As they spend weeks unpacking their things, making the beds and arranging their undergarments on the shelves of their new wardrobes, an endless stream of sheets of paper babbles over their heads—letters, reports, denunciations, and notes, reports that meander forth and back again. A certain district head named von Zollern expresses doubts about whether they ought to permit these persons to reside in Brünn; it strikes him as suspect that a neophyte—as he has heard—would be able to afford such a quantity of hired help. Help, it should be noted, made up exclusively of other neophytes. Although His Imperial Majesty has put special emphasis on tolerance, Administrator von Zollern nonetheless fears taking responsibility for this company and would prefer they settle elsewhere, until such a time as they receive a final determination from the Imperial-Royal Provincial Administration.
The response he receives says that, given martial law in Poland, the newcomers’ fate should be determined by military authority, without the approval of which—pursuant to the imperial ordinance of July 26, 1772—persons of Polish origin cannot be permitted to remain in the country. Then a missive arrives from the military commander’s office, stating that the neophytes are in fact subject to civil, not military, jurisdiction, and that the civil authorities are therefore requested to issue a ruling on their eligibility for residency. The civil authorities, meanwhile, turn to the district head with the request that he obtain information regarding the person of Joseph Frank: the aims of his travels, his means, as well as further details of his purported business activity.
In the wake of investigations by official and unofficial intelligence agents, the district head reports:
. . . that this Frank has testified that in the Polish Kingdom, thirty miles from Czernowitz, now containing peoples of the Russian Empire, he owns a quantity of horned cattle, in which he trades extensively; however, on account of present circumstances and of the wartime disruptions in Poland, fearing for his and his family members’ lives, he now intends to dispense with trade and herd. That furthermore he owns property in Smyrna, the income of which he collects every three years, and thus, having no intention of conducting business in Moravian Brünn, he shall live exclusively off the aforementioned sources. Insofar as the aforementioned Frank’s behavior, conduct, character, and social relations are concerned, the most careful, wide-ranging, and painstaking investigation on the part of the District Office has found nothing that might impugn the reputation of this man. Jacob Frank is a person of proper conduct; he lives off his own income and ready monies and is not prone to the incurring of debts.
After a year on the outskirts of town, in the beautiful hills near Vinohrady, with their many gardens, they move to Kleine Neugasse and then to Petersburger Gasse, where, thanks to the assistance of Zalman Dobrushka and others, they are able to take a twelve-year lease on a town councillor’s house at number 4.
The house stands right next to the cathedral, on the hill, and from it you can see all of Brünn. Its courtyard is small and neglected, overgrown with burdock.
Eva gets the nicest, brightest room, with four windows and myriad pictures on the wall that depict little genre scenes with shepherdesses. There is a four-poster bed, quite high and none too comfortable. She hangs her dresses in the wardrobe. Magda Golińska sleeps on the floor each night, until they finally buy her a bed. This isn’t strictly necessary, since whenever it’s cold they sleep cuddled together anyway, but only when Eva’s father isn’t awake to see it, when his snoring carries all across the house.
And yet Jacob complains that he can’t sleep.
“Get rid of that ticking!” he shouts, and has them remove to downstairs the clock that had at first so delighted him. The clock comes from somewhere in Germany and is made entirely of wood, with a little bird that leaps out on the hour with such a clatter that it is as if a canister shot has exploded nearby, as if they were still under siege in Częstochowa. And the little bird is ugly and rather resembles a rat. Jacob wakes up in the middle of the night and stomps around the house. He sometimes goes into Avacha’s room, but if he sees that Magda is lying there with her, he gets even more upset. Finally they give away the clock as a gift.
In the summer, Eva goes to Aunt Sheyndel’s to learn good manners and to play the fashionable piano Zalman has had brought in from Vienna. She also studies French, and as she is quite bright, she soon learns how to handle herself in conversation. With her intimates she speaks in Polish, as her father has forbidden Yiddish to all. With her cousins, however, she must speak in German; she is tutored in it at her aunt’s house, along with the younger girls. Eva is ashamed to be attending these lessons with such little children. She studies as much as she can, but even so, she fears she won’t catch up with the young Dobrushka girls. She also sometimes joins in on the sessions with the Hausrabbiner who takes care of the children’s Hebrew education, both the girls’ and the boys’. He is an old man, Solomon Gerlst, a relative of so important a person as Jonathan Eibeschütz, who was born right there in Prossnitz, where his extended family still lives. His primary focus is the two boys, Immanuel and David, who have already passed their bar mitzvahs and are now beginning to study the holy books of the true believers.
