Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Slave

Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Slave. Penguin, 1962.

Translated from the Yiddish by the author and Cecil Hemley.

Part 1. Wanda.

Jacob, a tall, straight man with blue eyes, long brown hair and a brown beard, was born in Josefov. The village was marauded by Cossacks who raped the women and murdered the men and children. He fled Josefov, but robbers caught him, dragged him to the mountains and sold him as a slave to Jan Bzik. He had been there for four years. He was a pious Jew but he was living now without his prayer shawl and phylacteries. Circumcision was the only mark on his body to show that he was a Jew. He knew his prayers and prayed regularly. The peasants in the village, though Christians, lived like pagans. He could not escape: the mountains were unfamiliar to him; further, he would be killed if he was seen on the other side of the stream. There were many people who wanted to kill the Jew, but the bailiff wouldn’t permit it, for he was a good worker and took good care of the cattle.

Every evening, Wanda, the daughter of Jan Bzik, brought him food and carried the milk back to the village. She was a widow and loved Jacob. When he was asked by her father to do some work on the Sabbath, she would wake up early and do it for him. Once he was bitten by a snake and she sucked out the venom. When he sprained his ankle she snapped it back into the socket and applied lotions. He too longed for her but he knew that the feeling was contrived by Satan. He did his best to resist the temptation and prayed to the Lord to redeem him from captivity. Wanda thought that he was very wise and knew all the answers. She had proposed marriage but he would not be a Christian. Nor would he fornicate. Her father had been ill for some time and she knew that he was going to die soon. She always knew such things. She had foreseen her husband’s death. Similarly she knew that she and Jacob were meant for each other. She was willing to run away with him and become a jew, but he knew that it was a sin to allow a gentile to be a jew except for reasons of faith. She wanted to be a jew for his sake and he couldn’t permit it. Further, if the Christians knew about it, she would be burnt at the stake.

In the beginning of the novel, Jacob was constantly praying to the Lord to grant him death so that he could escape from slavery. He knew that his desire for Wanda was a sin. But then the devil came in with lots of arguments in favour of it: Had not Moses married a woman from Ethiopia? Didn’t King Solomon take as his wife Pharaoh’s daughter? He thought that he should study the Torah to ward off evil. Since he could not remember all the commandments, he decided to carve them on a stone as and when they came into his memory.

Usually he was alone in the mountains but during harvest season he would be taken to the village. Reaping was tough work, still he would not eat the food of the gentiles and others ridiculed him for his foolishness. One such time, a circus visited the village. Jacob talked to the proprietor who agreed to inform the Jews of Josefov about his situation as a slave there. Then they would come there and ransom him, for to free a captive is a holy act for the Jews.

His father was a wealthy contractor. His mother was a rabbi’s daughter. When he was twelve, he was engaged to Zelda Leah, the ten-year-old daughter of the town’s elder. Jacob was a good student and he was more interested in the library of his father in law than in the ten-year-old girl. Zelda had the odd habits of an only child. She suffered from heart burns, headaches, backaches and so on. He scarcely knew how she bore him three children. It was a loveless marriage. So he turned his attention to finding out the meaning of existence, trying to comprehend the ways of God. He knew that Judaism was based on faith and not on knowledge, yet he sought to understand wherever it was possible. He started lecturing to the boys in the village. Then, when he was twenty-five, the Cossacks attacked Josefov and he had to flee. Now he is twenty-nine.

Once he was forcibly taken by the cowherds to join the autumn celebrations. He was forced to drink Vodka; someone tried to push a sausage into his mouth. People were dribbling and vomiting and copulating all around. He used to wonder what sins had been committed by the small children of those nations Moses had been told to annihilate, but now he understood that certain forms of corruption could be annihilated only by fire.

