His brother installs Moliwda in his home, an old man’s messy bachelor quarters in Solec, and he tells him to get himself together so that he can start his new employment soon.
Moliwda begins his new life by shaving. Sharpening the razor, he watches out the window as anxious crowds gather along the street. Everyone continues to be shocked and outraged. Gestures have grown bolder, words higher-flying: God, the Republic, victim, death, honor, heart . . . Every syllable is stressed. In the evening, he can hear their monotonous prayers, recited in tired, resigned voices, as well as impassioned shouts.
Moliwda begins by writing and translating letters the king’s diplomatic services sends out across Europe. He composes them and writes them out over and over, mindlessly. He translates mindlessly, too. He watches the universal commotion like he would puppet theater. And the play is about trade. About the market that is the world. People invest in goods, in all variety of matter, and in all its variations—possessions, power that will bring earnings and offer confidence, pleasures for the body, valuable objects that beyond their price are totally useless, food and drink, intercourse. In other words, in everything that ordinary people understand as life. And everybody wants it, from the peasant to the king. Somewhere beyond all this robe-tearing and throwing yourself on the pyre looms a warm chamber and a richly set table. It seems to Moliwda that Bishop Sołtyk, already hailed as the greatest hero, is a kind of Herostratus who has fanned the flames for his own glory, since his act in the Sejm, which might seem heroic, served no purpose, contributed nothing to the common good. And this fanatical resistance to Russia’s demands regarding religious dissenters is incomprehensible to Moliwda. Everything Tsarina Catherine might say is treated in advance as an attack on the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, and yet you hardly need any special powers of discernment in order to see that such is the spirit of the times—rights for other denominations, for example. There are certain things that are black and white, but most are gray. He is not the only one in the royal chancellery who thinks this way.
Going home, he looks over the prostitutes, who even in this turbulent time do not leave their posts on Długa Street, and he wonders: What exactly is this thing called life?
And even though they cannot answer this question, he often makes use of their services, because since his departure from the monastery, Moliwda has been terrified of being alone.
Of wandering caves
When you get out of the little town, heading southeast, the road leads first through a dense forest, where in addition to the trees white stones grow. They grow slowly, but with time, as the earth gets older, they will come out onto the surface completely, the soil won’t be necessary anymore, since there will be no people, and all that will remain will be just those white rocks, and then it will turn out that they are the bones of the earth.
You can see that the landscape changes right outside the town—it is dark gray, rough, and made up of tiny, lightweight pebbles, as if they’d been ground in a mill. Pines grow here, and tall mullein, which peasant women make decoctions out of to lighten their hair. The dry grass crackles underfoot.
Immediately past the forest begin the hills with their many white rocks, from which the castle ruins rise. When they see it for the first time, they all think that this castle cannot have been built by human hands, but rather that it was formed by the very same force, the very same hand that built the world. This structure resembles the fortress of the bałakaben, those limping, rich little men who live underground, of whom the sages tell in the holy books. Yes, this must be their property, along with all the land around Częstochowa—bizarre, rocky, so full of mysterious passageways and hiding places.
But Ezdra, a Częstochowa Jew who is friendly to Frank and his company, who sells them most of their provisions, saves the biggest revelation for last. This, here, is a cave.
“What do you think?” asks Ezdra triumphantly, smiling and revealing his teeth, turned brown by tobacco.
The entrance to the cave is hidden in the bushes that grow over the hillside. Ezdra invites them inside, as if it were his own residence, but sticking their heads inside is enough for them; you can’t see anything anyway. Ezdra produces a torch from somewhere and lights it. After a few steps, the opening behind them disappears, and the torchlight shows the inside—damp walls, strange, beautiful, glistening, as though made of some ore unknown to man—of a smooth mineral that has solidified into icicles and droplets, of wonderful rock in a beautiful reddish hue, interwoven with threads of a different color, white and gray. And the deeper inside they go, the more the insides look alive, as if they were going into a stranger’s stomach, as if they were traveling down intestines, stomachs, kidneys. The echo of their steps reverberates off the walls, grows like thunder and comes back in pieces. Suddenly from somewhere a gust of wind blows out the rotten torch they’re carrying, and they are enveloped in darkness.
