In this sense, death doesn’t really exist, thinks Asher—no one has ever described the experience. It’s always someone else’s death, a stranger’s. There is no sense in being scared of it, since what we would be scared of is something other than what it really is. We are afraid of an imagined death (or Death), a thing that is a product of our mind, a tangle of thoughts, tales, rituals. It is the contractual sadness, the agreed-upon caesura, that introduces order into human lives.
And so when Asher sees that furrow on her nose and that strange skin color, he understands her time has come. On Tuesday morning she tells him to help her get dressed—him, not Sofia, the woman they have hired to help around the house. Asher laces up her dress. Gitla sits down at the table but does not eat, and then she goes back to bed, and Asher takes off her dress for her. He has a hard time removing the straps from their clasps—his hands have grown coarse, uncertain. He feels as if he is unpacking a valuable, fragile object, something like a Chinese vase, like a delicate crystal goblet, breakable glass, in order to put it away; he will not use this object again. Gitla, bearing it with patience, also asks in a weak voice to write a short letter to Samuel. She asks for paper, but she doesn’t have the strength to write, so she merely dictates a few words, and then, after her laudanum, she falls asleep, not reacting when Asher interrupts his letter-writing. She lets herself be fed (but only by Asher) soup, broth, but she eats only a few spoonfuls. Asher puts her on the chamber pot, but Gitla produces only a couple of droplets of urine, and Asher thinks it is as though her body is stuck, like a small, complex mechanism. And so it goes until evening. In the night Gitla awakes, asks about various things, such as if they’ve paid the book dealer, and she reminds him to take the flowers out of the window box for winter. She asks him to take back the materials from the seamstress—they will never turn into dresses now. The girls definitely wouldn’t like them—they are such fashionable women—even though the quality of the materials is high. He could give them to Sofia—Sofia would be happy to have them. Then memories come back to her, and Gitla tells of the winter when she came to Asher’s door in Lwów, of sleighs, snow, and the Messiah’s retinue.
On Wednesday morning she gives the impression of feeling better, but at around noon, her eyes glaze over. She fixes them upon some distant point, seemingly beyond the walls of this Viennese household, somewhere in the air, high above all homes. Her hands are restless, wandering over her bedclothes, her fingers making little folds in the damask of her comforter, then trying hard to straighten it back out.
“Fix my pillow,” she says to Adelaida, her dear friend, whom Asher has already informed and who has rushed here from the other end of the city. But the pillow is no help—she is obviously in a great deal of discomfort. Rudolf Ascherbach summons their daughters, but he can’t know when they’ll arrive. One of them lives in Weimar, the other in Wrocław.
Gitla’s voice has slowed down and lost all its melody, her tone is flat, metallic, unpleasant, Asher notes. It is hard to understand her. And several times she asks what day it is. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. Asher answers with a gesture her simple question:
“Am I dying?”
He nods soundlessly, and then adds in a hoarse voice:
“Yes.”
And she, being Gitla, assured, mobilizes within herself, and you might think that she was now taking this whole death business into her own hands, this problematic and irreversible process, as if it were merely the latest in the long list of tasks she has had to perform. When Asher looks at her body, tiny, emaciated, devastated by her illness, tears come to his eyes, and this is the first time he has cried in a very long time, maybe even since that day when the Polish princess was resting in their home, when everyone was trying to collect the vodka spilled from broken barrels with their rags.
At night, Adelaida and Mrs. Bachman, the downstairs neighbor, watch over her. Asher asks his wife:
“Do you want a priest?”
After a moment’s hesitation he adds:
“Or a rabbi?”
