“What is your name?”
The boy responds resolutely in slightly shaky Polish:
“Hilelek.”
“That’s nice . . .”
“And then I am also named Wojciech Majewski.”
Now Deymowa can’t hold back her tears.
“Would you like a pretzel?”
“Yes, a pretzel.”
She tells this later to her younger sister, Golczewski’s widow, in the workshop of her brother-in-law, may he rest in peace, under a lovely signboard made of iron.
“. . . This little baby Jew who tells me ‘Praised be our Lord Jesus,’ have you ever seen such marvelous things?” Deymowa breaks down and starts crying again. Since her own husband’s death not long ago, she has cried often—daily—and everything has seemed unbearably sad to her, so that a great sorrow for the whole world often overwhelms her. And just underneath that sorrow is an anger that crosses over oddly easily into sympathy, and suddenly in the face of the enormity of the misfortunes of the world, she can only throw up her hands, and all of it brings her to tears.
Both sisters are widows, but Golczewski’s widow bears it better, having taken over her husband’s printshop that tries to compete with the big Jesuit printer’s by taking sundry orders of all kinds. Right now she is busy talking with some priest and only half listening to her older sister.
“Here, Your Ladyship, look!” He hands her a rather unevenly printed appeal signed by Primate Łubieński, in which he calls on the szlachta and the townspeople to become godparents to the Contra-Talmudists.
“Contra-Talmudists,” repeats Deymowa seriously, while her sister adds: “Ne’er-do-wells.”
Father Chmielowski is insisting on printing a small run of his tales. Golczewska doesn’t want to interfere, but printing only a few copies will cost him dearly, she explains, whereas if he prints more, the cost per copy will come out to about the same. But the priest is discombobulated and can’t quite make up his mind. He explains that this is only for a name-day gift, and he doesn’t need that many copies, as it’s really just for one person.
“Then why don’t you write it out nicely in your own hand, Father? Maybe in some amaranthine or golden ink?”
But the priest says that only print lends the appropriate seriousness to each word.
“The handwritten word is too mangled somehow, while print speaks loud and clear,” he explains.
Golczewska, the typographer, leaves him deep in thought and turns once more to her sister.
There might not be two such different sisters anywhere in Podolia. Deymowa is tall and stout, with light-colored skin and blue eyes. Golczewska, meanwhile, is petite and has dark hair, grayed wisps of which work their way out from under her bonnet, even though she is barely forty. Deymowa is better off, which is why she is dressed so nicely, in a richly pleated mantle over many starched petticoats that took thirty cubits of black silk to make. Over this she has thrown a lightweight linen jacket that reaches her elbows, also black—after all, she was widowed recently. She wears a snow-white bonnet on her head. Next to her, her younger sister, girded by an apron stained with printer’s ink, looks like a servant. Yet they understand each other perfectly without speaking. They read the primate’s appeal and exchange glances full of meaning.
In Primate Łubieński’s appeal, it says that each godparent must furnish his godchild with the appropriate Polish attire, as well as maintain him not only until his baptism but until he returns home. The sisters know each other so well and have been through so much together that they don’t even particularly need to get into a discussion of this topic.
After much hesitation, the priest finally agrees to a bigger print run. He points out in a quarrelsome voice that the title is to be in boldface, and that they are not to stint on space for it. And the date, and the place, without fail: Leopolis, Augustus 1759.
Of proper proportions
Pinkas could not restrain himself and went out at once. He flits past buildings down a narrow band of shadow and glances furtively at the carriage that is just pulling up to the market square. Instantly a crowd surrounds it. Pinkas is afraid to look at it, and when he does force himself to raise his gaze, the sight absorbs him completely and takes his breath away, even though every little detail feels like a grain of salt rubbed into his pain.