Once a month, a tailor comes, and Avacha’s aunt gradually orders her a new wardrobe: light summer dresses in muted colors, little cropped vests that show off her décolletage, hats so bedecked with ribbons and flowers that they look like dolls’ graves. At the cobbler’s, she orders shoes made out of silk, so soft that Eva is scared to go out onto the dusty streets of Brünn. In these new outfits, Eva transforms into a woman of the world, and her father squints with satisfaction as he looks at her, asking her to say something in German, anything at all. Then he smacks his lips with satisfaction.
“This is the child I asked for, this daughter, this queen.”
Eva likes to please her father—only when he likes her does she like herself. But she does not enjoy her father’s touch. She slips out of his grasp and goes off, as if busy with something, though she is always scared that he will call her back. She prefers to be in Prossnitz with her aunt and uncle. There, both she and Anusia Pawłowska do the same thing as their cousins: they learn how to be ladies.
In the Dobrushkas’ garden, fruit has already appeared on the little apple trees; the grass is lush, with paths trodden in it. It rained not long ago, and now the air is a clear, dark green, scintillating with myriad smells. The rain has etched little fissures into the main path, and drops are drying on the wooden bench Sheyndel has set up there, where she often comes to read. In the summer, Eva also sits out on this bench, trying to read the French novels that her aunt keeps under lock and key, a whole cabinet full of them.
Zalman Dobrushka often watches his daughters through the open window as he sits doing his accounts. Lately he hasn’t been going to his tobacco shop, as the stuffy summer air sparks asthma attacks. It is hard for him to breathe, so he has to be careful. He knows he won’t live too much longer, and he’s decided that he will leave his business to his eldest son, Carl. There is an ongoing battle in the Dobrushka family over baptism. Zalman and several of his elder sons are resistant to it, but Sheyndel supports their children who do decide to take such a step. Carl has recently been baptized, along with his wife and children. The tobacco business has become a Christian business. Tobacco will be a Christian good.
Of Moshe Dobrushka and the feast of the Leviathan
Twenty years ago, Moshe was at the wedding in Rohatyn, though of course he cannot know this. Yente touched him through the belly of a very young Sheyndel, disgusted by the horse shit in the courtyard. Yente, who also sometimes travels to the Dobrushkas’ garden here in Prossnitz, knows him well—yes, this is him, this once-uncertain, partial existence, a gelatinous orb of potential, a being who is and is not at the same time, for the description of which no language has yet been invented, nor theorized by any Newton. But from where she is, Yente sees both his beginning and his end. It isn’t good to know so much.
Meanwhile, in Wa
rsaw, in the kitchen on Leszno, the bony fingers of Hayah, now Marianna Lanckorońska, are molding a figurine of him from bread. It takes a long time, because the mass crumbles and breaks, the little figure takes on strange shapes and falls apart. It will turn out completely different from all the others.
Moshe is studying law, but he is more interested in theater and literature, and Viennese wineries are without a doubt better places to learn about life, he tells his mother. He wouldn’t dare say the same to his ailing father. His mother loves him above all else and considers him a true genius. Her maternal gaze sees in him an exceptionally handsome young man. Then again, no one who has not yet passed their twenty-fifth year can be denied at least a little beauty, and so it is with Moshe—he is simultaneously slender and solidly built. When he comes from Vienna, he dispenses with his powdered wig and goes around with his head bare, his dark, wavy hair tied back. In fact he resembles his mother, with her high forehead and full lips, and just like her, he is voluble and loud. He carries himself elegantly, in the Viennese fashion: he swaggers. His tall, thin leather boots with silver-plated buckles emphasize his long, slim calves.