One day there was a storm and heavy rains. He knew that Wanda could not come. But she came as usual though she couldn’t return. At night she moved into his bed and he felt that he could not resist the temptation of the flesh anymore, still he took her into the cold river and made her immerse herself in the water before making love with her. She loved him so much that she went through it for his sake. The next morning brought no repentance. He was no longer ashamed before God.

When winter came he was asked to move into the hut of Jan Bzik. He slept in the granary. She visited him regularly at night and they made passionate love. All his waking hours were now occupied with thoughts of Wanda. Then Jan Bzik died and now he was in greater danger, for there were many people who would have killed the Jew but for the old man. And then one day, while Wanda was away with her brother to a nearby village to buy a cow, he was summoned by Zagayek the bailiff and he thought that his end had come. He steeled himself to face the inevitable. But when he reached there he was greeted by some Jews from his village who had come there to ransom him back. They took him back to Josefov. He was unable to bid farewell to Wanda. Back in the village, he heard about the atrocious cruelties committed by the Cossacks. He could not stop asking why God permits such things to happen. His body had returned home but his spirit was restless. To keep himself from thinking, he kept himself busy. One day, seated in his study, he said to God: “ I have no doubt that you are the Almighty and that whatever you do is for the best, but it is impossible for me to obey the commandment, Thou Shalt Love Thy God. No, I cannot, Father, not in this life”.

He tried his best not to think of Wanda. He devised several ways of torturing himself whenever he thought of her: fasting, pebbles in his shoes, a stone beneath the pillow, and so on. But the Evil One was persistent. Wanda was always in his dreams. A match was proposed for him with a widow who was a few years older than him and had a grown up daughter. “The Jew does not tempt Evil by denying the body but harnesses it in the service of God”. He could never love her; perhaps he might be able to find forgetfulness with her. They met and she liked him. The wedding contract was completed, the date set. Then Wanda appeared in his dream begging him to return. She was pregnant in the dream. All was clear to him now. The law obliged him to rescue Wanda and his child from the idolaters. He returned the ransom money and left Josefov for the mountains. He had learnt that he was different from the jews around him. They obeyed the rules mechanically but did not keep the spirit in human relationships. They cursed and cheated. He saw only suffering around: “Where was God? How could he look down on such want and keep silent? Unless, heaven forbid, there was no God”. So he left for the mountains. He was like his Biblical namesake who had left Beersheba and journeyed to Haran for love of Rachel and had toiled seven years to win her, who was the daughter of a pagan. He was a slave returning to bondage, a Jew again putting on Egypt’s yoke.

He reached the mountains at midnight, went to the granary and took her away with him. She was not pregnant. She knew that he would be coming. She had consulted a witch, made a clay image of his, wrapped it in her hair, bought an egg laid by a black hen and buried it at the crossroads with a piece of glass from a broken mirror. She saw him in the glass. So she knew he would come; it was she who made him come. But Jacob would not permit her to believe in witchcraft and asked her not to talk like that. Thus the two lovers were finally united, though their future appeared fraught with problems.

Part 2 – Sarah

Once more the Cossacks attacked Poland and slaughtered the jews. Muscovites and Swedes followed suit. Some jews settled in Pilitz with the consent of the overlord. Adam Pilitzky was a poor manager. He and his wife encouraged each other to take lovers. They were an odd couple. Slowly there emerged a jewish community in Pilitz.

Jacob and Wanda, now renamed as Sarah, came there. He became a teacher there. She had to pretend to be a mute because Yiddish would take too long for her to learn and people called her Dumb-Sarah. At night, he taught her. She believed in the Torah and obeyed all the laws. She had become pregnant by that time. Jacob worried that she would not be able to control her screams during labour and then people would know the truth. If Christians knew that she was seduced into Judaism, there would be trouble. If the Jews knew the actual reason for the conversion, Jacob would be excommunicated. His five years of slavery was now succeeded by a life long slavery. Yet he had saved a soul from idolatry though he himself had stumbled into transgression.

