One evening, two men show up at Asher’s—one old and one young. The older one is dressed in a long black coat and a cap. His beard unfurls majestically over his ample belly. He has a sad and open face and piercing blue eyes that fix on Asher. The younger one, who seems to be here out of respect for the other man, is tall and heavyset. His eyelashes and eyebrows are almost transparent, and against his pale complexion, his brown eyes look like glass beads. Standing in the doorway, the older man gives a sigh full of meaning.
“The esteemed doctor,” he begins in Yiddish, “is in possession of a particular thing that does not belong to him.”
“How interesting,” answers Asher, “since I have absolutely no recollection of ever appropriating anything at all.”
“I am Pinkas ben Zelik of Kozowa, a rabbi. And this is my nephew, Yankiel. We have come for Gitla, my daughter.”
Stunned, Asher says nothing. Only after a moment does he regain his senses and his voice.
“You’re saying she is the thing to which you were referring? She’s a living being—not a thing.”
“Yes, yes, that’s just the way people talk,” says Pinkas good-naturedly. He peers over Asher’s shoulder into his home. “Perhaps we could come in for a word.”
Asher reluctantly lets them come inside.
“When you are a doctor, all you see is human suffering,” says Pinkas, his father-in-law, let us call him, when on the following day Asher Rubin is once more at the hospital among the victims of the plague. “But life is a great force; we stand on the side of life. What has happened cannot unhappen.”
Pinkas pretends he’s wound up here by accident. The lower half of his face is covered by a piece of white cloth, which will supposedly protect him from effluvia. The stench here is terrible; the hospital has become less a place of healing than a place to die, and the sick are being laid out on the floor now, since the hospital is small.
Asher doesn’t say a word.
Pinkas says, over his head, as though not even addressing him, “The Vienna kahal needs a doctor, and in particular, an expert on eyes. They’re starting a Jewish hospital. Asher Rubin could take his wife and”—here he falls silent for a moment, then goes on—“children and get out of here. Everything bad that has happened would pass into oblivion. A wedding would take place; all would be repaired.”
After another pause, he adds in a tone of encouragement to conversation:
“This is all because of those unfaithful dogs.”
When he says, “unfaithful dogs,” his voice grows hoarse, and Asher looks up at him in spite of himself.
“Go away from here, both of you. We’ll return to this subject. Do not touch anything. I need to see a patient now.”
This kind of death is quick and merciful. First your head hurts, then nausea and stomachaches, followed by diarrhea that never lets up. The body dries out, the person fades from view, loses strength and, finally, consciousness. It takes two or three days for death to come. First a child died, and then that child’s siblings, then the mother, and finally the father—Asher watched it all. That’s how it started. From that family the plague spread to the rest.
The man of the household he is visiting right now has dropsy. Godfearing Jews, these people give him a knowing look as they ask about the situation in town, as though proud that all they have is dropsy. A woman in a slanted bonnet raises her eyebrows significantly: it’s the curse, she says, it’s that powerful herem cast upon the renegades. It works. God punishes traitors who befoul their own nest, those heretics, those fiends.
“His good luck was bound to give out, it’s all devil’s work—hence that money, those carriages with all those horses, those ermines. Now God has made an example out of him. His renegades are dying of the plague, one after the other. That’s their punishment,” she murmurs.
Asher turns his head away from her and directs his gaze at the curtains by the window, faded and coated in dust, so that their pattern is barely visible—they’re just the color of dust, that’s all. He thinks of Pinkas, his sort-of father-in-law, and he wonders what would happen if hate could transform into a plague. Is that how herem works? Asher often sees how a cursed person quickly becomes defenseless, weak, ill, and when the curse is taken off him, he gets well.
