King Solomon's Seal

By Jascha Kessler

KING SOLOMON’S SEAL consists of 63+ pieces, some short, some long, each a story, several containing stories within stories. There is a short introduction, TO THE READER, which informs us by whom it originated and is narrated, if neither the why nor how. There is also an AFTERWORDS, which in some ways puts Finis to these tale-tellings. The time of its narrations is about 1750-1820, the place a small “house of study” perched on a mountain in the eastern part of the Fatra Range in Carpathia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during that century. The materials are diverse in nature, suggestion and purpose, although the reader may and should suppose them meant for us today, even if the language by which the tales are told is a pasticcio of assumed translation into English from some other language, one that relates perhaps to whatever may have been the Yiddish vernacular of those lost times in that faraway place. Some two or three of its fables have appeared in print.

KING SOLOMON’S SEAL, playful and mock-serious at once, is meant to entertain. It is a “literary” work, consisting of pseudo-fairy tales, pseudo-folk materials, legends and the like.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483643502

Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler is a poet, writer, and translator. His translation of Traveling Light by Kirsti Simonsuuri won the Finnish Literary Translation Centre Award in 2001. He has held a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, where he was also Fulbright Professor of American Literature. He is currently Professor Emeritus of English and Modern Literature at UCLA.

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Copyright © 2013 by Jascha Kessler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 07/11/2013

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CONTENTS

To The Reader

1.   Facing The Music

2.   King Solomon’s Seal

3.   No Greater Love?

4.   What Price Chastity?

5.   Odious Comparisons

6.   The Shamus And His Good Wife

7.   The Power Of His Word

8.   The Tenth Woman

9.   A Solemn Oath Solemnly Sworn

10.   In The Rabbi’s Court

11.   Making The Best Of It

12.   Tolerance

13.   Seven Secrets

14.   Three Wives

15.   Adam’s Daughter

16.   A Tenth Man?

17.   His Parting Words

18.   The Stone Of Patience

19.   Abel And The First Minister’s Daughter

20.   Fathers and Sons

21.   Had Onan Lived

22.   Going and Coming

23.   Authority

24.   Economy

25.   Piety

26.   Two’s Company

27.   Concerning A King And A Tailor

28.   A Weeping Widow

29.   Who, Whom?

30.   Little, Yet Much

31.   Friends, or Mourners?

32.   Beggar’s Choice

33.   You Would Think

34.   Charity

35.   Nearest Is Dearest

36.   His End Is His Beginning: The Same

37.   Manna

38.   A Man Of Delicate Principle

39.   A Table Set in the Presence of Mine Enemy

40.   To Be Poor

41.   Gratitude

42.   Give Us The Man

43.   The Art Of Science

44.   What Was Your Duty?

45.   Case Proven

46.   Two Lessons

47.   Despair

48.   Alexander’s Horse

49.   Ages Of Enlightenment

50.   The Song of the Nightingale

51.   Who Knows Thirteen?

52.   Power

53.   Job’s Wives

54.   For Lack of Better

55.   A Virgin Queen

56.   Coat, Or Lining?

57.   Not Yet At Aleph

58.   Joseph’s Pit

Afterwords

Notes

Books by Jascha Kessler

Poetry

AMERICAN POEMS: A CONTEMPORARY COLLECTION (Anthology)

WHATEVER LOVE DECLARES

AFTER THE ARMIES HAVE PASSED

IN MEMORY OF THE FUTURE

COLLECTED POEMS

Fiction

AN EGYPTIAN BONDAGE & Other Stories

DEATH COMES FOR THE BEHAVIORIST: Four Long Stories

CLASSICAL ILLUSIONS: Twenty-eight Stories

TRANSMIGRATIONS: Eighteen Stories

SIREN SONGS & CLASSICAL ILLUSIONS: New & Revised

RAPID TRANSIT: 1948

Translations

THE MAGICIAN’S GARDEN, Twenty-four Stories by Geza Csáth (from the Hungarian)

OPIUM, Twenty-four Stories by Geza Csáth (Penguin Series: Writers from the Other Europe)

BRIDE OF ACACIAS: The Poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad (from the Persian)

UNDER GEMINI: Selected Poems of Miklós Radnóti (from the Hungarian)

MEDUSA: Selected Poetry of Nikolai Kantchev (from the Bulgarian)

TIME AS SEEN FROM ABOVE & OTHER POEMS by Nicolai Kantchev (from the Bulgarian)

THE FACE OF CREATION: CONTEMPORARY HUNGARIAN POETRY (23 poets from the Hungarian)

CATULLAN GAMES: a long poem (from the Hungarian of Sandór Rakós)

KING OEDIPUS (in SOPHOCLES, 2) With Introduction.

TRAVELING LIGHT: Selected Poems of Kirsti Simonsuuri (from the Finnish)

TATAGA’S CHILDREN: Fairy Tales (from the Serbian of Grozdana Olujic)

OUR BEARINGS AT SEA (from the Hungarian of Ottó Orbán)

Táhirih: A PORTRAIT IN POETRY: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (from the Persian) With Introduction

Drama

CHRISTMAS CAROLS & OTHER PLAYS

Prose

LEE MULLICAN’S GUARDIANS (Catalogue Introduction)

Some titles in this collection have appeared in print, before being revised for this collection. They are: Seven Secrets, [MIDSTREAM, January/February, 2000. Volume XXXXVI, No.1] and Coat, or Lining? [MIDSTREAM, July/August, 2000. Volume XXXXVI, No.3]. Part of In the Rabbi’s Court was published as The Case of the Missing Jewel, PLAYBOY [v23 # 5, May 1976]. Not Yet at Aleph, appeared in AMOR FATI [Volume 4, No.1, 2011]. Alexander’s Feast, is anthologized in UNDISCOVERED GEMS, Mithra Press, 2012 (UK).

