Moshe of Podhajce, when he talked, would lean forward and stretch out his neck, and his piercing, high-pitched voice would immediately attract everyone’s attention. When he told stories, he would become so engrossed in them that he would raise his fists over his head, shake his head, raise his eyes to the sky, and roar. He was quite the actor, and there was no one he could not do an impression of. Thus we asked him to do so often.
Sometimes he would imitate me, and I would laugh until I cried, seeing myself in his gestures: impulsive, impatient—he could even perform my stutter. And he alone, Moshe of Podhajce, was permitted to mock Jacob: he would stand up very straight, and his head would come forward a little, his eyes would become round, avian, penetrating, and he would blink very slowly, and anyone would swear his nose had grown. Then he would put his hands behind his back and walk, and just like Jacob, he would drag his legs slightly, sort of in a dignified way, sort of lazily. At first we would snicker, and then we would roar with laughter whenever Moshe did Jacob preaching to people.
Jacob himself laughed with us, and his laughter was deep, resounding, as if reaching us from the bottom of a well. It immediately did everyone good when he laughed, for it was as though he were building a tent over our heads, keeping us safe. Moshe of Podhajce is a good actor, even though he is a learned rabbi.
One August day, a breathless Osman of Czernowitz arrived with the news that the true believers who had been camped out along the river, armed with the king’s letter and encouraged by some messengers from the new bishop, had crossed over the Dniester with all of their belongings, a song on their lips, untroubled by anyone, the border guards merely observing the joyful procession. Osman said they had scattered over three villages among the bishop’s landholdings in which they had some connections, and some were now living there—in Us′ciski, Ivanie, and Harmackie—and were sending supplications with Osman for Jacob to return.
“They are waiting for you like they are waiting for redemption,” said Osman, and knelt down. “You don’t even know how desperately they wait for you.” And Jacob suddenly started laughing and repeating with audible relish: “Lustig, unsere Brüder haben einen Platz erhalten,” which I assiduously noted down.
Now almost daily someone appeared from Poland with good news, their faces flushed, and it became ever clearer that we would be returning. Hana had already learned of it, for she was often in a gloomy mood and regarded me with great disgust, not speaking a word, as though it were my fault that Jacob wished to leave this lovely home he had with her. And right after the harvest, which was the best in many years, the grapes so sweet that they stuck to our fingers, we set off to see our people in Bucharest and obtain their support. We gathered so many grapes that we were able to buy carts and horses and make the proper preparations for our journey. In a letter from Poland we learned from our people that an entire village belonging to the bishop was awaiting us. And for the first time the name was spoken: Ivanie.
There are external and internal things. External things are appearance, and we live amongst external things like people in a dream, and the laws of appearances must be taken for real laws when in fact they are not. When you live in a place and a time in which certain laws are in effect, then you must observe those laws, but never forgetting that they are only partial systems, never absolute. For the truth is something else, and if a person is not prepared to come to know it, then it may seem frightening and terrible, and that person may curse the day he learned of it.
But I do believe that everyone can tell what kind of person he truly is. It is just that deep down, he doesn’t want to find out.
Father Benedykt weeds the oregano
The Kabbala Denudata from 1677 by von Rosenroth, written in Latin, was given by Elisha Shorr to Father Chmielowski after he saved his Jewish books. Since the issuing of the royal letter, the books have returned to their owner. Truth be told, this came as a great relief to Father Chmielowski. If anyone had found out what the priest had been keeping in the Firlejów presbytery, there would have been quite the scandal. For this reason, he also has an ambiguous relationship with his gift. The book was brought by some farmhand, wrapped up in linen, tied with a hemp rope. It must have cost a fortune. The farmhand gave it to Father Chmielowski without a word and disappeared.
Father Chmielowski reads it in the afternoons. The letters are small, so he can only read in broad daylight, by the window. When it gets darker, he opens a bottle of wine and sets aside the book. He holds the wine in his mouth and looks at his garden, and past it, at the ragged meadows across the river. The grass is tall, and a gust of wind will sway it, so that it waves, trembles, as if the meadows were living organisms. Their surface resembles the hide of a horse that balks and shivers when a bumblebee lands on it. With each gust the grass reveals its lighter underbelly, greenish gray like the undercoat of a dog.
To tell the truth, the priest is disappointed; he doesn’t understand a thing, even though it is written in Latin, only Latin, but its contents are more like what Mrs. Dru?backa writes. For instance, “My head is filled with dew.” What could that mean?
The coming to be of the world is somehow too poetic, he thinks—for us it’s snip, snip, in six days God created the world, like a boss who knows how to get something done, instead of thinking about doing it. But here it’s all so complicated. And the priest’s vision is weakening, and reading tires him out.
It is a strange book. Father Chmielowski had been craving for a long time this kind of general knowledge that explains the beginning and the end, the travels of the planet in the sky and all the miracles and wonders, but this account strikes him as too elusive, and even his favorite Latin scholastics would never have ventured explanations of such miracles—such as that Jesus Christ was Adam Kadmon, pure divine light descended to the earth. Now he thinks about the migration of souls, for instance. To tell the truth, he has heard about this heresy, but he has never given much thought to its logic. The book says that there is nothing wrong in it, that even a good Christian should believe that after death we are reborn in other forms.