The man who emerges from the carriage is tall and well built, and to his height is added a slim Turkish hat, which feels like an organic element of his stature. Dark, wavy hair pops out from under his hat, softening somewhat the emphatic features of a rather harmonious face. His gaze is insolent—so it seems to Pinkas—and he is looking slightly upward, so that you can see a bit of the whites at the bottom of his eyes, as though he were about to faint. He casts his eyes around the people standing about by his carriage and over the heads of the rest of the crowd. Pinkas sees the movement of his prominent, nicely shaped lips. He is saying something to the people, laughing—and now his even white teeth gleam. His face gives the impression of youth, and his dark beard seems to conceal even more of that youth, maybe even dimples. He looks both authoritative and childlike. Pinkas senses how this person might appeal to women, and not only to women, but also to men—to everyone—for he is extremely charming. This makes Pinkas hate him even more. When Frank stands up straight, other people reach up to his beard. His Turkish coat, greenish blue and adorned with purple appliqué, shows off his powerful shoulders. The brocade shimmers in the sun. This person is like a peacock among chickens, or like a ruby among rocks. Pinkas is surprised, astonished—he didn’t expect Frank would make such a big impression on him, and he cannot bear the fact that somehow he actually likes this man.
Aha, thinks Pinkas, but he must be frivolous, since he is wearing so much gold. And no doubt he is stupid, since he’s so impressed by such a carriage, although they call him Wise Jacob. Sometimes beauty is harnessed to evil’s interests, becoming a trick for the eye, a fake to stupefy the crowd.
When Frank walks, people make way to let him pass, holding their breath. Those too shy to speak reach out to touch him.
Pinkas tries to remember how he imagined him. He can’t. Purplish azure has filled up his brain. He feels sick. Even when he turns away from this proud march of Jacob Frank’s through the delighted crowd, and spits out of forced disgust, he still has him in his mind’s eye.
Late at night, close to midnight, Pinkas can’t sleep and tries to calm his mind by writing up a report to take to the kahal. They can add it to their file. The written word lasts forever, while colors—even the brightest ones—fade. The written word is sacred, and every letter will eventually go back to God, nothing will be forgotten. So what, then, is an image? Nothing. A vivid void. Even the brightest colors will dissipate like so much smoke.
This thought gives him strength, and he suddenly envisions what strike him as the true and proper proportions. For what is bearing, or charm, or a resounding voice? They are but raiments! In the bright light of the sun everything looks different, but in the dark of night, all that brightness pales, and you can see better what it conceals.
With a flourish he puts down the first words: “I saw with my own eyes . . .” Now he tries to be truthful, faithful, forget about the coat and carriage, and he even pictures Jacob naked. He sticks to that thought. He sees skinny, crooked legs and the rare hair across a sunken chest, one shoulder higher than the other. He dips his pen in ink and holds it aloft over the paper for a second, until a dangerously large black drop has gathered at the end; then he carefully shakes it off into the bottle and writes:
He was in fact rather horrible, ugly and contorted, coarse. His nose was crooked, probably from being struck. His hair was dull and matted, and his teeth were black.
In writing “his teeth were black,” Pinkas crosses an invisible line, but in his passion, he doesn’t realize it.
He did not look human at all, rather more like a demon or an animal. He moved about violently, and in these movements, there was not a drop of grace.
He dips the pen back in the well and starts thinking—what kind of habit is this, to think with a damp pen, it will no doubt result in a blot—but no, the pen leaps at the paper, and in a frenzy scratches out:
He spoke seemingly in many languages, but the truth is that in none of them was he able to articulate a single thing or write sensibly. Thus when he did speak aloud, he emitted a sound that was highly unpleasant to the ear, a high-pitched screeching, and only those who knew him well could really understand what he was after.
In addition, he was never really educated anywhere, so he only knows what he has heard here and there, and his knowledge is riddled with gaps. He seems to be acquainted only with fairy tales, the kind you tell to children, and his followers believe in these stories without exception.
By the time he is finished, it really seems to Pinkas that he saw not a person, but a three-headed beast.