One day Pilitzky drove into town. He was drunk and wanted to kill Gershon. Gershon was a shady dealer and he managed the leased lands as if they were his own. When Pilitzky ordered him to be hanged in public, there was a huge outcry. Though Gershon was his enemy and hated him, Jacob rushed in to help him. At that time, Sarah came there. She saw Jacob standing before Pilitzky. She thought that he was going to be killed. She ran to them, fell at the feet of Pilitzky, and begged him to spare her man. The mute had spoken! It was a miracle. Pilitzky was overwhelmed. He made Jacob his new manager in the place of Gershon. If he didn’t accept it Pilitzky would throw out the jews. So he had to accept it in order to save the community. And he did his work well.

Now women sought Sarah out and begged her to bless them. Jacob was worried about deceiving the community. One day the truth would be known and he would be punished. She might scream and talk in labour. He was getting ready to face the punishment. Meanwhile he was becoming famous in Pilitz. He was the husband of a holy woman. He was received in the house of Pilitzky. Mrs Pilitzky had sensed that Sarah was really not a mute but offered to help them. She once asked him to kiss her but he would not.

When Sarah went into labour, and it was a difficult one, she screamed but said nothing. Feeling sure that she would die, the women around her were talking of burying her, and some of them were even loudly planning to make a new match for Jacob. She lost her control and started talking in Polish. People immediately concluded that there was a dybbuk in her and it was the dybbuk who was speaking through her, and it should be exorcised. Sarah knew that she was dying because the witch had predicted that she would die in childbirth. When Pilitzky learned the truth he advised Jacob to leave the town before the priests arrived to burn him.

A meeting of the community decided that the woman should not be buried in the cemetery and that the child should not be circumcised. After the delivery, the women refused to visit her. And after her death, Jacob was called to a meeting. He told everything. Later that night, two dragoons arrested him and were taking him to be killed. He knew that he was going to certain death. Suddenly he broke free and ran away. He crossed the forest and reached the Vistula. The ferryman was a decent man and he offered Jacob food and shelter. There he met a Jew from the Holy Land; he told him his whole story. After listening to Jacob, he said: the community is right; that is the law. But behind the law there is mercy. Without mercy, there would be no law. Jacob was asked to save the child and bring it to the Holy Land.

Jacob went back to Pilitz. Sarah’s body was already buried. All his money had been stolen. After visiting her grave, he went to the peasant where his son was and took it with him. The woman gave her own breast milk in a bottle to feed the baby on the way. Jacob left with his son for Israel.

He named his son Benjamin – like the first Benjamin, this child was a Ben-oni, a child born of sorrow.

Like his namesake, he too had lost a beloved wife, the daughter of an idolater, among strangers; Sarah too was buried by the way and had left him a son. Like the Biblical Jacob, he was crossing the river, bearing only a staff, pursued by another Esau. Everything remained the same: the ancient love, the ancient grief. Perhaps four thousand years would again pass; somewhere, at another river, another Jacob would walk mourning another Rachel. Perhaps it was always the same Jacob and the same Rachel.

Now the redemption had to come.

Part 3 – The Return.

Twenty years had passed. Adam Pilitzky had hanged himself. His wife Theresa had also died. The city had grown. And Jacob returned to Pilitz to take his wife’s bones back to the Holy Land. His son Benjamin was a lecturer in Jerusalem. He couldn’t locate the grave of his wife. So he spent the night in a poorhouse. When he woke up the next morning, he saw Sarah calling him. His time had come.

And he died. Now he was no more the slave of his body. He was freed at last. When the people tried to bury him in the new cemetery, they found Sarah’s body, and he was buried with her.

The community had buried Sarah outside the cemetery but the dead had gathered to take her in. The cemetery itself had ordained it; Sarah was a jewish daughter and a sanctified corpse. It was yet another miracle that her body had lain for twenty years in the earth and yet it was still recognizable. The town was in an uproar at this miracle. After so many years, they were now together. There must be a design behind everything.