On the third floor, both sides of the palace have rooms for the men and the women as well as guest rooms. Many have been furnished and arranged, yet there are still not enough to accommodate all the visitors they receive. The Lord does not permit spouses to live together. He is the one who determines who will be with whom, and the truth is there have never been any disagreements on this score.
In such an atmosphere, romances and affairs have been known to blossom. Sometimes someone who is already in the Lord’s good graces requests the opportunity to get closer to this woman or that man. Then the Lord either permits it or doesn’t. So it went recently with Jezierzański’s daughter, Magda Golińska, who, although somewhat ashamed, begged the Lord to allow her to have intercourse with Jacob Szymanowski from the Lord’s personal guard, despite the fact that she was already married to Jacob Goliński, who had stayed behind in Poland to run his business. For a long time, the Lord refused consent, but eventually he relented, moved by the grace and beauty of Szymanowski. It turned out to be a bad decision.
Behind the palace and the stables, on the slope, there grows a small garden mostly planted with herbs and parsley. It includes a pear tree that bears very sweet fruit, drawing wasps from all over Brünn. On warm evenings, the young people from the palace and those who are living in quarters around town all come together under that pear tree, and this is where real life occurs. The youth sometimes bring instruments and play and sing; languages join together, and melodies overlap. They sing until one of the older people chases them away; then—with permission—they go out onto the square at the base of the cathedral.
The horses are not kept in the stable all the time, except for maybe the pair needed for the small, everyday carriage. The rest are kept in stables outside the city—beautiful coursers, each pair different. When the Lord needs to leave, he sends someone to Obrowitz on horseback, to bring back horses with a cart.
The Lord does not need horses, however, to go to church. The cathedral is right on his doorstep, its massive stone walls visible from his window, its tower looming over all of Brünn. When its bells ring, everyone gathers in the inner courtyard, wearing their most elegant clothing, forming a retinue. First the Lord goes with Eva, followed by the elders, and behind them the young people led by Jacob’s sons, who have recently come to join their father and sister. The gate is opened, and they slowly make their way to the cathedral. The shortness of the distance they must cross gives them the opportunity to mark each step with great solemnity, giving onlookers time to get a good look at them. The denizens of Brünn gather beforehand to witness this parade. The Lord always makes the biggest impression. He was born a king—tall and broad-shouldered, with additional height provided by his high Turkish fez, which he almost never takes off, and his broad coat with its royal ermine collar. People also look at his Turkish shoes, with their upturned toes. Plus Eva is an attraction in her own right, the most fashionably dressed, head held high, dressed in celadons or pinks. She glides along beside her father like a cloud, and the eyes of the crowd slide right over her, as if she were a particular kind of being made of precious matter, untouchable.
In the early spring of 1774, when Jacob is ailing again, this time with indigestion, he brings in from Warsaw the wife of Kazimierz Szymon Łabęcki, Łucja, one of the women who nursed him back to health in Częstochowa. Now he wishes to repeat the therapy. With no discussion, Łucja packs up and travels to Brünn with her child and her sister, and there she puts herself at Jacob’s disposition. For half a year she breastfeeds him, and then she’s sent away, and he begins to spend more and more time in Vienna.
In the summer, a host of maidens joins Eva’s retinue. Eight of them come from Warsaw: the two young Wołowskas, Lanckorońska, Szymanowska, and Pawłowska, as well as Tekla Łabęcka, Kotlarzówna, and Grabowska. They travel in two carriages, under the escort of their brothers and cousins. After two weeks, the cheerful company arrives. The young ladies are clever, pretty, always atwitter. Jacob watches them from the window as they disembark, straightening their crumpled skirts and tying the ribbons of their hats under their chins. They look like a flock of chickens. They retrieve their baskets and trunks; a few passersby stop to investigate this unexpected density of charm. Jacob appraises them with his eyes. The prettiest ones are always the Wołowskas, thanks to some impudent Rohatyn appeal that appears to be innate in them—no child of the Wołowskis has ever been ugly. And yet it seems that all their twittering annoys Jacob—he turns away from the window, almost irate. He tells them to come in their best dresses after the evening meal in the long hall, where he is accompanied by several of the older brothers and sisters. He is sitting in the new armchair he’s had made in the image of the red one he had in Częstochowa, though more ornate, while the brothers and sisters sit against the wall in their usual places. The girls stand in the middle, somewhat skittish; they whisper amongst themselves in Polish. Szymanowski, who is standing next to Jacob, holding in his hand something that is neither a tall spear nor a halberd, shushes them severely. He orders them to take turns going up to the Lord and kissing his hand. The girls go obediently; only one of them starts giggling nervously. In silence, Jacob approaches and examines each of them in turn. He spends the longest looking at that giggling one, who is black-haired and black-eyed.
“You look like your mother,” he says.
“How do you know, Lord, who my mother is?”
There is laughter in the room.
“You are Franciszek’s youngest, right?”
“Yes, but not the youngest, I have two brothers after me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Agata. Agata Wołowska.”
