“Who is the gentleman?” Anna Czerniawska asks, with great presence of mind.
She takes the girl by the elbow and leads her gently into the dining room. She tells her husband to bring something warm, since it is cold and the girl is shivering.
“Herr Roch,” says the girl, crying.
“Do not fear. All will be well.”
“He’ll marry me. That’s what he said!”
“You’ll receive compensation.”
“What does compensation mean?”
“All will be well. Leave the child with us.”
“It’s, it’s . . . ,” the girl begins, but Czerniawski can see for herself when she has cleared away the cloths around it. The child is sick, the girl must have bound her stomach. That is why the infant is so calm, his eyes moving around strangely, slobbering.
Czerniawski brings her some food, the girl eats with appetite. Husband and wife confer for a moment. Then Czerniawska decides, and her husband places several gold coins on the wooden table. The girl goes. That same day, the Czerniawskis go out into the country, and there, paying a generous sum to a certain steward, and giving him the child, they sign a long-term agreement with him.
These little love affairs of Roch’s cost quite a bit. This is the second time.
Eva Frank, informed by the Czerniawskis, has summoned Roch to her chamber, and is now reproaching her brother. Her dress sweeps away from before him the scraps of material left here by the seamstress who until a moment ago had been taking her measurements. Eva speaks in a hushed, tense voice that lashes Roch.
“You do not apply yourself in anything, you are incapable of doing anything of use, nothing even interests you. You are a pain in the ass that expects to be coddled. Our father has given you so many opportunities, and you have squandered them all. Women and wine—that’s all you’re good for.”
She exchanges a glance with Czerniawska, who is sitting with her husband by the wall.
“Your wine will be rationed from now on. Father has determined it.” Roch, in his armchair, laughs, not looking up, so that it appears he is laughing into his boots. His light red hair sticks out under from his carelessly donned wig.
“Father is sick and won’t live long. Do not speak to me of him. I’ll throw up.”
Eva loses all her self-control. She leans in over her brother and hisses:
“Silence, you pathetic, tiny, stupid man.”
Roch covers his face with his hands. Eva turns abruptly, her lavish dress again sweeping up the scraps of fabric and scattering them about the room, and exits.
Czerniawski, embarrassed, sees that Roch is weeping.
“I am the most unfortunate of men.”
Of neshika, God’s kiss
The Lord dreams of that strange smell again, that ambrosia smell. A few hours later, the next attack arrives. The von La Roche family bring in for Jacob Frank the finest doctor in all of Frankfurt, and he in turn calls a consultation with his local Offenbach colleagues. They debate at some length, but it becomes clear that there is nothing they can do for Jacob. He is completely unconscious now.
“When?” Eva Frank asks them, as they are leaving Jacob’s room.
“That we cannot tell you. The patient’s organism is extremely strong, and his will to live is iron. But no one can survive such a powerful apoplexy.”
“When?” Czerniawski repeats.
“Only God knows.”
And yet the Lord survives. He regains consciousness for a moment and is cheered up by a green parrot that speaks, brought to him as a gift. Someone reads him the newspaper, although it is unknown to what degree the news from the papers, ever more apocalyptic, makes it into his mind. In the evening he proclaims that women must also be taught to ride horses. The women will also be warriors. He demands that all the expensive robes and carpets be sold so that they can purchase more weapons. He calls in Czerniawski in order to dictate letters to him. Czerniawski writes down everything Jacob says, not giving any indication, even with his eyebrows, what he thinks about it all.
The Lord also proclaims that a delegation must be sent to Russia, orders it readied. Most of the time, though, he lies there lost in thought, as if in his mind he had already traveled far away. He is delirious. And in his delirium, the same words appear over and over again. “Do as I command,” he calls out to everyone for the whole of one evening.
“The men will tremble,” he says, foretelling great riots and blood upon the city’s streets. Or he prays and sings in the old language. His voice breaks off, transforms into a whisper: “Ahapro ponov baminho,” or “I beg His countenance forgiveness.” He says: “I must be very weak if I am to approach death . . . I must renounce my strength, only then will it renew me . . . everything shall be renewed.”
