“I still haven’t finished writing the report for Your Excellency,” Pikulski blurts. “The Zohar is also a commentary, another kind of commentary, I would say, mystical, not having to do with the law, but rather with questions of how the world came into being, of God Himself . . .”
“Blasphemies,” says the bishop. “Let’s get back to work.”
But Father Pikulski is still standing there. He’s some ten years younger than the bishop, maybe more, but he looks quite aged. It must be because he’s so thin, thinks the bishop.
“It’s a good thing Your Excellency sent to Lwów for me,” Father Pikulski says. “I am at Your Excellency’s disposition, and I don’t think Your Excellency would find another soul better versed in Jews than I am, or in this Jewish heresy.”
Having said this, Father Pikulski flushes, clears his throat, and lowers his head. He worries he may have gone too far, and thereby committed the sin of pride.
The bishop doesn’t notice Father Pikulski’s embarrassment. He is wondering why he is so cold, as though his blood were not reaching his body’s extremities, as though it were flowing too slowly—but why would his blood have become so reluctant?
The bishop has had enough problems with the local Jews. What an infernal tribe, insidious and insistent—whenever you throw them out, they come slinking back around the edges, so there’s nothing you can do about them short of something decisive, irreversible. Nothing else helps.
Had the bishop himself not brought about the royal decree against the Jews in the eighth year of performing his office, that is, Anno Domini 1748? He had so pestered the king about it, sending letters and filing petition after petition until at last the king had issued his edict: All the Jews of Kamieniec would have to leave within twenty-four hours. Their homes would go to the town, and their school would be razed. The Armenian merchants played their part in it, for the Jews had raised their ire by undercutting them on prices and trading in an unofficial, even illicit manner. The Armenians repaid the bishop handsomely. But the problem did not go away. Thrown out of Kamieniec, the Jews moved to Karvasary and Zinkowcy, immediately violating the restriction on them settling closer than three miles from town, and yet no one seemed to care to do a thing about it, and the authorities turned a blind eye. They would still come into town each day, so as to do at least a little bit of business. They’d send their women. Worse, their customers began to follow them out past Smotrycz to Zinkowcy, where they created an illegal market that diminished the size of the Kamieniec market. More complaints were lodged against them, not least that Jewesses from Karvasary were brought in to make those bagels of theirs, although this, too, was prohibited. Why do I have to be the one to handle all of this? the bishop thinks.
“They say the laws of the Torah no longer apply to them,” Father Pikulski goes on. “And that the form of Judaism based on the Talmud is a religion of deception. There can be no more talk of a Messiah to come—the Jews have been waiting in vain for the Messiah . . . They also say that God exists in three parts, and that this God lived on earth in human form.”
“Well, of course. That they’re right about.” The bishop perks up. “The Messiah won’t come now because he already came. But you’re not going to tell me, my good man, that they believe in Jesus Christ.” The bishop crosses himself. “Now give me that letter from those crazy people.”
He looks over the document as though expecting something special: seals, watermarks . . .
“Do they know Latin?” says the bishop suspiciously, reading the letter these Contra-Talmudists have submitted to him, which is unquestionably written in a learned hand. “Who writes for them?”
“They say it is a man named Kossakowski, but from which Kossakowskis he comes, I know not. I do have it on good authority that they are paying him quite well.”
Of Father Chmielowski’s defense of his good name before the bishop
Father Chmielowski rushes up to the bishop, delicately kisses his hand; the bishop, meanwhile, raises his eyes to the heavens—whether in a blessing for this new arrival or a gesture of boredom, it would be difficult to say. Pikulski also greets the priest—effusively, for him—by bowing low and extending his hand to shake Father Chmielowski’s briefly. The old priest—ill-shaven, white-haired, wearing a ragged cassock (appallingly, some of the buttons are missing), and carrying an old bag that has lost its strap so he has to hold it under his arm—smiles broadly.
