The Last Demon

promised that if I succeed, I’ll be transferred to Odessa.’
    ‘What’s so good about that?’
    ‘It’s as near paradise as our kind gets. You can sleep twenty-four hours a day. The population sins and you don’t lift a finger.’
    ‘So what do you do all day?’
    ‘We play with our women.’
    ‘Here there’s not a single one of our girls.’ The imp sighs. ‘There was one old bitch but she expired.’
    ‘So what’s left?’
    ‘What Onan did.’
    ‘That doesn’t lead anywhere. Help me and I swear by Asmodeus’s beard that I’ll get you out of here. We have an opening for a mixer of bitter herbs. You only work Passovers.’
    ‘I hope it works out, but don’t count your chickens.’
    ‘We’ve taken care of tougher than he.’
III
    A week goes by and our business has not moved forward; I find myself in a dirty mood. A week in Tishevitz is equal to a year in Lublin. The Tishevitz imp is all right, but when you sit two hundred years in such a hole, you become a yokel. He cracks jokes that didn’t amuse Enoch and convulses with laughter; he drops names from the Haggadah. Every one of his stories wears a long beard. I’d like to get the hell out of here, but it doesn’t take a magician to return home with nothing. I have enemies among my colleagues and I must beware of intrigue. Perhaps I was sent here just to break my neck. When devils stop warring with people, they start tripping each other.
    Experience has taught that of all the snares we use, there are three that work unfailingly – lust, pride, and avarice. No one can evade all three, not even Rabbi Tsots himself. Of the three, pride has the strongest meshes. According to the Talmud a scholar is permitted the eighth part of an eighth part of vanity. But a learned man generally exceeds his quota. When I see that the days are passing and that the rabbi of Tishevitz remains stubborn, I concentrate on vanity.
    ‘Rabbi of Tishevitz,’ I say, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I come from Lublin, where the streets are paved with exegeses of the Talmud. We use manuscripts to heat our ovens. The floors of our attics sag under the weight of Cabala. But not even in Lublin have I met a man of your eminence. How does it happen,’ I ask, ‘that no one’s heard of you? True saints should hide themselves, perhaps, but silence will not bring redemption. You should be the leader of this generation, and not merely the rabbi of this community, holy though it is. The time has come for you to reveal yourself. Heaven and earth are waiting for you. Messiah himself sits in the Bird Nest looking down in search of an unblemished saint like you. But what are you doing about it? You sit on your rabbinical chair laying down the law on which pots and which pans are kosher. Forgive me the comparison,
but it is as if an elephant were put to work hauling a straw.’
    ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ the rabbi asks in terror. ‘Why don’t you let me study?’
    ‘There is a time when the service of God requires the neglect of Torah,’ I scream. ‘Any student can study the Gemara.’
    ‘Who sent you here?’
    ‘I was sent; I am here. Do you think they don’t know about you up there? The higher-ups are annoyed with you. Broad shoulders must bear their share of the load. To put it in rhyme: the humble can stumble. Hearken to this: Abraham Zalman was Messiah, son of Joseph, and you are ordained to prepare the way for Messiah, son of David, but stop sleeping. Get ready for battle. The world sinks to the forty-ninth gate of uncleanliness, but you have broken through to the seventh firmament. Only one cry is heard in the mansions, the man from Tishevitz. The angel in charge of Edom has marshaled a clan of demons against you. Satan lies in wait also. Asmodeus is undermining you. Lilith and Namah hover at your bedside. You don’t see them, but Shabriri and Briri are treading at your heels. If the Angels were not defending you, that unholy crowd would pound you to dust and ashes. But you do not stand alone, Rabbi of
Tishevitz. Lord Sandalphon guards your every step. Metratron watches over you from his luminescent sphere. Everything hangs in the balance, man of Tishevitz; you can tip the scales.’
    ‘What should I do?’
    ‘Mark well all that I tell you. Even if I command you to break the law, do as I bid.’
    ‘Who are you? What is your name?’
    ‘Elijah the Tishbite. I have the ram’s horn of the Messiah ready. Whether the redemption comes, or we wander in the