The Gateway to Justice, where it stands that first the body must be purified of the sediment of filth, then the same must be done with the soul, from which all traces of anger and rage must be purged, which is of special importance, so the soul will be freed of all attachment, except to the Lord, may he be blessed, and all knowledge, no matter what learning it stems from, and then, when the body and soul are pure and empty, they should be isolated in an equally pure room, and pray and dedicate themselves to the moving of letters, in order to channel the thoughts in the right direction and to avoid any external interference that would divert them to a wrong path. Then, the Well will no longer be far off, but that does not mean that man dares to relax and neglect caution, for the path within is not the same as the path without, and he who wishes to leave, for whatever reason, must first prepare himself, because once he enters the Well, but is not prepared for the return, he will not be able to achieve that state. When coming back out of the Well a person returns to an impure world, among forces that will rend his garments woven of purity and draw him back into the struggle between good and evil, in which we all suffer for Adam's original sin, and he who comes back from the Well, no matter how long he stayed there, arrives weary and worn from the effort of concentration, and is therefore easy prey for all those demons who, leechlike, attach themselves to him and drain his blood until he collapses utterly and succumbs to their rule, though it is better not to write on that now, lest such horror dissuade those who are still unsure of the teachings and quake at the thought that they are slipping down a narrow path to an impassable gateway guarding the entrance to the Well. He is right, Margareta said, there is no greater obstacle than self-doubt. She looked at me as if she expected me to agree, but I said nothing. No matter how interesting the document that she was presenting to me might be, I could find no explanation in it for the many things I still didn't understand, and I was afraid, if she kept this up, that we'd never get there. Margareta leafed through a few more pages, took one in her left hand and one in her right, and then, after a moment of indecision, decided on the one in her right. The author, she said, used various methods to attain mystical insight, including weeping and fasting, and he noted down the many visions he had, and among them is one that we have taken to be the first and has served as the foundation for all we have built. I held my hand up to stop her and asked if she didn't think that it was high time she told me who the "they" or the "we" she kept invoking were, and could she not explain what this Well was all about. Soon, promised Margareta, although I didn't find this particularly convincing, as she continued to describe the vision. In short, it began with a description of waking up from "chaotic reality" with the help of a "slap with no hand," which, as at the time when I wrote the answer to the advertisement, reminded me of the Zen question about the sound of one hand clapping. I never mentioned this to Margareta, though I meant to, but I only thought of it now, when I can no longer reach her. During most of our lives we try to keep up with ourselves, but we are often no more than observers of what is happening to us, and then, while we sit in the shade of an oak or a pear tree, we regret the chances we have frittered away. I don't know why this is. If someone had asked me, I would have definitely arranged the world we live in differently. It is all so complex, as complex as the vast fabric of conspiracy that slowly emerged from behind what Margareta had said. Perhaps conspiracy is not the most apt word, but none other occurs to me. Margareta seemed to be taking her time deliberately with her answers to my questions. We circled around the Well the way a cat, one might say, circles around a dish of milk, except that the cat starts lapping up the milk at some point, while access to the Well, for us, or at least for me, was still a stretch. But I should hold to some sort of sequence, though I'm no longer sure of how valid certain road signs are. After the slap came the story of the migration of souls, in which the author of the document, using complicated proofs and mathematical calculations, claimed that he knew the pathway along which the soul of a famous Kabbalist from Safed, probably Yitzhak Luria, though he never says so explicitly, moved across the centuries, and when the author was penning his text, this soul was dwelling in the body of an ordinary water carrier. Invoking his vision, the author of the document remarked that the soul can always be found, as needed, in someone who recognizes the meaning of the slap. And were it to come to pass that this was needed, Margareta went on reading, then the hour would have come for everything else too, and that would be the time to make use of the weapon to protect our brothers and sisters just as the magnificent golem would protect them, which also implied that the bodies of select people would replace the forms of the letters and become, themselves, language, that the system of the Sephirot coincides with a part of the city, and, most important, there would be a joining of the King and his Queen, actually the Crown would descend into the Kingdom, so that the Lord, may he be blessed, would unite again with the Shekhinah. Then, and only then, will ingress to the Well appear, and they who enter will not regret it. After all this, I thought, I am where I started. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, as if I were getting ready to leave, yet I didn't. Margareta stopped reading and said that now I certainly understood how all the elements were interconnected, and then, feeling my doubts, she enumerated them: he in whom the soul of the ancient Kabbalist now dwelled recognized the slap; that way, others recognize him, and they start preparing incantations for the defense shield in a process by which letters are written out with bodies; the last words are created on the eve of Shabbat, hence on Friday evening, then they mark the system of the Sephirot in the part of the city, which thereby becomes an emanation of divine holiness, making it possible for the celestial King and his Queen to unite; this act then raises the defense shield and opens the door of the Well, which is at the very center of the Sephirot, and as long as the shield remains up, invisible to the ordinary eye, the entrance to the Well, which leads to the other world, remains open. And they who wish to leave, I said, can do so safely? Yes, Margareta said. Even now I wonder whether she really believed in it or whether hers was the gesture of a person who had in fact lost all hope. I could understand that, although I didn't believe that the political and social situation in the country was extreme enough to force members of one ethnic group to such a desperate act. Of course what someone from outside might not feel at all may be horrifying for someone seeing it from within. The horror of identity is that it can't be sloughed off the way a snake sheds its skin, and there is no dungeon worse than an identity that one doubts or that others have proclaimed to be bad or evil. I experienced this myself many times in the years of ethnic strife, facing