“I hear you’re staying with His Excellency for good,” he says congenially, but evidently Pikulski detects some reproof in this, for his face turns red again.
The vicar forane launches into his supplication right away. He does so boldly since he knows the bishop well, from when the bishop was just an ordinary priest.
“Your Excellency, I did not come here to pester. I came to ask for your brotherly counsel. What is to be done?” he opens dramatically.
From his bag, he pulls out a package of sorts, wrapped in a grubby linen cloth, and sets it down in front of him, keeping his hands on it as he explains his business.
The issue goes back many years, to when the vicar forane was still preceptor for the magnate’s son on the estate of Joseph Jabłonowski. In his free moments, he had been given license to make use of the castle’s library. He would go there often, whenever his charge was otherwise occupied, and he spent every spare instant he had reading in that font of good knowledge. Even back then he was starting to take notes and copy out whole passages from books, and what with his terrific memory, he also managed to retain a lot.
Now, as yet another edition of his book has been printed—Father Chmielowski jabs at the package with his forefinger—this ancient case has reared its ugly head again: he is accused of having stolen both the idea and a number of the facts and interpretations from a manuscript by Prince Jabłonowski, which supposedly had lain for all to see on the table in the library, where the priest could easily have cribbed from it at will.
The priest falls silent for a moment, unable to catch his breath, while the bishop, alarmed by his fervor, leans toward him over the desk and glances uneasily at the package, trying to remember “this ancient case.”
“How could I have cribbed?” exclaims the vicar forane. “What does ‘cribbed’ even mean? My entire project is a thesaurus stultitiae—a collection of foolish little things! I gathered all of the knowledge of mankind in my volumes—so how would I not have borrowed from other sources? How would I not have perused? Aristotle’s wisdom or Sigebert’s chronicles or Saint Augustine’s holy works cannot belong to any one person! Even if he is a magnate, and his holdings include vast treasures, still, knowledge does not belong to him, and it cannot be stamped or imprinted or staked off like a field! As though he doesn’t have enough already, he has to ruin the one thing I do have—my good name and the reader’s esteem. When, omni modo crescendi neglecto, with great effort I brought the work to completion, now he wants to destroy its reception with such libel? Dicit: Fur es! That I would have stolen his idea! How innovative of an idea is it to write down a few interesting things? Whatever curiosis I have found wherever, I have sine invidia, with no jealousy whatsoever, brought it out onto the stage of my Athens. And what is wrong with that? Anyone could have had the same idea. Just show me where!”
Here the vicar forane in a single movement liberates the tome from its packaging and holds this fresh edition of New Athens up to the bishop’s eyes. The pungent smell of printer’s ink assaults their nostrils.
“This is the fourth edition, is it not?” Bishop Dembowski says, trying to calm him down.
“Well, exactly! People read this more frequently than you might think, My Dearest Excellency. In many noble houses, and amongst certain of the townspeople, this book sits in the living room, and persons young and old alike will reach for it, and bit by bit, nolens volens, they soak up information on the world.”
At this Bishop Dembowski falls deep into thought; wisdom, after all, is merely the ability to mete out judgments.
“Perhaps the
allegations are unwarranted, but the person making them is a highly respectable man,” he says, though a moment later he adds, “Although he is quarrelsome and embittered. What am I to do?”
Father Chmielowski would like the Church’s support for his book. Especially since he is, after all, one of its officers. He stands bravely in the ranks of the faithful and works for the good of the Church, not caring for his own advantage. He reminds the bishop that the Commonwealth is a destitute country when it comes to books. Apparently there are as many as six hundred thousand nobles in it, while a paltry three hundred titles are published every year, leaving the elites to enrich their minds how, exactly? Peasants cannot read, by definition, such is their lot that books are irrelevant to them. The Jews have their own—most of them don’t know Latin. For a moment he is silent, and then, staring at the threads on his cassock that once held buttons, he says:
“Your Excellency, you promised two years ago that you would make a contribution to this publication. My Athens is a treasure trove of information that everyone must have.”