Jakubowski, devastated, falls asleep at Jacob’s bedside. Later he will claim to have recorded Jacob’s last words, which he renders as follows: “Christ said that he came to free the world from Satan’s grip. But I came to free it from all the laws and statutes that have been in effect till now. When everything has been destroyed, the Good God will be discovered.”
The truth is that at the very end, Jakubowski wasn’t with the Lord. The women had come to replace him, and they no longer allowed anyone in. Eva with Anusia, old Matuszewska, Zwierzchowska, Czerniawska, and Eva Jezierzańska. They set out holy candles, put out flowers. The last person to converse with him—if it could be called a conversation—was Eva Jezierzańska. She had sat by his bedside the whole previous night, but come morning, she went to get a little sleep herself. Then the Lord sent for her, saying only: “Eva.” Some people thought he was summoning Her Ladyship, but he did not say “Ladyship,” only “Eva,” and he usually called his daughter Avacha or Avachunia. And so Old Jezierzańska came in, replacing Jakubowski and Eva, sitting down on the edge of the bed and immediately understanding what it was he wanted. She laid his head on her lap, and he tried to put his lips in the position they might take for kissing, but failed on account of the paralyzed half of his face. She pulled out a large, flabby breast and pressed it to the Lord’s lips. And he sucked it, although it was empty. Then he lost the last of his strength and stopped breathing. He didn’t say a word.
A shaken Jezierzańska left the room. She did not cry till she was out the door.
Antoni Czerniawski announces to the uneasy company come morning that the body has been washed now, changed, and laid upon its catafalque. He says:
“Our Lord has passed. He died of a kiss: neshika. God came to him in the night and brushed his lips with His lips, as He did with Moses. The Almighty God is now welcoming him into his chambers.”
A single mighty sob resounds, the news races through the galleries, flies out from the castle and whirls like a vortex down the narrow, impeccable streets of Offenbach. Soon the bells in all the local churches start to peal, regardless of denomination.
Czerniawski notices that all the elder brothers have already come downstairs except Jakubowski, who spent all night at the door. Suddenly he starts to worry whether something might have happened to him, too. He climbs the stairs to the last floor, thinking what a bad idea it was to put the elders up so high, that this needs to change.
Jakubowski is sitting with his back to the door, hunched over his papers, his gray, close-cropped hair with its woolen cap on a head that looks as small as a child’s.
“Brother Piotr,” Czerniawski says to him, but Nahman does not react.
“Brother Piotr, he has passed.”
There is a long silence, and Czerniawski understands that he ought to leave the old man to himself.
“Death is no bad thing,” Jakubowski says suddenly, without turning around. “And in fact, there’s no need to deny it, it belongs to the good God, who in this way mercifully saves us from life.”
“Brother, are you coming down?”
“There is no need.”
The night after her father’s death, Eva has a dream. Something happens in that dream that makes her body swell, something
moves over her, lies down on her, she knows what it is, but she cannot see it. The worst (and also the best) is that she feels a pushing out in her belly, something pushes into her womb, into that place between her legs she does not even want to name, and there it moves inside her, it lasts but a moment, and that is because everything is broken off by her sudden pleasure, an explosion, and then a weakening. It is a strange moment of shamelessness and destruction. The unpaid bills, the mayor’s glances, the letters from Giacomo Casanova, Roch’s shady dealings and the clumps of silver on the white tablecloth, evidence of triumph—none of it matters anymore. All is invalidated in this brief moment. And even in the dream Eva wants to forget about everything, erase for all time both this pleasure and this shame. And, still dreaming, she orders herself to forget about everything and never to return to it. To treat it as other mysteries of the body are treated—periods, rashes, hot flashes, minor heart palpitations.
