Dr. Ascherbach sits down at the edge of the couch where she is lying and takes her hand. Very gently, he begins to talk with her. He is not in a hurry; he permits her drawn-out silences. This soothes her nerves. He can bear the silence that now reigns in the stuffy, dark, cold room. Without realizing it, he starts to stroke the patient’s hand. He is thinking about something else. That the crumbs of human knowledge start to come together like chain links, one linking with the next, unbreakably. Soon it will be possible to cure every disease, including ones like this. But right now he feels helpless, he doesn’t understand her ailment, he doesn’t know what is behind it, and the only thing he can give this poor, thin, unfortunate girl is his own warm presence.
“What is the matter, child?” he asks. He pats her head, and the patient starts to look at him.
“Could I open the curtains?” he asks quietly.
Her answer comes resolute: “No.”
As he is returning late in the evening down the streets of Vienna, still filled with motion and noise, he is reminded of when he used to walk through Rohatyn to get to Hayah Shorr, who would throw herself across the floor, prophesying, tensing her body, covered in sweat.
Compared with Vienna, Rohatyn is a dream under the eiderdown in a dark, smoky chamber. None of Asher’s patients now resides in a common chamber, none wears shmatte on her head, and none dresses in a Polish kubrak. No one here suffers from a Polish plait. The houses are tall, powerful, with thick stone walls; they smell of lime, and the fresh wood from which the stairs are constructed. Most of these new houses are connected to street sewers. Gas lamps burn on the streets, which are broad and airy. Through the clean glass windows you can see the sky and the strands of smoke that rise up from the chimneys.
And yet today Asher saw, in that sick girl, Hayah Shorr from Rohatyn. That woman who was young then, and must be sixty years old by now, if she is still alive. Perhaps Mrs. Rudnitzky would be relieved by prophecy, by the agile navigation of the darkness of her reason, of its shadows and fogs. Perhaps that is also a good place to live. Maybe that is what he should advise her husband: “Mr. Rudnitzky, your wife ought to start to prophesy, for that will help her.”
Of figurines made out of bread
Hayah Marianna is dozing now. She has let her head fall to her chest, her hands have dropped down limp, and in a moment her account book will slide right out of her lap. Hayah keeps the bills at her son’s. This means spending all day in the office behind his shop, sitting and tallying columns of figures. The shop sells all kinds of fabrics. Her son is named Lanckoroński, like all of her sons and daughters, and Hayah herself, now a widow. Her son and Goliński imported the textiles, but Goliński became a wholesaler and lost a great deal of money, while Lanckoroński kept to retail and has done all right. The shop is on Nowe Miasto, very lovely and well kept. Warsaw’s townswomen come here for their materials—the prices are reasonable, and you can get discounts, too. There are a number of simple percales, as well as the still cheaper cotton imported from the East that has been such a hit lately. Servant girls and cooks sew themselves dresses out of it. The wealthier townswomen buy better materials, throwing in ribbons, feathers, bands, hooks, and buttons. In addition to all that, Lanckoroński imports hats from England, this being his latest line; he wants to open a small shop with just English hats on Krakowskie Przedmieście. He’s also thinking about starting to produce them himself, since no one in Poland is making decent felt hats. Why not? God only knows.
Hayah snoozes in the little back office. She has grown fat and doesn’t like to exert herself now; her legs ache, her joints have thickened, painful and constantly cracking. Because of this new corpulence, Hayah’s face has filled out—it’s hard to glean her old features in it. In fact, that old Hayah has vanished now, dissolved. This new Marianna is sort of sleepy, as if she were always in a fortune-telling trance. And yet, whenever anyone comes to her seeking advice, she’ll still unfold her board; when she unfolds it on the table and digs out from a small wooden box the appropriate figures, her eyelids start to tremble and her gaze drifts up until her pupils finally disappear. In this way, Hayah sees. The figures set out on the flat surface create all sorts of different arrangements, some pleasant, others ugly, some that set your teeth on edge. Hayah-Marianna is able to lay out in her board every “farther” and every “closer,” both in time and in space, knows how to show, based on a figure’s position, attraction or its opposite, repulsion. She also sees clearly conflict and accord.
