Several of the men working on the shed stop doing what they’re doing so they can stand in the doorway and eavesdrop on the women. Soon their heads are white with feathers: someone must have snatched up one of the baskets with a little too much zeal.
Of which of the women will be chosen
“Go to him,” Wittel’s husband says to her. “He took a liking to you. You will be blessed.”
But she resists.
“How could I sleep with him, when I’m your wife? It’s a sin.”
Shlomo looks at her with tenderness, as at a child.
“You’re thinking in the old way—it’s almost as though you haven’t understood any of what’s happened here. There is no sin, and that’s that—husband or no husband. The time of salvation is upon us. The notion of sin no longer applies. He is working hard for us, and he wants you. You are the most beautiful.”
Wittel frowns.
“I’m not the most beautiful, come on. Even you ogle all the girls here.” She pauses. “What would you do?”
“Me? If I were in your place, Wittel, I wouldn’t be asking questions. I’d go straightaway.”
Truth be told, Wittel receives this permission with relief. She has not been able to think about anything else for days on end. The women who have been intimate with him say that Jacob has two members. More precisely, that whenever he wants to, he has two members, and when he doesn’t, he takes his pleasure with one. Soon it will be within Wittel’s power to confirm or deny this assertion.
In late February, Jacob sends a carriage for Hana, and Wittel no longer goes to him every night. Hana is called “Highness.” A feast is given in honor of Her Highness. For days the women bake, drowning in goose fat, delivering their dinner rolls to Hava’s chamber once they’re done.
Wittel wishes it were an accident, but unfortunately, it’s not: she purposely eavesdrops on Jacob and Hana making love. She feels her stomach get twisted up. She can’t understand what they’re talking about because they speak in Turkish. It excites her to hear Jacob speaking in Turkish, and she thinks that next time she will ask him to talk Turkish to her, too. She won’t have to wait too long for next time: after only a month, Hana, gloomy, disappointed, will return to Turkey.
Already in December, the Lord had ordered all the adults to gather together.
They stood in a circle and remained for a very long time in complete silence, for the Lord had forbidden conversation, and no one had the courage to speak up. Then he had the men move over to stand along the right-hand wall. Of the women, he chose seven, as was done by the First, Sabbatai.
First he took Wittel’s hand and named her Eva. Wittel, who had no idea what was going on, immediately flushed all over and shifted her weight from one leg to the other, nervously; she had completely lost all self-confidence. She stood aflame, obedient as a hen. Jacob set her to his right. Then he took Wajgełe, Nahman of Busk’s very young new wife, and named her Sarah. She went as though to a beheading, in despair, with her head bowed, glancing at her husband, resigned to her fate. Jacob placed her behind Wittel. And behind her he placed Eva, Jacob Mayor’s wife, whom he named Rebecca. Then he spent a long time looking at the women, who lowered their eyes; finally he reached out for lovely Sprynełe, aged thirteen, daughter-in-law of Elisha Shorr, wife of his youngest son, Wolf; her he named Bershava. Now he started to line them up on his left side—the first was Isaac Shorr’s wife, whom he named Rachel, and then Hayim of Nadwórna’s wife, whom he named Leah. He put Uhla Lanckorońska on the end and named her Afisha Sulamitka.
All the names were the names of the wives of the patriarchs, and the chosen women stood there overwhelmed, in silence. Their husbands also kept quiet. Suddenly Wajgełe, Nahman’s new wife, started to cry. This was not the time to cry, although everyone understood why she was doing it.
Hana’s gloomy gaze notes these details of Ivanie
The people in the shacks sleep all in a row on rickety, rotting frames, or on the ground, with simple bundles of hay for bedding. Their beds are not beds, but pallets. Only a few have real beds with linen sheets. The Shorrs have the best beds.
They are dirty and lice-ridden. Even Jacob has lice, which is because he keeps company with the town filth. Or so Hana assumes. Although, in fact, she knows for certain.