“El Shaddai,” Jakubowski says in a whisper.
They freeze, and now you can hear their uncertain, shallow breaths, the roar of the blood in their veins, the beating of their hearts. You can hear Nahman Jakubowski’s stomach growling; you can hear Ezdra swallowing saliva. The silence is so dense that they can feel on their skin its cold, slick touch. Yes, without any doubt, God is here.
Zwierzchowska, who very naturally has taken over the rule of their entire company, parceled out into Częstochowa houses as they are, is preparing a generous gift for the prior—silver candlesticks and a crystal chandelier so valuable that the prior cannot possibly turn down their request. They have already gone on walks together around the monastery, after all. What harm would it do to go a little farther? The prior hesitates, but the glint of the silver and the sparkling of the crystal convinces him. He gives his permission. The monastery is having some financial troubles. It should be quiet, only Jacob with two companions. Hana and the children stay behind, under guard.
The moment has arrived. October 27, 1768, the day after the birth of Jacob’s son Joseph. The Lord goes out for the first time beyond the town’s walls. He puts on Czerniawski’s long coat and pulls a hat down so that the brim comes right to his eyes. At the tollhouse a cart awaits, and a peasant hired to drive it; they go down the sandy, uneven road in silence.
Jacob goes into the cave alone, telling the others to wait. Czerniawski and Jakubowski set up a little camp at the entrance, but the fire they build barely smolders. The day is rainy and damp. Their kapotas get wet from all this standing around in the drizzle. Jacob does not return until evening. In the weak flames, skewered apples swell to bursting.
By the time he appears in the opening, it is already dark. They can’t quite see his face. He tells them to go quickly, so they go, stumbling over stones sticking out of the ground or over their own legs. Their eyes have grown accustomed to darkness, but now the night is bright somehow—is it the damp fog scattering the light of the stars and moon so, or is it this local earth the color of dried leaves that is shining? The peasant with the cart, who is waiting for them by the road, is soaked and angry. He wants more money; he didn’t know it was going to take this long.
Jacob doesn’t say a single word the whole way; he only talks when they are back in the tower, after casting off his soaked coat:
“That is the same cave where Shimon bar Yochai and his son hid before the Romans, and God miraculously delivered them food and ensured that their clothing never got destroyed,” he says. “It was here that Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar. This cave traveled here after us from Hebron, didn’t you realize? Deep inside, at the very bottom, is the grave of Adam and Eve.”
A silence falls, in which Jacob’s words try to find their places. It could be said that all the maps of the world are moving around over him, making a rustling sound, turning around, accommodating one another. This lasts for a while, and then the others clear their throats, and someone sighs; it seems as if order has been restored. Jacob says: Let us sing. And they sing together, just as they used to sing in Ivanie.
Two women stay the night
with him, while he tells the rest who live in the town that the two Matuszewskis and Pawłowski are to have intercourse with Henrykowa Wołowska. It is similar the following night: with Sofia Jakubowska are to be Pawłowski, both Wołowskis, Dembowski, and also Jasskier.
Of failed legations and history laying siege to the monastery walls
The good run enjoyed by Nahman, or Piotr Jakubowski, does not last long. The effortfully prepared delegation to Moscow concluded in complete fiasco. The emissaries—Jakubowski and Wołowski—were treated like criminals, murderers, traitors, for news had already reached Moscow from Poland of the fallen Messiah imprisoned in Częstochowa. They managed to meet with no one, despite their generously distributed gifts. In the end they were chased out like spies. They returned quietly and without any money left. Jacob punished them. He bade them stand before the company barefoot, in just their shirts, and then, kneeling, to beg everyone’s forgiveness for their ineptitude. Jakubowski bore it better than Franciszek Wołowski. Marianna Wołowska later told the other woman that her husband sobbed that night out of shame and humiliation, though of course it had all been through no fault of theirs.
Now they sense that the whole world is plotting against them, all of Europe. At this point the prison in Częstochowa seems to Nahman Jakubowski familiar and cozy, particularly since the Lord can, without restriction, go out into the town, and even on long walks in the cave, and the whole company has free access to him.
