Just beyond the city limits, they sit on the side of the road, as if resting after a difficult visit to a human settlement, as if shaking off its foul air, its garbage that sticks to their feet, the filth and noise of the masses. The itinerant merchants count the money they have made. They have laid aside their portable stalls—mostly empty now, the goods they held gone—although they keep an eye out for any scrap enthusiasts who might happen down the road. Oftentimes they’re Scots, men who come from their own far-off land to set up a shop they hang over their shoulders: beautifully woven silk ribbons, tortoiseshell combs, holy pictures, remedies for baldness, glass beads, mirrors in wooden frames. Their language is bizarre, and sometimes it is impossible to understand them, but the language of coins is universal.
Nearby rests the picture-maker—an old man with a long beard, wearing a woven hat with a broad brim. He has a wooden rack hung from leather straps, affixed with holy pictures. He has removed from his shoulders this heavy baggage and now feeds on what the peasants have paid him in—dense white cheese and damp rye that transforms into a dumpling in his mouth. A feast! He probably also has bottles of holy water in his leather bag, little pouches of the desert sand Jesus prayed over for forty days, among other wonders, the sight of which will widen his customers’ eyes. Moliwda remembers these things from his childhood.
On a daily basis, the picture man pretends to be a saintly person who just happened to become a seller of pictures. Then, as befits a saintly person, he raises his voice a little, so that it will be more like the voice of a priest, and he speaks in a singsong tone, as if reciting the Holy Scriptures, and from time to time he interjects Latin words, regardless of whether they make sense, since it impresses the peasants. The picture man wears a giant wooden cross around his neck, which weighs him down considerably; he has rested it against a tree and is airing out his footwraps on it now. He sells his pictures by first identifying one of the nicer houses in the village, then going there as if in a kind of trance, insisting that the picture itself has chosen this home, and even this particular wall, the one in this chamber—the sacred one. It is hard for a peasant to turn down a holy picture; he will take his hard-earned money out of its hiding place and hand it over.
Just a little farther on is the inn, crooked and small, sloppily whitewashed, but with a porch before its entrance and wooden boards resting on posts that serve as benches. The benches are occupied by old men who are too poor to go inside and order something to eat, so instead they sit and hope for alms from someone who has already satisfied his own hunger and now finds himself in a better mood, with a more sensitive heart than when he turned them down on his way in.
Moliwda gets off his horse, although he hasn’t traveled that far yet from Lublin. Immediately two old men rush up to him with laments on their lips. Moliwda gives them some tobacco and stays to smoke himself, and, enchanted, they thank him. He learns from them that they both come from the same village: it is hard for their families to maintain them, so every spring they set out to beg, not returning until winter. They have been joined by a half-blind old woman traveling alone to Częstochowa, she says, but if you take a closer look at her, you’ll see all kinds of little pouches of herbs under her apron, some sort of seeds strung on threads, and other medicaments. She must be a woman with considerable knowhow—she’d be able to stem blood flow, and help deliver children, but if you paid her enough, she could get rid of a pregnancy, too. She keeps quiet all these things she knows, which is no surprise. They recently burned a woman just like her at the stake in Greater Poland, and last year several were captured in Lublin.
Inside the inn, there are two former Turkish prisoners of war, supplied with Church testimonies that state they have just been released from captivity and order whoever meets them to be charitable toward their bearer, out of Christian sympathy for their ill fate. But the former captives hardly look like they have suffered. They’re both fat and jolly, especially now that the first round of vodka has started working on them, and they’re just about to order another. Those Turks must have taken pretty good care of them. The innkeeper, a Jewish widow, independent and impertinent, gives them a bowl of potatoes seasoned with onion fried in butter and can’t keep from asking questions, curious about what it was like where they were. Everything they say amazes her, sending her hands flying to her cheeks. Moliwda eats the same dish of potatoes, drinks some buttermilk, and purchases a pint of vodka for the road. When he does get back on the road, he sees some commotion right away—it’s the bear men, heading to Lublin; they always make a lot of noise so that as many people as possible crowd around them to view the humiliation of the dirty, and probably ill, animal. That sight—who knows why—gives the oglers a strange satisfaction. Now they’re poking the bear with a stick. That poor animal, thinks Moliwda, but he understands the joy it brings to the vagabonds: look at that, it’s so strong, but it’s worse off than I am. Cretinous vermin.
There are always a lot of loose women on such tracts, too, for when a girl is pretty and young, or even just young, men immediately seize on to her, and as soon as they have seized, the girls may as well already be practicing the oldest profession in the world. Some of them are fugitive noblewomen who gave birth to a child out of wedlock, the child of a peasant or farmhand at that, and then the shame for the family is so great that it is better to abandon the child and hope for the mercy of its relatives than to swallow this misfortune. And so the girls leave—their only other option being a convent—with the tacit permission of their offended and indignant family, from the larch manor into the black of night. And if they come to a river, a bridge, a ford, then they fall into the hands of the eternally intoxicated raftsmen, and from then on, every man will demand, for every service—a night at the inn, a lift somewhere—one and the same payment. That’s how easy it is to fall.
