Moliwda sets out from Warsaw for Lwów when the roads freeze up again, becoming traversable. After his meeting with Archbishop ?ubieński, he is taken to Ivanie by a priest named Zwierzchowski, who has now been assigned to the anti-Talmudist question. The priest gives him a whole chest full of catechisms and instructional pamphlets, and rosaries and religious medallions, too. Moliwda feels like one of those street vendors saddled with all kinds of devotional objects. Separately packed in tow is a figurine of the Virgin Mary, carved a little clumsily out of linden and brightly painted, for Mrs. Frank from Mrs. Kossakowska, as a gift and a memento.
He arrives in Ivanie on March 9, 1759, and no sooner has he arrived than he is overcome by emotion, for in Ivanie he sees the image of his own little village close to Craiova, with all the same elements, just colder and so not quite as cozy. The atmosphere is the same, like a never-ending holiday, which the weather even seems to further: there is a slight frost, and way up in the sky the cold sun casts down bright, freezing beams. The world looks cleansed. People make tracks upon the white snow, so you can follow them wherever they go. Moliwda thinks how snow keeps life more honest: everything is somehow more distinct, and every rule applies more absolutely. The people who meet him in Ivanie look radiant and happy despite the brevity of the days. Children with puppies in their arms come running up to his carriage, along with women flushed from work, men flashing big grins. Smoke rises in straight vertical lines from the chimneys, as though a sacrifice made in that spot were being met with unconditional acceptance.
Jacob greets Moliwda ceremoniously, but once they are inside his little shack, and once they are alone, he fishes Moliwda’s stocky figure from inside his wolf fur and holds him for a long while, patting him on the back and repeating, in Polish, “You came back, you came back.”
Then they’re all here: the Shorr brothers—though not the father, who hasn’t quite recovered from that beating—as well as Yehuda Krysa and his brother and brother-in-law. Nahman is here, newly remarried to some young girl (marrying them off at that age is barbaric, Moliwda thinks), Moshe surrounded by smoke, the other Moshe, the Kabbalist, with his whole family—everyone is here. Now they crowd into this little room where the windows have frozen into a pretty pattern.
At the welcome banquet, Jacob sits in the middle of the table, beneath a window, which frames him from behind like he’s a picture. Jacob against the black backdrop of night. They all hold hands. Everybody takes a good look at everybody else, as though they haven’t seen one another in ages and ages. Then there is a solemn prayer, which by now Moliwda knows by heart; after a moment’s hesitation, he joins in. Then they converse, at length and in chaos, in a chorus of languages. Moliwda’s fluent Turkish wins over Osman’s somewhat suspicious followers, who look and act like Turks although they drink almost as much as the Podolians. Jacob is in a good mood. He is vibrant; it is a pleasure to see the enthusiasm with which he eats. He praises the dishes, tells stories that elicit bursts of laughter.
Moliwda used to wonder whether Jacob could feel fear. Eventually he decided that Jacob would not recognize the feeling, as though he’d simply been born without it. This gives Jacob strength: people can sense that absence of fear, and that absence of fear in turn becomes contagious. And because the Jews are always afraid—whether it’s of a Polish lord, or of a Cossack, of injustice or hunger or cold—they live in a state of extreme uncertainty, from which Jacob is a kind of salvation. The absence of fear is like a halo that radiates a heat that can warm up a chilled and frightened little soul. Blessed are those who feel no fear. And although Jacob often repeats that they are in limbo, they are comfortable enough in limbo.
When Jacob disappears for even a moment, conversations come apart, no longer laced with the same energy as when he’s there. His mere presence is enough to instill order; eyes travel to him involuntarily, like moths to flame. And so it is now. Jacob is the focal point of the evening. Jacob glows. Late at night they start to dance, first the men alone, in a circle, as though in a kind of trance. When, exhausted, they return to the table, two women come out to dance in their stead. One of these women will spend the night with Moliwda.
In the evening, Moliwda gives a solemn reading to the company assembled, of the letter he’d dashed off a few days earlier to the Polish king, in the name of these Wallachian, Turkish, and Polish brothers:
Jacob Joseph Frank departed with his wife, children, and more than sixty other persons from the Turkish and Wallachian lands, barely escaping with his life, for having lost all his worldly possessions, and knowing only his mother tongue and some dialects of the East, and knowing not the customs of this most glorious Kingdom and having thus no means to live within it, neither him nor his people, whom, even being so numerous, he had brought over to the true faith, now supplicates your Royal Highness in all His Compassion for a place and mode of sustenance for our society . . .
Here Moliwda clears his throat and pauses: a doubt flickers through his mind, and he wonders if this letter is not somewhat disrespectful. What could the king care about them, when his own subjects—those peasants born Christians, those multitudes of beggars, orphaned children, hapless cripples—needed help?
. . . so that we might now settle down in peace, for to live among Talmudists is unbearable to us, and a danger, insofar as that intolerant nation has never learned to think of us as anything other than wrong-faithed schismatics, etc.
Unheedful of the law given to this land by Your Excellency, they are everywhere and at every moment persecuting, pillaging, and attacking us, as was exemplified not long ago in Podolia, so near your Majesty Himself . . .
From the back of the room comes a single sob. It is followed by others.
. . . and so it is that we humbly beseech Your Majesty to appoint a commission in Kamieniec and in Lwów, that our rightful belongings might be returned us, our wives and children given back, and the decree from Kamieniec be observed in a satisfactory manner, and we entreat Your Royal Highness to proclaim in a public letter that our brothers in hiding may reemerge, with their thirst for faith akin to our own, that they might make themselves known without fear; that the lords of these locales might be an aid in the acceptance of the holy faith, and were the Talmudists to inflict any oppressions therefrom resulting, that these same brothers might be helped in reaching safety, as to unite with our society.
His listeners like his ornate style. Moliwda, greatly pleased with himself, reclines atop the carpets—for since Hana’s arrival Jacob has inhabited a larger residence, which Hana has furnished according to the Turkish custom. It’s a bit incongruous in that outside there is snow, and gusts of wind. The dwelling’s little windows are almost entirely covered over with blown powder. As soon as the door is opened, a fresh dusting penetrates the interior, which smells of coffee and licorice. A few days earlier, it had seemed that spring had arrived.