The baptism
On September 17, 1759, after a solemn mass, Jacob Frank is baptized. He takes the name Joseph. The baptism is performed by the metropolitan of Lwów, Samuel Głowiński of Głowno. His godparents, meanwhile, are the not-quite-thirty-year-old Franciszek Rzewuski, elegant, dressed after the French fashion, and Maria Anna Brühl. Jacob Frank bows his head, and the holy water wets his hair, then flows over his face.
After Jacob goes Krysa, dressed like a member of the szlachta, in the traditional style of the Polish nobility, and in this new costume, his asymmetrical face seems dignified somehow. Now he is Bartłomiej Walenty Krysiński; his godparents are Count Szeptycki and Countess Miączyńska.
Behind him stands a group of people who follow him one by one up to the altar. Godparents in ornate ceremonial attire trade places with one another. A pipe organ plays, making the tall, beautifully vaulted cathedral ceiling seem even higher—somewhere up there, just past the steep arches, there is a heaven into which all those baptized will now be admitted. The tart scent of the tall yellow flowers that decorate the altar mixes with the incense into an exquisite scent, as if the finest Eastern perfume has been sprayed into the church.
Now come some well-dressed younger people, their hair cut at the chin like pageboys’—these are Jacob Frank’s nephews, Paweł, Jan, and Antoni, and a fourth, son of Hayim of Jezierzany, now Ignacy Jezierzański, nervously crumples his hat in his hands. There is a moment’s silence when the organ pauses for the tired organist to page through his sheet music to get to the next song. For a moment, the papers’ rustling resounds around the church, otherwise so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then the music bursts forth again, solemn and sad, and this is how Franciszek Wołowski—until recently Shlomo Shorr, Elisha’s son—goes up to the altar with his own young son, seven-year-old Wojciech. And after him his father, the eldest of the Frankists, dignified, sixty-year-old Elisha Shorr, supported by his daughters-in-law, Rozalia and Róża; he has never fully recovered from being beaten. And after them goes Hayim Turczynek, now Kapliński, and Barbara, a Wallachian, who, aware of her own beauty, allows herself to be admired by curious eyes. It is clear to everyone that the people who bow their heads before the metropolitan’s damp fingers make up one big family that branches out in all directions, like a tree.
At least that is what Father Mikulski is thinking as he watches them, trying to glean proofs of blood relationship from their appearance and posture. Yes, they are baptizing a single giant family, a family that might be called Podolian-Wallachian-Turkish. Now, nicely dressed and taking things seriously, there is something new to them—a dignity, a confidence they didn’t have even yesterday when he saw them on the city’s streets. Suddenly he is frightened by this novel guise of theirs. Soon they will put out their hands for noble titles, since of course a Jew who converts has the right to such things. If he pays enough. The priest is overwhelmed by a doubt that verges on outright fear—that here they are letting in all these foreign, impenetrable faces, although their intentions are muddled, vague. It feels to him like the whole street is pouring into the cathedral now, and that they will keep going up to the altar, one by one, until evening, and that even then, there will be no end in sight.
It isn’t true that everyone is present. Nahman, for instance, is not. Instead, he is sitting with his little daughter, who has suddenly taken ill with diarrhea and a high fever. Wajgełe tries to force-feed her milk, but to no avail, and soon the features of her face start to sharpen, and on the morning of September 18, she dies, and Nahman says they have to keep it a secret. The next night they hold a hurried funeral.
Of Jacob Frank’s shaved beard, and the new face that emerges from underneath it
Hana Frank, who has just arrived from Ivanie to be baptized, does not recognize her husband. She stands before him and sees a face that seems newly born, with pale, delicate skin around the mouth, lighter than the skin on his forehead and cheeks, dark lips, the lower one slightly turned down, and a soft chin with a little indentation in the middle. Only now does Hana see the mole on the left side, under his right ear, like a birthmark. He smiles, and now his bright white teeth draw attention. He is a completely different man. Wittel, who shaved him, retreats with the washbasin full of foam.
