I heard it, Hananiah answered.
What do you think, Hananiah? went on the wagoner. Who is the robber they hanged?
It’s my opinion as well, said Hananiah, that the fellow can have been nobody but Zusha.
The sun sank, sank again, and then sank once more. The women dropped their knitting needles, and wiped the tears from their eyes. Hananiah took out his kerchief and knotted it for a sign. In silence they rolled along the riverbank until they arrived at Lipkani, where they halted. From Lipkani they made their way towards Radiaitz, where the wagoner took off the horses’ bells so that robbers and highwaymen might not hear them jingling. From there they made their way to Shtepenasht, a small town on the Basha river not far from the river Pruth. The folks of Shtepenasht are heavy in flesh and light in Torah; a fist-sized bite of food to them is like a mere olive-sized bite of food for others.
From Shtepenasht they made their way to Jassy, where they arrived at dusk on the Sabbath eve. There are twenty-one large synagogues in Jassy, apart from one hundred and twenty Houses of Study and small synagogues and prayer rooms; yet when they came to Jassy, they did not pray in a single one of them but stayed at their inn and constituted a prayer quorum for themselves, as the Sabbath had begun ere they had time to change their clothes.
But next day they hastened to the Great Synagogue, dressed in their Sabbath clothing and wearing their prayer shawls. By the time they reached the synagogue the congregation was already deep in prayer, since the folk of Jassy start early and leave early. Anyone who has never seen Jassy at her ease never saw a contented city in his life. More than twenty thousand Jews lived there, eating, drinking, rejoicing, and enjoying life. Among them, indeed, were some for whom the eating of cookies in the shape of Haman’s ears at Purim was more important than eating matzah at Passover. The holy men of the age labored greatly to make them stand erect instead of wallowing in the dust.
In brief, our men of good heart arrived in the midst of the prayers at a time when no man greets another. They stood where they were and nobody paid any attention to them. But when the time came to read the Torah, the sexton summoned them to the reading. What was more, the sexton summoned each one of them by his own name and the name of his father — except for Hananiah, whom he did not summon. It is the general custom that when a man comes to a place where he is not known and the warden wishes to summon him to the Torah, the man is asked for his name and the name of his father and then summoned; but this fellow summoned them without first asking any questions. If he was not a prophet, he was an angel or more than an angel; since even an angel has to ask, as we find in the case of Jacob, whom the angel asked, ‘What is thy name?’
After the prayer was ended, the sexton arranged a fine repast in their honor, and while they sat together he asked each one of them about his affairs. They were astonished, for he told them everything that went on in their homes and their town. Yet from the way he ate and drank there was no sign that he was on a high spiritual level.
But once the wine went in, his secret came out.
Don’t you recognize me? he asked them.
We have not the honor, they answered.
Then he said, Do you remember Yoshke Cossack, who once sold himself to the king’s army for a skullcap full of money?
We remember, they replied, that they used to feed him on all kinds of dainties. If he wanted raisins and currants, they gave them to him. If he asked for Hungarian wine, he received it. If he wanted a bed with pillows and cushions, they had one prepared for him. When they took him off to serve the king, he asked for his pay to be doubled and they doubled it; and then, after all that, he ran away and deserted.
Would you suppose, said he to them, that he ran away to the Garden of Eden?
His actions, they responded, were not such as to indicate that there would be any place prepared for him in the Garden of Eden.
Well, said he, if you want to see him, just lift up your eyes and take a look at me. So then they stared at him and sure enough they recognized him.
There was another great marvel which our men of good heart saw in Jassy. This was a man with hair growing from the palm of his hand. On one occasion when folk had been talking of the coming of the Messiah, he held out his hand and said, There is as much chance for the Messiah to come as there is for hair to grow on the palm of my hand. Before he even had a chance to drop his hand to his side, there the hair was. He always wore a bandage around that hand and would take it off only to prove that we must never despair of the Redemption. Of course, the wiseacres who know everything had already tried pulling out the hair, for, they said, he must have it fixed on with paste; but by the next day the hair would have grown again.
On the day after the Sabbath they left Jassy and arrived at Vaslavi, a town on the river Vasli, which joins the river Barlad. In that town there is a great market for honey and wax, from which five hundred householders make a comfortable living. They spent the night there and next morning proceeded to the Holy Congregation of Barlad, so called after the river running through its midst. In this town there are two graveyards, one new, and the other old, in which people are no longer buried. It stands in the middle of the town and in it are the graves of martyrs killed for the sanctification of the Name; graves that are black as soot and face the east. They spent one night there and in the morning made their way to Tikotsh, a large town containing between five and six prayer quorums. There they spent a night and went on next morning to Avitshi, whence they journeyed to a large town called Galatz on the river Danube, where you take ship for the Black Sea, which the ships must cross in order to reach Stambul.
All the time that our comrades were journeying through this country, the wagons followed one another through villages surrounded by meadows and vineyards and cucumber fields; flocks of sheep were scattered over the whole countryside, grazing in the meadows and drinking from the water troughs next to the wells; and shepherds sat piping pleasant tunes to them, tunes that were sweet and sad and sounded like the tunes that are sung in the House of Prayer on Yom Kippur. How do Gentiles who tend sheep merit such holy music? This was once explained by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov of blessed memory, who said that this people have suffered a great deal but never denied their God, and therefore they merit piping the very music that Israel, who are holy, sing on a holy day and in a holy place before the Holy One, blessed be he.
So the wagons went their way with the horses pacing ahead, neighing and with their tails raised; other horses which they could not see answered them from the meadows, at which they would twitch their ears and pause. Countless sheep went by, crowding and thrusting one against the other, with their wool all in curls; and a cloud of dust rose all around the sheep as they walked, while a little shepherd strode behind them with a whistle in his mouth, playing to himself. Tall hills rose above the ground, now to the east and now to the west. Water ran down from the hills and the hills themselves came together, as if they did not want to let the wagons pass. But the handiness and skill of the wagoner and of Hananiah, who drove their horses expertly, got them out of the narrow pass. They entered one town and left another, and wherever they arrived the men of good heart were received with great affection. Beds were made ready for them and tables were set with food and drink: with mamaliga floating in butter, and with sheep cheese, and with wine; and when they departed the town, the cantor would accompany them singing the Sabbath verse, ‘Happy in their departure.’
When our comrades arrived at Galatz, the party broke up. All the travelers awaited a ship which would take them to the Black Sea, while the wagoner went around looking for other wayfarers. The comrades sat in their inn and wrote letters to their brethren in Buczacz. They had much to write and they wrote much. This is the proper place to mention the good quill pens of the men of Galatz, which do not scratch or pierce the paper and do not splutter and scatter ink while writing; for since their geese are fat, the quills are soft.