The figurines have really multiplied since Rohatyn times—there are so many of them these days, and the latest are also the smallest, made just from bread now, never out of clay. In a single glance, Hayah can comprehend the meaning of a constellation, see where it is headed, what it will develop into.
Certain patterns develop out of this, patterns that connect with one another via bridges or gangways, there are also dikes and dams between them, and wedges and nails, joints, bands that squeeze together situations with similarly shaped outlines, like the staves on a barrel. There are also the sequences that look like ants’ paths, old botanical routes, and it isn’t known who’s walked down them or why they went that way instead of another. There are loops and vortices and dangerous spirals, and their slow movement draws Hayah’s gaze down, into the depths that accompany every thing.
From that little office where she stations herself, Hayah—leaning over her board that makes some of her son’s customers think that this strange woman has reverted to childhood and is playing with her grandchildren’s games—sometimes glimpses Yente; she can feel her presence, inquisitive but calm. She recognizes her, she knows it is Yente; evidently she has not quite died, which does not surprise her. She is, however, surprised by the presence of someone else entirely, of a completely different nature. This is someone tenderly observing them, her and the office, and all the brothers and sisters scattered all across the earth, and the people on the streets. This someone is attentive to details. Right now, for instance, this someone is observing the figurines and board. Hayah guesses what this someone wants, so she treats the presence like an ever so slightly annoying friend. She raises her closed eyes and tries to look this someone in the face, but she doesn’t know if this is possible or not.
The rejected proposal of Franciszek Wołowski the younger
Franciszek Wołowski the younger would like to have Eva. Not because he loves her and desires her, but because she is unavailable. The more impossible it becomes, the more Franciszek’s will to marry Eva Frank is fortified. This is why he has come down with such a serious case of her, the illness also due to his father—who always said that Eva would be his, and that in this way the two families would join, and Franciszek would take over after Jacob. Jacob looked upon it favorably too, but then, when Eva started to see the emperor himself, all hope floated off like a cloud, high, very high, ungraspable now. Eva is different these days, appearing rarely, dressed in gleaming silks, having become as slippery as a fish, impossible to grasp.
Franciszek proposes to her without the knowledge of his father, who is still in Warsaw, attending to the brewery. His proposal is passed over in silence, as if Franciszek had committed a shameful act that can never be mentioned by anyone. There are whispers of it at the court in Brünn for weeks on end, but he does not receive an answer, and slowly he realizes that he has made a fool of himself. He writes his father an embittered letter and asks that he summon him back to Warsaw. As he waits for an answer, he stops coming to the communal prayers and to Jacob’s chats. What seemed so attractive to him when he used to come here—this little crowd of people in the palace on Petersburger Gasse, new faces, a sense of community, as if he had found himself in an enormous family, the flirtations, the gossip, the never-ending jokes and amusements, followed by the prayers and songs—now all of that disgusts him. Perhaps he hates most of all the drills constantly being organized for the young men and boys by his uncle Jan Wołowski, called—on account of the uniform he insists upon wearing—the Cossack. He dril
ls several of the boys in a Cossack squadron, but there aren’t enough horses for a squadron; the boys have to take turns riding the four saddled ones. The Lord had given his second cousin, Franciszek Szymanowski, the task of forming a legion. This new word appears in all sorts of contexts: uniforms for the legion, the legion’s standard, legion practice, legion songs . . . Franciszek, Shlomo’s son, hears it incessantly, although toward all matters to do with uniforms and saberwaving he feels a profound reluctance, colored by contempt.