“Say something,” Hana urges him. “I’ll know you by your voice.”
Jacob laughs loudly, tossing his head back as he does.
Hana is shocked. The Jacob who stands before her is a boy, a new person, practically naked, all of him there on the surface, defenseless. She touches him lightly with her hand, and her hand discovers the astonishing smoothness of that skin. Hana feels an obscure anxiety, unpleasant, and she cannot restrain a violent sob.
Faces should remain in hiding, in the shadows, she thinks, like deeds, like words.
21.
Of the plague that descends upon Lwów in the autumn of 1759
Not so long ago, people believed that the plague was brought about by an unfortunate constellation of the planets, thinks Asher, as he strips naked and wonders what he ought to do with his clothes. Throw them out? If they’ve absorbed any effluvia from the infected, he might well risk spreading it about the house. And nothing could be worse than introducing a plague into his own home.
The weather in Lwów has changed suddenly, going from hot and dry to warm and humid. Wherever there is even a little earth or rotting wood, mushrooms pop up. Fog hovers every morning in town like thick sour cream, undisturbed until people come out into the streets, when it begins to lift.
Today he pronounced four dead and made his rounds of the afflicted; he knows there will be more of them. They all have the same symptoms: diarrhea, stomachache, progressive weakening.
He recommends drinking large quantities of fresh water or—better yet—herbs brewed in boiling water, but since his patients are mostly camped out on the street, they have nowhere to heat water. The worst affected are the Jewish neophytes. They hurry to be baptized, believing that once that happens, they’ll never get sick and never die. Just today, Asher saw several patients like this, two of them children, every one of them with a Hippocratic face: sharpened features, sunken eyes, wrinkles. Life must have a certain mass to it, since when it ebbs, it makes a person’s body resemble a dried-out leaf. He went from the Halickie Przedmieście through the market square and saw the city closing in on itself, shutters battened down, streets emptied, and he thinks the market might not even take place now, unless some peasants come in from the country, not yet aware of the plague. Whoever is still healthy and has the means will leave Lwów.
Asher tries to picture how the illness passes from one person into another; it must be that it takes the form of some dense, vague fog, a fug, or a virulent vapor. These miasmas, getting into the bloodstream from inhaled air, infect and inflame it. Which is why Asher, summoned today to a certain bourgeois household where the lady of the house had fallen ill, positioned himself next to a window through which air was entering, while the sick woman lay whence the air was exiting. The family tried to insist that he let her blood, but Asher is against this procedure—some people it greatly weakens, parti
cularly women, even if it does reduce the virulence of the plague in the bloodstream.
Asher has also heard of infectious germs, something along the lines of little insects that cling to materials like fur, hemp, silk, wool, and feathers, scattering off them at the slightest movement, getting into the blood through the lungs and poisoning it. Their strength is dependent upon air—when it is clean, they collapse and perish. As to how long a germ can last, medical opinion is that in things kept in a cellar or a dungeon, it can survive up to fifteen years; in ventilated spaces, thirty days at most. The same is true when it is in a human being—it can’t last longer than thirty days. Yet in the main, people blame the pestilence on God’s wrath over the sins of man. And that applies to everyone—Jews, Christians, and Turks. Divine vexation. Solomon Wolff, the doctor from Berlin with whom Asher corresponds, says that pestilence is never endemically European, but is always imported from other parts of the world; its cradle is Egypt, from where it tends to make its way to Stamboul, and from there to spread through Europe. Thus those Wallachian Jews must have brought the plague to Lwów when they came here to be baptized. At least that’s what people have been saying.
Now they’re all counting on winter to save them, since freezing is the antithesis of rot, and therefore serious illness should vanish or at least weaken tremendously throughout the winter months.
Asher does not allow Gitla to go out of the house, saying she is to sit with Samuel by the windows with the curtains drawn.
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