“And then there are children, of course. What ultimately ends up happening is shared children. How do you know that that young thing that lay with you last night won’t have a child soon? And whose will it be? Her husband’s or yours? That binds them together tightly, too, since that way they’re all fathers. Whose child is Shlomo’s youngest daughter?” asks Moliwda, now absolutely intoxicated.
Jacob lifts his head and looks at him for a moment; Moliwda’s eyes have softened, clouded.
“Shut up,” says Jacob. “That’s none of your business.”
“Oh I see,” says Moliwda, “now it’s not my business, but when you want a village from the bishop, then it is my business.” He reaches for the pipe as well. “It’s a good system. The child belongs to the mother, and thus to the mother’s husband, too. It’s mankind’s greatest invention. It means that only women have access to the truth that agitates so many.”
That night they go to bed drunk, sleeping in the same room because neither wants to go out in search of his own bed, with a blizzard raging. Moliwda turns to Jacob, not knowing if he’s asleep yet or not, or if he can hear—his eyes are partly closed, but the lamplight is reflected in the slender glassy strips below his lashes. Moliwda feels that he is talking to Jacob, but maybe he isn’t talking at all—maybe it only feels that way—and he doesn’t know if Jacob is listening.
“You always said she was either pregnant or in confinement. And these long pregnancies and long confinements meant that she was always unavailable, but in the end, you had to release even her from the women’s rooms; you, too, must be bound by the same justice you impose on everyone else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Jacob doesn’t react. He’s lying on his back, his nose pointing straight at the ceiling.
“I watched you communicating by glances on the road, you and her. And she was telling you no. Am I right? And your glance also said no. But now that will mean something more. I’m waiting, I’m asking you for that same justice with which you handle your own people. I’m one of you now, too. And I’m asking for your Hana.”
There is a silence.
“You have all the women here, they’re all yours, and all the men, body and soul. I understand that you are something greater than a group of people with the same goal. You’re something greater than a family, because you are bound together by all the sins that are forbidden to a family. You’re bound by saliva and semen, not just blood. Those ties are strong. They bring you closer together than ever before. That’s how it was at home in Craiova, too. Why should we submit to laws we don’t believe in, laws that are incompatible with the religion of nature?”
Moliwda jabs him in the shoulder, and Jacob exhales.
“You embolden your people to be with one another but not like they want, not just following the call of nature—you decide, because you are their nature.”
By the last sentence, he’s mumbling almost unintelligibly. He can tell that Jacob is asleep now, so he stops talking, disappointed by the lack of reaction he’s received. Jacob’s face is relaxed and calm—he clearly heard nothing because he wouldn’t be smiling that way if he had. He is beautiful. It occurs to Moliwda that he is like a patriarch even though he is young, his beard still black, without a trace of gray, flawless, and Moliwda thinks he must be catching this same Ivanie madness, because he also sees a kind of glow around Jacob’s head, which Nahman had told him about so excitedly—Nahman, who now also calls himself Jakubowski, after Jacob. Suddenly Moliwda thinks of kissing Jacob’s lips. He hesitates for a moment and touches his fingers to Jacob’s mouth, but even that does not awaken him. Jacob simply smacks his lips and rolls over.
In the morning they have to clear the snow from in front of the door, the drift too deep for them to step outside at first.
Divine grace, which calls out from the darkness into the light
The following day, Jacob hurries Moliwda back to work. In Nahman’s little house there is a separate chamber for such things. Moliwda has begun to call it “the chancellery.”
They will be writing yet more supplications, which they will use to further importune the episcopal and royal secretariats. Moliwda sips beer with a spoonful of honey in it—for his stomach. Before any of the others come in, Jacob asks, out of nowhere:
“What is your business with us here, Moliwda? What’s your game?”
“I have no business with you.”
“Well, we’re paying you.”
“I take the money to cover my costs, to have something to eat and something to wear, because otherwise I’m poor as a dervish. I’ve seen too much of the world, Jacob, not to understand you all. These bishops and nobles are just as foreign to me as they are to you, even though I come from them.” He swallows a spoonful of his mixture and adds after a moment, “Although I do and I don’t.”
“You’re a strange man, Moliwda. It’s like you’re broken in half. I can’t understand you. Whenever I look at you, you just pull the curtain down. I’ve heard there are animals in the sea that whenever you try and catch them, they release ink.”
“Those are octopuses.”
“Well, that’s exactly how you are.”
“When I’ve had enough, I’ll just leave you.”
“Krysa says you’re a spy.”
“Krysa is a traitor.”
“Who are you, Count Kossakowski?”
“I’m the king of an island in the Greek sea, the ruler of agreeable subjects, don’t you know?”
Now, sentence by sentence, they concoct a new request to W?adys?aw ?ubieński, Archbishop of Lwów.
“Do not overdo it,” Moliwda worries, “because we don’t know what he’s like. He might not look upon us too favorably. They say he’s motivated by self-interest and vanity.”
The one thing they know for sure, though, is that the supplications have to be written and written and written, one after the next. They have to be careful and rounded as drops of water, in order that they might patiently wear away at the crag. Moliwda falls into thought, gazing at the ceiling.
“We have to start from the beginning,” he says. “From Kamieniec. From the bishop’s decree.”
And that’s just what they do. They present themselves in a good, noble light and spend so long on their good intentions that they all start to believe what they’re saying.
“And having learned of this, always struggling against the spirit of wisdom, our opponents raised their hands against us and accused us of inconceivable crimes before the bishop,” suggests Moliwda.
They nod. Nahman would like to insert something.
“Perhaps it could be that they raised their hands against us and ‘furthermore against God Himself’?”
“But what would that mean?” asks Moliwda. “What does God have to do with this?”
“It’s just that we’re on God’s side.”
“It’s that God is on our side,” says Shlomo Shorr.
Moliwda doesn’t really care for it, but he adds the hand of God, like Nahman wants.