And so he travels to Vienna, wanders the streets, and in this uncomfortable situation, he finds consolation in concerts, which in Vienna is not difficult—music is everywhere here. He was quite moved listening to one composer named Haydn, whose music seemed so close to him and so beautiful. He cried discreetly: his eyes grew moist, but he managed to hold back the tears, which flowed inwardly instead and washed his heart. When the orchestra finished playing, and the applause began, he felt that he would not be able to bear the lack of this music, that he needed to have it without interruption. The world became empty. He had learned after the concert, which he had barely been able to afford, that there was something in this world that could raise a person to the height of happiness, and that it was possible not to even know about it, living in constant lack. He was supposed to buy his sisters presents—lace and buttons covered in silk, they had asked for hats and ribbons—but Franciszek would bring them sheet music instead.
He didn’t manage to get into the concert by this young man named Mozart, but he found a place beneath the opera windows where he could hear as though he were inside. He had the impression that the opera had fallen upon him, and the cathedral upon it, and now all of Vienna was cascading onto his head, and he was dumbfounded. This music was as impossible as Eva, becoming a great and peerless dream that could never come true in Warsaw. He is Warsaw, she Vienna.
In the end, the letter he had been waiting for arrived, and his father told him to come back. He reminded him about Marianna Wołowska, the daughter of Franciszek’s uncle Michał, whom Franciszek had known since childhood. There was nothing in the letter about marriage, but Franciszek understood that she had been assigned to him now. His heart grew tight, and in that state, he went away to Warsaw.
Saying goodbye, Jacob hugged him like a son—all of them saw it. And—it is true—Franciszek felt like Jacob’s son. He felt he would be given some sort of mission to fulfill, just not the one he had expected. Evidently from where Jacob was, things looked different from how they did to Franciszek. Franciszek bade tender farewells to his friends who were planning to remain at the court, with the Maiden. Finally, he purchased his music and looked through it later in his carriage, trying to play it silently with his fingers on his lap. Deep down he felt a great relief that he was going back to Warsaw, and that from now on that would be his place. He would be the commander of some other legion, in a fortress in Warsaw, following Jacob’s orders there.
As soon as he had crossed the border, Vienna paled, becoming just a black-and-white engraving, and all of Franciszek’s thoughts turned toward Leszno Street in Warsaw, toward his Marianna. He started thinking about her intensely and remembering what she looked like, since he had never before taken a good look at her. When they stopped along the way in Kraków, he bought her—totally innocently—a pair of tiny coral earrings that looked as if someone had deposited little droplets of their common, cousinly blood upon the gold filigree.
A final audience with the emperor
Letting the Lord’s blood is a task Zwierzchowska has mastered; now she can do it with great efficiency. The blood flows into the bowl, a considerable quantity of it. After this procedure, the Lord is weak, unsteady on his feet. Pale. That is good. He will look weak enough.
The carriage is waiting, not as fancy and ornate as the one in which they used to ride to Schönbrunn. It is a simple carriage drawn by two horses; it is humble and does not call attention. Three of them climb in—Jacob, Eva, and Anusia Pawłowska, who accompanies Eva, makes a good impression, and speaks wonderful French.
Emperor Joseph spends the summer in Laxenburg with his ever-present ladies, known for their beauty and intelligence. Their pretty hats accompany him like airborne jellyfish, ready to keep intruders away from him. Beneath the hats are the two Liechtenstein sisters, Countess Leopoldine Kaunitz and Princess Kinsky, with whom he is said to be having a romance.
Eva did not wish to go; her father forced her. Now she sits sulking, looking out the window. It is May 1786, the world is in bloom, the hills around Brünn look soft and ripely verdant. Spring has come early this year, the lilacs have long since bloomed, now it is the jasmines and the bulky peonies, and everywhere is the sweet, joyous smell of flowers. Jacob moans and groans; the bloodletting really has weakened him this time. The outlines of his face have sharpened, just like after his hemorrhage. He does not look good.
At first they are made to wait a long while—a thing that has not befallen them before. Through the windows they see little groups of people strolling through the park, the bright splotches of ladies’ parasols, the lush green of the trimmed lawns. They wait about two hours, not saying a word to one another, in total silence, and only once does someone look in on them and offer them water.
