The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

  When the candlelight disappears under the door and gets faint in the cracks between the wood, Yente opens her eyes and, with a weakening hand, feels for the amulet. She knows what’s written on it. She breaks the strap, opens the carrier, and swallows the amulet like a little pill.

  Yente lies in a small, cramped room, where the servants keep coming in with the guests’ coats and laying them at the foot of the bed. By the time the music starts from all the way inside the house, you can barely see Yente beneath the pile of garments; only when Hayah drops by is order restored, the coats winding up on the floor. Hayah bends down over her elderly aunt and listens for her breathing, which is barely perceptible, so weak it seems a butterfly would stir up more of a breeze by fluttering. But her heart is beating. Hayah, slightly flushed from the vodka, presses her ear to Yente’s breast, to the cluster of amulets, strings, and straps, and she hears a delicate boom, boom, very slow, the beats as distant from each other as Yente’s long breaths.

  “Grandma Yente,” Hayah calls her quietly, and she has the impression that the old woman’s half-closed eyes have trembled, and her pupils have moved, and that something like a smile has appeared on her lips. It’s a stray smile—it undulates, sometimes the corners of her mouth rise, sometimes they fall, and then Yente looks dead. Her hands are tepid, not cold, and her skin is soft and pale. Hayah fixes her hair, which has come out from under her kerchief, and she leans in to her ear: “Are you still with us?”

  And again that smile comes from somewhere to the old woman’s face, lasting just a moment and then vanishing. Hayah is being called from afar by the stomping of feet and the loud sounds of the music, so she kisses the old woman on her lukewarm cheek and runs to dance.

  The rhythmic stomps reach Yente’s chamber—the wedding guests are dancing, although here you can’t quite hear the music, which gets stuck in the wood walls, the winding corridors breaking it down into individual murmurs. All you can hear is the boom, boom of dance steps and, from time to time, a high-pitched squeal. There was an older woman watching over Yente, but roused by the wedding, she went off. Yente is curious, too, about what’s going on out there. She is surprised to discover that she can easily slide out of her body and be suspended over it; she looks right at her own face, fallen and pale, a strange feeling, but soon she floats away, gliding along on the drafts of air, on the vibrations of sound, passing without difficulty through wooden walls and doors.

  Now Yente sees everything from above, and then her gaze goes back to under her closed eyelids. That’s how it goes the whole night. Soaring and renewed descent. Back and forth over the border. It tires her, she’s never worked as hard as she is working now, not cleaning, nor in the garden. And yet both the falling and the rising are pleasant. The only nasty thing is that movement, whistling and rough, that tries to push her out to somewhere far away, past the horizons, that force, external and brutal, that it would be impossible to face were the body not protected by the amulet, from the inside, irreversibly.

  Strange—her thoughts blow over the whole region. “Wind,” says some voice in her head, which must be her own. Wind is the vision of the dead as they gaze upon the world from where they are. Haven’t you ever noticed the fields of grass, she wants to say to Hayah, how the blades bow down and are parted? That has to be because there is a dead person watching. Because if you counted all the dead you’d find that there are many more of them than there are of the living. Their souls have been cleansed already over their meanderings through lots of lives, and now they await the Messiah, who will come to finish the task. And they look upon everything. That’s why wind blows on earth. Wind is their watchful gaze.

  After a moment of startled hesitation she, too, joins in with this wind that flies over the houses of Rohatyn and the impoverished little settlements, over the carts clustered together on the market square in the hope that some customer might happen by, over the three cemeteries, over the Catholic churches, the synagogue, the Orthodox church, over Rohatyn’s public house—and it dashes onward, rustling the yellowed grass on the hills, at first chaotic, in disarray, but then, like it’s learning dance steps, it speeds along the riverbeds all the way to the Dniester. There it stops, for Yente is astonished by the mastery of the winding line of the river, its filigrees, like the outlines of the letters gimel and resh. And then it turns around, though not because of the border that has colluded with the river and that divides two great countries from each other. For Yente’s vision knows no such borders, after all.

