“He’s useless to us,” Jacob said when Radziwiłł finally left. He stretched out and yawned loudly. We fell asleep at once with our heads on the table, and once the sun was up, it was time to set out for Lublin.
Of sad turns in Lublin
Two days later, as we were entering the outskirts of Lublin, known as Kalinowszczyzna, out of nowhere, a hail of stones fell upon us. The force of this attack was so great that the stones broke through the sides and doors of the carriage and bored holes into its roof. As I was sitting next to Jacob, I flung myself spontaneously atop him. I was pummeled not by the stones, but by Jacob—he hurled me away in fury. It was a good thing that our vehicle was surrounded by eight horsemen, armed with weapons, for they, too, roused from their dozing, drew their sabers, and attempted to chase down the rowdy rabble. But from behind the houses, from all the streets, more of them came running, with pitchforks and sticks, and a burly woman hurled mud from a basket with perfect aim at our carriage, and a real, albeit chaotic, battle began. But these Jews from the outskirts made more noise than they did damage. It was just a gaggle of oafs, and in the end they scattered at the sight of the sentries who came to our aid at the behest of Moliwda and Krysa, who had galloped ahead into town to get help.
My deep sadness, my exhaustion from the previous night, and that attack, in which many of us were injured (I had a wound on my forehead and a big bump on my head, and since that time I’ve had a headache), wore us down greatly, and it was in that state that we arrived in Lublin. The worst was yet to come, however. In the evening, thanks to the efforts of Moliwda and Mrs. Kossakowska, we were lying down in the voivode’s palace when it became apparent that Reb Mordke was ailing, and that he was suffering from the same symptoms as had afflicted those with the plague in Lwów. We set him up in a separate room, but he did not wish to remain there, and he dismissed our concerns, insisting there was no way he could be sick. Whenever anyone attempted to leave his side, Jacob bade them sit back down beside the sick man, and he himself attended to him and gave him water to drink, although old Reb Mordke’s eyes had started to weaken.
Hershel, having the knack and sensitivity of a woman when it came to taking care of people, nursed the sick man with great dedication. I ran around Lublin for broth and a chicken breast. Reb Mordke, though weak, greatly desired to see Lublin, for he had studied there when he was young and had many memories of it. And so Hershel and I took him into town and led him slowly up the little streets all the way to the Jewish cemetery, where his teacher had been buried. As we walked among the graves, Reb Mordke pointed out a lovely tombstone, newly erected. “That’s the type I like,” he said. “That’s the type I’d like to have.”
We chided him and scoffed at his concerns, saying it was hardly the time for any of us to be dreaming of our tombstones. Had we not all been whisked from under the dominion of death? So did Hershel admonish him, fervently, with tears in his eyes. Truth be told, I could never quite believe that myself. But Hershel did, like so many. Or perhaps I did, just like those others. My memory is hazy. When it came time to return to the palace, however, we had to practically carry a greatly debilitated Reb Mordke in our arms.
That night, we sat up with him in the voivode’s palace in Lublin, which had been neglected and was damp and dirty. The plaster had cracked from moisture, and the wind crept in through the unsealed windows. We rushed to the kitchen for hot water, but Reb Mordke had bloody diarrhea that would not let up, and his eyes continued to weaken. He told us to light a pipe, but he could no longer smoke it, simply holding it in his hands while the dying fire warmed his ever-colder fingers. We all stole glances at Jacob, wondering what he would say. Reb Mordke himself looked at him expectantly: How was Jacob planning on saving him from death? After all, Reb Mordke had been Jacob’s most faithful disciple for these many years, since sunny Smyrna, since sea-scented Salonika, and someone like him, who had already been baptized, could not die.
The next night Jacob went out alone into the wet courtyard and was gone for two hours; when he returned, he was freezing and pale, and he collapsed on the bed. I went to his side.
“Where have you been? Reb Mordke is dying,” I reproached him.
“I could not conquer him,” he said, seemingly to himself, although I heard him perfectly well. So did Itzak Minkowski, who had been sure Jacob had been kidnapped.
“Who are you talking about?” I shouted. “Who were you fighting? Who was here? There are castle guards posted everywhere, keeping watch . . .”
“You know who . . . ,” he said, and a chill ran down my spine.
The next morning, Reb Mordke was dead. We sat around him into the afternoon, dumbfounded. Hershel burst into a bizarre kind of laughter, telling us that this was just what happened—that first you died, and then you came back to life. That it would simply take a little while for death to fully materialize, since otherwise no one would believe in resurrection. That was possible, for otherwise there would be no way to know if someone was immortal. Yet I was angry and said to him: “You’re a fool.” Which I now greatly regret. For Hershel was no fool. And I, too, was convinced that this could not be real, that something exceptional would happen soon, as exceptional as the times in which we were living, as exceptional as we were. And then there was Jacob, who could barely stand on his feet, sweat running down his face, his eyes half closed, and in them a dark light. He scarcely said a word, and I realized that powerful forces were waging a war over us, dark forces battling the very lightest ones, like in a stormy sky, when the black clouds chase out the blue and cover up the sun. And I could almost hear that vast clashing, a kind of low rumble, a dismal clanging. And suddenly my vision took off after that sound, and I saw the lot of us sitting in a circle with Reb Mordke’s ghost, devastated and weeping. We were like the little figures made of bread for Hayah’s board game, monstrous and ridiculous.
