It wouldn’t be easy to place a young girl with a child. He would have to find out from the kahal where there might be shelters of some sort for such women, he thought back then.
Now things are different. Asher is no longer considering finding them a shelter. Gitla has begun to help around the house and has taken on the cooking. She is finally starting to go out—pulling her cap down over her face and flitting down the streets as though fearing someone might recognize her. She races to the market, buys vegetables and eggs, so many eggs, for she lives off their yolks, which she drizzles with honey. For Asher she cooks good, familiar dishes, like what he remembers from home—tasty kugel, or cholent with mushrooms instead of beef, since Gitla doesn’t eat meat. She says Jews do the same thing to animals that Cossacks do to Jews.
But Lwów is not a big city, and it won’t be long before the secret is out. The Jewish quarter can be traversed in ten minutes—go out of the Market Square on Ruska Street and turn onto Jewish Street, and then move briskly along down the incredibly boisterous New Jewish Street, where homes are clustered one on top of the other, with endless extensions and stairs and tiny courtyards housing little workshops, laundries, stalls. People know each other well here, and nothing escapes their attention.
Of the reversal of circumstances: Katarzyna Kossakowska writes to Bishop Kajetan So?tyk
Your Benevolent Excellency, please hear out your faithful Servant, who is not only the truest Daughter of our Most Holy Church, but also your Friend, in whom you shall always find Succor, even in Moments so terrible as this.
The Bishop’s Death shocked us all to such an extent that for the first few Days in Czarnokozińce, all kept the Silence of the Crypt. Even I did not learn of it at once, as for some Reason it was initially shrouded in the greatest Mystery. It is said to have been an Apoplexy.
The Funeral will not take place until January 29—you have no doubt already received News of it and still have a little bit of Time to make the proper Preparations for the Journey. You must know, Your Excellency, that upon the Death of Bishop Dembowski our Cause has taken a wholly new Turn. The Rabbis swung into Action, as did the King’s Advisers, who are quite in their Pocket, and soon it was that nowhere could our Pets find any Backing; without the Bishop, the whole Matter got covered in Ash, with no one to tend to it any longer. Wherever I go, and whatever I say on this Question, I instantly hit a Wall of Indifference. Furthermore, the Frosts are terrible this Year and people have shut themselves up inside their Houses—no one will so much as poke out their Nose. The Entirety of our Commonwealth seems to be dependent on the Weather. Perhaps this is also why they are putting off the Funeral, so that the Snow might relinquish its Hold enough to make Roads passable. Right now they could hardly dig the Grave.
It worries me, Excellency, that all our Efforts may have been for naught. The Violence previously dealt to the Talmudists has now been turned against our Shabbitarians. The Jewish Communities have been requisitioning their Dwellings—in the best Case, that is, for many have simply been burned, along with Everything inside them. The poor Creatures come to me for Aid, but what can I do for them on my own now that the Bishop has gone? I give them Clothing and a little Money, just enough that they might afford a Carriage over the Dniester. For they are leaving Everything behind and hurtling southward en masse toward Wallachia, where their Leader is to be found. I sometimes envy them this and would myself like to go from here to where it is warm and there is Sunlight. In any Case, I lately saw one of the Shabbitarians’ little Villages. It was empty to the last little Shack, and it sent a Chill right down my Spine.
I, too, have somehow lost the Impetus for all Activity. I have been ailing a bit, I must have caught a Cold during my Journey from Rohatyn to Kamieniec, and nothing has been able to restore my internal Warmth since then, even my husband’s much-aged aqua vitae. People are saying that Bishop Dembowski was cursed by the Jews, and that this was the reason he died. An Innkeeper told me that two Curses had been battling for some time over the Bishop’s Head. One was trying to defend him, the other to destroy him. One had been cast by his beloved Shabbitarians, the other by the Talmudist Rabbis. And so the people here all prattle on, although I do not believe in Curses, Jewish or otherwise. But it did sow some Anxiety within me to think that over our Heads some cosmic Wars are being waged by all kinds of Forces flying around, swirling like Clouds, while we, so fragile and so blithe, are simply unaware.
They’re saying the Bishop’s Successor is going to be ?ubieński, whom I know well and who will, I hope, take up our Cause.
I remain hopeful, Your Excellency and my dear Friend, that we will meet at the Funeral, which everyone is preparing for as though for some great Wedding. I myself saw the Herds of Oxen purchased in Wallachia and chased across the Dniester to Kamieniec for the Funeral Banquet . . .
Pompa funebris: January 29, 1758
Archbishop Dembowski’s body, carefully groomed, had initially been transferred from the rumpled bed that witnessed his cruel death to a special chamber with no windows, where the merciless frosts made the long wait until the funeral possible. It traveled from there to the sumptuous show chamber, to a four-poster bed, where bouquets of the last flowers of the season have been placed, along with bundles of spruce and juniper. Ever since, the unflaggingly praying nuns have kept him constant company.
A whole battery of scribes has been set to writing the notices, and a makeshift secretariat has popped up—tables arranged like in a monastery’s scriptorium, bottles upon bottles of ink, and a special cleric with curly hair who drowsily sharpens the quills.