For several of these relations, I’m indebted to Amin Banani, scholar and friend over several decades, with whom I collaborated on a project never to be realized. For another fable built up and transmogrified from a coarse-enough jest related in 1961 by Robert Mezey, poet and friend for 65 years, I owe him thanks. The source of another tale, itself part of a tale, was an interview with Simon Wiesenthal published in a newspaper, perhaps before his death in 2005.

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WHEN YOU WERE CONCEIVED WHO CONSULTED YOU?

WHO CONSULTED YOU WHEN YOU WERE BORN?

WHILE YOU LIVE ARE YOU CONSULTED?

WHEN YOU DIE WHO CONSULTS YOU?

AND WHO SHALL CONSULT YOU

WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR ACCOUNT

TO THE RULER OF ALL RULERS

THE HOLY BLESSÈD ONE?

To The Reader

A lthough the name of Reb Yaacov ben Yaacov in those times was known far and wide, it was a name that carried with it a certain weight of meaning only to those who knew… for as the rustic adage had it, To know, one must know . Some said he was difficult of approach. Others declared he was difficult to understand. Still others that he was dangerous to follow. And in their varying judgments there was some truth. Nonetheless, his name drew seekers from every quarter of the Empire and beyond. Despite the hazards and hardships of the roads that led eventually to his House of Study perched upon a forbidding, forested spur near the eastern end of the Fatra range, and notwithstanding the flinty reserve of villagers in the old settlement below, a sort of redoubt inhabited by hard-faced, battle-scarred, stolid peasants more pagan than Christian, pilgrims would set out every spring to undertake the journey, knowing they might perish on the way; for even after they’d managed to evade wandering bands of brigands, they might be swept off by an avalanche or drowned in a sudden torrent loosed upon them without warning from a storm that whirled from the heights at any season,. Some sought him out as though he were a Wunderrebbe ; others rather to find him out, as though he was not some kind of Wunderrebbe . Faith drew them as much as curiosity. Belief encouraged them; or doubt drove them. To any supplicant, to all seekers, ben Yaacov was hospitable, if like adamant he remained unaffected, untouched and unmarked by their hidden hopes and feverish desires, impelled as they were to leave some mark of their own fugitive existence upon the personage they’d managed to reach by dint of sacrifice or through favoring chance.

Curious anecdotes concerning ben Yaacov drifted out into the world over the years. Yet others were gathered in a moldy, Morocco-bound ledger kept by one of his students who’d returned to his native village in Hungary shortly after the Congress of Vienna had accomplished its work. He, together with most of the Master’s disciples, had not abandoned their quarters in the former House of Study after his passing, but persisted in delaying mourning long after the first year’s prayers for the deceased had been said, stubbornly sitting shivah, as it were, in their hearts; which, it must be recorded, was contrary to their teacher’s firmly-expressed wish. They told themselves that since the poor in spirit continued to arrive, whether on foot, astride mules or riding on fine horses, carried on carts, reclining in carriages, or wrapped in furs on sleighs… new, always new pilgrims… they were bound to make them welcome in his name. Poor and rich, old and young, men and women, each offering their token gift they climbed up, and exhausted stayed to rest, either in the village’s little inn or squatting in lean-to shelters of pine boughs thrown together around the ancient House of Study that looked down upon its mossy rooftops. A good while they would remain for days and weeks pondering the rotten remains of disappointed hope. In currying the garden long run to seed they convinced themselves they communed with what they imagined might be some faintly-hovering breath of his spirit. Some swore it informed the groves; some that they had heard it sighing in some breeze soughing through a thicket in the old forest; even that it could be glimpsed to flit after dark through the summer months like the greenish-blue flickering of August’s fire flies.

As for dropping a pebble on his grave… a custom immemorial… that proved impossible, for nowhere was it to be found. His own faithful were as perplexed as any of these votaries, though they had been present at the burial, seen his grave dug by a gang of taciturn men from the village, and wept as they chanted while the plain pine box was lowered and the yielding forest soil redolent of mushroom and rosemary decently shoveled back to be smoothed over by loving hands. Yet months later, after Rosh Hashanah ended and the Day of Fasting had been closed with the Yiskor prayers, when they trudged up to pay their respects, entering some good way into the wood that climbed steeply behind their House of Study, nothing was to be found. The grove, its very clearing seemed altered beyond recognition. Had not just the one year… but five score with their hundred winters… somehow slipped by? Of course it was desolating to have lost the cynosure of their lives; still, what could be done about it? That’s the way it was.

What of that faithful student who departed bearing with him some of the commentary and teachings he’d committed to memory as well as the pages of the fine, leather-bound, folio-sized, commonplace book his family had entrusted to him, wishing he might fill them with wisdom? Instead of repaying those who found him with the means to travel and study for seven years and yet seven more, in the not unreasonable expectation they would be served one day by him as their beloved rabbi, he fled after but the few days it needed to acquire a change of clothes and bid a terse farewell to his hapless parents, a dozen siblings, and a disappointed betrothed, no longer young as once upon a time she had been; indeed already well past her prime. He vanished before the Sabbath sun dawned, his destination never disclosed. Nor had he offered them the least explanation for his betrayal of the trust vested by them to support the years of his youthful promise. Perhaps he feared he and those vestiges of the previous century and what was recorded of that teacher and his ways would be lost in the flood of waves of the new century’s oncoming upheaval? Who knows?