He converses with another, Tekla Łabęcka; even though the girl can’t be more than twelve years old, her lavish beauty catches the eye.
“Do you speak German?”
“No, French.”
“Then how do you say in French: I’m as foolish as a goose?”
The girl’s lips begin to quiver. She lowers her head.
“Well? You say you speak French.”
Tekla says quietly:
“Je suis, je suis . . .”
It is quiet as a crypt, no one is laughing.
“. . . I cannot say it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I only tell the truth!”
Lately Jacob has taken to carrying with him everywhere a staff topped with a snake’s head. And now, with this staff, he goes over the girls’ shoulders and chests, prying the hooks of their corsets with it, scratching their necks.
“Please remove your frippery. Halfway.”
The girls don’t understand. Neither does Yeruhim Dembowski, who has turned a bit pale and is communicating with Szymanowski with his eyes.
“My lord . . . ,” starts Szymanowski.
“Undress,” the Lord says mildly, and the girls start to undress. Not one of them protests. Szymanowski nods, as if to calm them down and to confirm that undressing in public and showing their breasts is completely natural. The girls start to unfasten their corset hooks. One of them whimpers. In the end, they all stand half naked in the middle of the hall. The women, mortified, look away. Jacob doesn’t even look at the girls. Tossing aside his staff, he leaves the room.
“Why did you have them debase themselves like that?” Franciszek Szymanowski lays into Jacob now, walking straight out after him. These days he looks like a Pole, with his long black mustache sticking out at the sides. “What did those innocent girls ever do to you? This is how you welcome them?”
Jacob turns to him, pleased with himself, smiling.
“You know I never do anything without a reason. I had them debase themselves in front of everyone for the simple reason that when my time comes, I will elevate them, lift them up above all other girls. Tell them that from me, so they will know it.”
Scraps: How to catch a fish in muddied waters
It is written that there are three things that do not come if you are thinking of them: the Messi
ah, lost objects, and scorpions. I would also add a fourth: the invitation to depart. It is always this way with Jacob: you need to be ready for anything. I had barely unpacked in Warsaw, and Wajgełe, Sofia, my wife, had just arranged to have the walls of our apartment on Długa covered in printed canvas, when a letter came from Brünn, and in Jacob’s handwriting at that, saying to take them some money, for they had run out. Gathering the appropriate funds and placing them inside a barrel, as we had done before in Częstochowa, making believe that we were beer merchants, I set out with Ludwik Wołowski and Nathan’s (or Michał’s) sons, and within the week we were there.
He greeted us as is his wont—boisterously, loudly, no sooner had we gotten out of the carriage than we were welcomed and treated like kings. The distribution of letters, the telling of how things had been for us all, how many children had been born, and who had died—this took all afternoon. And then, as it was Moravian wine that we were offered, it was of good quality, and it immediately clouded our heads, so that it was only in the morning on the following day that I began to be aware of where I was.
The truth is that I was never able to take much pleasure from that place in Brünn; it was the lifestyle of a lord, and not how it ought to have been. Jacob must have been disappointed that I was not excited about the vastness and exquisiteness of the palace as he proudly took me around his new estate opposite the cathedral, and as we went with the entire court to mass, and there among the pews we had our very own places, like real nobility. I remembered his other homes: the one rented in Salonika, that low windowless burrow that light could enter only once we had opened the door, and the wooden one in Giurgiu, with the roof of flat stones, its clay-patched walls covered in vines. In Ivanie, the one-room hut with the packed clay floor and that cobbled-together stove. And in Częstochowa, too, the stone cell with its window the size of a small handkerchief, always cold and damp. I couldn’t feel at home in Brünn, and slowly I started to become aware that I was getting older, and that all these novelties had ceased to appeal to me, and that, having been brought up in Busk in poverty, I would never grow accustomed to such riches. In the church, too—tall, slender, almost gaunt—I felt out of place. In such a church it is difficult to pray; the pictures and the sculptures, even if beautiful, are distant, and there is no way to view them slowly and in peace. The priest’s voice carries and reverberates in echoes off the walls—I never understand a thing. At the same time, it is a regime of kneeling, and that I have mastered quite well.
Jacob would always seat himself in the first row, ahead of me, in his sumptuous coat and that high hat of his. Next to him was Avachunia, gorgeous as the cake with icing they sell here out of glass cases like it were jewelry, with her hair carefully arranged beneath a hat so elaborate its details absorbed my entire attention. Next to Evunia was Zwierzchowska, charged here with overseeing the women in the stead of a weakening Wittel, and two maids. I would like to send my own Basia here to be a maid, so she could grow accustomed to the bigger world, as in Warsaw she will not learn or understand much, but she is still so young.
And I thought to myself, beholding all this, this whole new world that had opened up to Jacob in this foreign country: Was this the same Jacob? I had taken my last name from him, after all, Jakubowski, as if I were his property, his woman, but I did not find him now as I once had. He had gained weight and his hair was completely white, a legacy of his time in Częstochowa.
