Mario Bellatin - Jacob the Mutant

A se’ah is a biblical measure the size of an egg.

Forty se’ot is the minimum size for a mikveh.

A mikveh is a ritual bath.

To carry out such an act they had to dress in white clothes and fast the entire day before the ritual.

The participants had to begin standing with the water reaching up to their ankles.

The rabbi would then open his mouth and with awe he would repeat his repetitive song:

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the World. The Lord, God of Israel.

You are one and Your name is one, and You have ordered us to hide Your great name because Your name is wondrous.

Blessed are You and blessed is the name of Your glory forever, the glorified and wondrous name of the Lord, our God.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

Blessed are You, Revealer of Your secret to those who fear You.

God is the knower of secrets.

As these ideas went through my head (I remained confined in my prayer cell), Jacob remained sleeping, and his cousin focused on his labor of stuffing the bodies of the wild animals.

Many a person could inquire into the meaning of such a task.

For what reason could it be so important, for Jacob and for his cousin as well, to carry out this sort of homage to the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo, which for so many years simply served the purpose of disguising the existence of a tavern managed, in such a strange way, by the wife of a rabbi?

At that time, things began to get progressively worse in the community.

After having carried out relatively calm lives, many of the villagers began to be monitored and some of them even came to have signs hung from their necks that testified to their pertinence to the Jewish faith.

The children suddenly stopped going to the rabbi’s house where they had sat around the large wooden table that also served its purpose as a dining room table.

If truth be told, the children suddenly stopped going to Jacob’s house not only because of the steady escalation of things but also because the rabbi would spend his days sleeping.

The floods have lifted, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods have lifted up their roaring surge. Greater than the crash of many waters, greater than the mighty breakers of the sea, mighty is the Lord on high (Psalms 93:3–4).

The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory sounds, the Lord is over many waters (Psalms 29:3).

Jacob slept, and his cousin continued his labor.

Once the cousin finished giving certain positions to the animals’ corpses (which, in some way, brought back memories of the times when the animals were still alive and were the attractions offered by the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo), that very cousin began to test out positions, with concrete actions, to give some grandeur to the scene of dead animals.

The cousin positioned the embalmed panther so it would be attacking the wild wolf.

The hyena, which a lost, wandering man had transported from Africa, bore a wide grin like that it was seen to have in its natural habitat.

Jacob, meanwhile, continued sleeping…

He couldn’t seem to handle the abandonment he had just suffered in a state of wakefulness.

Jacob also couldn’t seem to handle the fate of the Tiny Nocturnal Zoo or the atrocities occurring around him.

It is not known how, but during his sleep he was even able to learn that the dances particular to his community had begun to be prohibited.

Especially those dances of the Hasidic tradition that were usually performed twice a year on the outskirts of town.

The authorities resorted to taking measures based on a Roman text written in Latin, where more than two thousand years ago the same thing had been prohibited within the boundaries of Rome.

Cum progenitores nostri Christianæ Religionis cultores quæsīverint separationem Judæorum a Christianis, statuendo illis habitationem in Venetiis 15 dierum, & signum tellæ zallæ in medium pectoris, & Judæi variis ingeniis & fraudibus suis impetraverint non portare signum, se cum mulieribus Christianis immisceant, & Juvenes doceant sonare & cantare, tenendo publicas Scholas; Vadit pars, quod omnis Judæus non portans signum telæ zallæ, sine ulla gratia vel remissione condemnetur in pœna statuta. Et similiter aliquis Judæus non possit tenere Scholas alicujus ludiartis, vel doctrinæ, vel ballandi, vel cantandi, vel sonandi, vel docere aliter in civitate nostra, sub pœna Ducat. 50, & standi sex menses in carceribus. Liceat tamem illis mederi.

What was truly prohibited was the festive and rebellious nature of clapping and dancing.

According to tradition, dancing and clapping helped because a kind of mystical wind would blow through the heart that would help the participating souls reach the highest point that could be reached while on Earth.

A wind that was capable of penetrating the sixteen joints of the arm and the sixteen joints of the legs that all human beings have.

Recalling this, there in the prayer cell where I found myself, the words proclaimed by the sheikha of my order took shape, the ones where she affirmed that living bodies were morphologically prepared to receive the mystical experience.

That mysticism wasn’t a question of faith, but rather the revelation itself of our living organism.

Something concrete and palpable.

In some way similar to how, when clapping or performing the traditional dances, the presence of the divine wind that lifted the heart’s spirits became evident.

It seems to me then that the presence of the hundreds of dance academies that appear in the chapter “Beatitudes” of the book Jacob the Mutant isn’t a casual occurrence.

In Jacob the Mutant there is an entire city full of dance schools.

A population that finds itself obliged — just as Rome was more than two thousand years ago — to impose a series of restrictions around that practice.

There Jacob can be found, living in that place after having fled the horror into which his homeland plunged.

Serving as a rabbi, carrying out his strange ablutions in a lake of pestilent waters found facing the lands given to him by his ship brother.

Anyone who has read the book knows that “ship brother” is the term that the immigrants used with each other, thus guaranteeing a pact of aid in survival at their shared destination.

These dances — neither in ancient Rome nor in the American settlement where Jacob and his family ended up living — could not be performed under the fate of free will.

According to what is written, one should turn to the presence of the righteous man — Hasidic or ha-tzadik , the name given to the leader of a Hasidic group — so he may guide them.

And there was Jacob Pliniak until, suddenly, as if being called upon by one of the Mystical Sephirot that only present themselves to certain beings once in a lifetime, as he carried out his usual ablutions in the waters of the region’s lake, he came back to the surface, transformed into an old woman named Rose Plinianson, a Catholic woman who until just before her death put all of her efforts behind fighting the dance academies that threatened to annihilate the city where they lived.

A case of transmutation similar to the one that my grandfather tried to show me each time he brought me to visit the camels?

An occurrence of transformation like that which my grandfather carried out when from one day to the next he was no longer at my side?

Let not the foot of pride overtake me (Psalms 36:12).

While the feet are raised through dance, the ego lessens in intensity , seems to be what Jacob Pliniak repeated as he submersed himself in the waters before coming back out transformed into the young Miss Plinianson.