In fact he never arrived at any frontier of the Empire. By an odd concatenation of chance encounters it happened that on the third day he forsook the highway that must have led him toward one or another of its great cities; somehow he’d wandered too far to turn back to the last crossroad. Having nothing to lose by it, he plodded forward. Following a broken path of mostly muddy clay, here and there still marked with stretches of the round flint paving stones of Roman Pannonia, he was led by late evening to the crumbling wall of an old fortress, its broken gate hanging wide, its gardens overgrown and packed with thorn bushes. A light winked within what once was its keep. With trepidation he approached a blackened oak door and though anxious, resolved for whatever fate, hammered at the scarred wood with the knocker, a bronze fist riveted high into it. Admitted after a long wait, he was relieved immeasurably by the warm reception accorded him, for within its walls he found welcome, albeit disconcerted at first by the barbaric ferocity of its owner, a ruined nobleman.

After a week passed, during which he several times offered his thanks and made as if to leave, it was borne in upon him that this was a place where the adieu of a farewell was not recognized, if only because it availed not for the living. Nor did the bare, empty choir of the collapsed chapel look down with pity upon its untended graves and their toppled, fungus-scarred headstones. Furthermore, he knew that in truth he had nothing to gain, even were it permitted him to attempt escape. So he ended by taking up his offered place as factotum, resigned to serve subjected to its exigencies until his days should be ended. His fate was to have been abandoned to this wilderness which by then had so decayed into trackless marsh and impenetrable forest that not even the boldest of hunters dared force their way into it for fear of finding themselves irretrievably lost, whether engulfed in a pool of mud or torn apart by wolves or a she-bear.

His employer was the grandson of a heyduck who inherited these lands from the childless and unlucky lord he’d served. A soldier’s gallantry earned him a fine reward: he had been ennobled, the rare enough title of Count bestowed upon him in the field at the Gates of Vienna for his exploits in the campaigns that saw the retreat of the occupying army of The Sublime Porte. Though his lineage was therewith newly-founded, certainly as nobility is reckoned by a Magyar aristocracy rooted half a millennium deeper in the land than the ruling Habsburgs, he was not only too proud to endure a life in this world of theirs, but envied even the most wretched scion of the Kohanim, who when all is said and done is descended, as he’d heard it, from the House of Aaron. Eventually he was to drink himself to death, having kissed the ring of neither bishop nor cardinal, for he refused to confess that any man or woman might be nobler than the Romany she-devil with whom he shared his bed. Once, when a presumptuous Austrian baron rose from his seat at the long table, having objected to partake of the same meat from which she carved her portion, this wretched son of warriors reminded him of a reproof once made to a too-proud Frankish lord who’d sneered at a poor guest’s nameless origins. Sir, said that wise man, my lineage commences with me, whereas your pedigree ends here and now with you! As long as he was let alone, he was content to sit by the fireplace and drink his plum brandy through a winter’s long night. Given his doomed manner of living, it is no surprise that he often commanded his little Jew to sit nearby and begged him to read aloud from that Book of Hours, as he called it. And reminded him always to close whatever story he brought with him that told of the days and ways of his former teacher with those words Reb Yaacov ben Yaacov spoke after his wife was put to her rest. It was reported that some idle person came to ask what had caused her death, whereupon that sage replied, Her being alive. This saying was a gift incomparable, he declared, for it helped him to sleep,

A packet of those faded pages remains, having survived somehow the vicissitudes of two hundred years’ progress yielding to progress, accompanied by disaster falling upon disaster, until the latest unspeakable, indeed unimaginable, disaster of our own times, manifestly coming, as all who run may read. Perhaps those pages may even serve to distract a soul shrouded in the pall of the mechanical entertainments that flood our own days and nights, whose power thrills and paralyzes through grotesque and transmogrified forms of ancient prophetic voices, their cries and whispers now emptied of any meaning. Perhaps their perusal can lift a soul drifting upon the hebetude that ensues as the after-effect of those electrifying currents of images and sounds, a soul in peril of sinking into one or another of the varieties of despair engendered by the pandemonium enslaving and ruling our nights and days. Any least they might serve, however brief the diversion and relief their tales provide from today’s media’s topical productions… hedonistic, pretentious and tendentious, sensational, sentimental and vicious, manufactured by the machinery commerce and government have invented to possess us, no sooner produced and broadcast than obsolete, yet with such power as holds in thrall ourselves and the children. Their poor leaves are here gathered in hopes to afford an hour or two in which our distress is assuaged… our mortal distress… from which there is but one release.

Facing The Music

W ork and money, milk and honey, love and laughter, and fine weather too… all arrived in plenty during those latter years of Reb Yaacov ben Yaacov’s teaching. And yet it seemed to his disciples his gaze went elsewhere; not fixed mystically upon some other world; rather on another time within this very time, another day and hour within this very day, though it was one they themselves were unable to see. It was as if he were not at home where for tens of years he’d been quite at home. Hence, one fine morning on the first day of June they made up their minds to ask him why it was he made himself as it were not present to them.

Sssh, said their beloved master, Is that music I hear? Yes? Music… of a sort. His expression was all concentrated attention; but what sounds he listened to, it was hard to tell. And added, his index finger raised the way a hunter’s is to catch some scent on a breeze, It is something like the rumble and roaring of distant wheels, heavy wheels… far, far off.

Naturally, they believed he must be attending to beings invisible to the dull ears of their unfledged youthful mortality, Cherubim, like Ezekiel’s four-faced wingèd sphinxes, those Phoenician monsters, yoked perhaps to David’s chariot, or… ?