This is no community. It’s an ordinary rabble, just a muddled crowd. Some can’t even communicate, like those who use Turkish or Ladino on a day-to-day basis, like Hana, and don’t know the local Jewish tongues.
There are sick and crippled people whom no one is treating. The laying on of hands does not help everyone. On her first day in Ivanie, Hana witnessed the death of yet another child, who died from a cough, simply suffocating.
Many among them are loose women, be they widows, agunot, or whatever else. Some of the women aren’t even Jews, that’s what Hana thinks. They’ll give it up for some morsel of food and because doing so allows them to stay here. She shuts her eyes to the fact that in Ivanie everyone sleeps with everyone, even attaching great meaning to it. Hana does not understand why men place such importance on intercourse. There’s nothing so amazing about it. Since her second child, she’s lost all interest. She is bothered by the scent of other women on her husband’s skin.
Jacob seems completely changed to Hana. At first, he was happy she had come, but then they only slept together twice. Jacob has something else on his mind now, or maybe it’s some other woman. That Wittel hangs around him and glares at Hana. Jacob chooses them all over Hana. He barely listens to her; he’s more interested in Avacha, whom he carries around with him wherever he goes. He sits her up on his shoulders; their daughter likes to pretend she is riding a camel. Hana stays at home and breastfeeds the baby. She worries about their son, worries he will catch some disease here. Little Immanuel is still ailing, after all. Ivanie’s winds haven’t helped him, and neither has the extended, seemingly endless winter. The Turkish wet nurse reminds Hana every day that she does not want to be here, either, that she is repulsed by it, and that she’ll lose her milk soon as a result.
Back at home in Nikopol it’s spring already, while here the first fresh blades of grass have barely forced their way through the old layer of rotted vegetation.
Hana misses her father and his peace and equilibrium. She also misses her mother, who died last year, and when she thinks of her mother, she is beset by premonitions of her own death, and she feels scared.
Of Moliwda’s visit to Ivanie
Moliwda sets out from Warsaw for Lwów when the roads freeze up again, becoming traversable. After his meeting with Archbishop Łubieński, he is taken to Ivanie by a priest named Zwierzchowski, who has now been assigned to the anti-Talmudist question. The priest gives him a whole chest full of catechisms and instructional pamphlets, and rosaries and religious medallions, too. Moliwda feels like one of those street vendors saddled with all kinds of devotional objects. Separately packed in tow is a figurine of the Virgin Mary, carved a little clumsily out of linden and brightly painted, for Mrs. Frank from Mrs. Kossakowska, as a gift and a memento.
He arrives in Ivanie on March 9, 1759, and no sooner has he arrived than he is overcome by emotion, for in Ivanie he sees the image of his own little village close to Craiova, with all the same elements, just colder and so not quite as cozy. The atmosphere is the same, like a never-ending holiday, which the weather even seems to further: there is a slight frost, and way up in the sky the cold sun casts down bright, freezing beams. The world looks cleansed. People make tracks upon the white snow, so you can follow them wherever they go. Moliwda thinks how snow keeps life more honest: everything is somehow more distinct, and every rule applies more absolutely. The people who meet him in Ivanie look radiant and happy despite the brevity of the days. Children with puppies in their arms come running up to his carriage, along with women flushed from work, men flashing big grins. Smoke rises in straight vertical lines from the chimneys, as though a sacrifice made in that spot were being met with unconditional acceptance.
Jacob greets Moliwda ceremoniously, but once they are inside his little shack, and once they are alone, he fishes Moliwda’s stocky figure from inside his wolf fur and holds him for a long while, patting him on the back and repeating, in Polish, “You came back, you came back.”
Then they’re all here: the Shorr brothers—though not the father, who hasn’t quite recovered from that beating—as well as Yehuda Krysa and his brother and brother-in-law. Nahman is here, newly remarried to some young girl (marrying them off at that age is barbaric, Moliwda thinks), Moshe surrounded by smoke, the other Moshe, the Kabbalist, with his whole family—everyone is here. Now they crowd into this little room where the windows have frozen into a pretty pattern.