When she wakes up, her innocence is restored. She opens her eyes and sees her room, bright, cream-colored, and her dressing table with its porcelain jug and bowl. And the dollhouse made for her by special order in Bürgel. She squints, and as long as she lies on her stomach, she still has access to her dream, and to that unlikely pleasure, but when she turns over onto her back and straightens the cap in which she sleeps in order not to destroy her neatly arranged hairdo, the dream goes, and her body curls up on itself, dries out. The first thought that comes to her mind is that her father has died. And for some reason, that thought awakes in her two completely contradictory feelings—unbearable despair and a strange, rocking joy.
Gossip, letters, denunciations, decrees, and reports
Here is what Offenbach’s Voss News had to say about the funeral of Jacob Frank:
The body of Baron Frank was ceremoniously buried on December 12, 1791, in Offenbach.
He was the patriarch of a Polish religious sect that followed him to Germany and that he ruled with tremendous panache. He was worshipped almost as another Dalai Lama. The procession opened with women and children numbering some two hundred, clothed in white, candles sparkling in their hands. The men went after them in colorful Polish costumes, with silk sashes across their shoulders. Then went the brass and reed band, and the body of the deceased, carried upon a sumptuous bier, followed. On either side of it walked: on the right, the deceased’s children, his only daughter and his two sons; on the left, Prince Marcin Lubomirski, Polish magnate, with the Order of Saint Anna at his neck, along with many dignitaries. The deceased lay in an Eastern costume, red, clad in ermine, his face turned toward the left side in a semblance of sleep. His casket was surrounded by a guard comprising Uhlans, Hussars, and other Polacken in lavish attire. Prior to his death, the deceased had issued his decree that no one lament him or go into mourning for him.
After the funeral, which was attended by the entire city of Offenbach and half of Frankfurt, some company sat down with Sophie von La Roche. Bernard was the first to comment on the matter, being well informed as always:
“People are saying that these neophytes are trying to establish some sort of confederation amongst the Jews. Under the banner of opposition to the Talmud, the Jewish Bible, they challenge authority and follow a version of Turkish laws and beliefs.”
“Well, I think,” says Dr. Reichelt, who was there during Jacob Frank’s illness, “that this entire messianic movement is a rather complicated form of extracting money from naive Jews.”
Then it is the turn of a friend of the family, von Albrecht, formerly a Prussian resident of Warsaw, whose grasp of all matters Eastern is excellent:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I must say I’m surprised at your naiveté. I have always warned that this new sect is an attempt to appropriate and control the synagogue all across Poland, that it would thus be prudent to monitor its activities very closely indeed and inform His Royal Emperor’s office of the development of the situation. That is what I saw many years ago now, when they were first beginning. And now apparently an overwhelming quantity of arms has been discovered at their court. In addition, they’ve been conducting drills there, with alarming regularity, as well as recruiting young men for their army . . .”
“But women, too, apparently,” exclaims Mrs. von La Roche.
“It all raises the suspicion,” continues this erstwhile resident of Warsaw, “that these neophytes were preparing for an uprising in Poland, which would have been aimed against the Prussians. I am therefore very surprised by your prince, who so wholeheartedly agreed to receive them here. They managed to make their sect into a kind of state within the state, ruled by its own laws, with its own guard, and its accounts in the majority conducted outside any banking system.”
“They lived peacefully and honestly,” says Sophie von La Roche, attempting to defend those “little insect-like people—” but the doctor interrupts her:
“They had unimaginable debts . . .”
“Who does not have debts these days, my dear doctor?” Sophie von La Roche asks rhetorically. “I prefer to believe that Eva and her brothers are the illegitimate children of Tsarina Elizabeth and Prince Razumovsky, that’s what we’ve been thinking of them here. It’s more romantic.”
They laugh politely and change the subject.
“Such skeptics,” Mrs. von La Roche comments, in a mock-offended tone.
Yet the matter of Jacob Frank and his disciples hardly quiets down, and now letters and denunciations are carried by an ever more violent wind blowing over Europe, whipping up new fears and further conjectures.