But Asher would sooner let himself be infected than believe in such things. He knows that everything in fact comes down to water—just one contaminated well is enough to kill a whole city. The sick drink the water, and then their infected waste travels to other water supplies. Asher goes to the town hall and presents his observations—it must have some connection to the wells and to the water. They agree with him—him, a Jew—and order the wells to be closed, and indeed, the plague does seem to die down a bit. But then it explodes again, stronger than ever, having evidently migrated to some other water sources. They can’t very well shut down all the wells in Lwów. They can only hope that some of the population, for whatever reasons, will be immune to this plague. Some people do ail only briefly, and only slightly, and then their health comes back of its own accord. Others simply don’t fall ill, as if they are invincible.
And finally, in all this bleak confusion, Asher sees the anointed one; his eyes can take their fill of him now. Since his initial appearance in Lwów at the end of August, he has been spotted often—either in his sumptuous carriage or walking among the camps of his emaciated followers. He is obviously not afraid. In spite of the warm weather, he wears a tall Turkish hat and a Turkish coat of a lovely green color, like water in a pond or the glass used to make vessels for medicaments. He looks like an enormous green dragonfly that flits from one place to the next. When he approaches one of the afflicted, Asher steps aside without a word. Frank lays hands on the forehead of the patient and closes his own eyes. The patient is doubtless in seventh heaven, if he’s still conscious. Recently one of the sick Jews went on his own to a church and demanded to be baptized. As soon as the rite had been hastily performed, he got better. Or that is what they say in the Halickie Przedmieście. At the synagogue they say something else: that immediately after the baptism, the renegade died.
Asher has to admit that Frank is a handsome man. Perhaps that is what Samuel will look like someday. He wouldn’t have anything against it. But it isn’t Frank’s looks that give him his power. Asher knows such people, many magnates have it, the nobly born—that inexplicable selfconfidence, founded in nothing, or perhaps in the existence of some internal center of gravity that makes the person feel like a king in any situation.
Since that man has been in town, Gitla has not known a moment of peace. She gets dressed, but she ends up not leaving the house. She stands a moment in front of the door, and then she takes off her things and stays. When Asher comes home, he finds her lying on the settee. Her belly is big again, round and hard. Her whole body seems slightly swollen, unwieldy. She is always in a bad mood and insists that she will die in childbirth. She is angry with him—without him, and without this latest pregnancy, she would have gone back to her father or run off with that Frank again. As she lies in the dark on the settee, she must be imagining all the possible versions of her life she won’t be able to experience.
When it turns chilly in the latter half of October, the plague does not pass, but instead gains momentum. The Halickie Przedmieście has been deserted ever since housing was found for the newcomers among the neighbors, around the monasteries and in aristocrats’ country manors. There are daily baptisms at the cathedral and in the churches of Lwów—there is actually a line. Whenever anyone dies, a lot of other people want to be baptized right away.
When those who have already been baptized continue to die, Jacob stops appearing on the streets and healing people with the touch of his long fingers. Some say he’s gone to Warsaw to see the king, to try to obtain some land for the converts. Others say he was afraid and fled once more to Turkey.
That’s what Asher thinks, his mind on the latest deaths. For instance, the Mayorkowicz family. Over the course of two days the mother, the
father, and four of their daughters died in his hospital. A fifth is in the final throes, so wasted away she no longer looks like a human child, but rather like a dark specter, a phantom, while a sixth, their eldest, has suffered such despair that her hair has gone completely gray.
The Mayorkowiczes had a proper Christian funeral, with wooden coffins and places in the cemetery paid for by the city. They were buried under their new names, to which they had not had time to grow accustomed: Mikołaj Piotrowski, Barbara Piotrowska, and their daughters: Victoria, Róża, Tekla, Maria. Asher urges himself to remember: Srol Mayorkowicz, Beyla Mayorkowiczowa. As well as Shima, Freyna, Masha, Miriam.
And now, after the funeral of the Mayorkowiczes, or Piotrowskis, he is standing in the hallway of his house and slowly taking off his clothing. He rolls it into a ball and tells the maid to burn it. Death might cling to buttons, to trouser seams, to a collar. Naked, he goes into the room where Gitla is. She looks at him in astonishment and bursts out laughing. He doesn’t say a word.
