een no Jews living in Zemun, or at least not in any significant numbers. In 1717, when the Austrians routed the Ottomans and captured Belgrade, several Jewish merchants settled there, along with a larger group of Austrian merchants and craftsmen. When the Ottomans recaptured Belgrade some twenty years later, however, these Jews withdrew from Belgrade and chose to make their home in Zemun. Eleazar's trace can be found there today, it said, but hardly anyone knows this, or even wishes to learn about it. The next passage dealt with the way the Austrian authorities treated the Jewish residents of Zemun, but there was no further mention of Eleazar. On [>] of the manuscript, however, after a passage listing the rabbis who had served in the Zemun synagogues following Jehuda Jeruham — Israel Aleksandar, Joze Fridensberger, Šlomo Hirš, Jehuda ben Šlomo Haj Alkalaj, S. D. Tauber, Hinko Urbah, and kantor Geršon Kačka at the Ashkenazi synagogue, and M. B. Aharon, Šabtaj, Moše Bahar, and Hakham Jichak Musafija at the Sephardic synagogue — there was an unrelated passage: here one must also remember that Eleazar still had Hermes' words in mind about how he, Hermes, was searching for the secrets of Genesis, and how he had gone into a cave deep beneath the surface of the earth, through which powerful winds blew, and there before him appeared an image of incredible beauty, an image of which it is written in the Torah that God made man in his own image, and this image, which represented his perfect nature, instructed Hermes in what he should do to obtain knowledge about the most exalted matters. Further, it was written, this is why Eleazar occasionally separated his self from himself, that is, freed himself from his body, until he could see himself, slender and transparent, illuminated by a wondrous inner light that came from the divine spirit. But what Eleazar was able to do, and with such remarkable ease, did not work for anyone else, so perhaps there is no point in speaking of it further. And truly, the next few pages contained no mention of him, until [>], where the part about Eleazar began with the words "In the meanwhile," as if it were taken from some larger whole in which his life was laid out in chronological order, in much greater detail. And so in the meanwhile, it was written at the bottom of the page, Eleazar wondered more and more often why God, who was perfect, had not created a perfect world, but instead had made a world in which there was a place and a role for evil. Eleazar understood, it said, the Kabbalistic explanation that it had not been possible to create a perfect world because that would have meant that God, who is perfection, was duplicating himself, making a copy of himself, and God, in the nature of things, cannot be duplicated, cannot copy himself, he can only limit himself. Hence, it said, there is evil in this world, though not as a separate force, as pure evil, but always and only as part of all that is, therefore in man's soul, from its very inception, there are germs of both good and evil. God is none the weaker for it, the manuscript reads, but instead more generous; this didn't satisfy Eleazar, and after long periods of musing and going through all the possibilities, he decided to approach the left side, the side of evil. With this in mind, it said, Eleazar stood in the circle of light from a special source, but in such a way that he could see both his shadows, the one that was his astral body, and the one that held the living spark of the astral body and seldom shows itself, and for that he needed to say certain prescribed words, and that was when impure forces appeared, which took over Eleazar's shadows, and, with the shadows, Eleazar, and after that no one ever saw him. His name was not mentioned again until fifty pages later. Before that final mention, the manuscript dealt with the Zemun Jewish cemetery; then a brief history was given of the Zemun synagogue, so it's unclear why the piece about Eleazar's destiny is treated here. Today, it says in that chapter, somewhere in Zemun is a place where the forces of good and evil intersect, and where it is possible, if a person knows the right words, to pass from one world into the other, and even to move into the realm of endless possibilities, or into the realm of endless worlds that emanate from the ten divine Sephirot, endlessly multiplying and forging anew the reality we dwell in. Outside a new day had long since dawned. The clock showed seven-thirty A.M., which meant that I had spent four hours leafing through the manuscript I still had no clear sense of. If this is one of the books of sand, I told Marko, I should be finding grains of sand on my hands after reading it. There was no sand on my hands, but plenty of dust and paper shreds. After I read that Eleazar's passageway to the other world still existed in Zemun, my first thought was of the corner in the courtyard on Zmaj Jovina Street. I hadn't gone there for several days, just as I hadn't thought about the woman from the quay, because the circumstances, the events connected to the warnings scrawled on my door, had pulled me in another direction, which might have been the cause of the nagging sense of impaired equilibrium that had been dogging me for weeks. I splashed my face with water, ate a piece of bread spread with honey while I waited for the weather report on the morning radio program (clouds, wind, with a chance of rain in the afternoon), I got dressed, put a piece of gum in my mouth, and left the apartment. I decided to walk to Zmaj Jovina Street, taking the shortest cut through the center of town. This exposed me to exhaust fumes, but I was too groggy and tired, after my nocturnal