“Kabbalah or no,” Katarzyna Kossakowska says, her cheeks pink from the wine, “something unprecedented in the world is happening among us now. Thousands of Jews are wanting to convert to the Catholic faith. They are cozying up to us like chicks to a mother hen, poor and exhausted by their own Jewishness—”
“You are mistaken,” Father Pikulski interrupts her, clearing his throat out of embarrassment; Kossakowska looks at him, startled by this intrusion into her train of thought. “They have much to gain from it. They have long looked at our country as a shiny new promised land . . .”
“You really have to watch their hands at all times,” adds Bishop So?tyk.
“. . . they’re now executing a sentence to do with their Talmud, but the sentence ought to be carried out against all their books. The Kabbalah is a certain type of dangerous superstition that really should be banned. It teaches a way of worshipping God that is pure heresy. It allegedly also teaches how to predict the future and promotes the performance of magic. Kabbalah definitely comes not from God, but from Satan.”
“You exaggerate, Father.” Now Kossakowska is the one to interrupt. “And even if it were to have the stench of sulfur, regardless, soon they will all find another kind of life in the lap of the Church. That’s why we’re all here, after all, to help these lost souls when they declare their best intentions.”
Prince Jerzy Marcin Lubomirski eats his blood pudding; it’s the best thing they’ve served at this dinner. The meat is tough, and the rice is overcooked again. The cabbage gives off a strange, musty smell. His interlocutors are old and boring. He doesn’t know anything about Jews, whom he has only ever seen from afar. Only once has he had a more intimate acquaintance with one, one of the girls who is always orbiting the garrison, whores of every stripe and nation, so that the soldiers may pick their type and color.
Of newly appointed Archbishop Dembowski, who is preparing for a journey
Waiting for his packing trunks, which might arrive at any moment, ready to set off at once for Lwów to assume the archbishopric, the bishop takes another good look at the sets of underwear he has had sewn and then had the women embellish with his monogram: MD, Miko?aj Dembowski.
The monograms are embroidered in purple silk thread. And the silk stockings he requested have been sent from abroad, Bishop Dembowski having long since given up on the local linen ones. There are white stockings as well as purple ones that are the same shade as his monogram and that also feature stitching around their delicate cuffs. He has something brand-new, too: long underwear, made of delicate wool, which scratches him a little around the hips but provides him with the warmth of which he has been so desirous.
It would seem that he is pleased. Who knows whether his subtle attempts at the archbishopric might not have been reevaluated in light of recent events—so many poor people, cast out by their own, humiliated, yet feeling the merciful heart of Jesus Christ palpable and near. The bishop will not let the matter rest until this whole Jewish multitude is baptized. It would be a great miracle for all of Europe, perhaps the dawn of a new era. He inspects the books that have been readied for the trunks, and his gaze falls upon a volume just bound in fresh leather. He knows what this is. Smiling, he picks it up, flips through it, and lands on this little ditty:
What is wrong with Poland?
Wrong are the roads and the rulers of Poland,
Wrong are the bridges, narrow and broad,
Wrong the countless people who have been spared the rod.
The bishop smiles to himself, touched by the poem’s naiveté. If only Father Chmielowski had as much wisdom as zeal! After a little consideration, he adds this book, with its beautiful binding, to the pile with the rest.
On the last night before his planned departure, Bishop Dembowski goes to bed in his castle in Czarnokozińce quite late, his hand numb from writing letters (all attempting to organize Jewish questions, including a letter to the king that urges him to support this noble campaign). He awakens in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, somehow very stiff, his neck like solid wood, his head aching. He dreamed of something awful, but he can’t quite remember what it was. Some sort of trampling, a violence, such sharp edges, the sound of fabric being torn, cracks, a guttural babbling of which he understands not a word. As he lies in the darkness, still trembling with fear, he tries to reach his hand out to ring for a servant, but he feels he cannot move, that the hand that spent the whole day writing letters—his own hand—will not obey him now. That is impossible, he thinks, terrified. This is a dream. An animal panic overwhelms him.
He notices an unusual smell, and with intensifying terror, he realizes he’s wet himself. He wants to move but he cannot; this is exactly what he dreamed of—that he could not move. He wants to cry out for a servant, but his lungs will not obey—they don’t have the strength to take in any air or to let him make the slightest whimper. He lies motionless until morning, on his back, his breathing fast as a rabbit’s. He starts to pray, but since his prayers arise from fear, they break off, and then the bishop doesn’t even know what he is saying. He feels as if some invisible figure has come and sat on his breast, some phantom, and if he cannot dislodge it, this phantom will kill him. He tries to calm down and settle back into his body, feel an arm, a leg, sense his stomach, tighten his buttocks, move his finger. But he quickly retreats, for nothing remains there. All that is left is his hand, as though it hangs in an absolute vacuum. The whole time he feels like he is falling, and he has to hold on to the sconce with his eyes; the sconce is high up in the bishop’s bedroom in Czarnokozińce, hanging over the trunks he’s packed. Thus he remains, in mortal terror.
In the morning a servant finds him, and a big fuss is raised. The medics let his blood; it flows black and thick, and their faces reveal mounting concern.
After his blood is let, the bishop’s condition improves somewhat. He starts to move his fingers and his head. Faces bend over him, saying something, asking, looking on in sadness and in sympathy. But they just depress him, they’re made up of too many different parts, so that his head spins, and he’s dizzy and nauseated—eyes, mouth, nose, wrinkles, ears, moles, warts, there’s just too much, it’s unbearable, and his eyes flit back up to the sconce. He seems to know that someone’s hands are touching him, but all he can feel is the absolute estrangedness of his own body. People stand over him, but he cannot understand their conversations. He catches a word here and there, but he can’t hold on to any, as they don’t create sentences or meaning. The people leave, and then there is only a candle. In the near-darkness the bishop would very much like for someone to hold his hand; what he wouldn’t give for the warm, rough interior of anyone’s hand . . .