The barber puts the lather on his face and starts to shave him. The razor scrapes him quietly, slicing away his hair. Suddenly the bishop’s imagination makes the leap beneath their frayed kapotas, and he is tormented by the image of their members. They are circumcised. This both fascinates and shocks him, and also makes him angry in some way he can’t quite understand. He clenches his jaw.
If this peddler of holy pictures—which is against the law; they really have absolutely no respect for the rules!—were to be stripped of this tallit of his and dressed in a cassock, would he look any different from the clerics walking just over there? And if he, the Bishop of Kamieniec, Dembowski of the D?b coat of arms, who is patiently waiting to be named archbishop of Lwów—if he were to be stripped of his rich robes and dressed in those tattered Jewish kapotas and set out with those pictures before a mansion in Kamieniec . . . The bishop winces at this absurd idea, though for a moment he can see himself, fat and pink, as a Jew selling pictures. No. No.
If it were as people said, if they were so powerful, then they would be wealthy, and not poor like these Jews just outside. Are they strong or weak? Do they pose a threat to the bishop’s mansion? Is it true that they hate the gentiles and find them filthy? And that they have tiny dark hairs all over their bodies?
God would not allow them to have such power as So?tyk thinks—after all, they rejected Christ’s act of salvation, and therefore no longer have any relation with the true God; cast off the path to salvation, they have wandered out into the wilderness somewhere.
The girl doesn’t want the medallion—she unbuttons her shirt just below her neck and pulls out her own, which she shows to the boy, who eagerly moves in closer to her neck.
The girl does buy the picture, however, and the salesman wraps it up in thin, stained paper.
What are these other people like when they take off their robes? the bishop wonders. What changes in them when they are alone, he thinks, dismissing the deeply bowing barber, and realizes that it is time for him to go and change for mass. He goes to his bedroom, happy to get rid of the heavy cassock he wears at home. For a moment, he stands naked, wondering whether he is committing some sort of terrible sin; already he has started to beg God to forgive him for it—whether it is the sin of shamelessness or maybe just of human piteousness. He feels the lightest cool breeze rustle ever so gently the tiny hairs on his stocky, hairy body.
Of Hayah’s two natures
Jacob has brought with him several horsemen, richly dressed after the Turkish fashion—men who have been given a special room. Their leader is Hayim, Hana’s brother. They speak only Turkish to each other. Jacob Frank is now known as Ahmed Frenk, and he has a Turkish passport. He is untouchable. Every day a messenger delivers news to him from the disputation in Kamieniec.
At word that Jacob Frank has secretly stationed himself for the duration of the Kamieniec disputation at her father’s house in Rohatyn, Hayah takes her youngest child, packs a trunk, and sets off from Lanckoroń to Rohatyn. It is hot, the harvest will begin soon; slowly, gently, waves make their way across the golden fields of crops that stretch out past the horizon, and it looks as though the whole earth, soft and gold, were sighing. Hayah is wearing a light-colored dress and a cerulean veil. Her baby daughter sits in her lap. Hayah sits up straight and calm in the carriage, breastfeeding the little one. A couple of dapple-gray horses draw a light coach covered in a linen tarpaulin. To all appearances, it is transporting a wealthy Jewish woman on her way somewhere. The peasant women stop and bring their hands up to their eyes in order to see the woman better. Hayah, as soon as she meets their gaze, gives a little smile. One of the women reflexively crosses herself; Hayah cannot tell if it is at the sight of a Jewish woman or of a woman with a child wearing a blue veil.
Hayah passes her daughter to a servant and runs straight to her father, who stands up from his accounts as soon as he sees her and starts to hem and haw with happiness. She leans into his beard and breathes in its familiar fragrance—coffee and tobacco, the safest smell in the world, or so it seems to Hayah. Soon the whole house has come running—her brother Yehuda and his wife, petite as a little girl, with pretty green eyes, and their children, and the servants, and Hry?ko, who is now called Hayim and who lives next door, and also the neighbors. It gets noisy, and Hayah sets out her traveling baskets, takes out the gifts she’s brought. Only once she has fulfilled this pleasant duty and eaten the chicken broth that is daily fed to Jacob—chicken feathers float through the kitchen—can she look in on the guest.
Hayah goes up to Jacob and takes a good look at his sun-darkened face, where after a moment’s seriousness the ironic smile she knows so well appears.
“You’ve aged, but you’re still beautiful.”
“And you’ve gotten all the more handsome because you’ve lost weight. Your wife must not be giving you anything to eat.”
They embrace like brother and sister, but Jacob’s hand gently slides over Hayah’s lean back, as though caressing her.
“I had no choice,” says Jacob, and takes a step back. He fixes his shirt, which has slipped out from under his galligaskins.
“You did the right thing by running. Once we’ve made our deal with the bishops, you’ll return like a king,” says Hayah, taking his hands.
“They wanted to kill me in Salonika, and they want to kill me here.”
“Because they’re afraid of you. But that is your great strength.”
“I won’t come back here again. I have a house and a vineyard. I’ll study the Scriptures . . .”
Hayah bursts out laughing, and she laughs sincerely, joyfully, with her whole body.
“I can see it already . . . studying the Scriptures . . . ,” she says, catching her breath and unpacking the books and teraphim from her small trunk. Among the statuettes there is one that is special; it is ayelet ahuvim, the favorite doe—a deer figurine carved out of ivory. Jacob takes it in his hand and looks it over, rather inattentively, and then he reads the titles of the books Hayah has set out on the table.
“You figured it would be some techinot, some sort of women’s supplications, no?” Hayah says, flicking her skirt, setting the white feathers swirling across the floor.