She looks at him in surprise, perhaps she doesn’t understand. He had to ask her. But there will be no priest or rabbi. Gitla would be mortally offended if he did that to her. On Thursday at dawn the throes begin, and the women wake Asher, who has been napping with his head on the desk. They light the candles around the bed. Adelaida starts praying, but quietly, as if talking just to herself. Asher sees that Gitla’s fingernails have whitened, and then, irrevocably, they turn blue, and when he takes her hand in his, it is icy. Gitla’s breathing is wheezing and difficult, each breath requiring effort; in an hour, it has turned to a rattle. It is difficult to listen to it, and both Adelaida and Mrs. Bachman start to cry. Then her breathing softens—or maybe their ears get used to it?—and Gitla calms down and floats away. Asher witnesses the moment—it happens quite a bit before her heart stops, and her breathing, Gitla simply slips away somewhere, she is no longer in this whistling body, she is gone, vanished. Something took her, caught her attention. She didn’t even look back.
On Thursday afternoon at twenty past one, Gitla’s heart stops beating. She takes a last deep breath, and that breath stays inside her, filling her breasts.
There is no final exhalation, Asher thinks with mounting rage, no soul that slips out of the body. Quite the contrary, the body sucks the soul inside it, so that it can carry it into the grave. He has seen this so many times, but only now has he fully comprehended it. Just like that. There is no final exhalation. There is no soul.
A Warsaw table for thirty people
News of Jacob Frank’s death makes it to Warsaw late, at the start of January, when the city suddenly empties due to the frost and the whole world seems withdrawn into itself, tied up with rough twine.
At the Wołowskis’ on Waliców a great table has been set for thirty people, carefully covered in a white cloth and set with porcelain. Next to each plate lies a bread roll. The windows are covered. The Wołowskis’ children, Aleksander and Marynia, politely greet the guests, from whom they receive little gifts—fruits and sweets. Lovely Marynia, with her curly, pitch-black hair, curtseys and repeats: Thank you, Uncle, thank you, Aunt. Then the children disappear. Arranged at equal intervals, the seven-armed lampstands illuminate the assembled—all dressed like burghers, neatly, in black. Old Franciszek Wołowski sits at the head of the table, next to him his sister Marianna Lanckorońska and her son, Franciszek the younger, and his wife, Barbara, and then there are the adult children of the other Wołowski brothers with husbands, wives, and also the Lanckoroński children, the two Jezierzański brothers, Dominik and Ignacy, and Onufry Matuszewski and his wife from the Łabęcki family, the Majewskis of Lithuania, and Jacob Szymanowski with his new wife from the Rudnicki family. Franciszek helps his father get up, so that he can take a good look at everyone, and then he extends his hands to those standing on either side of him, and everyone else does the same. He thinks his father will intone one of those songs they have to sing quietly, almost whisper, but his father only says:
“Let us thank our almighty God and his glory, the Holy Virgin of Light, that we have survived. Let us thank our God that he has guided us here, and let each of us pray for him as he is able, and with the greatest love.”
Now they pray in silence, their heads bowed, until old Franciszek Wołowski speaks up again in his still-powerful voice:
“What announces the arrival of the new times? What did Isaiah say?”
Sitting to his left side, the eldest Łabęcka says mechanically:
“The cessation of the laws of the Torah and the falling of the kingdom into heresy. So it was said in the oldest times, and for this we have been waiting.”
Wołowski clears his throat and takes a deep breath:
“Our ancestors understood this as best they were able, and they thought that that prophecy had to do with how Christians were running the world. But now we know that it wasn’t about that—all Jews must pass through the kingdom of Edom, in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled! Ja
cob, our Lord, was the incarnate Jacob who went first to Edom—since the biblical story of Jacob also told, fundamentally, our story. And so says the Zohar: Our father Jacob did not die. His earthly legacy has been taken on by Eva, who is Jacob’s Rachel.”
“In essence Jacob did not die,” they answer him in chorus.
“Amen,” Shlomo Franciszek Wołowski answers them all, sitting down to the table, tearing his roll in half, and starting to eat.