The priest does not want to say it, lest the bishop suspect him of pride, but he would be delighted to see the book in every landed estate, read by everyone, for that is how he has been writing it: for everyone. Why could women not sit down with it? Some of its pages would even be suitable for children . . . although not just any pages, he mentally notes.
The bishop clears his throat and leans back a bit, so Father Chmielowski adds, in a quieter, slightly less fervent voice:
“But nothing came of that. I paid for everything myself, giving the Jesuit printers all of the money I had set aside for my old age.”
The bishop thinks that he must somehow extricate himself from the absurd demands of this old acquaintance. No money—where would he get it?—and no public backing. The bishop hasn’t even read this book, and he doesn’t particularly like Chmielowski. He is too disorganized to be a good writer, and he certainly doesn’t strike the bishop as a wise man. And if they are talking of aid, it ought to be to the Church, not from it.
“Father, you live by your pen, so use it to defend yourself,” he says. “Write your explication, put your arguments down in some sort of manifesto.” He sees that the priest’s face is growing longer and sadder, and, pitying the old man, he quickly adds in a softer tone, “I’ll support you among the Jesuits, but don’t advertise it publicly.”
The priest obviously did not expect this sort of reception, but before he can say more, a secretary who looks like an overgrown rodent appears in the doorway, and so Chmielowski just picks up his package and leaves. He tries to exit slowly and with dignity so no one can tell how deeply disappointed he is.
Roshko takes him home, shrouded in furs. The snow is up to the roofs of the thatched cottages, and the sleigh glides lightly, as though they were flying. The sun reflects off every snowflake, blinding the priest. Just before they reach Rohatyn a cavalcade of sleighs and sleds emerges from that brightness, bearing many Jews, then noisily vanishes into the blinding white. The priest does not yet know that a long-awaited letter has arrived for him at home.
What Elżbieta Drużbacka writes to Father Chmielowski in February of 1756 from Rzemień on the Wisłoka
I would like to write to you, my dear friend, with greater frequency, but with my daughter in childbed, all the administration of the estate has fallen onto little old me, my son-in-law being on the road at present, a journey that has lengthened in duration by more than a month on account of the terrible snows, which have made a portion of the great highway completely impassable, while the rivers have all overflowed, isolating a good many settlements completely.
From early morning on I am up and running around—cowsheds, pigsties, henhouses, making preserves out of whatever the servants have brought in; from dawn, all the effort it takes to obtain any dairy, lumps of cheese for soup, cheese pancakes and quark, smoked meat, fattened poultry, lard, flour, kasha, bread, mushrooms, dried fruits, confections fried in honey, wax and tallow for candles, oils for the lamps and for fasting days, wool, yarn, leather for shoes, sheepskins for coats. In order for bread to make it to the breakfast table, a million things must happen first, and I must personally ensure they happen, often in cooperation with many other people, most of them women. Women are the ones who operate the querns, the spinning wheels, the looms. It is on their watch that the smokehouses smoke, that dough rises in the kneading troughs, bread bakes in the ovens, candles are pressed into shape, herbs are dried for home pharmacies, lard is salted, vodka is distilled and spiced, beer is brewed, meads fermented, stores placed in the larders and the granaries. For three of any home’s quoins rest upon the woman of the house, and the fourth upon God.
I have not written a single line in months, and I would be glad at this point, to tell you the truth, to take a little rest from this old mill. I have two daughters, as you know, and one of them has so taken to giving birth that she has now produced a fourth little girl. Things are going well for her, she has a good husband with a good career, and it is obvious that they are very close. What more could a person want than such human closeness?
I try to look upon everything with good humor, tho’ there are many things awry. Why is it, for instance, that some have such an excess in life, while others such a lack? And not only of material goods, but also of activities, time, luck, or health. If only everything could be divided evenly . . .
