The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

“People always want things to be simple. This or that. Black or white. People are idiots. Was not the world made out of countless shades of gray? You can take her home,” she concludes, speaking to Israel.

Nahman is happy. He always sits behind Jacob. He loves to look over his shoulder. That is why he can relate to the Scriptures, it being written in the Book of Proverbs 25:16: “If you find honey, eat just enough—too much of it, and you will vomit.”

I took to heart what Isohar had taught us. He said that there are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out what is most important. The funnel takes in what he reads at one end, while at the other, everything he’s read pours out of him. The strainer lets through the wine and keeps the sediment; he ought not to read at all—it would be infinitely better if he simply dedicated himself to some manual trade. The sieve, on the other hand, separates out the chaff to give a result of only the finest grains.

Tovah thought that it would not do to get too close to Christianity. When later, excited, we discussed the Trinity with others, he claimed that the Christian teachings on the Trinity are a distorted version of an older understanding of the divine mystery, which no one can remember anymore. It is but a pale shadow, riddled with mistakes.

“Keep your distance from the Trinity,” he warned.

For on this worst and darkest of days, light is born. Sadness would be nothing without some knowledge of joy. At the very bottom of that sadness, that mourning, there is a dash of joy and holiness—and vice versa. Isaiah 61:3 says: “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.”

He speaks in a learned, elegant manner. He invokes Isaiah. It would be hard to outtalk him. He has evidence for everything. When he cites the appropriate passage from the Scripture, he looks up, as though somewhere in the air a library hangs, invisible to others’ eyes. Jacob does not react to Nahman’s lectures, gives no indications that he’s heard. When Nahman finishes, Jacob doesn’t even nod to him. What a strange school.

The Messiah has to fall as low as possible, otherwise he isn’t the Messiah. Israel returns with a heavy cart but a light heart. —

Srol is forty-two years old, but he already looks like an old man—a wrinkled, weather-beaten face, dark, sunken eyes into which a kind of shade has crept, and an overgrown beard matted into a Polish plait. The Jewish God is clearly against him—why would he have only daughters? What sins did Srol commit to be given only girls? Must he expiate some long-standing offense of his ancestors? Srol is convinced this God is not the one for him. That there is another God, truer and better, not this earthly manager and leaseholder. To the true God it is possible to pray by way of Baruchiah, singing songs or trusting Jacob.

The priest’s words are still knocking around in his head: magic, metempsychosis, incest, unnatural practices . . . and he feels as if a great weight has pinned him down.