At Easter, after many petitions from Jacob, the prisoner is granted permission to walk out onto the ramparts once a week. From then on, all the old soldiers await his Sunday promenade. Would you look at that, he’s up there now. The Jewish prophet. His dark figure, tall but stooped, walks along the wall, there and back, turning with a kind of violence and racing in the other direction, to then rebound off some invisible wall and start back again, like a pendulum. You could set the clocks by him. Roch will do exactly that—he will adjust the watch he received from the convert. It is the most valuable thing he has ever owned in his life, and he regrets that this has happened to him only now. If he had had it twenty years ago . . . He pictures himself in his parade uniform, walking into an inn teeming with comrades in arms. At least he can be assured that, thanks to this watch, he will have a decent funeral, with a wooden casket and a grand salvo.

He observes the prisoner calmly, without sympathy, accustomed as he is to unexpected twists of fate. To Roch’s mind, this convert prophet’s is a pretty decent fate. His followers provide their master with good food and smuggle money into the monastery, even though it is strictly prohibited. Many things are prohibited in the monastery, and yet they have everything here, whether it’s Wallachian or Magyar wine or even vodka, and everyone closes their eyes to tobacco. The bans have little effect. They only work at the start, but then human nature with its long finger begins to poke a hole in them, first a little one and then, when it encounters no resistance, a larger and larger one. Until finally the hole is bigger than what isn’t the hole. That’s how it goes with any interdiction.

The prior, for example, has banned the old soldiers on numerous occasions from begging for alms at the entrance to the church. And they really did quit for a while, but then, after a few days—though there wasn’t any begging—one hand did extend for just a little while as the pilgrims passed by. Soon others joined it, then more and more, until, after another few days, a muttering began:

“Spare a little change.” (The Books of Jacob)

Among the advantages of the state in which Yente has found herself is that she now understands the workings of the messianic machine. She sees the world from above—it is dark, faintly marked by sparks of light, each of them a home. A faltering glow in the western sky draws a red line under the world. A dark road winds, and beside it the river’s current gleams like steel. Along the road moves a vehicle, a tiny dot that can hardly be seen; a dull rattle spreads in waves through the dark, thick air as the cart goes over the little wooden bridge and on past the mill. The messianic machine is like that mill standing over the river. The dark water turns the great wheels evenly, without regard for the weather, slowly and systematically. The person by the wheels seems to have no significance; his movements are random and chaotic. The person flails; the machine works. The motion of the wheels transfers power to the stone gears that grind the grain. Everything that falls into them will be crushed into dust.

Getting out of captivity also requires tragic sacrifices. The Messiah must stoop as low as possible, down into those dispassionate mechanisms of the world where the sparks of holiness, scattered into the gloom, have been imprisoned. Where darkness and humiliation are greatest. The Messiah will gather the sparks of holiness, which means that he will leave behind him an even greater darkness. God has sent him down from on high to be abased, into the abyss of the world, where powerful serpents will mercilessly mock him, asking: “Where’s that God of yours now? What happened to him? And why won’t he give you a hand, you poor thing?” The Messiah must remain deaf to those vicious taunts, step on the snakes, commit the worst acts, forget who he is, become a simpleton and a fool, enter into all the false religions, be baptized and don a turban. He must annul all prohibitions and eliminate all commandments.

Yente’s father, who saw with his own eyes the First, that is, Sabbatai, brought the Messiah on his lips into their home and passed it on to his favorite daughter. The Messiah is something more than a figure and a person—it is something that flows in your blood, resides in your breath, it is the dearest and most precious human thought: that salvation exists. And that’s why you have to cultivate it like the most delicate plant, blow on it, water it with tears, put it in the sun during the day, move it into a warm room in the nighttime. (The Books of Jacob)