At the welcome banquet, Jacob sits in the middle of the table, beneath a window, which frames him from behind like he’s a picture. Jacob against the black backdrop of night. They all hold hands. Everybody takes a good look at everybody else, as though they haven’t seen one another in ages and ages. Then there is a solemn prayer, which by now Moliwda knows by heart; after a moment’s hesitation, he joins in. Then they converse, at length and in chaos, in a chorus of languages. Moliwda’s fluent Turkish wins over Osman’s somewhat suspicious followers, who look and act like Turks although they drink almost as much as the Podolians. Jacob is in a good mood. He is vibrant; it is a pleasure to see the enthusiasm with which he eats. He praises the dishes, tells stories that elicit bursts of laughter.
Moliwda used to wonder whether Jacob could feel fear. Eventually he decided that Jacob would not recognize the feeling, as though he’d simply been born without it. This gives Jacob strength: people can sense that absence of fear, and that absence of fear in turn becomes contagious. And because the Jews are always afraid—whether it’s of a Polish lord, or of a Cossack, of injustice or hunger or cold—they live in a state of extreme uncertainty, from which Jacob is a kind of salvation. The absence of fear is like a halo that radiates a heat that can warm up a chilled and frightened little soul. Blessed are those who feel no fear. And although Jacob often repeats that they are in limbo, they are comfortable enough in limbo.
When Jacob disappears for even a moment, conversations come apart, no longer laced with the same energy as when he’s there. His mere presence is enough to instill order; eyes travel to him involuntarily, like moths to flame. And so it is now. Jacob is the focal point of the evening. Jacob glows. Late at night they start to dance, first the men alone, in a circle, as though in a kind of trance. When, exhausted, they return to the table, two women come out to dance in their stead. One of these women will spend the night with Moliwda.
In the evening, Moliwda gives a solemn reading to the company assembled, of the letter he’d dashed off a few days earlier to the Polish king, in the name of these Wallachian, Turkish, and Polish brothers:
Jacob Joseph Frank departed with his wife, children, and more than sixty other persons from the Turkish and Wallachian lands, barely escaping with his life, for having lost all his worldly possessions, and knowing only his mother tongue and some dialects of the East, and knowing not the customs of this most glorious Kingdom and having thus no means to live within it, neither him nor his people, whom, even being so numerous, he had brought over to the true faith, now supplicates your Royal Highness in all His Compassion for a place and mode of sustenance for our society . . .
Here Moliwda clears his throat and pauses: a doubt flickers through his mind, and he wonders if this letter is not somewhat disrespectful. What could the king care about them, when his own subjects—those peasants born Christians, those multitudes of beggars, orphaned children, hapless cripples—needed help?
. . . so that we might now settle down in peace, for to live among Talmudists is unbearable to us, and a danger, insofar as that intolerant nation has never learned to think of us as anything other than wrong-faithed schismatics, etc.
Unheedful of the law given to this land by Your Excellency, they are everywhere and at every moment persecuting, pillaging, and attacking us, as was exemplified not long ago in Podolia, so near your Majesty Himself . . .
From the back of the room comes a single sob. It is followed by others.
. . . and so it is that we humbly beseech Your Majesty to appoint a commission in Kamieniec and in Lwów, that our rightful belongings might be returned us, our wives and children given back, and the decree from Kamieniec be observed in a satisfactory manner, and we entreat Your Royal Highness to proclaim in a public letter that our brothers in hiding may reemerge, with their thirst for faith akin to our own, that they might make themselves known without fear; that the lords of these locales might be an aid in the acceptance of the holy faith, and were the Talmudists to inflict any oppressions therefrom resulting, that these same brothers might be helped in reaching safety, as to unite with our society.
His listeners like his ornate style. Moliwda, greatly pleased with himself, reclines atop the carpets—for since Hana’s arrival Jacob has inhabited a larger residence, which Hana has furnished according to the Turkish custom. It’s a bit incongruous in that outside there is snow, and gusts of wind. The dwelling’s little windows are almost entirely covered over with blown powder. As soon as the door is opened, a fresh dusting penetrates the interior, which smells of coffee and licorice. A few days earlier, it had seemed that spring had arrived.