Yet that noise approaches with marching horns and trumpets mixed and mingling with myriad voices. From whence? Yet is not our house tranquil and still?

The Rebbe appeared to them shut away in a strange, unaccustomed state, fixed in a fascination that stiffened him rather than half-awake and bemused.

So, ever hoping for exaltation, they thought amongst themselves, It may be he hears the wheels of Elijah’s chariot of fire? Perhaps it sounds a fanfare? Seraphim, perhaps? They grew fretful, fearful he might be readying himself to be taken up, to mount some swaying ladder like the angels’ used in Jacob’s dream, and leaving them here deserted and alone forever. The boldest spoke out, Reb Yaacov, tell us what it is. Do you see the Cherubim of the Ark?

Do I know what the Cherubim looked like?

They clamored, But we wish to know, and we must, if only to keep a memorial for the future. a sign prepared to warn those to come?

Warn those to come? echoed the Rebbe. That may not avail, my dear children.

We meant, but to preserve somewhat from you… to leave as it were some word to the wise?

The Rebbe smiled and sighed, seeming almost wearily resigned to return to the world of speech. Then, as though to clear his mind, he shook himself and rose abruptly to his feet. "Come, the air is sweet; the orchards are in bloom; and the sun still hours before setting. There is time left today; time perhaps for tonight as well. As for that future you strain your hearts to receive, let it be said, Whatever things are created by HaShem, may His name stand! Let it be forever known! And known too that whatever those things, they are small in their beginning, small as a mustard seed, but afterward grow large . . . all things, except for mourning. And further, altogether contrarily, mountainously huge as is mourning when it begins, it then grows small, diminishing and dwindling ever smaller, smaller until . . . it is blown away on time’s swift wind, lost forever . . . ."

Puzzled, they rose to follow him out of doors, squinting as they stepped into the afternoon’s shimmer of golden dust. Reb Yaacov led them along a path meandering amongst apple and pear trees, where the clamor of birds recently returned from warmer climes to mate and build their nests made cheerful music. When the shadows began to lengthen, they stopped and turned back towards ben Yaacov’s house, expecting to enjoy the afternoon’s promised cakes and tea. As they entered on the high road that ran through their little village, he stopped, his arms lifted and outstretched, blocking their way. Horses saddled waited blocking the road. Up there around their House of Study a squad of soldiers stood before its old, carved, massive doors. Two hammered with the butts of their muskets at its bar and locks; two more went about casually poking and smashing out windows with their bayonets. The racket and chorus as they worked and shouted imprecations at the walls was harsh. Others echoed them, calling out from the rear of the building. It sounded as though the structure was being torn at plank by board: they heard more shattered glass and toppling masonry. They watched as books were flung from the upper floor, falling fluttering like wounded birds.

The Rebbe thrust his students aside, marching them down a narrow lane between the peasants’ cottages.

What’s happening? cried the strongest of his students.

Be still! ben Yaacov hissed. Listen! Do you not hear? Such a music they make! It seems I recognize it at last.

Music? cried the lad. How can you say, music! I hear no music! Music is from Michael, music is from Gabriel.

Another joined in, Reb, if this be music, let us cry havoc! We must call to the guard for rescue!

Sssh! admonished ben Yaacov. Maybe you don’t recognize the same music as I. It will make that infernal racket you heard just now on the road up there seem scarcely as loud as the sound of a mustard seed falling to earth. Rescue, you say? Rescue by the guard? Rescue comes not from any such high places. Nor will it come from the Highest. Not today; most certainly not tomorrow. I hear what I hear. It is such music as you shall and must learn to hear. We have entered the Valley of Death. We stand in its shadow. And there is no table set before us.

They looked at him with amazement. What wild talk was this from their imperturbable master? They planted their feet and declared he must speak of this here and now. One demanded, When shall we hear that music you hear, Rebbe!

Shoo, shoo! Come away! This very hour, come away instanter!

Rebbe? Shall we live to hear that music? And will we dance then!

You may hear it, and you will most surely dance, he replied. Better you should not. To such music, King David never danced. So if you hope to dance, just you wait. You will be dancing such a dance as… !

We won’t move until you speak! Even if we must stand here all night until tomorrow comes, we won’t move!

Sadly, ben Yaacov put his finger to his lips and reluctantly told them all they wished to know from him. Tomorrow? he said. I promise you this: That music you shall hear tomorrow, yes. And again on the next morrow. Perhaps hear it always in the endless returnings of tomorrows after that… until the last morrow comes… at the end of time!

King Solomon’s Seal

C oming from every part of the Empire, as well as those dark regions over which the Czar ruled far to the north and East, Reb Yaacov ben Yaacov’s young disciples brought with them in their packs not merely the few precious books they owned together with some necessaries bundled in faded black gabardines tied round with fraying hemp, but the tales and traditions of their village homes, a good many of which were interwoven with tattered ancient beliefs concerning the realms of the unseen. Notwithstanding Torah to which they had to apply themselves day and night, what they perused as the scroll was unwound and rewound was frequently clouded by images and sounds hovering over and even intruding upon the script as they wavered and danced before their eyes. It sometimes seemed that whatever lurked in kingdoms occulted, hidden through the ages like sunken, long-forgotten treasure, sent forth cries that echoed through their waking hours, haunting by night their dreams.