Now by day the chamber downstairs in the tower turns into a chancellery. Jacob dictates letters to true believers in Podolia, Moravia, and Germany, tells them of the Shekhinah hidden in the Jasna Góra picture and summons them for baptism en masse. The tone of these letters grows more apocalyptic by the month. Sometimes the scribe—Jakubowski or Czerniawski—finds that his hand trembles as he writes. In the evenings, meanwhile, the chancellery becomes a common room, the kind they used to have back in Ivanie, and after lessons only the chosen ones stay behind, and the “putting out of the candles” begins. One autumn day in 1768 during this ritual, the Paulines from the monastery try to get into the tower, and in the end they force the door. But they can’t see too much there in the dark. Yet evidently they have seen enough, for the next day the prior summons Jacob under guard and prohibits him henceforth from receiving anyone besides his immediate family.
“No women in the monastery, and no young boys,” says the prior, and as he says it, he covers his face with his hands.
He also brings back the ban on going into town, although as tends to be the case with bans, this one crumbles with the passage of time and the giving of generous gifts. In this time of growing civil unrest, the prior issues a categorical order to close the monastery all night, but in the end he is moved enough by Hana’s illness that he allows her and the children twenty-four-hour residence in the officer’s chamber.
News that something is going on in Podolia, by the Turkish border, reaches them through the so-called Korolówka Buttercup, Pawłowski’s brother-in-law, who circulates correspondence around Podolia and has eyes in the back of his head. First—a strange thing—his father, who is a tentmaker in Korolówka, received from Polish lords a great order of tents, which must certainly mean that they are preparing some sort of military movements. And Buttercup is right—soon they learn from Roch that a confederation against the king has surfaced, while the king is colluding with Russia in the little town of Bar. An emotional Roch tells them of standards: that on them appears Our Lady of Częstochowa, the very same, with her dark face and child in arms, and that the confederates wear coats with crosses on them and an inscription in black: “For faith and freedom.” Apparently, the royal army dispatched against the confederates either flees in the face of their religious zeal or crosses over to their side. Roch sews the torn-off buttons back onto his old uniform and polishes his shotgun, like all the other old soldiers in the monastery. Stones are laid at the base of the monastery walls, and the arrowslits, overgrown with bushes, are cleared and repaired.
The previously sleepy little town of Częstochowa slowly fills up with Jewish refugees from Podolia, as the Haydamak uprising there has unleashed pogroms. Jacob’s fame has reached the refugees, and so they also make their way to the holy Christian monument, believing that no violence will be able to reach inside it, and that in addition they can seek their refuge under the wing of the Jewish maybe-Messiah imprisoned here. They bring with them terrible stories: The Haydamaks, enraged and lawless, will not let anyone escape. The night sky is red from the glow of burning villages. When the prior’s regime relaxes somewhat, Jacob goes out to see the new arrivals every day and puts his hands on their heads, and the rumor spreads that he can heal them.
The whole of the Wieluńskie Przedmieście has now been transformed into a camp, with people living on the streets and on the long, narrow market square. Every day the Pauline Fathers bring them fresh water from the monastery, since it is said that the wells are unclean now, and everyone fears plague. Every morning the Fathers distribute loaves of bread, warm from the monastery’s bakery, and apples from its orchard, which this year are plentiful and lush.
Nahman Jakubowski runs into Hasidim he knows in this camp. The orphaned followers of the Besht look askance at Jacob’s people, mistrustful. They stick together, but eventually they start to get into debates with the Frankists, debates that grow noisy, violent. Their voices, which carry quotations from Isaiah, from the Zohar, rise above the walls and can even be heard from Jacob’s tower.
On the occasion of little Joseph’s baptism, Jacob gives a great feast in the town, so that anybody may eat and drink, without regard to whether he has been baptized or circumcised. Equally celebrated is the wedding of Jacob Goliński, for whom the Lord has selected—Goliński being a good true believer—Magda Jezierzańska, a wife half his age. The ceremony occurs in the novitiate chapel in the monastery, which the prior graciously allows them to use after it has been repainted. The service is beautiful, and you can’t yet hear the roar of the cannons that are inexorably closing in on Częstochowa. Instead, there is the beautiful and noble sound of the psalms of the Paulines, who are pleased that the monastery has received such a sumptuous offering.