He does manage to save, in the end, that skinny little girl, the second Mayorkowicz daughter, Elia, now called Salomea Piotrowska. Asher keeps her in the hospital and feeds her well. At first a gruel of rice and water, and then he goes and buys her chickens and has them boiled down to broth, and he pushes pieces of meat into her mouth, little by little, in tiny bits. The girl starts to smile each time she sees him.
At the same time he writes a letter to Starosta Łabęcki, and a separate letter to the starosta’s wife. Two days later he gets a response from Rohatyn saying to bring little Salomea.
Why did he not write to Rapaport, to the kahal? He did consider it. But after just a moment’s reflection he realized that little Salomea would be better off at the Łabęckis’ palace than in the home of wealthy Rapaport, even if—and this was unlikely—he should want to take her in. When it comes to Jews, today they’re rich and powerful, tomorrow they are poor and sorrowful; Asher has learned that much in his life.
After Hanukkah and the Christian New Year, in early January, Gitla gives birth to twin girls. In March, as the last snows are disappearing, Asher and Gitla pack up all of their belongings and their children and set out for Vienna.
What Moliwda writes to his cousin Katarzyna Kossakowska
O beloved and enlightened Cousin of mine,
It is a good thing you got out of here quickly, for the plague has run completely rampant now, and the evidence of the rampages of the Lady of Death are everywhere visible. The most painful part of it is that the plague has taken such a liking to your wards, as there are many poor among them, and malnourished. In spite of Father Mikulski’s provisions and the goodwill shown to them by many noble people, they have remained in need, and hence more susceptible to illness.
I, too, have now packed my things, and in just a few days I shall lead Jacob and his company to Warsaw, where I hope to meet with you at once in order to go over our operations in detail. Thank you, too, for the generous honorarium for my work that you were able to collect for me from those among your acquaintances who are in a position to support us. As I understand it, the most generous among them has been the good Count Jabłonowski. I have a great deal of respect for him, as well as gratitude, altho’ I am not quite convinced by the idea of a Buskian Paraguay. For your wards, my dear cousin, are hardly so gentle as the Indians of Paraguay. And they possess a religion older than our own, along with writings and customs. With all due respect, Prince Jabłonowski should have come to Ivanie or ought to spend some time with them now in the Halickie Przedmieście.
I will not undertake to describe to you the whole of it, for it depresses me o’ermuch. After the death of the daughter of Nahman (now Piotr Jakubowski), one of the first victims of the epidemic, people started at once their talk of how this was yet another Jewish curse upon the infidels. It kills with unheard-of rapidity. All the water escapes the victim, and the body seems to collapse on itself. The skin wrinkles, and the features get sharp as a wolf’s. Over just a couple of days, the person weakens and dies. Nahman-Jakubowski, completely broken, has thrown himself into his Kabbalah, counting and recounting something or other, hoping he might find an explanation for his terrible misfortune.
It is getting cold, and there is no means to help those camping out on the streets, or the ailing. More funds, more clothing, and more food would be helpful, particularly given that Father Mikulski, who has been overseeing this whole enterprise, can no longer keep up.
The doctors have begun to demand that newcomers to the city provide evidence that they are not coming from plagueafflicted regions, that those who are suspected of coming from such regions be “aired out” away from the city for six weeks, and also that plague-afflicted regions have a sufficient number of doctors, medics, and dedicated assistants, porters, and gravediggers. They are also calling for those having contact with the plague-ridden to wear distinguishing insignia, for instance, white crosses over their chests and backs. A store of funds is needed as well, for food and medicine for the impoverished, and the dogs and cats that run from home to home should be removed, and every incident of pestilence should be tracked; a quantity of little wooden houses needs to be built outside town for the ill and those suspected of illness, along with sheds in which to air out suspect goods. And yet, Poland being Poland, all those demands seem to have blown over somehow, leaving not a trace.
You, my dear, enlightened Cousin, will know what to do to make these people comfortable. Many of them, in preparing for their baptism, have sold off their modest belongings and can do nothing but await our mercy.
