Moliwda and Jacob look at Warsaw from Praga on the other side of the river. They see the city situated high on the embankment, the brown and red of the bricks and the roofs of the city’s tenements all squeezed in together, farming an urban honeycomb. The redbrick defensive wall has broken down completely in several places, overgrown with the roots of the little trees that have cropped up. Over the city loom the towers of the churches—the stiletto collegiate church of Saint John, the bulbous Jesuits’ church, and, farther in, the angular brick of Saint Martin’s Church on Piwna Street and, finally, more toward the river, the tall Marsza?kowska Tower. Moliwda points out each of these in turn, as if showing his various properties to Jacob. He also points out the Royal Castle with the clock tower and the splendidly arranged gardens below, now covered in the thinnest layer of the first snow. The embankment and the city lurch up like some wild anomaly on this decidedly level terrain.
It is getting dark already, and the ferry will not go over to the left bank now. So they find a place to spend the night at a nearby inn—smokefilled, with low ceilings. Because they are both dressed like nobles and request a clean room with separate beds, the innkeeper gives them preferential treatment. For supper they order roast chicken and potatoes with lard, as well as cheese and pickles, though these are not to Jacob’s liking, and he does not eat them. He is unusually quiet and focused. His face is shaved, and the little indentation in his chin and the ever-present circles under his eyes are now especially visible against the pallor of his lower face. He is wearing his tall fur hat, so the innkeeper assumes he is a Turk, maybe an official messenger.
Moliwda’s gaze gets hazier with the vodka. He isn’t used to the strong Mazovian spirits. He reaches across the table and touches Jacob’s cheek, evidently unable to stop marveling at his appearance now that he has done away with his beard. A surprised Jacob looks up at him, still chewing. They converse in Turkish, which gives them a sense of security.
“Don’t you worry. The king will receive you,” says Moliwda. “So?tyk wrote to him. And a number of people have expressed support for you to him.”
Jacob tops up Moliwda’s vodka; he himself drinks little.
“That woman will give you a free place to live, with servants, while you’re here.” “That woman” is how they refer to Mrs. Kossakowska. “You can have Hana join you, everything will work out.”
Moliwda is trying to cheer him up, but in fact he feels as if he’s shoving Jacob right into the lion’s den. Especially today, on seeing this city that is at once haughty and miserable. Angst has been tormenting him: after the plague in Lwów, after the deaths in Lublin, what else can go wrong?
“What I’m after isn’t just some nice accommodations,” says Jacob gloomily. “I want them to give me land, and I want full control over that land . . .”
It occurs to Moliwda that Jacob wants an awful lot. He decides to change the subject.
“Let’s get us a girl,” he says in a conciliatory tone. “One for the two of us, we’ll both bend her over,” he says, although without conviction. But Jacob shakes his head. With the silver toothpick he always carries with him, he picks pieces of meat out of his teeth.
“Given how long we’ve gone without an answer, it seems to me he doesn’t want to see me.”
“Come on now, it’s the royal chancellery. They get applications like yours by the hundred. The king is rarely in the capital, he’s most often in Dresden, so when he gets here, he is buried under letters and petitions. I have a good friend there. He will put your letter at the top of the pile. You just have to be patient.”
Moliwda reaches for another piece of chicken, holds the drumstick in front of him like a child’s saber, trying to tease Jacob. But Jacob just gets annoyed.
“And I’ll say on your behalf,” and Moliwda begins to imitate the accent in which Jews sometimes speak Polish, “we have joined the Catholic Church in good faith, putting our fates into His Majesty’s hands, in total faith, knowing he will not leave his littlest subjects in such terrible distress . . .”
“Stop it,” says Jacob.
So Moliwda stops. Jacob pours himself some vodka and drinks it down in one gulp. His eyes start to gleam, and his gloom slowly melts away, like snow brought into a warm room. Moliwda moves over to his side and puts his arm over his shoulder. He follows Jacob’s gaze and sees two women, one seemingly a young lady of the night, the other likely her companion. Clearly both working girls of a better sort, and they look back at Jacob and Moliwda with equal curiosity, no doubt assuming they are noblemen from overseas. Or envoys on the road. Moliwda winks at them, excited, but Jacob holds him back, saying there are spies all over, and who knows what might happen. It wouldn’t be a good idea.
They sleep in the same room, on two beds that are more like pallets, fully clothed. Jacob has arranged a shirt so his head doesn’t touch the rough straw mattress. Moliwda falls asleep but is awakened by the ruckus downstairs—they’re still making merry in the dining room. Drunken shouts can be heard, and then it sounds as if the innkeeper is throwing out the most obstreperous of his guests. Moliwda looks over at Jacob’s bed, but it is empty. Frightened, he sits up and sees Jacob by the window, rocking back and forth and muttering something to himself. Moliwda lies back down and realizes, when he is already half asleep, that this is the first time he’s seen Jacob praying for himself. And on the very brink of sleep, Moliwda is surprised; he has always been sure that Jacob didn’t believe in all the tales he told the others, in the triple or quadruple gods, in the order of the Messiah—or even the Messiah himself. What part of the heart believes, and what part is certain that none of it is true? he wonders sleepily, and then the last thought that comes to him before he finally drifts off is how hard it is for us to ever get away from ourselves.
Of events in Warsaw and the papal nuncio