We were not victorious against death, not that time.
On the following day, we held a proper funeral. We carried out an open coffin, according to the Catholic custom, and laid it in a richly outfitted cart. The news had made its way around town, that this had been a great Jewish sage who had gone the way of the Cross, and an enormous procession turned out, including members of guilds and trumpeters and monks and common people in great multitudes, curious to see a converted Jew be buried on consecrated land. People cried a great deal, for reasons that struck me as unclear, as they did not know the deceased, nor did they particularly understand who he had been. In the parish church, when the local bishop gave his sermon, the whole church was in tears, perhaps because the words “in vain” came up so many times in it, and together, those two words are likely even worse than “death.” I, too, cried, being in the grip of despair, in an eternal kind of woe, and it was only then that I was able to fully lament my little daughter, and all my dead.
I recall that Hershel was standing next to me and asked me what those Polish words meant, “in vain.” I told him, and he said, “They have a good sound.”
It’s when all your effort goes to waste, when you build on sand, when you try to collect water in a sieve, when you discover that your hard-earned money is counterfeit. All of that is in vain. That’s how I translated and explained it to him.
The weather was foggy and somber when we left the church. The wind lifted the muddied yellow leaves from the ground, and they flew at us like a strange species of bat. Even I, always attuned to the signs God gives us, did not understand what He was trying to tell us then. I beheld Jacob’s tearstained face, and this sight made such a strong impression on me that my knees got weak, and I was unable to go on walking. I had never seen him cry before.
When it was time to go back after the funeral, Jacob told us to grab the sides of his Turkish robe and keep them up, like wings. And so we did; we concentrated on holding up the sides of his robe like blind men, in spite of our sadness and the driving rain that lashed down upon us. We held fast to that coat of Jacob’s that everyone now wanted to have in his hand, if only
for a moment, so that we all took turns, the whole way from the cemetery to the palace. The crowds parted for us, and to them we must have looked like strange insects, our faces drenched in rain and tears. “Who is that?” they’d whisper, as down the narrow streets of the town we made our way back to the palace, still holding on to Jacob’s robe. The more surprised they seemed, the stranger the looks they gave us, the better. Our despair, and our grief, pulled us apart from them. Once more we were other. And that was how it was supposed to be. There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as candy. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens—an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren’t obvious. Cleverness and acumen come about. A person who is a stranger gains a new point of view, becomes, whether he likes it or not, a particular type of sage. Who was it who convinced us that being comfortable and familiar was so great? Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work.
The day after Reb Mordke’s funeral, Hershel died. Quick and quiet as a rabbit. Jacob locked himself in his room and did not come out for two days. We had no idea what to do. I scratched at the door and begged him to at least say something. I knew how much he loved Hershel in particular, like he did Her Ladyship, even though he was just an ordinary, well-intentioned child.
During the funeral, Jacob went right up to the altar, knelt there, and suddenly began to sing at full volume “Signor Mostro Abascharo,” or “Our Lord Is Coming Down,” the song people sing in times of duress. Instantly our voices joined in powerfully with his, and we knelt behind him. And as the last words were broken off by sobs, someone—I believe it was Matuszewski—began our holy song, “Yigdal”:
The Messiah will reveal the splendor of Your Kingdom
To the poor, the beaten, the demeaned,
You shall reign forever, our sacred refuge.
“Non ai otro commemetu,” or “There is no one but you,” added Jacob in the old language.
Our voices sounded desperate, filling the church, rising up to the vault and coming back down multiplied, as though an entire army were singing in this strange Eastern language that no one here knew, that contained sounds that were not of this place. I remembered Smyrna, the port, the salty sea air, and I could smell the spices that people here, in this Lublin parish church, had never even dreamed of. The church itself seemed arrested in shock, and the candle flames stopped quavering. The monk who had been laying flowers by the side altar now stood by a column and looked at us as if he were beholding ghosts. Just in case, perhaps, he crossed himself discreetly.
At last, together, so loud that the stained glass seemed to shake in the church’s windows, we prayed in Yiddish that God might lend us a helping hand in this foreign country, Esau’s country, help us, Jacob’s children, lost in the fog, the rain, and this terrible autumn of 1759, which would be followed by an even worse winter. That evening I came to understand that we had taken our first step into the abyss.
The day after the funeral, Jacob and Moliwda went to Warsaw, while the rest of us remained in Lublin, as Krysa had filed a court case claiming assault and battery, and demanding a considerable settlement from the local Jewish kahal. Since everyone was on our side, the trial was to be held quickly, and the ruling would certainly be in our favor. I didn’t care about any of that very much. I went around to the churches of Lublin, sitting in their pews to think and reflect.