Now and then their teacher would descend from his study to pace back and forth along the aisle between their two rows of benches, only to halt abruptly in the center of the study hall, throw up his arms spread wide, not to embrace their world, but as it were toss his net over them like some fisherman wading in the river Tisza that wound its turbulent way far below. It seemed to them they were caught in its meshes, helpless and subject to whatever his present mood. Then he might shake himself, as though waking from contemplation of his catch he’d decided to toss them out again like small fry, sending them to drift downstream on the current as best they might, slowly whirling in the eddies of the waning day. Now and again his eyes might reveal a fierce glint that betokened the onset of some idea or question they none of them would be able to fathom. Warily they’d sit and watch him as mice do a cat… he was their teacher, after all; they were trained to wait with the patience befitting their ignorance. Soon enough out would come some dark parable or tale of occult significance; and if they were lucky, it proved commentary on one or another question earlier brought forward. Had any of them resolved to write down his narratives and discourse, it all could have been preserved bound in a folio volume of variant midrashim, somewhat strange to be sure, even exorbitant lessons to be attributed in years to come to one Reb Yaacov ben Yaacov.

One afternoon on Tisha B’av he appeared, manifesting nothing like their anticipated solemnity. Quite otherwise. He seemed rather to skip down the wide stairs from the eyrie of his study, scarcely touching the baluster, while humming a happy dance tune, Rosza! Rosza! as though he were joining the Czardas dancers at a Zigeuner wedding. Although they had been sitting daylong as though in sackcloth and ash, each in his own way deep in mourning for their Temple lost… not once but twice! temples perhaps forever lost to enemies old and new… his sprightly demeanor augured that they would be distracted not merely from formal lamentation, but beset by a challenge not to be withstood… just like the destruction that fell upon Jerusalem from out of Babylon, or the ruin later wrought by Roman engineers.

The eldest at that time, as it happened, was named Solomon David, a hopeful naming by hopeful parents at the hour of circumcision, parents so poor that like most Jews of the Pale in those times they’d never had much more to wrap about themselves than the rags and tatters of hopelessness. Familiar with his teacher’s unexpected ways… anxiously anticipated by them… the young man guessed that regardless what might once again be recovered from the depths, there was for him no escape. It would have the burden of its meaning loaded upon his back. And so it came to pass.

How may this longest of saddest days be beguiled? ben Yaacov crooned. "The sun’s light pours like honey over our mountains. To and fro wing our little friends, catching what they can to feed their new-fledged younglings. Now the breeze blows from the cold heights; now it rises in shimmering mist from the waking orchards. The corn rows lift their ripening heads to attend the sickle of tomorrow’s reapers. Can you hear those copper bells clanking on the heights as the bellwether cow leads her herd to fresh pasture? And also the faint tinkle of rusty iron bells on the goats and ewes as they wander climbing higher through the furze in flower? And still, here you sit draped in shrouds of gloom; you sigh and you sorrow over and for those broken and half-buried stones that yet stand far across the eastern seas. And you, Shlomo Duvud, moan loudest of all, as though sitting shivah for the soul of Jewry and all its souls, past, or present, and to come."

At that, this student and disciple rose from his seat, his eyes bulging reddened with rage, hands clenched as if he would… he knew not what he would… but perceiving the mocking yet kindly grin of his rebbe he was dissuaded and returned to his wits. Down he sank, resigned as it were once again to be taken out of himself; in truth, he felt relief within his heart that perhaps ben Yaacov intended to lessen this day’s unbearable weight of annual ritual grief.

Upon which, seeing their eyes brighten with the ever-ready curiosity of good pupils, ben Yaacov resumed, now pacing slowly as was his wont back and forth in study hall, now at the rear, now returning, even like the plowman going about his work turning over the sillion of the field.

"It has been related of one Eleazar ben Yaacov, a distant ancestor of mine, that he was summoned before Vespasian, Emperor of the Romans, as you should recall, who together with Titus his son overcame the last defenders of Jerusalem, tore down and destroyed our Second Temple, and with that exterminated our presence and rule in Judea once and for all. Who can say but that the demon nightly besetting the old general in his dreams had not been sent to vex him on account of that sacrilege? Imagine! A golden medal and a hoard of gold coins Vespasian caused to be struck in Rome after melting down the great Menorah! Its design? An effigy of himself standing under Jerusalem’s palm tree, holding up his shield, with on it these triumphal words: Judea Capta! And whom should we see seated and weeping at his feet but the figure and form of a maiden: she herself, our vanquished very Judea. Here, look for yourselves!"

Whereupon ben Yaacov reached into his caftan to grope in his bosom and retrieve a grand, golden medal. Framed in a wreath of silver laurel, it had hung concealed from a silver chain about his neck. Displaying it before their amazed eyes, he continued, "Released from some vessel hidden beneath the Sanctuary of the Ark… who knows? from that vessel sealed once upon a time with his seal by Solomon and only after eight hundred years forced open by the Legion’s engineers after they’d broken open its portals… that terrible spirit, that awful demon, leapt out and fastened its grip on Vespasian, that enemy of the Jews, yet even so Judea’s long-awaited savior. Be that as it may, Eleazar was brought out from Jerusalem, as Josephus has told us, because he possessed the ring Solomon received from heaven, with its four jewels given him by the four archangels, by the power of which ring Solomon ruled over the four elements. And engraved upon its stone were the letters of the Eternal One, which were the name of the Highest. Some have said it could not have been those letters; rather, the six-pointed Star of David. Here where we live now our gentile magicians will have it so, saying, No, it was a star of five points only. And they think to weave a web of power by that sign? Nonsense! With none of those was it inscribed: the ring on the hand of Eleazar, brass on one side to command the good spirits, iron on the other to command evil ones… ghuls and ifrits, those shedim and shedot . . . that same ring is lost with which he assuaged the Emperor Vespasian and helped him to be rid of the malign and condign ghost plaguing his sleeplessly tossing nights. Still, Eleazar himself with that signet once released Vespasian the Emperor from fear, by singing to him certain charms he knew, charms devised by Solomon… who alone commanded the ten thousand secrets of the world, its three thousand proverbs and one thousand and five songs. He so freed him that the scarred, battle-hardened general lived on to die a man of three score and ten… indeed, in the presence of his loyal guards he perished standing upright and unassisted, his arm resting on his shield.