I have already asked Countess Denhoff once to help me sell my wine, for I make good wine, tho’ not from grapes, but rather out of berries, or, perhaps most of all, wild rose. It is strong, and the fragrance and flavor of my wine are widely praised. I will send you, too, dear friend, some bottles.
As I write, the doors have crashed open, and the little girls are racing in, chasing Firlejka, who came inside with muddied paws that need to be wiped off, but the dog keeps escaping between the legs of the tables and chairs and everywhere leaves filthy tracks, mud seals, as it were. Whenever I look at her, at this crumb of God’s creation, I think of you, my dear friend. How are you, how is your health, and—above all—how is your great work going? The girls squeal and holler, the dog doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about, and when the youngest falls down on the floor, the dog, thinking it’s a game, eagerly begins to grab her and shake her by the dress. Oh, there is a great laundering in store.
Kindly include, in your letter to me, some interesting little tales, that I might shine in society when at last I return to it. In May I will be going to the Jabłonowskis’ again, at their invitation . . .
Father Chmielowski to Elżbieta Drużbacka
It was so generous of You to send Your Wine, and I truly love the Taste of it. I drink it in the Evenings, when my Eyes have tired and are no longer capable of working, but what I can do, and with great Pleasure, is look into the Fire and sip Your Wine. I thank You for it from the very Bottom of my Heart, just as I do for Your Books of Poetry.
Of all of Your Poems I like best the one that praises the Forests and a Life of Solitude, on which Point I completely agree. I leave aside the Poems on Love, for such Things I neither understand nor have the Time for, and in any Event, it would hardly be befitting of my spiritual Station to attend to Vanities of this Kind. All this mortal Loving is valued too highly, and it sometimes seems to me that when People do attend to it, what they really mean is Something else, that this “Love” of which they speak is some kind of Metaphor, the which I simply cannot grasp. Perhaps only Women have access to it, or maybe Men with more feminine Traits. Is the Meaning Caritas, or rather Agape?
I admire the Spontaneity of Your Poetry, which seems to flow like Beer from a Tap. Where does all that fit within You? And how are You able to just invent all of those beautiful Sentences and Notions? I see, dear Friend, that my Work is of an altogether different Nature. I invent Nothing, offering instead the quinta Essentia of several hundred Authors whom I have read from Cover to Cover.
You, my Friend, are completely free in what You write, while I must stand on
the Foundations of that which has already been written. You draw from the Imagination and the Heart, scrupulously reach into Your Feelings and Your Fantasies as tho’ into a Purse, and scatter gold Coins all around You, where they gleam, luring the Masses. I contribute Nothing of my own, merely citing and compiling. I mark my Sources very carefully, which is why I place throughout a sort of “Teste,” which advises the Reader to go and see for himself in the Mother Book, to note how Information weaves together, gathering across the Centuries. In this Manner, when we quote and cite our Sources, we build an Edifice of Knowledge, and we enable that Knowledge to proliferate as I do my Vegetables or Apple Trees. Quoting is like grafting a Tree; citing, indicating a grafted Quote’s Source, like sowing Seeds. Consequently we need not fear Fires in Libraries, a Swedish Deluge, or the Uprisings of a Khmelnytsky. Every Book is a Graft of new Information. Knowledge should be useful and readily available. Everyone should have at least the Rudiments of every indispensable Subject—Medicine, Geography, Natural Magic—and they ought to know a Smattering of Facts about foreign Religions and Nations. One must obtain the guiding Principles and have them settled in one’s Head, for et quo Modo possum intelligere, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi? And instead of having to pore over Volume after Volume, having to purchase whole Libraries, the Reader, thanks to my Work, has it all without multa Scienda.
I often stop to wonder how to encapsulate it, how to handle such Vastness? Whether to just choose a few Passages and translate as faithfully as possible or to summarize the Authors’ Arguments and simply indicate where they have been taken from, so that the more curious Reader might track them down, if he is able to locate the Volume in Question in some Collection.
The Books of Jacob Page 33