Mostly I considered the Shekhinah. I felt that at this terrible time it was the Shekhinah that was emerging from the darkness, struggling among the husks and giving signs, and I remembered my trip to Stamboul with Reb Mordke. It, that Divine Presence, had settled in our rotten world—it, or she, an inconceivable formlessness that nonetheless existed in matter, a glimmering diamond in a lump of black coal. And now I remembered everything, for after all it had been Reb Mordke who introduced me to the mysteries of the Shekhinah. It was he who took me into different holy places, free from the prejudices that are so common among Jews. As soon as we made it to Stamboul, we went to the Hagia Sophia, to the great shrine to that Christian Mary, the Mother of Jesus, of whom Reb Mordke spoke as being close to the Shekhinah. That had astonished me then. I would never have gone into a Christian church myself, and even in that one—which had, after all, been turned into a mosque—I felt uncomfortable, and would have gladly skipped that part of my education. My eyes could not get used to all the paintings. When I spied on the wall a huge likeness of a woman who was furthermore brazenly staring in my direction, I was overcome by a kind of breathlessness I had never experienced before, and my heart started pounding so that I wanted to get out of there, but Reb Mordke grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back. We sat down on the cold hard floor, by the wall under some Greek inscriptions, no doubt engraved there centuries before, and slowly I regained my senses so that my breath became regular again, and I was able once more to behold this wonder:
The woman emerges from the wall, positioned high in the dome’s vault, over our heads, powerful. She is holding a child in her lap, as if she is holding a piece of fruit. But it is not the child that is important. Her mild face betrays no human affect except that which lies at the foundation of everything—a love that is absolutely unconditional. I know, she says, without moving her lips. I know everything, and nothing escapes my understanding. I have been here since the dawn of time, hidden in the smallest particle of matter, in the stone, in the shell, in the wing of an insect, in this leaf, in this drop of water. Split a trunk in two, and you will find me; part a rock, and I will be there.
This is what that enormous figure seemed to be saying to me.
It seemed to me that this majestic person was revealing a painfully obvious truth, yet I remained unable to understand it.
22.
The inn on the right bank of the Vistula
Moliwda and Jacob look at Warsaw from Praga on the other side of the river. They see the city situated high on the embankment, the brown and red of the bricks and the roofs of the city’s tenements all squeezed in together, farming an urban honeycomb. The redbrick defensive wall has broken down completely in several places, overgrown with the roots of the little trees that have cropped up. Over the city loom the towers of the churches—the stiletto collegiate church of Saint John, the bulbous Jesuits’ church, and, farther in, the angular brick of Saint Martin’s Church on Piwna Street and, finally, more toward the river, the tall Marszałkowska Tower. Moliwda points out each of these in turn, as if showing his various properties to Jacob. He also points out the Royal Castle with the clock tower and the splendidly arranged gardens below, now covered in the thinnest layer of the first snow. The embankment and the city lurch up like some wild anomaly on this decidedly level terrain.
It is getting dark already, and the ferry will not go over to the left bank now. So they find a place to spend the night at a nearby inn—smokefilled, with low ceilings. Because they are both dressed like nobles and request a clean room with separate beds, the innkeeper gives them preferential treatment. For supper they order roast chicken and potatoes with lard, as well as cheese and pickles, though these are not to Jacob’s liking, and he does not eat them. He is unusually quiet and focused. His face is shaved, and the little indentation in his chin and the ever-present circles under his eyes are now especially visible against the pallor of his lower face. He is wearing his tall fur hat, so the innkeeper assumes he is a Turk, maybe an official messenger.
Moliwda’s gaze gets hazier with the vodka. He isn’t used to the strong Mazovian spirits. He reaches across the table and touches Jacob’s cheek, evidently unable to stop marveling at his appearance now that he has done away with his beard. A surprised Jacob looks up at him, still chewing. They converse in Turkish, which gives them a sense of security.
“Don’t you worry. The king will receive you,” says Moliwda. “Sołtyk wrote to him. And a number
of people have expressed support for you to him.”
Jacob tops up Moliwda’s vodka; he himself drinks little.
“That woman will give you a free place to live, with servants, while you’re here.” “That woman” is how they refer to Mrs. Kossakowska. “You can have Hana join you, everything will work out.”
Moliwda is trying to cheer him up, but in fact he feels as if he’s shoving Jacob right into the lion’s den. Especially today, on seeing this city that is at once haughty and miserable. Angst has been tormenting him: after the plague in Lwów, after the deaths in Lublin, what else can go wrong?
“What I’m after isn’t just some nice accommodations,” says Jacob gloomily. “I want them to give me land, and I want full control over that land . . .”
It occurs to Moliwda that Jacob wants an awful lot. He decides to change the subject.
“Let’s get us a girl,” he says in a conciliatory tone. “One for the two of us, we’ll both bend her over,” he says, although without conviction. But Jacob shakes his head. With the silver toothpick he always carries with him, he picks pieces of meat out of his teeth.
“Given how long we’ve gone without an answer, it seems to me he doesn’t want to see me.”
“Come on now, it’s the royal chancellery. They get applications like yours by the hundred. The king is rarely in the capital, he’s most often in Dresden, so when he gets here, he is buried under letters and petitions. I have a good friend there. He will put your letter at the top of the pile. You just have to be patient.”
The Books of Jacob Page 63