Be that as it may, Eleazar returned afterward to his house below the Western Wall of Ezra’s now desecrated Temple in ruins. When it came the hour of his time to die, he called his children to him and bequeathed them a story.

One of the younger lads interrupted, asking like the simple child he was, Say, Rebbe, if David had but his harp, his sling, and a sword, from whence came a ring of such power?

Turning to him smiling, ben Yaacov replied, Solomon was wise from childhood. That is the reason David appointed him heir to his throne.

"The ring, Rebbe?’

And it is said that when he married Pharaoh’s daughter, she taught him the skill to play a thousand musical instruments, and with those she gave him proper chants to her idols, the hawk, the jackal, the lion, the ibis bird…

The ring!

"I have said, Simeon, from heaven… or so we’re told by that spawn of Nebuchadnezzar, the sons of Ishmael.

The ring! I say.

"Let it alone! In any case, Solomon had a ring; nevertheless, to build the Temple, for which purpose all use of iron was forbidden, that ring availed him not. From Midrash have we this understanding. And the rabbis would in this wise tell us of our Eleazar’s legacy, which, if you will be pleased to hear me out, is a pretty tale.

"How to quarry the marble granite and make a foundation for the Temple? How to cut and turn the cedars sent by Hiram of Tyre? Calling his counselors to him, he sought their advice; but they stood mute before him… until one ancient spoke up, saying, ‘Great King! I know of something mightier than iron! When the Creation was not yet fulfilled, when day still struggled with darkness, HaShem called into being a tiny creature, even a worm. Its name is Shamir; its nature such that it can split and carve even hardest stone.’

‘Where is that worm to be had?’ asked Solomon.

"‘Your Majesty shall forgive this old, bent head if I tell you that no mortal spirit has till this hour discovered where it conceals itself.’

"‘Then, since you have not yet understood the greatness of my own powers, wait and see… for what will I, that can I!’

"Upon that, Solomon sent them from his presence. Hardly had the noise of their murmurs died away, together with the shuffle of their slipper-shod feet, than the king touched the iron of his ring and called up two demons. They erupted… with a rumbling and with a roar of fierce wind… rising from the very chamber floor to stand, heads bowed, forty, tall Egyptian cubits before him. What do you wish from us! they demanded.

"‘The Shamir! Tell me, where is the worm Shamir to be found?’

"At those words, the demons wavered, paling from black smoke to gray vapor. One spoke, ‘Master, that is not to us revealed. Where it lies curled hidden in secret is knowledge possessed by our king alone, Ashmodai.’

"‘And in what corner of the world did His Highness build his dwelling?’

"‘Far-off, as far as far-off may be! In truth, as distant and removed from Jerusalem as one may go. There is there a mountain that reaches almost to the sky itself. Ashmodai has dug himself atop the peak a pit filled with the water he melts from the eternal ice of that crest by virtue of his burning breath. That pit he keeps sealed with an immense slab of polished adamantine stone fitted tight into its mouth. In the morning, he takes wing and flies aloft like a lightning bolt to the bottom step of the Almighty’s throne. And there he kneels, a willing subject, mumbling imprecations against His Creation. At night, like a meteor he swoops to that place, examines its heavy cover to learn if anyone has dared to pry it open. Then he lifts it, slakes his thirst with that purest, coldest of waters, and seals it tight once more. Then like a serpent Ashmodai wraps his body around it and sleeps until dawn.’

"‘Enough!’ commanded Solomon. ‘Begone!’ And the pair of dreadful demons sank hissing and roaring like a sandstorm through the pavement. The King immediately called to him his faithful captain, that Benaiah, conqueror of a hundred enemy armies in a hundred battles. Directing him to follow precisely his bidding, he equipped him with a strong, thick iron chain, prepared for him a seal engraved with the Name of Names, had some bundles of wool wrapped, and several well-stoppered goatskins filled with pure and strong red wine. Wishing Benaiah well, he sent him on his way; and in private then offered up secret prayers known to himself alone for his success.

"That faithful soldier set out on a difficult journey lasting many months. Unlike his royal master, he had no wide mantle of green linen upon which to ride the winds as Solomon now and again was pleased to do. At last he found the right path that led to the mountain far in the East and undertook his solitary and dangerous ascent towards its desolate peak high above the storm clouds that perpetually encircled it. Steep and silent was Benaiah’s climb around and up and over heaps of immense black boulders and shifting mounds of black slag where never a blade of grass dared take root. After a week and a week, he arrived at the crest, where the winds were frozen and the air cut like the sharpest flint. He found the round gray stone covering the well in Ashmodai’s pit and set to work digging a new hole somewhat to the left and below its rim. Then he drained the water collected in the well, stuffed it with his packets of wool and, since the sun was sinking in the West, began to work hard at making another pit a little higher up the slope above the demon’s well, this new one hidden off to the right, and from which a new-dug runnel ran into the well now emptied of water. Into the new one, he poured wine from the goatskins he had labored to haul upon his shoulders. Surveying the work, he was satisfied. Then he sequestered himself some distance away behind a rough outcropping of black granite to wait for the arch-demon’s return. The sun dropped behind the wall of mountains below the summit on which he stood; the stars burst into points of blue fire that filled the black sky. Suddenly, with a noise like a fiery waterfall, Ashmodai descended, folded his leathery vans, and perched like a carrion vulture beside his well. Thrice he rose, sniffing the air, and circled about it from right to left to make certain its seal remained undisturbed; satisfied, he lifted the stone cover, made himself small as a dwarf and clambered over the rim.