Letters sent around to Jewish communities and to others call for all Jews and Christians to unite under the banner of their sect called Edom. The goal would have been the so-called brotherhood above and beyond the differences between these two religions . . .
It is not known what aims might motivate the sect’s activities, but we can be certain that its individual members maintain close ties with the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, and the Jacobins, however scant may be the evidence from correspondence or from elsewhere . . .
King Frederick Wilhelm’s ordinance, meanwhile, clearly states:
. . . this man, Jacob Frank, was the leader of a sect, and at the same time a concealed agent of an as-yet unknown force. Recently letters have come out that call for the uniting of the different synagogues under the auspices of his sect. From now on, everything that is linked to secret societies arisen under unknown or unclear circumstances, every political enthusiasm, will require particular attention, considering that secret societies always act under cover of darkness and silence, each of them using Jacobinic propaganda for their terrible criminal intentions . . .
With time, meanwhile—for time has a wonderful ability to efface all uncertain places and patch up all holes—the analysis achieves a certain consistency:
As for the sect of Frankists now called Edom, insofar as it was until recently treated by many of our aristocrats as an exotic curiosity, we ought now, after the frightening and terrible experiences of the Revolution in France and their connections with Jacobinism, to change our perspective and treat mystical rituals as a cover for political and revolutionary intentions.
30.
The death of a Polish princess, step by step
Now things play out of their own accord. It is difficult to fully appreciate this when you are seeing them from the stage on which they are unfolding. Nothing is visible, there are too many sets, and they cover each other up and give the impression of chaos. In the confusion, the fact that Gitla Gertruda Ascherbach dies the same day as the Lord goes unnoticed. This is the fulfilment of a process begun somewhere in Podolia, one cold winter, when her great, tempestuous love, the fruit of which is Samuel, took its unjustly short place, a duration of the blink of an eye amongst all the events on this flat stage.
Yet Yente sees this order, this accord—Yente, whose body is slowly transforming into crystal in a Korolówka cave. The entrance to it is now almost completely overgrown with black lilac, their lush umbels filled with
long-ripe berries already fallen to the ground, where those that resisted the birds froze long ago; Yente sees the death of Jacob—but does not stay with it, for she is being drawn to another, in Vienna.
Asher, Rudolf Ascherbach, has been sitting at the bedside of his wife, Gertruda, Gitla, ever since she collapsed. He knew all he needed to some two, three months ago, when he looked at the tumor on her breast—he is, after all, a doctor; he thinks he was even coming to know it back when Gitla was still walking, and in a strange kind of anxiety trying to manage the household.
She was angered, for example, by the onions they ordered for winter in thick linen sacks, which had rotted on the inside and would not last until spring. She said that the laundress was ruining the cuffs of their sleeves and that the ice in the ice well smelled strange, like it had smelled in Busk—of stagnant water. Reading the newspapers, she inveighed against the stupidity of politicians, and her gray head would drown in the smoke of the Turkish pipe she would smoke until the end.
Now she lies on the sofa, mostly—she doesn’t want to go to bed. Asher measures out her ever-larger doses of laudanum and observes everything thoroughly and carefully. Observation, cool and dispassionate, brings him relief and defends against despair. For instance, for several days before her death Gitla’s skin gets thick, stiff, and matte, reflecting the daylight differently. This affects her facial features—they grow sharper. An oblong depression appears at the tip of her nose. Asher sees it on Monday evening, in the candlelight, when Gitla, though she is very weak, sits down to organize her files. Out of the drawers she pulls everything she has, everything she has written, all of her letters to her father in Lwów, written in Hebrew; articles, drawings, designs. She divides it into little piles and puts the files into soft paper folders. She keeps asking Asher for things, but Asher cannot focus. He has seen that furrow in her nose, and terror has gripped him. She knows she is going to die, he thinks in horror, she knows her illness is incurable, and that nothing can be done. But she’s not expecting death—that is something else entirely. She knows it with her reason, she can say it in words, write it, but deep down her body, being the animal it is, has not believed it at all.
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