The whole burden of maintaining the newcomers camping out on the streets of Lwów has fallen on Father Mikulski. He expends thirty-five ducats on them every week. Fortunately it is his niece, a woman not much younger than he is, resourceful and clever, who keeps in tight order his court expenditures and the money he spends on his neophytes, as he strives to call them, avoiding the word converts. Everyone knows her at market. When she is purchasing some fresh alimentation, no one dares haggle over anything with her. The city is also helping where it can, and local people have pitched in. Peasants have been observed sharing what they’ve been able to grow in their vegetable gardens. This villager in the four-cornered cap with the feather and the brown felt coat brought in a cart of young green apples and is dropping them directly into women’s aprons and men’s hats. Someone brought a cart of watermelons and several baskets of cucumbers. Nunneries take in women and their daughters, providing them with room and board. For the nuns this is a major challenge, as the number of sisters doubles and triples, and there are also those who spit on the Jewish women. The monks feed several dozen men per monastery. They mostly serve pea soup and bread.
Just before the baptism in Lwów, something like a market of Christian names emerges, where the name of highest value is Marianna. The name is in honor of Maria Anna Brühl, the wife of the king’s chief minister, who has been a generous supporter of the Contra-Talmudists. But they also say it’s the cleverest name—it contains within it both Mary, the mother of Christ, and Anne, Christ’s grandmother. Besides, it sounds good, like a nursery rhyme: Marianna, Marianna. So a lot of girls and young women want to be Marianna.
The daughters of Srol Mayorkowicz of Busk have already divvied up names amongst themselves. Shima turns into Victoria, Elia into Salomea, Freyna becomes Ró?a, Masha is Tekla, and Miriam Maria. Esther takes a long time to choose her name and finally resigns herself to Teresa.
In this way, it is as if there are now two versions of every person, all having doubles by different names. Srol Mayorkowicz, the son of Mayorek and Masha of Korolówka, becomes Miko?aj Piotrowski. His wife Beyla is Barbara Piotrowska.
It is widely known that some will receive their godparents’ last names. Moshe of Podhajce, who knows Her Ladyship ?ab?cka well and has done business with her husband, will take the name ?ab?cki. And since this wiry, intelligent rabbi has imagination and aplomb, and is the best-versed of everyone in Kabbalah, he understands the strength words and names have. He takes his first name after unfaithful Thomas. He will be called Tomasz Podhajecki-?ab?cki. His toddler sons, David and Solomon, will be Joseph Bonaventura and Casimir Simon ?ab?cki.
But not all the nobles are so eager to give away their names. Count Dzieduszycki, for instance, is not as inclined to debase his own name as ?ab?cki was. He will be godfather to Old Hirsh, Reb Sabbatai of Lanckoroń, and his wife, Hayah, née Shorr. Hayah is all gray now. Gray curls pop out from under her cap, and her face is pale gray, though her extraordinary beauty remains. Does this arrogant aristocrat in his English tailcoat—a thing never before seen in these parts and that makes him look like a heron—know he will be baptizing a prophetess?
“Take something simple, easy, rather than burdening yourselves with my name. Since you’re all redheaded,” he says to Hirsh, “why not choose Rudnicki, doesn’t that sound good? Or since you’re from Lanckoroń, maybe simply Lanckoroński? That sounds like a prince’s name.”
So they hesitate about whether to become Rudnickis or Lanckorońskis, but the fact is it’s all the same to them. Neither of them seems to fit Old Hirsh. He stands in his brown caftan, in the fur-lined hat that he never takes off, even in the summer, with his long beard and shaded face. He does not look particularly happy.
Also valued high on this stock exchange is the name Franciszek, or Francis, and one-third of the newly baptized members of the male sex will become Franciszek—they say it is in honor of Franciszek Rzewuski, who agreed to be the godfather of Jacob Frank himself and has put in a pretty penny for the process, too. But that’s not entirely exact. The real reason the name of the Assisi saint is so popular, as the priests discover in performing the baptisms, along with the ever-inquisitive Father Mikulski, it that Franciszek sounds a little bit like Frank—like Jacob Frank, their fearless leader.
It is evening on Friday in the Halickie Przedmie?cie. The late-setting sun still drenches the roofs in orange, and people who are sitting in little groups suddenly begin to feel uncomfortable. A strange and shameful silence follows. The crowd, who had been noisy half an hour ago as they gathered around yesterday’s bonfires, amongst rotten wicker carts stuffed with baskets and quilts and tethering several goats, has hushed. They look at the ground, their fingers playing with the fringes of their scarves.
A man’s voice suddenly begins to sing the Shema, but the others instantly quiet him.
The Queen of the Shabbat passes over their heads, not even grazing them, and travels straight into the Jewish quarter on the other side of town.
Of what happens to Father Chmielowski in Lwów
“Do you recognize me, Reverend Father?” some young man calls out to Father Chmielowski, who has just arrived in Lwów.
The priest looks at him closely, but does not recognize him, though he has the unpleasant sensation that he has encountered this boy somewhere before. Can his memory be failing him? Who could it be? Then he has it on the tip of his tongue—but the beard and the Jewish attire confuse him.
“I was your interpreter when you went to see the Shorrs several years ago.”
The priest shakes his head—he doesn’t remember.
“I am Hry?ko. You know, in Rohatyn . . . ,” says the boy, with a light Ruthenian lilt.
And suddenly the priest remembers the young interpreter. But there is something here he doesn’t understand. He is missing a front tooth, but then he has these breeches, this kapota . . . “Mother of God, why are you dressed like a Jew?” he asks.
Hry?ko looks away, up at the roofs, probably regretting having started this spontaneous conversation with the priest. He would like to tell him everything that has happened in his life, but at the same time, he is afraid to speak.
“Are you still with the Shorrs?” the vicar forane prods him.
“Oh, well, Shorr is a great man. Learned. He has money . . .” He waves his hand in resignation, as if the amount of money in question exceeded the very possibility of counting. “But what could be strange about that, Good Father, since he is like a father to me and my brother?”
“For heaven’s sake! How stupid you are!” Father Chmielowski looks around, frightened, to check whether anyone can see them. Yes, yes, the whole city can see them. “Have you gone completely mad? He ought not to have taken you in—you, Christian souls—but rather reported you as orphans, and then the way of orphans would you have gone. What will it look like! I ought not to care, since you are Orthodox, but all the same, you’re Christians.”
“Sure, and we would have ended up in some church orphanage,” Hry?ko says angrily, and suddenly raises his eyes to the priest. “But you’re not going to rat us out to anyone, are you, Father? For what? To what end? We’re good there with them. My brother is learning to read and write. He cooks with the women because he’s kind of a feygele.” He giggles. Father Chmielowski raises an eyebrow: he doesn’t understand.
From the crowd a girl emerges and starts to come up to Hry?ko, but seeing he’s talking with a priest, she retreats in some alarm. She is young, thin, with a big, pregnant belly. And unmistakably Jewish.
“Christ Almighty . . . So you are not only a Jewish hireling, but also newly wed to a Jewess! Holy Mother of God! People have lost their lives for far less!”