Of ordinary life
One of the contractors from whom the Wołowskis buy hops is especially inquisitive. With his hands in his pockets he watches Franciszek the younger weigh the bags and finally asks:
“Say, Wołowski, what do you all go and see that Frank for, and send your children out there, when you’ve been baptized already in our churches? Everybody’s saying he’s a kind of patriarch and that you pay him contributions. And that none of you will even think of marrying a Catholic girl.”
Wołowski tries to be as friendly as possible, patting him on the back as if they were on familiar terms:
“People exaggerate. The truth is we do marry amongst ourselves, but that’s how it is everywhere—we just know each other, and our women cook like our mothers cooked, and we all have the same customs. It’s natural.” Franciszek puts a bag on the scale and then supplements it with the porcelain weights. “My wife, for instance, makes the same sort of rolls as my mother, and there’s no one that could do that who wasn’t born in Podolia and into a Jewish family. Those rolls are why I married her. Jacob Frank gave us a hand when we were in need, and now we’re repaying him for that, out of gratitude. That’s a virtue, not a sin.”
Wołowski rummages around in the weights, needing the smallest ones in order to weigh the dry hops down to a lot, or thirteen grams.
“Right you are,” says the wholesaler. “I married for cabbage with peas. You’d lick your fingers the way my wife makes it. But people are also saying that you all settle down next to each other, that all there has to be is some lord’s court, and there you are, with your inn, and your shops, and that you even make your own kind of music . . .”
“What’s the harm in that?” answers Wołowski cheerfully, and enters the weight into its column. “That’s what trade is. You have to find somewhere where people will buy from you. You do it, but you wouldn’t allow me to?”
The wholesaler hands him a second bag, bigger this time, so that it barely even sits on the scale.
“What about children? They say you gave Frank’s sons higher educations at great cost, and that you called them barons, and that they were often seen here in Warsaw at masquerades and balls and comedies, roaming around in fancy carriages . . .”
“So you’re saying you don’t know of any Catholics who go to balls or masquerades? And have you seen the Potockis’ carriages?”
“Do not compare yourself with lords, Wołowski.”
“I’m not comparing myself. There are poorer and richer ones among us. Some walk per pedes, others have fancy carriages. What of it?”
Wołowski has had enough of this importuner now. He seems to be examining the dry hops, sniffing it and rolling it around in his fingers, but in fact he is looking around the courtyard. And in his voice this whole time there has been something like a stifled rage. Franciszek Wołowski the younger closes up the scale and heads for the exit. The importuner reluctantly follows.
“And another thing that just occurred to me. Is it true you all hold secret rendezvous, windows covered, weird rituals?” he asks captiously. “That’s what people say.”
Franciszek is careful. He takes a moment to weigh his words, as if putting the right weights on the scale.
“We neophytes take special care to love our neighbors. For is that not a basic commandment for all Christians?” he asks rhetorically. The man nods at him. “Yes, it is true, we gather together and confer, you know, just like yesterday in my home: what kind of help we can provide for one another, what to invest in—we invite one another to weddings and baptisms. We talk of our children, of their schools. We stick together, and that is not only not bad, but it actually sets an example for other Christians.”
“I hope you do can do well for yourself, Mr. Wołowski, amongst us,” the importuner says at last, somewhat disappointed, and they sit down to settle up for the hops.
When Franciszek finally manages to rid himself of him, he breathes a sigh of relief. But then right away he is back in a state of constant and exhausting high alert.
The atmosphere around them in Warsaw isn’t the best. Some have left for Wilno, like the younger Kaplińskis, or returned to Lwów, like the Matuszewskis, though it isn’t easy there, either. But the worst is probably in Warsaw. Everyone watches them and whispers. Barbara, his wife, says that Franciszek involves himself too much, which makes him visible. For instance, he took part in the Black Procession, demanding rights for the townspeople. He is also active in a merchant guild. He has a prospering brewery, he has a house, he guarantees other people’s loans—his name, multiplied by sons and cousins, sticks out. Yesterday, for example, Barbara found a piece of paper jammed in the doorframe with smudged, sloppy print:
Frank fills their heads with superstitions by the bucket,
Weird blessings so they’ll leave him down to their last ducat.
