“What about Bishop So?tyk? Does he believe it? I don’t know. I know people have different ways of handling things. Good work, Mr. Kossakowski.”
The next day, Moliwda heads straight for ?owicz, where he will take up his new post, in a new state of mind that verges on elation. The snow and ice have already begun to thaw, and the roads are difficult, so that the horses’ hooves slip over the still-frozen clods of mud, and in the afternoon, as it begins to get darker, the water in the ruts freezes, and the cold, sulfur-colored sky is reflected in the little tiles of very thin ice. He travels alone on horseback, sometimes joining up with other travelers, only to leave them for the next leg of his journey. Somewhere along the way he catches fleas.
Just past Lublin, he is attacked by some tatterdemalions with clubs, and he chases them away, waving his saber and howling like a man possessed, but from then on he travels in a group to ?owicz. He reaches his destination after twelve days and almost immediately gets to work.
The primate’s chancellery is active already, and one of the first matters that must be dealt with is the supplication from the Jewish “Puritanes,” as Primate ?ubieński himself calls them—the same supplication that Moliwda wrote not long ago in Ivanie. Now it looks as though he will have to answer it himself. For the time being, he has a few copies made to be sent on to others, to Nuncio Serra, to the royal chancellery, for the archive.
More than once he begins the delicate conversation with the primate about this, but ?ubieński is too absorbed by the organization of his primate’s palace, which is, sadly, a little worse for wear, lacking its former splendor, from the time when the interrex primate resided here during the interregnum.
The primate’s books have just arrived in trunks from Lwów. He looks them over inattentively.
“I need you to investigate why they’re insisting upon baptism like this. Whether they have ulterior motives, and what the scale would be of such a conversion,” he says, still distracted.
“There are at least forty such families in Lwów alone, and the rest come not only from the Commonwealth, but also from Hungary and Wallachia, and these are the most learned, the most enlightened,” Moliwda lies.
“But how many of them are there?”
“It was said that there might be as many as five thousand of them in Kamieniec, and now the latest reports are suggesting there might be three times that number.”
“Fifteen thousand,” says the primate, and picks up the tome at the top of the pile, opening it and flipping through it absentmindedly. “The New Athens,” he says.
IV.
The Book of
THE COMET
19.
Of the comet that augurs the end of the world and brings about the Shekhinah
The comet appeared in the sky on March 13, 1759, and as though at its command, the snows melted and poured into the Dniester, causing it to overflow. For many days, it has continued to hang suspended over the wet, vast world, a brightly shining star, disquieting, upending the order of the sky.
The comet is visible the planet over. It can even be seen in China.
It is seen by soldiers after a battle in Silesia, as they lick their wounds; by sailors as they sober up on the cobblestones in front of Hamburg taverns; by Alpine shepherds guiding their sheep to summer pastures; by Greek olive pickers, and pilgrims with Saint James shells stitched onto their caps. It is scrutinized by anxious women expecting to miscarry at any given moment, and glimpsed by families crowded down below the decks of fragile ships as they cross the ocean in search of a new life on the other side.
The comet resembles a scythe aimed at humanity, a naked glistening blade that might slice off millions of heads at any moment, and not only the ones on the craned necks in Ivanie, but also city dwellers’ heads, Lwów heads, Kraków heads—even royal heads. There is no doubt it is a sign of the end of the world, a harbinger of angels rolling up the whole show like a rug. The play is evidently over, armies of archangels already gathering on the horizon. If you pay attention, you can hear the clanking of the angelic arsenal. And it is a mark of the mission of Jacob, and of all who follow him on his arduous path. Any who yet doubt must now acknowledge that even the heavens are joining this onward march. As the days pass, it becomes clear to all in Ivanie that the comet is a hole drilled into the heavenly firmament, through which the divine light may pass in order to reach us, and through which God is now checking on the world.
The sages say that the Shekhinah will pass through this hole.
Strange as it is, remarkable though it may be, on Yente the comet makes little impression. From her vantage point, of greater interest are the countless humble human things that make up the warp of the world. The comet? Why, that’s just a single gleaming thread.
For example, Yente sees how Ivanie has a particular status in the hierarchy of being. The village isn’t firmly planted on the ground, isn’t altogether real. Homes stooping over like living things, ancient aurochs, muzzles approaching the earth, thawing it with their breath. From the windows, a stream of yellow light, the light of a faded sun, much more powerful than candlelight. People take one another’s hands, then let go to eat from a single bowl, halving their bread. Steam rises from the kasha that fathers tenderly spoon into the mouths of the children sitting in their laps.
Couriers on tired horses carry letters from the capital to far-flung provinces, barges loaded with grain glide sleepily to Gdańsk—the Vistula never froze over this year—while raftsmen come to after last night’s carousing. In court, expenses are tallied, but the numbers stay on paper, never turning into money—it’s always better to settle up in flour and vodka than in jangling coins. Peasant women sweep the cellars, and children play with pigs’ bones left from the slaughter. Now they toss them onto the sawdust-strewn floor and study the resulting patterns to divine whether winter will be over soon. Will the storks be quick to return? In Lwów’s market square, commerce is just getting going—you can still hear hammers bringing boards together to make stalls. The horizon lies somewhere past Lublin, just past Kraków, at the Dnieper, at the Prut.
The words pronounced in Ivanie—great and powerful words—transgress the world’s boundaries. Behind them lies a completely other reality—there is no language to express it. It’s like holding silk embroidered in fifty-six colors up to gray fustian—incomparable. Yente, whose vantage point is inaccessible to any other person, is reminded of a bursting—a softness, a stickiness, a fleshiness, with many facets and dimensions, though without time. Warm, gold, light, soft. It’s like some strange living body revealed by a wound, like the juicy pulp that escapes from under broken skin.
That’s how the Shekhinah comes into the world.