Eva has learned that Moshe has a fiancée in Vienna named Elke, the stepdaughter of the wealthy industrialist Joachim von Popper, an ennobled neophyte. Yes, yes, the wedding is being planned. His father would happily marry him off right now, so that Moshe could continue in peace with his brothers in what seems to the father to be best—the tobacco trade. But Moshe is just getting to know the strange and deep pocket of another world, from which money can be extracted endlessly and at will: the stock market. He knows, like his mother does, that there are more important things than the tobacco trade.
Moshe brings home friends, young people from wealthy backgrounds; then his mother opens the windows and dusts the garden furniture, and the clavichord is put out in the middle of the room so that it can be heard throughout the house and garden. His sisters put on their best dresses. These young friends, poets, philosophers, and God knows who else—Zalman calls them triflers—are open, modern people; none of them is bothered by Zalman’s beard, nor his foreign accent. They are eternally exhilarated, in a perpetual state of light elation, delighted with themselves, with their own verses, which teem with allegory and abstraction.
When his mother calls them for dinner, Moshe is standing in the middle of the living room.
“Did you hear that? Let’s go and eat the Leviathan!” he cries. The youth get up from their seats and glide across the polished floors, hurrying to take the best places at the table.
Moshe exclaims:
“At the messianic feast, Israel will eat the Leviathan! Sure, Maimonides explains this philosophically and loftily, but who are we to disdain the beliefs of simple people who spent their whole lives hungry?”
Moshe takes his seat in the very center of the long table, not missing a beat in his peroration:
“Yes, the people of Israel shall devour the Leviathan! The vast body of the beast will prove to be as delicious and as delicate as . . . as . . .”
“. . . as the meat of virgin quail,” suggests one of his pals.
“Or transparent flying fish,” Moshe continues. “The people will eat the Leviathan at such length that they will satisfy their many-centurieslong hunger. There will be such great grub, an unforgettable feast. The wind will flutter the white tablecloths, and we’ll toss the bones under the table for the dogs, who will be present, too, to reap the rewards of salvation . . .”
The applause that sounds is weak, since everyone’s hands are already busy placing food on plates. Until late in the night music and bursts of laughter will carry all throughout the Dobrushkas’ house as the youths play their fashionable French party games. Sheyndel stands with her arms folded, leaning against the doorframe, gazing proudly at her son. She has reason to be proud of him: in 1773 alone he has published three of his own treatises—two in German, and one in Hebrew. All on the subject of literature.
After Zalman’s funeral, which takes place in January of 1774, Moshe requests a conversation with his uncle Jacob Frank. They sit on the veranda, where Sheyndel kept her flowers over the winter, and where tall figs, palms, and oleanders still stand.
Moshe seems to admire Jacob while simultaneously not caring for him at all. This is often how he feels about people: immoderate and ambivalent. Now he watches him furtively and is irritated by the country manners his uncle so flaunts, irritated by his Turkish outfit, gaudy and theatrical. And yet he admires his completely inexplicable and seemingly unshakable self-confidence; he has never seen such a thing in anyone before. He sometimes catches himself feeling respect toward his uncle, occasionally even fearing him. Perhaps this is what attracts him so much.
“I want you to be my witness at the wedding, Uncle. I want you to be there for my baptism, too.”
“I like that you’re inviting me to a wedding at a wake,” says Jacob.
“My father would have liked it, too. He was always one for getting straight to the point.”
Through the window, seen by those attending the wake, they look as if they are smoking their pipes and talking about Zalman, wishing him a peaceful rest. They look relaxed: Jacob has stretched out his legs in front of him and is releasing rings of smoke, lost in thought.
“It all boils down to this,” says Moshe Dobrushka now. “Moses and his constitution are frauds. Moses himself learned the truth, but he hid it from his people. Why? So that he could hold power over them, no doubt. And he constructed such a massive lie that it actually started to seem like the truth. Millions of people have believed in that lie, cited it, and lived by it.” Moshe is giving a lecture more than he is having a conversation—he doesn’t even look at his uncle. “What must it be like to realize your whole life has been an illusion? It’s like someone telling a child that red is green, yellow pink, that this tree is a tulip . . .” He forgets himself in enumerating comparisons, makes a kind of circular gesture with his hand and keeps going.
