The Books of Jacob Page 10

  And that’s it for his life, it likely wouldn’t take up any more space than the title itself. His beloved died before New Athens was published, though that, too, was written out of love.

  But he has met with this strange decree of Providence of late, likely so that he will begin to reflect upon his life. In Kossakowska’s features he recognized her elder sister, and Drużbacka had served her for years, including at Princess Jabłonowska’s, until the bitter end. She had told him that she’d been with Joanna when she’d died. This had disconcerted him considerably—that Drużbacka turned out to be a messenger from the past. Her touch, her cheek, her hand had passed somehow into the poetess. Now nothing is so clear or colorful as it was—it’s all sort of blurry, without any definite contours. Like a dream that vanishes on waking, that flies out of your memory like fog from over a field. The priest doesn’t fully understand it, but he also doesn’t really want to understand. People who write books, he thinks, don’t want to have their own stories. What would be the point? In comparison with what is written, life will always be boring and bland. The priest sits with his pen, which has already dried up, until the candle burns out and with a quick hiss is extinguished. He is flooded with darkness.

  Father Chmielowski tries to write a letter to Mrs. Drużbacka

  Father Chmielowski feels unsatisfied with what he managed to say during Drużbacka’s visit. Because in fact he did not manage to say much, probably because of his natural shyness. All he did was boast, drag the poor lady around on a rocky path, in the winter, in the damp. The very idea that the intelligent and educated Drużbacka might take him for an ignoramus and an idiot now torments him. It torments him until he finally decides to write her a letter and lay out his rationale.

  He begins with a beautiful turn of phrase:

  Conductress of the Muses, Favorite of Apollo . . .

  But here he gets stuck for the whole day. He finds the phrase pleasing until sometime around lunch. By dinner, it strikes him as pompous and pathetic. Only in the evening, when mulled wine has warmed up his mind and body, does he sit down boldly to a fresh sheet of paper and write his thanks to her for coming to visit his “Firlejów Hermitage” and for bringing a little light into his monotonous gray life. He feels sure she’ll understand the word “light” broadly and poetically.

  He also asks after the puppies and confides in her all his troubles, like that a fox got all his hens, and that now if he wants eggs he has to send for a peasant. But he’s afraid to get new hens, for he would only be sentencing them to death by fox’s maw. And so on.

  He does not wish to admit it, but after he sends his letter, he waits for her answer. He waits and waits. He tries to estimate how long the post might take to get to Busk, where Drużbacka is. But it isn’t far, after all. The letter should have arrived by now.

  It comes at last. Roshko searches for its recipient all over the presbytery, holding the letter stiffly in his outstretched hand. He finds the priest in the cellar, decanting some wine.

  “Goodness, you gave me such a scare,” starts the priest. He wipes his hands on the apron he always puts on when performing his domestic tasks, and then he takes the letter carefully, between two fingers. He does not open it. He examines the seal and his own name calligraphed in beautiful, self-assured penmanship, the flourishes fluttering over the paper like battle flags.

  It is only later, after an hour or so, when the library has been heated by the stove, when he has warmed himself with some mulled wine and covered his feet with a fur, that—taking very great care indeed—he opens the letter and reads.

  Elżbieta Drużbacka writes to Father Chmielowski

  Christmas 1752, Busk

  My dear wise and generous Father,

  What wonderful luck that I am able, during this time so near the birth of Our Lord and Savior, to wish you every good fortune, and in addition, the safekeeping of your health and your well-being—for after all, we are so brittle we risk being knocked over by anything at any time. Yet may everything turn out for you just as you wish it, and may the grace of the Divine Infant Jesus endlessly favor you.

  I remain deeply impressed by my visit to Firlejów, and I must confess that I had imagined you, a priest of such renown, quite differently: that you would have a large library, and that in it rows of secretaries would sit at the ready, writing, rewriting. And yet instead you live as humbly as a Franciscan.

  I admire in you your botanical arts, your ingenuity in all things, and your enormous erudition. As soon as I got home I had the great pleasure of dedicating my evenings to a rereading of your New Athens, which of course I know well, having devoured its every page when it was first published. When my eyes would allow it, I read your book for hours on end. Now I enjoy the special circumstance of knowing the Author personally, and it even happens that I can hear his voice—as if you were here to read it aloud to me—but it is also the case that the book possesses a strange magic: it can be read without pause, here, there, and something interesting always remains in one’s mind, giving one fantastic pretexts for thinking of how very great and complex this world is, so much so that one cannot possibly comprehend it in thought—no doubt only in fragments, the bits and pieces of small understandings.

  Now night arrives so quickly, and darkness daily swallows up the moments of our lives, and candlelight is but a poor imitation of light, which our eyes cannot bear for too long.

  I know, however, that your New Athens project is the work of a true genius with enormous courage, and it is of enormous value to all of us who live in Poland, for it is a true compendium of all that we know.

  There is, however, one thing that troubles my reading of your wonderful work, my dear Father, and it is the very thing we spoke of while sitting in your home in Firlejów—I refer to Latin, and not only to it, but to its overwhelming abundance in your work, everywhere interjected, like salt poured too enthusiastically upon a meal, which, instead of elevating its taste, makes it difficult to swallow.