  4.

  Pharo and Mariage

  Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk has a serious problem. Even prayer, deep and sincere prayer, can’t wash away his thoughts. His hands sweat, he wakes up too early, as the birds are just beginning their songs, and he goes to bed late, for obvious reasons. So his nerves never get a good rest.

  Twenty-four cards. Each player receives six, and then a thirteenth is turned up to indicate the trump suit, meaning the one that will beat every other. The bishop can only calm down once he has been seated at the table, or perhaps once the trump card is lying there, exposed. Then a feeling like a blessing comes over him. His mind finds its proper balance, a wondrous equilibrium, his eyes focus on the table and on the aspect of the cards, taking everything in with just a glance. His breathing evens out, the sweat releases its hold over his forehead, his hands become dry, certain, quick, his fingers shuffle the cards smoothly, revealing one after the next. This is his moment of real delectation—yes, the bishop would prefer never to eat again, and to give up all other corporeal pleasures, rather than relinquish this instant.

  The bishop plays Mariage with equals. Not long ago, while the canon of Przemyśl was staying here, they would play till morning. He also plays with Jabłonowski, Łabęcki, and Kossakowski—but it’s not enough. Which is why recently something else has started happening, though he hates to even think of it.

  He pulls his vestments up over his head, changes into ordinary clothes, and puts on his cap. Only his valet, Antoni, knows about what happens, and Antoni is almost like family and gives no indication that he is taken aback by it in any way. One ought not to be taken aback by a bishop, a bishop is a bishop, he knows what he’s doing when he asks you to take him to a tavern on the outskirts of town, to a place he must know people will be playing Pharo for money. The table will be occupied by traveling merchants, noblemen in the middle of a journey, foreign guests, clerks carrying letters, and all variety of adventurers. In taverns not overly clean, and smoky, it feels like everyone is playing, the whole world, and like cards unite people better than faith or language. You sit down at the table, you fan out your cards, and there follows an order that is understandable to anyone. And one must simply adapt to that order, if one wishes to win. The bishop thinks it’s like a kind of new language that unites them in a brotherhood for that one night. When he is short on cash, he has them summon some Jew, but that one only lends small sums. For larger amounts, he gets promissory notes from the Jews in Żytomierz, guaranteeing them eventual repayment with his signature.

  Anyone who sits at the table can play. Of course the bishop would prefer a better class of people, would prefer to play with peers, but they only rarely have enough money, most of which seems to be in the possession of traveling merchants or Turks, or officers, or others, people from unknown climes. When the banker pours the money out onto the table and shuffles the cards, those who wish to play against him, the punters, come and occupy their seats, each with his own deck. A player takes from this a single card or more and places it before him, and on it, he lays his stake. Having shuffled, the banker reveals all of his cards in turn, laying the first down by his right hand, the second by his left, the third again by his right, the fourth by his left—and so on till the whole pack is dealt out. The cards to the right are what the house takes, while those to the left go to the punters. Therefore, if a person placed before him a seven of spades, and on it a ducat, and in the banker’s deck the seven of spades falls to the right, then the player loses his ducat
; if it falls to the left, then the banker pays out a ducat to the punter. This rule also has exceptions: the last card but one, though placed to the left, goes to the bank. When a punter has won, he may end the game, or he may play anew starting with a different card, or he may also parole. That’s what Bishop Sołtyk always does. He leaves the money he wins atop his card, bending up the corner of the card. If he loses then, he has still lost only the sum with which he started.

  It is a more honest game—all in the hands of the Lord. How could anyone possibly cheat?

  As the bishop’s card debts grow, he calls upon God to shield him from a scandal when it all comes out. He demands divine cooperation—after all, he and God are on the same side of this battle. But God acts somewhat sluggishly, and sometimes it seems like He wants to make another Job out of Bishop Sołtyk. It sometimes happens that the bishop curses Him; then of course he repents and begs forgiveness—as everyone knows, he is hotheaded. He gives himself a fast by way of penance and sleeps in a hair shirt.

