He was a short man, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped he had unruly flaxen hair and watery blue eyes, thin lips, a narrow chin and a short Slavic nose. His two days of lounging in bed were over, and that morning Yasha rose with the sun. In Lublin they said that if Yasha had chosen crime, no one’s house would be safe. He had worked over it for months, and Yasha had picked it with a shoemaker’s awl. Abraham Leibush, the locksmith, had wagered five rubles he could make a lock that Yasha could not open. He could walk a tightrope, skate on a wire, climb walls, open any lock. A reckless man! To win a bet, he had once spent a whole night in the cemetery. It was risky to debate with him since he was no fool, knew how to read Russian and Polish, and was even well-informed on Jewish matters. To the earnest moralists who attempted to get him to mend his ways, he would always answer: ‘When were you in heaven, and what did God look like?’

Yasha spent his Sabbath talking and smoking cigarettes among musicians. Esther, on the other hand, wore the customary kerchief and kept a kosher kitchen she observed the Sabbath and all the laws. He wore no beard and went to synagogue only on Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur that is, if he happened to be in Lublin at the time. Like every other magician, Yasha was held in small esteem by the community. In her younger days she had tried all sorts of remedies for barrenness, but now it was too late – she was nearly forty. In every other way she was a good wife she knew how to knit, sew a wedding gown, bake gingerbread and tarts, tear out the pip of a chicken, apply a cupping-glass or leeches, even bleed a patient.

Yasha, although a magician, was considered rich he owned a house and, with it, barns, silos, stables, a hay loft, a courtyard having two apple trees, even a garden where Esther grew her own vegetables. He need not have bothered with such instructions she always remembered to draw water from the well for Kara and Shiva, their brace of gray mares, or, as Yasha had nicknamed them, Dust and Ashes. The parrot shrieked Yoktan, the monkey, chattered the canaries whistled and trilled, but Yasha, disregarding them, merely reminded Esther to water the horses. His wife, Esther, would bring him cookies, milk, a dish of groats. He always spent a day or two in bed after returning from a trip his weariness required the indulgence of continual sleep. That morning Yasha Mazur, or the Magician of Lublin as he was known everywhere but in his home town, awoke early.

The magician of lublin book