“I’ll spend a couple of days here with you all,” says Moliwda. “It reminds me of Smyrna.”
Moliwda means it. He feels more at home among these Jews than he does in Warsaw, where they don’t even know how to prepare coffee correctly, pouring too much and watering it down, which then causes heartburn and anxiety. Here you can sit on the floor or on bowed benches at low tables where coffee is served in absolutely tiny cups, as though for elves. And here they provide him with decent Hungarian wine.
Hana comes in and greets Moliwda warmly, handing him Jacob’s daughter, little Avacha. The child is quiet, calm. She seems intimidated by Moliwda’s great red beard. She looks at him unblinking, as though trying to determine who exactly he might be.
“She seems to have fallen in love with Uncle Moliwda.” Jacob laughs. But then that evening, when it’s just the five of them—with Osman, Hayim of Warsaw, and Nahman—and once they’ve opened up their third jug of wine, Jacob points a finger in Moliwda’s face and says, “You saw my daughter. Know that she is a queen.”
They all nod agreeably, but this is not the reaction that Jacob desires.
“Do not think, Moliwda, that I mean merely that she’s good-looking.”
There is a brief silence.
“No,” Jacob continues. “She truly is a queen. You don’t even realize yet just how great a queen she is.”
Once it’s down to a smaller group of brothers, Moliwda—before he gets drunk—gives the others an update on their efforts with Archbishop Łubieński. They’re on the right track, although the archbishop still has doubts as to whether their hearts are truly and fully with the Church. The next letter Moliwda will write will be on behalf of Krysa and Shlomo Shorr, to give the archbishop the impression that there are many among them who wish to be baptized.
“You’re very clever, Moliwda,” Nahman of Busk says to him, patting him on the back.
Everyone has been making fun of Nahman since his second marriage. His childlike bride totters after him wherever he goes. Nahman, meanwhile, seems somewhat terrified of their marriage.
Moliwda suddenly bursts out laughing.
“We never had our own savages, like the French and the English did with their Bushmen and their Pygmies. These Polish lords would love to draw you all—their very own savages—into their fold.”
The wine from Giurgiu that arrived with Hana’s carriages is clearly working now. They talk over one another.
“. . . and that’s why you were going behind our backs to Bishop Dembowski?” Shlomo Shorr is saying in a rage to Krysa, grabbing him by his somewhat sullied stock tie. “That’s why you were bothering with him on your own, so that you could get his favors
for yourself, right? And that’s why you were going back to Czarnokozińce for letters from the bishop that would grant you safe conduct. Was he promising you that?”
“Oh yes, he always promised me that we’d gain independence within the kingdom. There was never any mention of baptism. And we ought to keep it that way. After he died it all fell apart. And you idiots are clamoring for baptism like starving pigs. That was never part of it!” Krysa leaps up and slams his fist up into the ceiling. “Afterward, somebody sent some thugs after me, and they beat me within an inch of my life.”
“You are despicable, Krysa,” says Shlomo Shorr. On pronouncing these words he walks straight out into the snowstorm. Snow flies in through the briefly opened doorway, melting on impact with the floor’s fresh spruce covering.
“I agree with Krysa,” says Yeruhim. Others nod at this: baptism can wait.
Here Moliwda chimes in: “You’re right, Krysa, here in Poland no one is going to give full rights to the Jews. Either you become Catholic or you remain nothing. Now Their Graces back you up with gold, because you’re against the other Jews, but if you were to want to go off somewhere and get set up with your own religion, they’d hound you about it right away. And they’d keep at it till they had you prostrate in their church. Anybody who thinks otherwise is mistaken. Before you there were heterodox Christians, the Polish Brethren, innocuous people who were much closer to their religion than you all. And they were tormented until they were finally driven out altogether. They had everything taken away from them, and they were either killed or exiled.”
The Books of Jacob Page 49