  No one knows yet that he has put his bishop’s insignia in hock in order to pay off some of his debts. With those Żytomierz Jews. They didn’t want to take it, he had to talk them into it. When they saw what was in the bishop’s chest, which he had covered in sackcloth for disguise, they jumped back and started wailing and lamenting, waving their hands like they had seen some ungodly thing in it.

  “I can’t accept this,” the eldest of them said. “To you, this is worth more than silver and gold, but to me it’s just metal for the scales. If we were found with these, they’d beat us within an inch of our lives.”

  So they grumbled, but the bishop insisted, raised his voice, frightened them. They took the insignia, and they paid him for it in cold, hard cash.

  The bishop, who has not managed to get the money back by playing cards, now desires to take the insignia back by force, even if he has to send in some armed men. Apparently they keep it in a little room under the floorboards. If anyone found out, the bishop’s life would not be spared. So he is prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure that the insignia is restored to his residence.

  Meanwhile he tries to win it back at Pharo, trusting blindly in divine intervention on his behalf. And it’s true: he starts out doing well. The room is very smoky, there are four of them at the table: the bishop himself; a traveler dressed in the German style, but who speaks good Polish; a local nobleman who speaks Ruthenian and curses in the same, with a young girl, almost a child, who sits on his lap, whom the nobleman pushes away when the cards aren’t going in his favor but sometimes also pulls close to caress her almost fully naked chest, drawing reproachful looks from Bishop Sołtyk; and finally, some merchant who looks to the bishop like a converted Jew, who is the one who has been winning so far. Before every deal, the bishop feels sure his cards will appear in the proper column, and during every deal he watches in disbelief as they go down on the other side. He genuinely can’t believe it.

  Polonia est paradisus Judaeorum . . .

  Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk, coadjutor of Kiev, who hasn’t slept and is exhausted, has just dismissed his secretary and is now writing a letter to the Bishop of Kamieniec, Mikołaj Dembowski.

  Hurriedly and in my own hand I must inform you, my friend, that though I am in good physical health, I am tormented by troubles that here press in from all sides so that I sometimes feel as cornered as an animal. You have come to my aid many times, and so this time, too, I turn to you as to a brother, in the name of our long-standing friendship, which it would be in vain to seek among others.

  Interim . . .

  Meanwhile . . . Meanwhile . . . Now he doesn’t know what to write. How, after all, can he explain himself? Dembowski doesn’t play cards himself, how could he understand Bishop Sołtyk’s situation? Suddenly he’s overwhelmed by a feeling of great injustice, he feels in his breast a gentle, warm pressure that seems to be dissolving his heart and turning it into a trickling pulp. He recalls taking up the bishopric in Żytomierz, his first arrival in the dirty, muddy town, enclosed on all sides by forest. His thoughts rush out to his pen now, quick and easy, and his heart is fortified, and his energy returns. He writes:

  You must remember well that when I took up the bishopric in Żytomierz, the place was rife with every type of sin. Whether bigamy or polygamy, vice was universal. Husbands would sell off their wives when they committed bad deeds and exchange them for new women. Neither concubinage nor debauchery was considered wicked, and apparently, upon marriage, both parties promised each other mutual freedom in that respect. Moreover, there was no observance of religious dictates, none of the commandments, everywhere just sin and depravity, moreover misery with poverty.

  I must scrupulously remind you, too, of how the diocese had been divided into 3 deaneries: Żytomierz with 7 parishes, including 277 villages and towns, Chwast with 5 parishes, or 100 villages and towns, and Owruck with 8 parishes, 220 villages and towns. Altogether the Catholic population is a mere 25,000. And my income from the humble episcopal estates has totaled 70,000 Polish zlotys; with expenditures for the consistory, and the diocesan school, that amount was nothing. You are aware of how little comes in from such poor properties. My own income as bishop was exclusively any revenue from the villages of Skryhylówka, Wepryk, and Wolica.

