Zizek wakes up to find himself lying on his jacket, his forehead bandaged and his body covered with a bloodstained army coat. Earlier, Fanny had tried to drag him over to the cart, but he was too heavy for her to lift. Instead, she cleaned his wounds with the little water they had left, tied bandages around his forehead and fastened the horses’ harnesses that Zizek had undone earlier.
The old horse, though unharnessed all this time, had not taken the opportunity to run away. At its ripe old age, freedom is not what it used to be. When it was young, it longed to roam the great outdoors; but at this point in its life, it will certainly settle for a nice stable and a mound of hay. Fanny pats its uneven back and looks at it with gratitude. The young horse stamps the ground, restless and excited. It has witnessed more in the past two days than it has in its entire life. Fanny rubs its forehead and goes to release the bandits’ horses, which are still standing drowsily in the middle of the road. Then she sits next to Zizek, hoping that he will wake up before first light, before they are found.
When Zizek opens his eyes and takes stock of his surroundings, he decides that the blow to his head and the darkness have distorted his vision. His gaze rests on three rocks, a short way off, which look like the shapes of three people, lying with sprawled arms and legs. But when he turns his head towards Fanny and sees her widened eyes, he grasps the severity of their situation. He is indeed looking at three bodies, there can be no doubt about that.
He tries to get up, only to collapse again in agony. His back is bruised and his head is bloodied, and Fanny has to help him stand. He staggers towards the horses and checks that the harnesses are fastened, and then looks towards the road to see if the way is clear. It takes him some time to realise that Fanny has done all of this already.
Zizek straightens up and looks around him. He throws his army coat, uniform and jacket onto the cart and starts to climb up to his seat. Fanny helps by pushing him up from behind and hops on after him. She attempts to take the reins in her hands, but he snatches them away from her and urges the horses to start moving.
She tries her luck. “Zizek Breshov?” But as always there is no reply – only this time she senses that his silence is charged with an unspoken accusation.
Sitting next to him, Fanny feels the sheath against her thigh: why has she continued to carry the knife even after abandoning her career of slaughtering? She does not know. She intended many times to bury it in the back of a cupboard, but whenever she removed the blade from her body she felt as though something were amiss, as if it were another body part in addition to the 248 that the Sages of antiquity had enumerated in the human body. Since she could not conceal its existence from her family, she had begun to use it almost absentmindedly, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do. She would pull out the knife to chop vegetables, trim branches and cut rope; a banal blade for everyday use. But every time Fanny chopped vegetables, she knew that the knife was not fulfilling its purpose, and that this was not the reason she wore it on her thigh. And although she was horrified by the very notion of going back to the slaughtering business, she kept sharpening the knife every day, exactly as the vilde chaya used to do.
Whenever she wielded the knife, Natan-Berl would look at her helplessly, perhaps even offended. Don’t you trust me, Fanny Keismann? She heard in her heart the whispers of his silent questions. Did it not become clear to you on the day of our wedding that you would no longer need that blade? No-one knows better than she that she could not ask for a better husband than Natan-Berl. He will give away everything he has and more before letting a single hair on her head come to harm, and no-one should confuse slow thinking with slow action. If anyone so much as raised their hand to one of his children, they would have a taste of the mighty arm of a man who, though he only uses violence as the absolute last resort, is for that very reason overwhelmingly formidable. The thing is, Fanny never believed that her safety depended on Natan-Berl; she always knew that her world hung by a thread regardless. And what does that mean? Well, the boys are indeed attending the cheder, and the girls are growing up, and Gavriellah, dear God – she has raised an extraordinary daughter, so bright and brave. Natan-Berl is absorbed with his work, her mother-in-law continues to complain in her cabin as a matter of course, and they want for nothing. But what about her? She steers their ship to the safety of the harbour, each and every evening, making sure that they drop anchor in the safest cove. But after everyone has gone to sleep, she sits in the kitchen for a while and listens to the howling of the wolves outside blending with the snores of her family. And she knows that the wolves are yonder and home is here, but the barrier between the two is either ephemeral or preposterously thin. At any given moment, the wind might roar and the waves might wash over them, and everything could come crashing down. And what does “everything” mean? Well, everything is everything. They will be adrift, without walls or a roof over their heads, defenceless. And this is why she needs the knife and cannot trust anyone.
One day, Fanny realised that such thoughts could overwhelm her, so she went to consult with Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin. She found him in his usual place, in the stuffy rabbi’s quarters in the synagogue yard, in the same run-down cabin that his predecessors had also had to endure.
When he saw Fanny, he tugged at his beard and said, “Everyone is leaving.”
“Who is leaving, Reb Halperin?” she asked.
“You might as well ask who is not leaving,” he said. “The Weissmans are leaving, and the Rosensteins and the Grossmans and the Althermans.”
“Where are they going, Reb Halperin?”
“You’d better ask where they are not going. Some go to Ellis Island and some to Berlin and some to St Petersburg and some to Palestine.”
“And what is wrong with that?” she asked.
“And what is good about that?” he said. “They get mixed up in politics like people in any other nation. They take a stand as if they were politicians all of a sudden: some with the proletariat and some with the intellectuals and some with the Russians and some with the delusion of Palestine. A disaster, I’m telling you; simply a disaster. What has protected us in the golus, do you know?”
Fanny was silent.
“Do you know, madam?” he asked again.
“Our faith?” she suggested.