He received Wołowski and me in his room, which was furnished in the Turkish fashion, and we sat on the floor. He complained that he could not drink much coffee anymore, for it dried out his stomach and in general greatly interfered with his health, which surprised me, for he always used to be as if he didn’t have a body at all.
And so those first days we spent looking around the area, going to mass and conversing, yet our conversations were barren in some way. I was uneasy. I tried hard to look at him as I had at that young man we had come across in Smyrna, and I reminded him of how he’d shed his skin entire and how, when we swam in the sea, he was able to save me from my own fear. “Is this what you are, Jacob?” I asked him one day, pretending I had had too much to drink, but in fact extremely alert to how he would respond. He seemed embarrassed. But then I thought that one would be a fool to expect people to remain as they once were, and that it is a kind of o’erpridefulness in us to treat ourselves as constant wholes, as if we were always the same person, for we are not.
As I was leaving Warsaw, there had been rumors among the true believers that the real Jacob had died in Częstochowa, and that the one who was now sitting before me had replaced him. Many believed this, and lately the rumors had intensified; I had no doubt that Ludwik Wołowski, and young Kaplin´ski, Jacob’s brother-in-law (for the rumors had reached Wallachia, as well), who arrived just after we did, had come to investigate that very matter, in order to reassure our people in Warsaw and everywhere.
We sat at the table, and I saw how in the faint candlelight all were watching Jacob carefully, observing his every wrinkle. Ludwik Wołowski, too, stared at him so, having not seen him for a long time and being no doubt shocked by the transformations. Suddenly Jacob stuck out his tongue at him. Ludwik turned crimson and spent the rest of the evening looking morose. Over supper, once we had discussed all that there was to discuss, I asked Jacob: “What is it you’re planning to do now? Just be here? What about the rest of us?”
“My greatest hope is that more Jews will come to me,” he responded. “For untold strength will come with them. In a single column there won’t be fewer than ten thousand . . .” So he spoke, and also of banners and uniforms, and of his wish for his own guard; the more wine he drank, the bigger his plans became. He said that we had to ready ourselves for war, and that these were times of trouble. Turkey had weakened, and Russia was growing stronger. “War is good for us—in muddied waters you can fish out a little something for yourself.” He grew more and more heated: “There will be a war between Austria and Turkey, that is certain—and what if we were to secure ourselves a coveted piece of land during all that wartime turmoil? For that we’ll need hard work and gold. The idea being that we could gather around thirty thousand people at our own cost, arranging with Turkey to support them in the war, and in exchange receive a piece of land for a small kingdom somewhere in Wallachia.”
Wołowski added that Hayah had also prophesied in Warsaw—and several times in a row—great changes in the world, fire and conflagration.
“In Poland the king is weak, and chaos reigns—” Ludwiczek started.
“I’m done with Poland,” Jacob cut him off.
He said it bitterly, aggressively, the way he used to be, as if he were challenging me to a fight. And then everyone was going on about having our own land, talking over each other, the very idea having set their imaginations on fire. And the two Pawłowskis, who had also come with their wives, and even Kaplin´ski, Jacob’s brotherin-law, whom I considered to be an exceptionally prudent person, also took to this unrealistic vision. Nothing but politics mattered to them anymore.
“I’ve given up on having our own land,” I cried into the drunken, animatedly conversing little crowd—but no one heard me.
To my astonishment, Jacob bade Yeruhim Dembowski and me to record his evening chats. First Eva’s dreams were recorded by Antoni Czerniawski, son of those Czerniawskis of Wallachia who had looked after the money in Ivanie, and he filled a lovely little book with these. But I was surprised by this new request, since he had always rejected my previous pleas to sanction such recordkeeping.
Clearly he felt safe in Brünn. Maybe Moshe Dobrushka had influenced him, too. He would visit often and insist to Jacob that such writings, while they needn’t include things not intended for outside eyes, would give the growing number of Jacob’s followers insight into his thoughts and stories. Writing such a book would be an extremely noble act, said Moshe Dobrushka, especially for posterity.
First Yeruhim, that is, Jędrzej Dembowski, would write, and then I. If we were n
ot there, the Czerniawskis’ son Antoni would sit in for us, as he was a particularly clever boy, and thoroughly devoted to Jacob. And it was to be written in Polish, for we had long since abandoned our old language. Jacob himself spoke as he wished: in Polish, in Yiddish, sometimes whole sentences in Turkish, and he also made many Hebrew intercalations; I had to rewrite it all, for no one would have been able to make it out from my notes.
I recalled how once I had wanted to be beside Jacob as Natan of Gaza was beside Sabbatai Tzvi, exalting him and showing Sabbatai himself that he was the Messiah, since Sabbatai did not know who he was. For when the spirit enters into a person, it happens as if by violence, as if the air were to penetrate the hardest stone. Neither the body nor the mind that the spirit has entered are fully aware of what has occurred. Thus there must be someone who pronounces it, who names it. And that is what I did with our holy Mordechai in Smyrna—we were witnesses to the descent of the spirit into Jacob; we put it into words.
The Books of Jacob Page 83