Immediately afterward, the news goes around that Russia has determined to insert itself into Poland’s internal disputes, and that Russian armies are en route from the east. This means war. Now every day the news is worse. And every day more people come to the Jasna Góra Virgin, believing that in her presence nothing terrible can happen to them. The chapel is full, people lie in the form of the cross on the cold floor, the air is thick with prayer. When the songs fall silent, from afar, from just past the horizon, comes the low, ominous thunder of explosions.
Alarmed by all of this, Jacob has Jan Wołowski go to Warsaw to fetch Avacha, who was sent there for her education and has been living with the Wołowskis. It is a decision Jacob soon comes to regret. He is surprised by her appearance. The thin little girl with the braids and bitten nails and hands rough from climbing the monastery walls has returned a young lady, beautiful and with excellent manners. She wears her hair pinned up in a high bun, and her bright dresses are cut low (although the neckline is covered with a kerchief ). Whenever she leaves the tower for her daily walk around the walls, all eyes in the monastery turn to her. The monks are displeased by the commotion she leaves in her wake. So her father keeps her in the officer’s chamber and in the end only lets her go out after dark, and always under someone’s watchful eye.
Two weeks after her arrival come the confederates, under the leadership of one Kazimierz Pułaski. One afternoon they occupy the Jasna Góra fortress as if it were the courtyard of a tavern, putting their horses, carts, and cannons everywhere, wherever they like, to the Paulines’ utter horror. They turn pilgrims away and introduce their own military rules. Immediately the fortress is closed, and Jacob can no longer be visited, nor can he go out into the town. With him are Hana, Avacha, and the boys, as well as both Zwierzchowskis, Matuszewskis, and his emissary Nahman Ja
kubowski. The monks must free up one of the monastery’s wings, which will be turned into quarters for the army. At first the pilgrimages stop completely, then cautiously they start up again, but at the gate the newly invigorated veterans now check everyone to ensure that no Russian spies slip through. Roch, who is the commander of the guard at the gate, has no time to converse with Jacob. Now he has other things on his mind—he has to supervise the daily delivery of wine and beer for the soldiers. The little town, too, livens up, as the soldiers must be fed, clothed, and entertained.
Kazimierz Pułaski looks young, like a boy whose mustache has just grown in. It’s hard to believe he is an experienced leader. He seems to know this, too, as he adds gravitas to his body with a heavy military coat that bulks up his slender silhouette.
He does not get much of an opportunity for battle. The Russian troops circle the fortress like a fox around a henhouse. They come up; they go off. People think they are frightened away by the Virgin Mary on the standards displayed around the walls.
Pułaski, who soon grows bored by the idleness in the closed monastery, is intrigued by the man in the high hat who rarely leaves the tower, and his beautiful, mysterious daughter, around whom legend already swirls in the garrison. He doesn’t care about matters of the church, nor do heresies much concern him. All he has heard is that this is the neophytes’ heresiarch, and a resident of the monastery. But a good Catholic. He sees him daily at morning mass. His sincere participation in the service, and the powerful voice with which he sings the Lord’s Prayer, make Pułaski admire and like him. One evening he invites them for dinner, but Jacob comes alone. Tall, distinguished, he says little, considers much. They discuss what might happen, Russia, the king’s politics. Pułaski understands that this prisoner of the king must be careful, and he tries to change the subject, since the conversation keeps stalling. To inquiries after his daughter, Jacob Frank responds that she had to stay behind with her mother, who is indisposed. Pułaski seems disappointed at this. But the next time, Jacob brings his daughter, and her presence ensures that the evening is a very pleasant one indeed. Other officers have been invited, somewhat excited by the presence of such a lovely—if shy and quiet—young woman, and they show off their wit and their intelligence. The wine is good, and the scrawny chickens taste like wildfowl.
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