Satan in Goray

still sparkling in the sky. Handfuls of dry saltlike snow fell across their faces. Rabbi Benish put on his outercoat and stepped over the threshold of the house to welcome the legate; putting up his beaver collar and crossing his arms, he thrust his hands up his sleeves. It was bitter cold and Rabbi Benish kept turning around, stamping his feet to keep warm. Somewhere from behind the snow hills, as huge as sand dunes, a man rose into view, wind-blown, dipped out of sight, and then emerged again, like a swimmer. Rabbi Benish glanced at the early morning sky. Fixing his gaze inwardly, he cried, "Master of the Universe, help us!"
    No one ever learned what Rabbi Benish said that morning, nor what the legate replied. But one thing soon became common knowledge: the legate rode away with no farewells from Goray, in the same sleigh in which he had arrived. It was late afternoon when the news spread that the legate had disappeared. It was Grunam the Beadle who imparted the information, with a stealthy smile in his left eye. Reb Mordecai Joseph blanched. He gathered immediately who was responsible for the legate's departure, and his nostrils dilated with anger.
    "Benish is to blame!" he screamed, and lifted his crutch threateningly. "Benish has driven him off!"
    For many years Reb Mordecai Joseph had been the rabbi's enemy. He hated him for his learning, envied him his fame, and never missed an opportunity to speak evil of him. At the yearly Passover wrangle he would incite the people to break Rabbi Benish's windowpanes, crying that the rabbi had only his own reputation in mind and gave no thought to the town. The thing that chiefly vexed Reb Mordecai Joseph was that Rabbi Benish forbade the study of the cabala; in defiance Reb Mordecai Joseph called the rabbi by his first name. And now Reb Mordecai Joseph hammered on his lectern, inciting controversy. "Benish is a heretic!" he shouted. "A transgressor against the Lord of Israel!"
    An old householder who was one of the rabbi's disciples ran over to Mordecai Joseph and struck him twice. The blood streamed from Mordecai Joseph's nose. Several young people jumped up and grabbed their belts. The cantor pounded on the stand, and commanded them not to interrupt the prayers, but he was ignored. Men wearing the large black phylacteries on their heads, and with the broad phylactery thongs wound around their arms, milled about, pushing one another. A tall, black-complexioned man, whose head almost reached the ceiling, began to waver like a tree in the wind, and cried: "Sacrilege! Blood in the study house! Woe!"
    "Benish is a heretic!" roared Mordecai Joseph. Holding on to his crutch he bent over and hopped forward with insane speed.
    "May he be torn from the earth... root and all!"
    Drops of blood shimmered on his fire-red beard; his low forehead, parchment-yellow, was furrowed. Reb Senderel of Zhilkov, an ancient foe of the rabbi, suddenly screamed: "Rabbi Benish cannot oppose the world! He has always been a man of little faith!"
    "Apostate!" someone shouted, it was hard to tell whether referring to the rabbi or his opponents.
    "Disrupter!"
    "Sinner that leadeth the multitude to sin!"
    "The world's aflame!" Mordecai Joseph kept pounding with his fists. "Benish, the dog, denies the Messiah!"
    "Sabbatai Zevi is a false Messiah!" a high, boyish voice cried out.
    Everyone looked around. It was Chanina, the charity scholar, a young divorced man and a stranger, who sat in Goray studying and lived off the community. He was one of Rabbi Benish's brilliant students--tall, overgrown, nearsighted, with a long, pale face and a chin sprouting with yellow hair. His coat was always unfastened, his vest open, showing a thin, hairy chest. Now he stood there, bent over his study stand, his near-blind eyes blinking, waiting with a silly smile for someone to come and argue with him, so that he could show how learned he was. Mordecai Joseph, who bore Chanina a grudge on account of the many folios of the Talmud he knew by heart and because he was always mixing in where he had no right, suddenly sprang at Chanina with that agility the lame display when they flare up and forget their defect.
    "You, too!" he screamed. "Take him, men!"
    Several young men ran over to Chanina, grabbed hold of his shirt and began to drag him off. Chanina opened his mouth, shouted, tried to tear himself loose from their grip, twisted his long neck back and forth, and flailed about him with his arms, like a drowning man. His coat