They worship him in Polish, wish him Shana Tova,
This man who was sentenced to life in Częstochowa.
Profiting off their vodka, he’ll go down in history,
But we’ve had enough of this folly, this mystery.
Once they’ve had their baptism, put an end to all this strife—
Just calm them down and let them live an ordinary life.
Heiliger Weg nach Offenbach
God’s true home is in Offenbach. This is what was told to a teenage Joseph von Schönfeld, nephew of Thomas Schönfeld of Prague, and with this, the preparations for his departure were under way. Admittedly, apart from the holy path that must be traveled by all true believers, there was also a certain practical reason: avoiding the army, in which the true believers, as Christians now, were required to serve. The path led through Dresden, where without any special justification boys could get letters of recommendation from Baron Eibeschütz, though for Joseph, with that last name of von Schönfeld—as his mother said—such a recommendation was not even necessary. With him went two other boys in his same situation.
When in June of 1796 they finally made it to Offenbach, they spent a whole day waiting for an audience with the Lady amongst the colorful international throng of young people. Some had already changed into eccentric uniforms and were drilling, others were just wandering around the courtyard, and when it started pouring, they were allowed to seek shelter under the roofs of the arcades. Joseph examined with interest the sculptures on the columns, each of them representing figures the clever boy easily identified from mythology. Among them was one he hated deeply, Mars—a thick-skulled knight in armor with a halberd, at whose feet stood Aries, the Zodiac sign governed by Mars, yet to Joseph it seemed that the ram was rather a symbol of those who, like sheep, follow generals’ orders and turn into cannon fodder. He was decidedly more drawn to the round, beautifully shaped Venus, upon whose curves he commented to his peers.
Not until evening were they received by the Lady.
She is a woman around forty years old, very elegantly dressed, with white, finely manicured hands, a tempest of still-dark hair pinned up into a high bun. While she reads their letter, Joseph gazes at her dog in fascination—tall and skinny, more like a monstrous grasshopper that never once takes its eyes off the boys. Finally the woman says:
“You have been accepted, my dears. Here you will submit to the rule that, assiduously complied with, will bring you happiness. Here lies true salvation.”
She speaks German with a strong German accent. She dismisses the other boys, telling Joseph to stay. Then she stands and goes up to him, giving him her hand to kiss.
“You are Thomas’s nephew?”
H
e assents.
“Is it true that he is dead?”
Joseph lowers his head. His uncle’s death is connected with some uncomfortable, embarrassing secret that has never been explained to him by his family. Joseph has never known if it’s because Thomas for some unknown reason let himself get killed or because of something else he has not been informed of.
“You knew him, didn’t you?” asks Joseph, in order to distract her from any further questions.
“You remind me of him a little,” says this beautiful woman. “If ever you would like to speak with me, or if there is anything you need, I will be happy to receive you.”
For a moment, it seems to Joseph that the lady is regarding him with tenderness, and this emboldens him. He wants to say something, he suddenly feels love and gratitude for this sad woman who is connected by some mysterious thread with that Venus made out of red sandstone, but nothing comes to mind that he could say, and so he shyly blurts:
“Thank you for letting me come here. I will be a good student.”
The lady smiles at these words, and it seems to Joseph that her smile is flirtatious, as if she’s a young woman again.
The next day they tell the boys to go all the way upstairs, to the small rooms where the so-called elders reside.
“Have you been to see the elders?” everyone has been asking them since they arrived, so Joseph is curious about who these elders are. The whole time he feels as if he has wound up in one of those fairy tales his mother used to tell him, teeming with kings, beautiful princesses, overseas expeditions, and legless sages who guard treasures.
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