Moliwda would like to make use of their services, but he fears their diseases and their filth, and the lack of a proper enclosure. He’ll wait until he gets to Warsaw.
How Moliwda is made messenger in the service of a difficult cause
During his first few days in Warsaw, he’s stuck in the home of his brother, a priest, who’s helped him out a little with equipment and attire, despite the fact that his share of the parish purse is scant. After so many years, Moliwda’s brother feels like a stranger, as two-dimensional as a sheet of paper, scarcely even real. For two nights they drink together, trying to break through this unexpected awkwardness that has arisen between them over the course of these twenty-some years. Moliwda’s brother tells him stories of Warsaw life, but it is only stolen gossip. Soon he is drunk, and airing a grudge against Moliwda for leaving him behind with their strict uncle, griping that the priesthood isn’t really his vocation, that it’s no good living on your own like this, that every time he enters the church it seems too big to him. Moliwda claps his brother on the back with the same sympathy he might have for a total stranger he met in some tavern.
Now he tries to arrange to see Branicki, but Branicki is always away, always on some hunting trip. He pleads his way into a meeting with Bishop Załuski, and tries to court the Princess Jabłonowska, who happens to be in the capital. He tries, too, to discover the whereabouts of his friends from twenty-five years ago, but it isn’t easy. And so he spends his evenings with his brother; there’s not much to talk about with someone you haven’t seen in that long; he is a stranger, obsessed with his priestly career, weak, and vain. In fact, everyone in Warsaw strikes Moliwda as self-obsessed and vain. Everyone here pretends to be something they’re not. The very city tries to pass itself off as something else, somewhere more populated, more extensive, prettier, when in fact it’s just a plain old dump with muddy little roads. Everything is so expensive here that all you can do is window-shop, and it’s all imported from elsewhere. Hats from England, French-style frock coats from France, Polish-style fashion from Turkey. And the city itself? Terrible, cold, abysmal, full of empty squares the wind howls down. Magnificent houses are built right in the sand
, in the mud, and you see servants transferring ladies from their carriage onto a wooden walkway so that they don’t drown in puddles in their thick, fur-lined mantles.
Moliwda feels worn out in Warsaw. He passes his time in the company of not especially demanding people, where the wine flows freely, and where he can tell his implausible tales, especially when he has drunk a lot of alcohol. Tales of calm at sea, or the opposite, of terrible squalls that cast him naked onto a Greek island, where he was found by women, and he doesn’t remember what happened next, and when he is asked to repeat a story in different company, he doesn’t know what he said before, where his adventures last led him. Of course he never strays too far, just circles around holy Mount Athos and the tiny islets in the Greek sea, along which a giant could step all the way to Stamboul or Rodos.
About the origins of his new name, Moliwda—for he tells people to call him Moliwda now—he tells different stories, but in Warsaw it makes a real impression when he tells people that he’s the king of a small island in the Greek sea called Moliwda. The same place where two women discovered him, naked as the day he was born. They were sisters, of noble Turkish lineage. He has even invented names for them: Zhimelda and Edina. They got him drunk and seduced him. He ended up married to them both, for such is the custom there, and after the almost immediate death of their father, he became sole ruler of the island. He reigned for fifteen years and had six sons, and to them he has left that little kingdom, but when the time comes, he will invite them all here, to Warsaw.
The company applauds in delight. The wine flows.
When he finds himself in more educated company, he alters his tale slightly, with it turning out that by chance and by virtue of his otherness, he was recognized as ruler of the island, an advantage that served him well for years, and things were good for him there. Here he starts describing its customs, making them sufficiently exotic as to be interesting to his listeners. He says that his name was given to him by Chinese merchants he met in Smyrna, traders in silk and lacquerware. They called him molihua, Jasmine Flower. When he says this, he always sees a smirk appear on his listeners’ lips, at least on the lips of the more malicious ones. Nothing resembles jasmine less than Moliwda.
He tells another story when it starts to get late, and a booze-soaked haze of intimacy has set in. In Warsaw, people party until morning, and the women are willing and not at all as shy as might seem at first, when they’re all playing the dainty little noblewomen. Sometimes this shocks him—it would be inconceivable amongst the Turks or in Wallachia, where women keep separate and far from men, for ladies to flirt freely in this way, while their husbands do the same in a far corner of the room. Here it’s not uncommon to hear—in fact, the higher the orbit, the more often you hear it—that the father of some child is not the one who acts as his father, but rather a friend of the family, some important person, an influential cousin. And no one is surprised by this, no one condemns it—quite the opposite, especially if the actual father is well-connected or holds a high position. That is, for instance, what all of Warsaw is gossiping about with respect to the Czartoryskis’ child, that the father is Prince Repnin, a fact about which Mr. Czartoryski appears not even a little bit displeased.
Finally, at the end of November, Moliwda is granted the honor of an audience with Bishop Sołtyk, who is now at court seeking the bishopric of Kraków.
The man he encounters is perfectly empty and conceited. Dark, impenetrable eyes bore into Moliwda, trying to decipher to what extent he might be useful. The bishop’s cheeks, which are slightly pendulous, lend him an air of gravity; has anyone ever seen a skinny bishop? Unless he has tapeworm . . .