Then they can hear amused voices and brisk steps, and suddenly the door opens. The emperor walks in. He is wearing light summer clothing, not French at all, rather peasant-like. His shirt, unbuttoned toward the top, reveals his slender neck and emphasizes the protruding lower jaw that is typical of the Habsburgs. He isn’t wearing a wig—his sparse hair is ruffled, making him look younger. Behind him come the two ladies, laughing, his elegant shepherdesses; their last humorous remarks come tumbling.
His guests rise. Jacob is unsteady, and Anusia rushes to his side to offer him support. Eva stands as though hypnotized and gazes at the emperor.
The two men, in this company of women, size each other up for just a moment. Jacob makes a low bow. Eva’s and Anusia’s dresses wither as they squat.
“Who is this my eyes behold?” says the emperor, and sits down, extending his legs before him.
“Your Imperial Majesty . . . ,” begins Jacob in a weak voice.
“I know why you are here,” says the emperor, and instantly his secretary comes in with a stack of papers. He hands Jacob a sheet and indicates several sections of it, casting only a quick glance at it himself. “Your legal and valid debts must be paid off. About a great many of them nothing can be done. Others you can extend for some time longer. Our aid to you consists in itemizing which debts are just, and which are not. On these you have been taken in, and those you ought not to pay, for the claims are unfounded. That is all we can do for you. I advise you to take better care of your interests. Dissolve the court, pay what you owe—that is my advice.”
“Your Majesty,” Jacob starts, falls silent, then adds: “Might we perhaps speak in private?”
The emperor makes an impatient gesture, and all of the women leave the room. When they sit down in the room next door at the fanciful little coffee table, Princess Kinsky orders an orgeat refreshment to be served. Before it is poured, the women hear the emperor’s raised voice from the other side of the door.
Eva collects her courage and, in a trembling voice, with her eyes glued to the floor, she says quickly, as if wanting to drown out that angry voice:
“We are asking for aid not only for ourselves, but for the whole city. Without us, Brünn empties out a great deal indeed, and Brünn’s merchants have already been complaining of low profits since we were forced to send away a part of our company.”
“I certainly sympathize with the citizens of Brünn, that they are losing guests like all of you,” Princess Kinsky answers politely. She is lovely, with a beauty similar to Eva’s—petite, with great dark eyes and luxuriant black hair.
“If the princess would speak in support of us . . . ,” Eva begins, but she can barely get the words out through her clenched teeth.
“You are overestimating my inf
luence on the emperor. We are for pleasant, frivolous things.”
A silence falls; it is hostile and unpleasant. Eva feels drenched. Under her armpits sweat stains crop up on the silk, and this takes away what little confidence had remained to her. She feels like crying. Suddenly the door opens, and the women rise. The emperor walks out first and doesn’t even look at the ladies; his secretary goes ahead of him.
“I am sorry,” Princess Kinsky says simply, and sets out after the emperor. When they have disappeared, Eva lets out all the air she’s breathed and suddenly feels as light as a slip of paper.
Thomas von Schönfeld and his games
They return in silence, no one says a single word the whole way home. In the evening, Jacob does not go down into the common room at all. As usual, Zwierzchowska is with him. For dinner he asks to be brought two hard-boiled eggs and nothing else.
On the following day, he begins to send the youths back to their homes. They manage to sell the elegant coach and the porcelain right away. Smaller items are bought up in bulk by a merchant from Frankfurt. Eva avoids going into town, she is ashamed, for in every place she owes somebody something.
A month after their audience with the emperor, Thomas von Schönfeld appears in Brünn. He is returning from abroad and brings Lady Eva a box of chocolates. Eva wrote him several desperate letters asking for help. In each of them she made some mention of debtors’ jail.
“Problems are a part of life, just like dust is a part of a stroll,” says Thomas, when the three of them ride out of town, to Jacob’s favorite forest paths. It is lovely summer weather. The morning is refreshing; later it will no doubt get hot. It is healthy to be a little cold when you know such heat is coming.
The Books of Jacob Page 91