the prejudices about Serbian identity, and I could only assume how that must have seemed from the perspective of being Jewish or of an identity that had permanently been branded as negative. Even so, it seemed highly unconvincing to me to have faith in Kabbalistic documents at the close of the twentieth century, especially considering the popularity the Kabbalah had gained in fashionable circles. On the other hand, I had to feel respect for those who brought their whole beings to this, investing a vast effort to unite the disparate elements into a whole that made sense. They got the idea for it, Margareta said, in the spring of 1992, when the Jewish refugees from Sarajevo arrived in Belgrade. That was when the younger generations of Jews understood for the first time that exile was in their genes, which led them to speed up their preparations for departure, while at the same time the lack of understanding and overt hostile feelings for the Jewish community began growing. The first letter arrived at that time, warning Jews, in poisonous though surprisingly calm language, to watch what they were doing. There were too many of you among us before, the letter said in closing, and now, with the scum arrived from Bosnia, there are many too many, and this means you should reduce your numbers yourselves, because if you don't, we will do it for you, and anything that upsets Serbian harmony will itself be upset. The letter was signed by the Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation. No one had ever heard of this organization, no one wanted to believe it existed. Margareta learned of the letter from her father, who was on boards and committees in the Jewish community, and that gave her the impetus to keep going. Meanwhile, the community redoubled its efforts to reduce the number of refugees in Belgrade, organizing their departure for Israel, Canada, and a number of European countries. The Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation wrote a second letter, in which they hailed the news that Jews were leaving Serbia, promising that those who stayed behind would be allowed to live in an orderly ghetto in Kosovo. The first explicitly anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the walls of Jewish buildings and cemeteries, tombstones were knocked over and desecrated, and soon thereafter the number of writings of that sort mushroomed in the press, as well as in books blaming the Jews for nearly all the evils of the world. She knew I knew most of this already, Margareta said, but she was giving me the full picture, because that way it would be easier to understand the details, even details that had not been mentioned, and I would definitely, she said, be able to understand how awkward this made everything, especially with what was going on: the war, inflation, political chaos, the isolation of the country, the plunge in the standard of living, the pervasive sense of insecurity. Of course I understood, I had no need to say so. Several concerned members of the Jewish community, she continued, were thinking about what the best solutions would be in such a situation, especially since they were disgruntled by the official position of the community, which did not support the current government, but were doing what they could to evade conflicts, believing this to be the best route to peaceful coexistence. The group of malcontents, including her, believed in a more aggressive handling of the issues, though she herself had been torn about choosing the most apt response, until she remembered the translated manuscript. She couldn't recall who it had been, though more likely she preferred not to disclose who was in her group, which was to her credit but a source of additional frustration for me. Margareta did not relent, she went right on talking about how someone, perhaps that same person, she said, or maybe someone else, noticed a series of similarities between one of the manuscript author's visions and the reality in which they found themselves. Seen in that light, the manuscript could suddenly be read as a concrete set of instructions about how to respond to the situation in which the community found itself, against its will. Meanwhile, as if they felt something was stirring, members of the Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation ratcheted up their campaign: more letters came in, some were published in the press, and the number of incidents that could be described as anti-Semitic also rose, though chances were that the incidents didn't all stem from the same group, which had inspired imitators among the right-wing organizations. The number of crimes leveled against members of the Jewish community soared, said Margareta, and though it was difficult to be sure that all were planned, it was alarming that apartment break-ins, pickpocketing in public transportation, fires in cellars and attics, smashed windows, and threats made over the phone grew radically from one day to the next, especially as all pertained to community members. This was no time for hesitation, said Margareta, and that was the position our group took, because we sensed that sooner or later we'd be facing an open clash. The Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation split around that time into several factions, just as the political parties had done in Serbia, as the result of inner power struggles and their inability to cobble together broadly acceptable platforms of action. The main branch abbreviated its name to the Army of Unity and Salvation and soon stopped making itself heard; the peace-loving part, called Salvation for All, extended a conciliatory hand, but no one believed that this reconciliation, even if it had been formally embraced, would have prevented the two extreme factions, the Patriots and the Eagle Avengers, from proceeding with their plans. Worst of all, said Margareta, no one was sure what their plans were. They went underground, they made no public statements, but they were recruiting new members. What with the situation in the country, there were more malcontents than one could count, all of them waiting for someone to tell them who was to blame. About that time, continued Margareta, there were rifts in her group too because some felt that there was no longer any point in waiting and testing fate, that they should strike the first blow without further ado, but the feeling also prevailed that violence was unacceptable and that they should focus on defense. Work accelerated on a definitive translation of the manuscript and preparations for what they called their action plan, not without headaches, because now all elements, including the slap, the mathematical calculations, the linguistic-physical structures, the migration of souls, and the revival of the union of the heavenly King and his Queen, all had to be brought into a harmonious whole, or, most important, into an effective whole, because if the plan were to founder, there would surely be no other chance. And so the entire plan was laid out, to be set in motion by the recognition of the slap, which would reveal the person within whom dwelled the soul of the ancient Kabbalist. And all along, I said, I was thinking it was the soul of the water carrier. Same thing, said Margareta, the water carrier quenches the thirst of the body and the Kabbalist quenches the thirst of the soul, but thirst is thir