"What a fragrance struck his senses! It was the wine whose scent he breathed. Wine, wine, the maker and source of joy! Should he taste of it? Or should he reject temptation? ‘I know you for what you are, wine! You make the world a mere mockery!’ he cried. And then he shouted, ‘And yet they say wine gladdens all hearts!’ He hesitated a moment… and was lost, overcome by a thirst stronger than his will. He leaned down into the well and began to scoop up wine by the handful and drink it down. He struggled to break the spell of its delightful fumes. In vain. Soon enough, his thoughts and strength grew confused. He imagined himself to stand amongst the bright angels he envied and hated; yet now to them he declared a most secret love. He staggered to one side, then back, croaking out an anthem of praise. At last he fell down, lay supine, and slept the sleep of the dead.

"That was the hour for which Benaiah had readied himself. He dashed from hiding to fasten and secure the chain around the demon’s neck. And none too soon, for Ashmodai suddenly woke and, feeling himself tied to the earth, commenced to shriek with fear and grief. So loud his lamentation, the very mountain shook and loosened rocks slid down into the crevasses scoring its sides. His eyes shot flames; his lips foamed foul froth; his fierce thrashing, convulsed with agony, helped him not. That madness persisted as the stars faded and the first red glow of dawn arose in the East. Then Benaiah approached, looked down at him and counseled peace: ‘Patience, you mightiest of spirits. Nothing may help you now. The Name of Names, the Ineffable Name, is set upon you and sealed. Be still!’

"The sigh that greatest of demons vented was so deep that His created universe trembled like a spider’s web in a storm of wind. His vassal spirits, those wicked creatures wandering in the seas, hovering on the breeze, burrowing below the earth, flapped away and hid themselves, to roost like bats hanging from the roof in the world’s unknown caverns. ‘I will be calm,’ said Ashmodai. ‘What is your will?’

"‘Follow me where you shall learn your charge.’

"There was no choice for the captive: that doughty soldier held the chain; Solomon’s seal secured its clasp. Down they went, entered the track traversing the vacant plains leading westward and away to Jerusalem. Wherever the two of them marched, that place was marked for destruction: trees flew uprooted from the ground and crashed; houses fell sideways in heaps of rubble, overturned or fell in upon their inhabitants. Nature cringed and shrank within herself whenever Ashmodai looked to right or left. One afternoon, as the two passed by a wedding party the demon shed a bloody tear, whispering, ‘Three days will scarcely be ended, and she shall wake to find her groom dead in her arms.’ In a village market they heard a rich man tell the shoemaker to craft him boots to last seven years and a day, upon which Ashmodai smirked, ‘That fellow bespeaks himself a pair of fine boots for seven years, when seven nights hence his new-made widow shall score with her nails her cheeks, bewailing his passing!’

"At last they made their way up to Jerusalem to stand before King Solomon, who demanded of Ashmodai the answer to but one question, ‘The holy Temple is to be built upon that mount which looks down on my city. It can not be accomplished till I am possessed of the worm Shamir. Tell me this: Where, Great Demon, do you keep it concealed?’

"‘In your power I may be, O King! Yet your wish I cannot grant,’ replied that dark angel. ‘The worm Shamir is in the keeping of the Prince of the Seas, who handed it to the rukh, enjoining her to preserve it unharmed always. The bird builds her nest atop a peak beyond the eastern desert, even more distant than my own solitary home. Her post she abandons never. In that very place, Highness, must Shamir be sought.’

"There was nothing for it. Benaiah was commanded to attempt that new task. Once more he set out on an arduous, perilous trek. Rivers and ranges he crossed; trackless forests and swampy meadows covered with harsh grasses taller than a man. At last the rukh’s mountain loomed on the horizon. When he had ascended to its summit, where starlight flashed in sparks from the wet, naked rocks, he descried that huge bird’s nest woven from weathered, naked branches all smeared with her droppings reeking of bones and blood. He climbed up and looked over its edge, where he saw within it a new-hatched brood of featherless chicks whose razor-hooked beaks gaped upward, awaiting morsels from their parent. Benaiah had carried with him a large, round sheet of thick glass, which he set above the nest to cover the hollow at the bottom of which her hatchlings squatted. When the creature flew home, she would see but not be able to feed them. Then the general hid himself to one side. With a great flapping and flurry of wings, the giant fowl landed; soon enough she understood what blocked her way. Plucking the Shamir from a pouch suspended from a golden chain about her neck, she was about to apply it to split the glass, when Benaiah leapt up making hideous clamor. The rukh was startled, and dropped the worm. Leaping forward, the brave soldier boldly snatched it up and, fending her off with superb swordplay, made good his escape.

The rest is brief to tell. Benaiah pursued his return to Jerusalem. Solomon built up his Temple. The smoke of incense and sacrifice was famous everywhere, and the choirs of Israel intoned his father David’s songs. The King reigned in magnificence and glory. The world brought its riches to his city. He put up palaces; sent his ships over the seas to trade; and laid out fine cities throughout his thriving realm. You have read concerning the works and days of David’s son.

