The Well were introduced to the material about the Zemun Jews, and, as I had seen for myself, she said, the manuscript was still seeking its final form. As if made of sand, I said. It makes more sense to say, Margareta continued, that the original manuscript functions like the computer programs of today, and that inside the program is a core, the heart of the program, which can be copied and introduced to any other text, because every text, actually every language, is, in fact, a computer program, which, furnished with the right knowledge, can be programmed any way one wants. Verber, it seems, was well on the way to figuring how the core fragment functioned, but death caught up with him and left us with no answer. The translation of the manuscript, or of one of the versions of the manuscript that was forever in flux, was completed, and then, though this is never spoken of, it has been replaced by a skillfully executed copy, which is without the lifegiving powers, and that copy is being preserved at the Jewish Historical Museum, where they believe they have the complete and unaltered legacy of Solomon Alfandari and Pavle Salom. I stared at her. That explained why in my manuscript I could never find what I'd been reading earlier, and why the pages changed their content, or the content shifted pages, either way, and I understood something else, which I blurted out: You took it, I said. I prefer to say I borrowed it, replied Margareta, and I will certainly put it back when we no longer need it. We? I asked. Who are we? That's the next part of the story, answered Margareta, but there's no point in hurrying, there is a sequence that can't be abbreviated, a path that must be followed, even as it takes detours. I can be impatient, I confess, but I can also be obedient, and though all sorts of questions were seething inside me, I said nothing. If I must be silent, I said, silent I will be. In that case, Margareta told me, she'd read me a part of the translation of the text, which, as she had mentioned, began with the words The Well, words that, it bears saying, no matter what changes appeared in the text, always were first. It is not entirely clear to me what they mean, but perhaps, she said, the initial mechanism is concealed in those words, a given sequence of letters or sounds that set in motion what we have described as the program that changes the text. She looked me straight in the eyes, the way a teacher does who wants to be sure that the student is following what he's being told, and tries to catch in his eyes the spark of comprehension or the fog of confusion. Margareta apparently espied the spark because she lifted the page, angling it so that more light fell on it, cleared her throat, and began to read: The Well shines even in the darkest darkness as if it is the most exalted palace in the sky, and mine eyes have seen nothing more beautiful. The year is 5500, the month of Tammuz, and Belgrade is once again in Ottoman hands. Our brothers and our sisters have been crossing the river these last months, leaving behind what could have been carried, let alone what could not have been carried but was for honest resale, and though most of them made their way to Novi Sad or Osijek, there were some who thought that here, in Zemun, was the best possible place to settle, and meanwhile both Ottoman Jews and Habsburg Jews hoped to return to Belgrade, the former because that was where they were from, they were citizens of that empire and believed the troubles would blow over and they would return to their land and property, while the latter, who had spent no more than ten years there, longed to go back, for they had relished the charm of the place of which many said that its position, overlooking the joining of the two broad rivers, made it unique in all the world. Everyone has the right to feel as he wants, I will contest this with no one, but here, in Zemun, on the Danube shores, the serenity is the greater, and besides, as I said, the Well is here. There will be those who will want to know at once how to gain access to the Well, does one descend into it or ascend to it, and although I will elaborate on this later, I will now remark that the path to the Well is long and arduous, much like the Bosnian mountain passes along which it is better not to walk at night, not for fear of robbers, but because of the ravines that beckon with a dark silence or a slippery path. And no matter what the path is like, it is the one and the only path, and whoever sets foot upon it, alone or with others, will find the return difficult, in other words he must be ready for temptation and exertion, for the constant doubt that will assail him like the leeches in marsh water until he arrives at the dark forest and finds the path leading to the Well. Then everything will be returned to him a hundredfold, and both earthly and heavenly treasures will be his to a degree he could never have imagined, nor ever in his dreams could they have been his. I should hasten to add that I know some who will hold this against me, because there are always those who demand a secrecy greater than the one the Lord, may he be blessed, gave us as his legacy, but it seems to me that no secret must remain unuttered in a time of calamity, and so the secret of the Well must be disclosed when I see that once again, as so many times before, our brothers and our sisters trudge down the long dusty road of exile. Even if this exile will never end, the moment has come for us to ready ourselves for far worse things to come, things that even history will fall silent when faced with, and if history falls silent, imagine what people will do, hence we must have our defenses close at hand, and from whom better to learn the skill of defense than from our ancestors and teachers, those who themselves tasted the woes of exile and the insatiable appetites of the executioner. The Well is a marvelous thing, but only the select may penetrate it, a chosen few in each generation, especially those generations that have grown up in wartime and therefore scatter more quickly than in peacetime. This is why I feel it is important, though it will not be easy, to set forth the skills needed to take up arms of defense at times when our brothers and sisters have no hope of defense from any other quarter, and must act to save their own lives. I long studied this secret skill, I spent many hours both day and night poring over ancient texts, combining letters and numbers, I repeated the name of the Lord, may it be blessed, in a hundred ways, was joined and became separate, became light and became dark, and all with the purpose of leaving the future generations a mast on which they could unfurl the sail of defiance, even as the enemy gloats in the belief that our vessel is sinking. It will never sink, I assure you. I have seen the future, and perhaps it is better not to speak of it, but no matter how far I ventured forward in time, I always found evidence that our brothers and sisters were out there, that we no longer had to tremble in fear that the Lord, may he be blessed, would lose his people. And now, let me set forth the sequence of topics about which I desire to write. I say desire only because I am no longer of sound health, I may fall silent before I say and write it all, so first I will set it out in the most basic of outlines, in the most summary of forms, and afterward, should nothing prevent me from doing so, a detailed explanation will follow, which is in keeping with the instruction given to Rabbi Josef Tajtacak by his teacher, when the teacher told the rabbi that writing in brief, a subject swiftly plumbed, represents the pinnacle of writing, such as what the celestial beings practice, while writing in longer fragments is a trustworthy sign of a text's inferiority. By the way, said Margareta, this summary of his runs on for more than a hundred pages, and who knows, had he ever managed to write out the fuller explanation, how long that book would have been. Besides, she said, many pages in that part are given over to descriptions of the different methods for attaining higher knowledge, and there are all sorts of things here: meditations, exhaustion by fasting and lack of sleep, mathematical exercises, language games and riddles, and it is possible that the translation is not fully accurate, though the substance of it is unquestionably preserved. For instance, said Margareta, and lifted the next sheet of paper, this here describes how he meditated without interruption for several days and nights and practiced permutations of Hebrew letters, until combinations of God's name began to spring from him, entirely of their own accord, and then, he writes, the letters began to resemble strange, dark expanses, like ravines in vile mountains: and suddenly I found myself there among them, alone, and just when I thought that I was lost and that I would never again return to my world, I spied a light in the distance, flickering and mobile like a butterfly, and as a butterfly hovers over a flower, attracted by its sweetness, that was how that light attracted me and hovered over me, over my soul open to a sign of heavenly embrace. I felt as if the light were pouring into me, and when I looked at my body, I saw that it was radiant, and just as that meandering light of a moment before had illumined me, now I shone on all objects, while my hand kept writing out new combinations of the supreme name of its own volition, and my lips moved, enunciating words that appeared before me as in writing on the wall, each word more beautiful than the one before it, though they all possessed a certain terror, from which, later, when it all ended, my teeth chattered. All this showed that, as in any teaching, there must be a certain sequence, just as is written in