Moliwda presents the matter of the Sabbatians to him, no longer in a tone of caritas, no longer attempting to evoke concern about their fate or aiming for his listener’s heart with beautiful sentiments. For a moment, he searches for the proper approach, and then he says:
“Your Excellency would hold a perfect trump card. Several hundred, maybe even thousands of Jews, who crossed over to the bosom of the Church, converted to the one true faith. Many of them are also wealthy.”
“I thought they were paupers from the street.”
“There are wealthier ones among them. They are fighting for titles, and titles are worth mountains of gold. According to the laws of the Republic, a neophyte can apply for a noble title with no great impediment.”
“That would be the end of the world . . .”
Moliwda looks at the bishop, who seems restless. His face is impenetrable, but his right hand makes a strange, involuntary gesture, his thumb, index finger, and middle finger rubbing nervously together.
“Who is this Frank, anyway? Some ignoramus, some lout . . . They say that’s what he calls himself.”
“He does call himself that. He calls himself an amuritz, a simpleton. It’s from Hebrew, am ha’aretz . . .”
“You know Hebrew?”
“I know enough. I can understand what he’s saying. It isn’t true that he’s a simpleton. He has been taught quite well by his people, he knows the Zohar, the Bible, and the Mosaic law; he might not be able to say many things well in Polish or in Latin, but he is a well-educated man. And clever. Whatever he sets out to do, he will accomplish. With the help of this person or that . . .”
“So just like you, Mr. Kossakowski,” says Bishop Sołtyk, in a flash of perspicacity.
Of useful truths and useless truths, and the mortar post as a means of communication
Much of that year of 1758 Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk spends in Warsaw. It is a pleasant time, since Warsaw offers abundant diversions. It is autumn, and everyone is coming back into town from their country estates—the social season could now be said to be under way. The bishop has many things on his mind. The first and most important is the expectation—the joyful expectation—that he will be appointed the next bishop of Kraków. The cards have been dealt, he tells himself over and over, and this means that his nomination will take place once the poor, sick Andrzej Załuski—his friend, Bishop of Kraków, and Joseph’s brother—has died. In some senses everything has already been settled among these three: Andrzej knows that he will die soon and is reconciled to death, like a good Christian who knows he has lived a holy life, and he has already written to the king recommending the appointment of Sołtyk as his replacement. Although now he has been unconscious for a fortnight, and earthly matters no longer concern him.
But they do concern Bishop Sołtyk. He has already ordered new vestments from the Jewish tailors, and new winter shoes. He spends the evenings with friends, goes to the opera, and to dinners where his presence is requested. Unfortunately, it still happens—he himself laments it extremely—that later he has his carriage take him home so he can change clothes and, according to his own time-honored custom, venture back out to a certain inn on the outskirts of town, where he plays cards. Lately he has managed to wager only small sums, so as not to greatly increase his already massive debt, and this improves his self-esteem somewhat. If only this were the single weakness that plagued mankind!
Another friend of Załuski’s appears in Warsaw, Katarzyna Kossakowska, a woman as sly as a fox—Sołtyk does not particularly like her, but he respects her and even fears her a bit. She has real missionary zeal, and she spreads word of her cause to everyone she encounters—she is seeking every kind of support in the capital for those Jewish heretics. She quickly unites those who can help in the matter of convincing the king himself to issue a letter of safe conduct that will protect those miserable souls, who now cling to the Christian faith. It becomes a fashionable topic at the salons, at formal dinners, in the corridors of the opera; everyone speaks of the so-called Jewish Puritans. Some with great excitement, others with a lofty, cool Polish irony. The bishop receives from Kossakowska an unexpected present of a gilded silver chain with a heavy cross on it, also silver, studded with stones. The piece is valuable and rare.
The bishop would have involved himself to a greater degree in this cause of hers had it not b
een for this business of waiting. He does, in point of fact, have competitors. As soon as Bishop Andrzej Załuski dies in Kraków, he will have to act quickly, be the first to appear before the king and make an impression upon him. It is a good thing the king is in Warsaw, far from his beloved Dresden and Saxony—but with those places now plundered by Frederick Augustus, it is safer for him here.
What a credit it would be in the eyes of God to bring all those Jewish heretics into the bosom of the church. The world has never seen such a thing—and it is only in Catholic Poland that such a thing could ever happen. The entire world would hear of us, thinks Bishop Sołtyk.
While he has been waiting, the bishop has devised a fabulous plan. Namely, he has ordered hired cannoneers with mortars to be positioned all along the road from Kraków to Warsaw, each at a distance of several miles, and just as soon as his man at the bishop’s in Kraków learns that Załuski has died, he will let the first cannoneer know to fire in the direction of Warsaw. At that signal, the second cannoneer will fire, and then the third, and so on, in a chain that links them all the way to Warsaw, and in such a way, by this unusual post, Bishop Sołtyk will be the first to know, before any of the official letters sent by the messengers are brought in. The idea was provided to him by Joseph Załuski, who had found it in some book, and who understood his friend’s impatience.
The Books of Jacob Page 46