They were quiet. After some short while, the treble voice of the young one fluted, Reb! The ring! What of the ring?

Their teacher stroked his beard, his chin pressed against his breast. He seemed reluctant to reply; but as he was Yaacov ben Yaacov, he must.

Of stories there are many; even too many. Some will tell you how Solomon, with the help of Ashmodai, whom he kept hidden and chained in a keep below his own bed, caught and tamed the evil genii who’d served the demon from the beginnings of their fall from the precincts of the throne of HaShem; how with his help, though altogether unwilling, he forced them each one by one into an amphora sealed with his seal, and sent them every one to the floor of the sea where they have lain ever since, unable to escape confinement because on their stoppers and plugs he inscribed…

Here the lad interjected raptly, . . . with His Name, the Ineffable Name of the Highest, the most Holy One, HaShem!

Amen! Amen! the others responded.

So you have said, ben Yaacov returned drily, in a low voice that crushed them into silence, so severe was it. They knew by that tone two things: that more was to come, and that whatever they supposed sure or believed certain would be rendered as it were to nothing. Meanwhile, the day of mourning was sinking with the sun towards its close. Their traditional Megilla, that lamentation marking Tisha B’av, had been foregone; in its stead they’d heard the marvelous tale of how the First Temple came to be constructed. So they contained themselves, attending what should be his next excursion.

Not so, little Simeon who squirmed on his bench and burst out, If not that Name of Names, Rebbe, whence the power of the ring? I mean, the Name of the Eternal One! You must tell us!

"What! My foot, my teacher? Must me no musts! What I shall say is this; and after this, that. There was Solomon the King reigning, as we have read, in glory. Until one night while Jerusalem slept, he found himself pacing up and down and to and fro in his bedchamber. Notwithstanding his fame and power, he remained unsatisfied. His pride and his ambition were not slaked and sated by the perfumes of extravagance and grandeur. He had grown wearied of frankincense and myrrh. To commune with his servant Ashmodai after the last call of the watchman seemed needful. Nu, despite his fabled wisdom, he summoned up that enslaved spirit from the dungeon. And that demon of demons, knowing his master better by far than his master knew himself, began, ‘O, Great King, with my help you have become of mortals the mightiest. Yet able am I to render you a thousand times mightier than you yourself can dream. Only, not while I lie chained by iron in the dark. Free me for but an instant. Vouchsafe me but that one moment to wear the seal-ring… and you will be given to know what shall astonish the world.’

What does that King of Kings? Out of his immense pride, even as he gazes into the mirror of himself, he strikes off the binding lock from the chain and holds out the precious signet once gained at such cost. The very air itself turns thicker than night. Ashmodai stands erect before him, glowing and crackling, rising like a column of smoke and fire until his feet, touching the earth, his head striking the clouds above until they flash with lightning and shake the city by their thunder. The ring itself the evil one hurls as it were an arrow far out over the western sea. Solomon he sets upon his open palm and with one breath puffs him off and away like a bit of goose down two thousand versts over the eastern desert, far beyond Samarkand, across the River Sambatyon’s roaring flood of stones, there to wander wherever he might clothed in the rags of a leprous mendicant. Then, feigning human form, he throws the monarch’s mantle about his own shoulders and awaits the dawn. The palace servitors find him where he sits in full regalia. Blinded by obeisance, they bow to this simulacrum. Ashmodai has assumed Solomon’s kingship, and enjoys its pomp and privilege. Thenceforth Israel is ruled by him from Jerusalem. What comes afterward, you may read what has been set down in our books.

Yaacov ben Yaacov ceased his telling. To them the conclusion seemed more than strange; indeed, terrible to contemplate. It was not yet dusk; perhaps an hour remained before the last light of day. The Rebbe strode to the portals of the House of Study and threw them open wide. The sinking sun sent its shafts directly into their eyes where they sat, dazzling them in the semi-stupor of their perturbed thoughts. The lad Simeon bit his lip in anguish, as though fearing to say aloud what he dimly felt must be some sort of answer to his questions, but which he failed to apprehend. It was otherwise with that eldest of their teacher’s disciples, Shlomo Duvud, who made as if to rise, although nearly overcome, his forehead glistening with pale beads, his cheeks mottled by blotches of fury.

Have my ears heard aright, Rebbe? Could this have been? Can it be so?

Reb Yaacov turned, tranquil in the face of that challenge, which had been voiced with such a barely-suppressed growl of rage that it caused the others to shrink back. If he seemed to smile, it was with sadness.

It is said moreover that Solomon was taken for a madman by those who pitied the filthy wretch knocking at their doors to beg a crust of old bread, boasting as he wolfed it down of lost greatness and a royal reign that was the wonder of the world.

Shlomo Duvud sat down, stunned by that reply; whereupon ben Yaacov commenced what was to be the closing portion of this day. They understood by his voice and manner that it was meant as a teaching to be pondered in days to come, perhaps through the years of their lives.

"I have spoken of my forebear Eleazar ben Yaacov, who was constrained to minister to the mind of Vespasian. He lived to witness the sadness of the Emperor’s final years, which amounted to more than four score and ten. In the days of Hadrian, May that one’s bones be ground to dust! Eleazar gave to his grandson Abner this history, which concerns the daughter of a poor, honest scribe… . One spring day he sent her on an errand. An innocent, happy maiden. she delighted in the sunlight dappling the forest path as she went along, calling to its creatures as they dashed this way and that before her. After a time, the sun having reached its zenith, she felt herself thirsty. Longing for the clear water