  The moment I arrived here, I occupied myself first thing with getting the finances in order. It turned out the cathedral had in its possession in capital from offerings by the pious a total amount of 48,000 Polish zlotys. This capital was invested in private land, and a certain sum was borrowed from the Dubno kahal, upon which the annual interest amounted to 3,337 Polish zlotys. Meanwhile, my expenses were great: church maintenance, four vicars’ salaries, the organist, the cantor, et caetera.

  The chapter, meanwhile, was modestly funded, with a variety of donations in the amount of 10,300 bringing in an annual income of 721 Polish zlotys. In addition, from the village donated by Prince Sanguszko, there was an additional income of 700 Polish zlotys, but the proprietor of the village, Zwiniacz, did not, for a period of three years, pay any interest on the 4,000 zlotys he had borrowed. The amount donated by a certain officer by the name of Piotr remained in the hands of Canon Zawadzki, who neither invested it, nor gave any tithe of it, and the same was the case with the sum of 2,000 Polish zlotys that remained in the hands of Canon Rabczewski. In sum, the chaos was great, though I made haste to organize it all.

  You are in the best position to appreciate how much I have accomplished, my dear friend. You have visited us, and you have seen it with your own eyes. I’m now completing the construction of the chapel, and these drastic expenses have exhausted my purse for the time being, but things are moving in the right direction, which is why I am asking you, my trusted confidant, for support, for some 15,000 zlotys, which I would pay back immediately after Easter. I have worked to encourage the generosity of the faithful, which at Eastertime will no doubt yield its fruits. For instance, Jan Olszański, the chamberlain of Słuck, put 20,000 zlotys into his property at Brusiłow, allotting half the interest of it to the cathedral, and the other half to the increase of the quantity of missionaries. Głębocki, the cupbearer of Bracław, donated 10,000 zlotys to the establishment of a new canonry and to an altar for the cathedral and gave 2,000 zlotys for the seminary.

  I’m including all this information because I’m doing a good business here and want to assure you that your loan will be repaid. In the meantime, I have entered into some unfortunate dealings with the Żytomierz Jews, and in their impudence, they truly know no limits, thus I would require the loan as soon as possible. It is astonishing that within our Commonwealth these Jews may so flagrantly break with law and good custom. Not for nothing did Popes Clement VIII, Innocent III, Gregory XIII, and Alexander III keep on ordering the burning of their Talmuds, and yet when we wanted to do the same thing here, not only had we no support, but the secular authorities even opposed us.

  It’s an odd thing that the Tatars, the Aryans, and the Hussites were all expelled, and yet someho
w no one thinks to get rid of the Jews, although they are the ones bleeding us dry. Abroad they even have a saying about us: Polonia est paradisus Judaeorum . . .

  Of the presbytery in Firlejów and the sinful pastor living in it

  This autumn is like a piece of embroidery done by invisible needles, thinks Elżbieta Drużbacka, riding in a large britchka on loan from the starosta. Deep bronzes in plowed furrows and a brighter streak of dried earth in the fields, and pitch-black branches, to which the most stubborn leaves are still clinging, pied splotches. And there remain blades of grass that are succulent and green, as if they have forgotten it’s the end of October, and that it freezes at night.

  The road is straight as an arrow and runs along the river. On the left side, a sandy ravine, the ground ragged from some long-ago catastrophe. You can see peasants’ carts going down over that yellow sand. Restless clouds float across the sky; one minute it’s gray and gloomy, the next a piqued sun bursts out from behind the clouds, everything on the ground suddenly becoming alarmingly distinct, sharp.

  Drużbacka misses her daughter, who is currently expecting her fifth child, and she thinks that in reality she ought to be with her now, not on some new peregrination in some foreign country with an eccentric castellan’s wife, and certainly not going off to see some jack-of-all-trades priest. But on the other hand, Drużbacka lives to be transported. You might think—but you’d be wrong—that being a poet is a sedentary profession, nearer to a garden than a public house, suitable for a homebody.

  The priest is awaiting her at the gate. He grabs the horse’s harness as if he’s been unable to think of anything other than this visit, and immediately taking his visitor’s arm, he guides her to the garden by the house.