  I understand, my dear Father, that Latin is a worldly language, versed in all things, and that it contains more useful words than Polish, but whoever does not know it will not be able to read your book—will get lost in it completely! Have you not thought about those who would love to read you but who do not know Latin—the merchants, the petite bourgeoisie who have a somewhat reduced level of education, or even those more intelligent tradespersons? They are the ones who could really benefit from the information you so scrupulously collect, as opposed to your confrères, priests, and academics, who already have access to books. If they wish it, of course, which they do not always. And I shan’t even mention the women who often know how to read quite well, but who, since they weren’t sent to school, will sink into Latin as if it were quicksand, right away.

  Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk writes a letter to the papal nuncio

  He saved this letter to write yesterday evening, but in the end, exhaustion overcame him, and so he must begin his day with this unpleasant task. His secretary is still half asleep; he stifles a yawn. He’s toying with the quill, testing out different thicknesses of lines when the bishop begins his dictation:

  Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk, coadjutor of Kiev, to papal nuncio Niccolò Serra, Archbishop of Mitylene

  Then the boy tasked with the stoves enters the room and starts raking out ash. The scraping of the dustpan is unbearable to the bishop, and all the thoughts in his head go flying into thin air like a cloud of that same ash. And of ash smacks the matter at hand.

  “Come back and do this later, son,” he says to him, softly, and then he takes a moment to regather his scattered thoughts. Then the pen goes on the attack against the innocent paper:

  Once more I congratulate Your Excellency upon this new station in Poland, in the hopes that it will be an occasion for the comprehensive fortification of faith in Jesus Christ in lands so particularly cherished by Him, for here in the Commonwealth we are the most faithful of His stable, the most devoted to Him in our hearts . . .

  But Bish
op Sołtyk has no idea how to get to the point. First, he wanted to deal with the matter more generally—he didn’t expect an explicit request for a report, even less from the nuncio. He is surprised by this because the nuncio has spies everywhere, and though he himself does not poke his Italian nose in others’ affairs, he does take advantage of other, zealous people’s noses.

  The secretary waits with raised pen, its end having already collected a sizable drop. But that man, very experienced, knows perfectly the habits of a drop of ink, and he waits until the very last moment before he shakes it back into the inkwell.

  How to describe it, thinks Bishop Sołtyk, and what comes to mind are fine sentences like: “The world is quite a perilous pilgrimage for those who sigh after eternity,” which would show the bishop’s uncomfortable and exhausting situation as he is now called upon to explain his actions, his righteous but unfortunate actions, when he ought to be dedicating his thoughts to prayer and the spiritual needs of his flock. Where to begin? Perhaps when the child was found, which happened just outside Żytomierz, in the village of Markowa Wolica, this very year, not long ago?

  “Studziński, right?”

  The secretary nods and adds the boy’s first name: Stefan. He was eventually found, but as a corpse, bruised and covered in wounds, seemingly from pricking. In the bushes by the road.

  Now the bishop brings his focus to within himself. He starts his dictation:

  . . . some peasants, having found the child, carried him to their Orthodox church, passing near that inn where he must have been tortured and where the blood from the very first wound on his left side must have been let, and due to this suspicion, and others, too, two inn-keeping Jews were taken in that village, along with their wives, and they confessed to everything and informed on others. Thus the matter resolved itself, thanks to divine justice.

  I was immediately alerted to the whole business and did not neglect to enter into it with all that was in my power, and right away in crastinum I ordered the heads of the neighboring properties and the lords to give up other guilty parties, and whenever they appeared sluggish on that account, I undertook myself to go around the properties and persuade their lordships to arrest. So were thirty-one men and two women arrested, and brought in shackles to Żytomierz, they were placed in pits dug especially for this purpose. After holding an inquisitio I sent the accused to the municipal court. For these most vile murderers unworthy of further investigation, the court determined to proceed to the strictissime examination of the Jews appearing then before them, all the more so since some of them changed the testimonies they had given to the consistory court and had been utterly destroyed by damning evidence given against them by Christians. Then the accused were taken to be tortured and were burnt three times by the minister of holy justice. From these corporal confessions it soon became apparent that Yankiel and Ela, the innkeepers at Markowa Wolica, talked into it by Shmayer, the rabbi of Pawłocz, somehow kidnapped this child, took him into the inn, made him drink vodka, and then the rabbi cut into his left side with a pair of shears, and then they read their prayers from their books as others among the Jews stuck him with pins and big needles, and from all his veins they squeezed out all his innocent blood into a bowl, the which blood the rabbi then distributed amongst those present, pouring it into vials for them.

  The bishop takes a little break in his dictation and has some Tokay brought to him, which always does him good—good for the blood. It is fine that it is on an empty stomach. He can also tell that breakfasting time is about to turn into lunching time, and he is starting to get hungry. And therefore angry. But what can he do. The letter has to go out today. So he goes on:

  So when the accuser in the matter of young Stefan, describing his dolenda fata, according to procedure made his oath with seven witnesses that the aforementioned Jews were the cause of the bloodletting and death of the child, the court sentenced them to a cruel death.