“Faith? Yes, certainly,” he was quick, even dismissive, in his agreement, touching his forehead and chest with his fingertips. “But as we have dwelled here, in these lands of our exile, what has protected us? I’ll tell you what: we have not mixed with politics. Do you understand, or do you not? The righteous do not take political positions, they strengthen their allegiance to the Blessed Holy One instead, and they could not care less whether the nobility is bickering with the peasants, and it is all the same to them if Polish nationalists are clashing with Russian oppressors. If there is something to sell to the gentiles or to buy from them in order to make a living, so much the better – but this is where the line between them and us is drawn. We share with them the same soil but not the same world; we breathe the same air as they do, but not the same Work of Creation. Dear lady, you know why we say ‘Pohlin’ instead of Poland, do you not?”
She was still silent.
“Do you or do you not? So, I will tell you: ‘Pohlin’ means ‘poh lin’, that is, here – ‘poh’ – where the Jew will lodge – ‘lin’ – and rest and pray and keep the Sabbath and celebrate the festivals and wait for the Messiah Son of David to lead the way to Jerusalem. It is here that we lodge, not in di golden medina or in Palestine or Berlin. And now, who will stay? Do you know, madam? So, I will tell you who: the ones who stay are those who do not have the money to leave. All of the meek, miserable, luckless, beggarly stricken lot. And all of them – who do they beseech for aid? Who else but Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin? Who else will they turn to? And can Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin help? Once there were Weissmans and Rosensteins and Grossmans and Althermans who made donations to the rabbi. But today?” He kissed his finger and raised it to his forehead.
At this point, Fanny understood that the rabbi was signalling his expectation of a donation from a wealthy lady such as herself as soon as their conversation ended. Unlike his predecessors, who either died of dysentery or froze to death in the ramshackle hut in the synagogue yard, Reb Halperin had managed to survive thanks to his adamant refusal to trust in the spontaneous gen-erosity of his townsmen and his extraordinary gift for tacitly demanding his wage. Fanny took out two gold coins and placed them on his table, whereupon he placed one of his felt hats as a cover over them and said, “I have thought a lot about your sister in the past few days, is the dear lady aware of that?”
Fanny was not aware.
“Does the dear lady understand what I am referring to?” he asked, and she nodded without having the slightest idea what it might be.
“So, I will tell you,” he said and proceeded to wax lyrical about the moment when a family’s unity is put to the test and about the price that the community is required to pay when a man such as Zvi-Meir grants himself a liberty that was not his to have. “But your sister, Mende, unlike the other geese in the flock – and you will have to excuse the expression – she knows her place in the world. So gentle, so humble, all the Daughters of Israel should look up to her. As it is said, ‘go out and look’, Mende Speismann: she accepts her predicament with humility, she does not court controversy, she puts her trust in the all-merciful God who sees the reasons for her grief.”
Fanny nodded in embarrassment and said that she had actually come to see the rabbi about another matter as well.
“Certainly.” He rose from his seat and said he would like to walk her out. “As much as half the kingdom for Mrs Keismann.”
They were already standing on the cabin doorstep and Fanny sensed that she should get to the point quickly. She told him about the knife she had been given as a child by her father and how she could not now part from the blade. The rabbi’s eyes lit up and he proceeded to calm her, saying that the matter was crystal clear: the knife had no significance as a knife, only as a memento of her father Meir-Anschil Schechter, righteous man of blessed memory. It could be that she was having a hard time parting with a memory from her childhood, and also, if he might venture, that she was craving a strip of the beef her righteous father used to serve her on a silver platter, which again evoked the knife. Perhaps it was time, the rabbi suggested, for her to embrace once more the customs of the congregation, for it is said in Genesis 1:28, “And have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth”, and the knife made a third appearance. And does she know what the difference was, between Cain’s offering and Abel’s offering? Does the dear lady know what it was? So, he will tell her: Cain brought an offering from the fruit of the earth, and Abel from the firstlings of his flock and their fat. Which offering did the Creator accept? There’s nothing to add, and the knife makes its fourth appearance. And it has already been said that, because Cain was so merciful with animals, he raged with cruel violence against humans, and ended up taking the life of his innocent brother, since, as it is said in Hosea 13:3, “They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.”
“And much more can be added,” said the rabbi. “Reams of words can be said; the conclusion will remain the same: when it comes to the things that really matter, one should follow the community and its customs.”
Fanny said nothing and waited patiently for him to finish his midrash and add congratulations and adulations to her and her household, to her sister and her household, and to all their relatives and their households. And when she left, she felt the knife and knew that it did not symbolise anything that called for a long and winding explanation. She missed her father, Meir-Anschil Schechter, righteous man of blessed memory, but the knife represented nothing more than the knife itself. More is known than unknown. It was an object that her father had given her as a child because he recognised that she had what it took to use it. And even though she had sworn an oath never to slaughter again, she could not let go of the confidence the knife exuded. Few people were as adept with the knife as she. Her father had known this when he sent her to Motal. Known, and said nothing.
“The world is on the brink of complete annihilation,” he simply told her before they parted. “If my daughter wants to gird her thigh with a knife for slaughtering chickens, so be it.”
Now the path is empty and she is riding next to Zizek in a daze, and she does indeed believe that the end of the world is here, like the Flood. She, of all people – a child-shochet-cum-murderer – is being sent to Noah’s ark, to sail along with this shadow of a man, this lifeless dust.