In which Katarzyna Kossakowska dares to disturb the powerful of this world
To Jan Klemens Branicki, Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, written on the 14th of December, 1759
I am so grateful to you, my good Sir, for the Hospitality you bestowed upon me recently, while I was once again on the Road. Mościska was lovely and comfortable, I shall remember it for a long Time. And since you professed yourself at my Disposition when it came to my good Works, I now turn to you for your Consideration of the Situation I have mentioned to you. By collective Action, we the highest-born who are so closely allied, and well acquainted with that French Expression noblesse oblige, might provide Aid and Assistance to those poor Neophytes, those Puritans of whom there is such an Abundance here in Podolia. You have no Doubt heard that they are now inclined to Warsaw, where they shall request an Audience with the King (which I very much doubt they shall receive), as well as some sort of Territory on the royal Lands to settle. Our Idea is to take them in upon our own Estates, which would be showing Christian Mercy, and the new Souls would arrive to us in this Way.
In a separate Letter, sent through Kalicki, I have already informed you, my good Sir, as to what has been happening in the Sejmik . . .
To Eustachy Potocki, my dear Brother and Artillery General of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, written on the 14th of December, 1759
With this Post I had the Obligation of sending you a Portrait of our Father, a Responsibility I would gladly discharge were there any Guarantee about the Arrival of the Package; however, when it comes to the Post, there can never be such Certainty.
I also reiterate my Question from my last Correspondence: Have you had a Chance to consider the Question of Land for the Neophytes?
You know me and have known me all my Life, and you know perfectly well that I have never cared too much about any Persons’ Fates, being rather hard, and I am quite convinced that even searching through Eyeglasses for one good and worthy, I would not find him. And yet in this Instance I see it as our Duty to help these People: they have been placed in the worst of all possible Situations; worse off than our Peasants, for they are like those Beggars we call Dziady, driven out by their own Kind, often stripped of their Property and without any Place to call their own, furthermore not particularly knowing the Language, and in many Cases finding themselves completely helpless. This is why they insist on sticking together. Were they to be parceled out to different ho
ldings of ours, they could live in the Christian Fashion, taking up Trades or Crafts and offending no one, and it would be our sacred Act to make them into our likeness and accept them under the Wing of our holy Church.
To Pelagia Potocka, Wife of the Lwów Castellan, written on the 17th of December, 1759
I am loath to bother Her Nobly Virtuous Ladyship with such old-fashioned—nay, such ancient—Notions, and to pester Her Ladyship with outmoded Wishes that would not interest Her in the slightest, such as neighborly love and mutual goodwill. But as I do not wish to be fashionable—only reliable and sincere—I breathe a sigh to our God who comes into our World to bestow Health and long Years, and I ask for more still: Her Ladyship’s good Fortune, but this I really cannot help.
You have no doubt heard of this new Cause, which is not a fashionable one so much as a righteous one, namely, to take in neophyte Girls, once Jewish, now Christian. Starosta Łabęcki’s Wife has taken in one such little Girl. Were I not so actively involved in orchestrating all of this, I would consider it, as well. Such an Act gives them Hope for a better Life, and a proper Education. Mrs. Łabęcka’s Girl is very clever; with the help of a Tutor, she is studying Polish and French simultaneously. Mrs. Łabęcki has been invigorated by it, and so the Benefit is mutual . . .
Of the trampling of coins and using a knife to make a V formation of cranes make a U-turn
The day before they leave for Warsaw, Jacob requests that the men and women who have been chosen gather together. They wait for him for about an hour. He comes dressed in the Turkish fashion, Hana with him, elegant and formal. The group moves quickly toward the High Castle, curious passersby taking them in. Jacob rushes ahead, taking great steps and leaning forward, so that old Reb Mordke really has to exert himself in order to keep up; he winds up bringing up the rear, Hershel with him. Hana makes no complaint about ruining her embroidered silk slippers—she stays a step behind her husband, lifting the hem of her long coat and watching where she sets down her feet. She knows that Jacob knows what he is doing.
The Books of Jacob Page 61