reading, to take the less direct route by the quay. On my way back, I thought, I might take that route, but first I should walk through the market and pick up some fuse cartridges and a new phone jack at the stall of the man who resells spare parts, and then, walking along the Danube, I could inhale and exhale the air as deeply as possible, swinging my arms vigorously to accelerate circulation, coordinate my equilibrium and speed the rhythm of my steps. Glavna Street was packed with people and cars, bluish clouds of fumes, and bustle, and the street vendors had opened their makeshift stalls out in front of the department store. The clouds the radio announcer so generously promised had not yet appeared, unless they were at the horizon, hidden from view by the rows of buildings, so that the sun, though still a spring sun, radiated a heat hard to bear, swallowing shadows like a Kabbalist. If somebody, I thought, had told me a few weeks before that I would be caught up in mystical teachings about good and evil, I would have thought that somebody mad. And now that same somebody could tell me I am mad and grasping at straws. It's only right, I decided, that I am thinking about this as I walk by Dubrovačka Street, which used to be the heart of the Jewish quarter of Zemun and where the young and old trees continued to cast shadows full of foreboding and promise. Once I am on the street, I thought, I should go to the synagogue, though they knew nothing of Eleazar when the temple was built, because it is always possible, and sometimes inevitable, that what is anticipated turns up where one least expects it, be it exalted celestial light or shards of the pottery in which earthly darkness was once preserved. I passed by the cinema and the hotel, and at the corner, by the shoe store, I crossed into Zmaj Jovina Street. The tai chi poster hung in the same place by the large wooden gate, but with a different starting date for the beginner's course and with no circle and triangle. The yin and yang were real, as I established when I tried to scratch them. The gate was ajar, the passageway leading to the courtyard radiated a pleasant freshness, the bench and barberry bushes had not changed, and water was dripping from the pump, as if just before I got there someone had been filling a bucket or, perhaps, a washbasin, and had slipped away upon hearing my footsteps. I went over to the bench and sat down, but the muted murmur from the street and market did not stop, nor did the music start to play. I looked up and saw a patch of blue sky. The sky is the same, I thought, even if everything else has changed. I closed my eyes, perked my ears like a rabbit, stopped breathing. Nothing helped. I squeezed my eyes shut even more tightly, breathed the air in deeply, slowly re-leased the breath, then breathed in again. I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes a broom was in my face. The broom was held by a small, scrawny woman, wizened face, no teeth. Get going, you bum, she said, scram. What did you think? she shrieked, and brandished the broom, that this is a city park and any old bum can sleep here? I shoved the broom out of my face, but that further infuriated her, so she kicked me. I got up and turned to go down the passageway and she swung the broom and smacked me on the behind. In a story by Kharms, I thought, she would have flown out a window, but I wasn't in a Kharms story, I was in Zemun, and as her voice rang after me down the cool passageway, I tried to understand what had happened. I didn't ask myself why the old woman with the broom was there, but why the place no longer radiated its magic. What had changed, the place or me? Maybe nothing, said Marko, maybe it just wasn't a good day for the harmony of the spheres. But that old woman, I asked, what are we to do with her, especially if she appeared from the left side? Do you actually believe, grinned Marko, that the old woman is a witch? She had a broom, I said. The broom means nothing, countered Marko, and besides, why would only old women be witches, don't you think that's prejudice? I said nothing. Why an old woman? Marko went on. Why not the young woman who was slapped? I'd much rather deal with a young witch than with some old hag. We hadn't been spending much time together of late, at least not the way we used to, and that came across in Marko's edginess, in his readiness to lock horns with me, to keep a certain distance. I didn't know what to do about it. I was spending more time with Jaša Alkalaj; I was staying up late, reading an assortment of Kabbalistic books from his library; I was able to think of little else. Worst of all, I told Marko, nothing had proved to me that I was on the right path or that I was on any path at all. Maybe, I said, I am just kicking around in the dust. When I repeated this to Jaša Alkalaj, he raised his index finger and said, If there is a signpost to be found, it is not along a path, but in the heart. Remember that, he added, and for the next few days I kept saying "A signpost in the heart" as a sort of mantra. Nothing happened. I still didn't know whether I was on the right path or not; I still couldn't explain why nothing had happened when I last sat on the bench in the courtyard at Zmaj Jovina Street; and I was still groping in the dark. After my retreat from the old woman I again walked the streets that led from the quay to the Harbormaster's, carefully inspecting the entranceways to the buildings and looking under each piece of litter I came across, but nowhere did I find any trace of the geometric symbol, nowhere was there a hint that would lead me to the woman who'd been slapped. I was running late again with my piece for