’s a funny sight, this eminent, mature man rummaging around in the bedding of an ancient woman, as if mistaking her for a young one, trying clumsily to clamber in with her. “Yente, are you going to tell me what’s happened?” he says to her in a fierce whisper, as to a child who has committed some monstrous offense,

“You’re like a child,” says Hayah, at once tender and enraged. “How could you? You just put it right around her neck?

Hayah recites: “For who are the beings who, when they rise, go down, and when they go down, climb up; and two being one, the one who is three.”

He asks her age. Old, is the answer.

“In ruins like these, a strange grass grows, a divine grass, perhaps, since no one sows it and no one harvests it. And a grass left to its own devices also acquires a wisdom of its own.

the tips of his horns over the edge of the moon, which was young and horned just like him, and he would ask, ‘What’s up, moon? Isn’t it high time for the coming of the Messiah?’

Meanwhile, anywhere in the World You can communicate with the Aid of Latin. Only Pagans and Barbarians avoid it.

Whatever Language a Person speaks is the Language in which he thinks. And Polish is neither clear nor tangible. It is more suited to a Traveler’s Descriptions of the Weather, but not to Discourses, where one must exert one’s Mind and express oneself clearly.

perhaps the most useful Thing is that one can also learn of others’ Ways of Thinking, which is very valuable indeed,

Every one of us thinks differently, and imagines Something altogether singular when he is reading.

those with a sensitive eye, most often older women who had seen a great deal during their lifetimes, had noticed that the machinery of the world is breaking down.

the Jews, in order to defend themselves, sent for help from the pope, but before their messenger managed to return to Poland, the Swedes arrived, laying waste to cities and towns. And once again the Jews were ripped to shreds, for being unbelievers.

With him, too, went his prophet, Nathan of Gaza, a great scholar who wrote down the Messiah’s words and sent them out into the world for all the Jews to read.

If it were as you all say, then a Messiah would come in every generation, he’d be here this month, and there the next. He’d be born again after every riot and after every war. He’d intervene after every misfortune. And how many of those have we had? Countless.

And once again the game of signs began—the clouds, the reflections on the water, the shapes of the snowflakes.

They came to the conclusion that the misfortunes of the preceding years had been blessings in disguise, for they made a kind of sense, foretelling the coming of the savior, just as painful contractions foretell the birth of a new person.

The Messiah imprisoned! Inconceivable! How could such a thing occur? A great anxiety now took hold among all those who had come at that time to Stamboul, and not only from Poland. Prison! The Messiah in prison, could that be? Did that fit with the prophecies?

He loved pomegranates, loved digging his long slender fingers into their granular insides, fishing out the ruby seeds and popping them into his holy mouth.

They also said in great secret—which nonetheless traveled faster than it would have had it been a slightly lesser secret—that the Messiah was a woman.

Sabbatai Tzvi had abolished all traditional Jewish holidays, having invalidated the old Law of Moses, which he would replace with some other, still-to-be-articulated law, according to which no one knew how to behave or what to say just yet.