“In other words, the World is a deceitful lie, rehearsed theater. And yet, Moses had been given the greatest opportunity, he could have led the exiled nation, the nation that was wandering the desert—he could have led them to the true light, and yet he preferred to deceive them, and to present the injunctions he himself had invented as if they were divine. He kept that secret well, and it took us ages to realize the truth.”
Moshe suddenly, violently, slides off his chair and kneels before Jacob, putting his head on Jacob’s knees.
“You, Jacob, are the one who insists we uncover this truth. You took this task upon yourself, and for that, I admire you.”
Jacob does not seem surprised to find himself holding the head of the young Dobrushka in his hands. Anyone who saw them through the glass now would imagine that the uncle was consoling the son after his father’s death—a touching sight.
“You know, Uncle, Moses was terribly wrong, he condemned us Jews, and not only us, to countless misfortunes, defeats, plagues, suffering, and then he abandoned his people—”
“He converted to another religion . . . ,” Jacob interjects, and Dobrushka goes back to his chair, but he scoots it up so close to his uncle that their faces are only a hand’s width away from each other.
“Tell me, am I right? Jesus tried to save us, and he was close, but his message got warped, just like Muhammad’s.”
Jacob says:
“Mosaic laws are a burden on and a violence to the people, but the divine laws are perfect. No man or creature had the good fortune to hear them, but we trust that someday we will hear them. You know that, right?”
Moshe Dobrushka nods vigorously.
“The whole truth is in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, in all the knowledge we can attain, knowledge that will free us from this misery . . .”
Sheyndel is made anxious by what she sees through the veranda window, and she hesitates a moment, then decisively knocks and opens the door to tell them the modest repast has been served.
Of the house by t
he cathedral and the delivery of maidens
As soon as they’re set up on Petersburger Gasse, guests start to visit, and noise fills the house. The annexes are occupied already, and those who could not fit have rented apartments in the homes of local burghers—so now the sleepy city of Brünn sees an influx of new strength, with all the young newcomers. Since the teachings take place in the morning, the rest of the day is open, and the Lord begins to direct drills, so that thenceforth the courtyard is characterized by polyglot commotion, as boys from Poland, Turkey, as well as from the Czech and Moravian lands—the “Krauts,” as the Lord calls them—train together. The court in Brünn allocates significant amounts to purchase them all uniforms, and once they are outfitted thus, the Lord divvies up his little army under varied banners. Sketches for uniforms and pennants are spread out on the table, and plans for setting up the troops. Every morning the Lord starts in similar fashion. He goes out onto the balcony and, leaning on the stone balustrade, says to those in training:
“Whosoever heeds not my words may under no circumstances remain at my court. Whosoever swears will immediately be erased from everything. And if anyone should say that the thing that I am striving for is bad or needless, he, too, will be banned.”
Sometimes he also adds:
“Once upon a time I went out to demolish and uproot; now I plant and build. I will teach you royal customs because your heads were made for crowns.”
Dozens of pilgrims are received at the court every month. Some come to visit the Lord, and some, usually the younger ones, stay on. For maidens and unmarried men it is a great honor to spend a year in the service of the Lord. They all bring money with them, which they immediately deposit with the steward.
The palace on Petersburger Gasse is sturdily built, with three stories. A heavy wooden gate guards the entrance to the outside courtyard, where the stable, the carriage house, the storehouses for wood, and the kitchen are located. On the Petersburger Gasse side, which leads straight to the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, are the most beautiful rooms, albeit all in the shadow of the enormous structure of the church. The rooms on the second floor are occupied by the Lord and Her Ladyship Eva, as well as Roch and Joseph, whenever they come here from Warsaw. Here are also rooms for the more important guests, for the closest brothers and sisters of the true faith. When the elders stay in Brünn—the Wołowskis, the Jakubowskis, the Dembowskis, or the Łabęckis—this is where they stay. At the end of the left wing the Lord has his office, where he receives his guests. Strangers are received downstairs, right next to the courtyard. There is also a huge hall where the previous occupant used to hold balls—now it is a place for meetings and study. At the back is the kindergarten, where the youngest children are taught. The Lord does not care to have infants around him, which is why expectant women are sent away from the court, back to their families in Poland, unless the Lord, who sometimes likes to suck their milk, determines otherwise.
The Books of Jacob Page 82