  The seven engines of this crime and ringleaders of this Pagan cruelty were to be tied together with hemp rope, both hands covered in pitch, and this having been lit, taken by the master of the pillory from the market square in the town of Żytomierz through the town up to the gallows. There they were to be flayed alive, then quartered, their heads stuck on stakes, the quarters hung up. Six were sentenced to quartering, while one—since he joined the holy Catholic faith along with his wife and children at the last moment—was given a lighter sentence, to merely be beheaded. The remainder were acquitted. The successors of those sentenced to death were required to pay a fine to the victim’s father of 1,000 Polish zlotys under penalty of eternal banishment.

  Of the initial seven, one managed to escape, and a second accepted conversion and was, along with the one sentenced to beheading, removed by me from death.

  As for the rest, their sentence was executed justly. Three of the guilty, hardened in their evil, were quartered, while three who had converted had their punishment commuted to beheading, and their bodies I myself took with many of the clergy to the Catholic cemetery.

  On the second day I performed the baptism of thirteen Jews and Jewesses, while for the tortured child I had an epitupticum prepared, and the sacred body of that innocent martyr I had buried on church grounds with great solemnity.

  Ista scienda satis, terrible, yet in all respects absolutely necessary in order to punish the perpetrators of such a shameful act. I trust Your Excellency will find in these clarifications everything he wished to know, and that it will allay the unease expressed in his letter that we have done something here that would go against the Church, Our Holy Mother.

  Zelik

  The one who escaped simply jumped off the cart that was taking those under arrest, all tied up, to be tortured. It turned out to be easy, since they were not securely tied. The fate of the fourteen prisoners, including two women, was already sealed, since they were considered essentially dead already, and it occurred to no one that one might try to escape. The cart, convoyed by a troop of men on horseback, went into the woods just outside Żytomierz for a mile. And it was there that Zelik ran. Somehow he worked his hands out of their tether, waited for the right moment, and when they got closest to the thicket, in one jump he was out of the cart and gone into the woods. The other prisoners just sat quietly with their heads bowed, as if celebrating their own impending deaths, and the guards did not immediately realize what had happened.

  Zelik’s father, the man who loaned money to Sołtyk, shut his eyes and started praying. Zelik, when his feet had touched the undergrowth, looked back and made sure to remember what he saw: an old man hunched over, an old married couple huddled together, their shoulders touching, a young girl, his father’s two neighbors with their white beards contrasting with the black of their overcoats, the black-and-white splotch of a tallit. Only his father gazed back at him, calmly, as if he had known everything all along.

  Now Zelik travels. He does so only by night. By day he sleeps; he lies down at dawn, when the birds make the most noise, and he gets up at dusk. He walks and walks, never on a road, but always next to one, in the thicket, trying to bypass open tracts of land. And if he must pass through an exposed area, he tries to make it at least one where crops are growing, for not everything has been harvested just yet. On his journey he scarcely eats—once in a while an apple, a bitter wild pear—but he does not experience hunger. He is still shaking, as much from terror as from anger or outrage; his hands keep shaking, and his stomach convulses, and his intestines seize up, and sometimes he vomits bile, spitting afterward for a long time in disgust. He’s had a couple of very bright nights on account of a full moon that shone, seemingly pleased with itself. Then he saw in the distance a pack of wolves, heard their howling. A herd of roe deer watched him—surprised, they followed him calmly with their eyes. He was also spotted by some old man who was wandering, blind in one eye, shaggy and filthy; the old man was deeply afraid of him, kept crossing himself and vanished fast into some bushes. From afar, Zelik observed a small group of escaped serfs who w
ere trying to cross the river into Turkey—he watched as men on horseback rode up, caught them, and tied them up like cattle.

  The next night it begins to rain, and the clouds cover the moon. Zelik manages to cross the river. The whole next day he tries to dry out his clothes. Frozen, weak, he thinks constantly about one thing. How could it be that the gentleman for whom he managed the forest’s accounts—a decent man, as far as he could tell—turned out to be evil? Why would he testify to a lie before the court? How was it possible that he lied under oath, and not about money or business, but on this, when people’s lives were at stake? Zelik cannot understand it; the same images replay over and over before his eyes: arrested, dragged out of their houses along with others, with his old, deaf father, who didn’t understand at first what was happening. And then that horrific pain that governs the body and rules the mind; pain, the emperor of this world. And then the tumbrel, taking them from the cells to the torture chamber, through the town, where people spit on them—spit on the wounded and destroyed.

  After a month or so, Zelik makes it to Jassy, where he seeks out some friends of his mother’s. They take him in, knowing what has happened; he spends some time there recovering. He has trouble sleeping, is afraid to shut his eyes; in sleep, when he does finally fall—as if slipping down the clay shores of a morass, charging into water—he sees his father’s body, covered in sludge, unburied, terrible. By night he is gnawed by the fear that death is lying in wait for him in the darkness and might snatch him up again—there, in the darkness, is death’s beat; there are the barracks of its armies. Since he escaped in such a banal way, since it didn’t even notice him gone from the heap of people it already owned, it will have designs on him forever.