The Twisted Path of the Hidden Saint: An Occult Tale of the Baal Shem Tov by Bassman Barak A

Author:Bassman, Barak A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Telemachus Press, LLC
Published: 2023-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

VII. When Dreams Come True

One day I was summoned to the manor house of the local nobleman, as His Lordship and his steward wished to investigate the profitability of the distilleries and taverns on the estate. I was shown into the study, and the three of us sat around a fine wooden desk for the next several hours reviewing ledgers of sales and expenses and discussing whether there were perhaps other ways to make even more profit. The Pan seemed unusually obsessed that day with money—where was it hiding, where could it be found, from whom could it be squeezed. And whatever I suggested was never enough—always he had to have more, so much more.

Eventually, the Pan grew weary of this discussion and retired for a nap, leaving me alone with the steward of the estate. This steward was a good man—he was also a nobleman by birth, but he had fallen on hard times, and so now he was managing his cousin’s lands. I asked the steward: Why was His Lordship suddenly so worried about the profits from his estate? Wasn’t I already paying him a hefty fee for the leasehold rights that I held?

The steward sighed, leaned in close to me, and then said in a hushed voice, almost a whisper: After living alone as a widower for many years, the Pan has married again. But his bride . . . She was not born from any of the great noble families of Poland that had been seeking a marriage alliance with His Lordship. He had been resident in Warsaw, attending to his interests at the royal court, when a mysterious woman began to sit every day in the same café that he often frequented. She was beautiful and clearly high born—her every gesture was elegance itself and her French was impeccable—but no one knew her family or from whence she hailed. There were rumors that she was a Portuguese countess driven into exile after being betrayed to the Inquisition. But then others swore they had seen her dance at balls in Budapest or Moscow.

Whoever she was, the Pan fell madly in love with her. He would spend all day sitting in that café, waiting, hoping, to see her from afar. And when she did come, always alone, always with a book in hand, he stared at her with such pitiful longing that he made a humiliating spectacle of himself—like a stupid boy infatuated with the first pretty girl he had ever seen.

Every once in a while, she would stare back at him and smile coquettishly. She seemed to do just enough to keep his hopes alive, but went no further—at least in the beginning.

The Pan ordered his valet to find out who she was and where she lived. But no one in Warsaw knew her or could say anything reliable about her past or her affairs. The valet tried several times to follow her from the café back to her lodgings, but he became lost every time—somehow, she always slipped unseen around a corner or through an alleyway.

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