The prior allows Jacob to go out onto the rampart that day, under Roch’s watchful eye, so that he can observe this murky human flood. He must be counting on this procession to make an impression on his prisoner and exhort his insufficiently Catholic soul to repent.
It takes some time for Jacob’s eyes to grow accustomed to the light and to the bouquet of spring colors. Then they follow the movements of the people, sating themselves, and it seems to Jacob that the crowd is fermenting, bubbling like sourdough. His eyes consume all the details hungrily, after weeks of having only the stones on the wall and the tiny piece of the world visible from the cell’s little window to react to. Now, from the rampart, they take in the monastery, the tower, the whole enormous complex and the walls that enclose it. Finally his gaze slides over the heads of the pilgrims, over the monastery roofs and walls to absorb the full panorama: a slightly undulating terrain, gray and sad, stretching to the vast horizon, dotted with villages and towns, the largest of which is the village of Cz?stochowa. Roch explains to him, partly in words, partly with gestures, that this name comes from the fact that the holy shrine located within it often (cz?sto) conceals (chowa) itself from the eyes of sinners, and you have to take a really good look to spot it among the gently sloping hills.
The holy picture that conceals without revealing
Jacob is permitted to enter the crowd in front of the picture. He is scared, but not of the picture—of the crowd. It is made up of pilgrims—highly emotional men, sweaty, with freshly shaven faces and smoothed hair, and townswomen, a motley bunch with flushed faces, the married ones in their finest garments, with yellow leather boots. What can he have in common with them? He towers over most of their heads, staring at this crowd that strikes him as frighteningly foreign.
The chapel is filled with paintings and votive offerings. It has only recently been explained to him that these are offerings for the monastery, all in the shape of ailing body parts the Virgin Mary has healed. There are also wooden legs and crutches left for her after miraculous recoveries, along with the thousands of hearts cast in silver, gold, or copper, and livers and breasts and legs and arms, as if a single being has been broken down into a million pieces that the holy picture will put back together and fix.
The crowd is silent, but for a cough here and there, to which the chapel’s vault adds gravity. A single, full-throated cry escapes a possessed man who can no longer bear the anticipation.
Suddenly the bells ring, and then the drums beat so loudly that Jacob would like to cover his ears with his hands. As if struck by a sudden blow, everyone throws themselves to their knees with a boom and a sigh, and those who can find the space lie facedown on the floor, while those who can’t hunch over the floor like clods of earth. Now the frightening trumpets play like Jewish shofars, the air vibrates, the noise is terrible. Something strange freezes in the air, so that your heart contracts as if from fear, but it isn’t fear, it’s something bigger, and it happens to Jacob, too, so that he falls on his face, onto the floor that was only just stomped all over by peasants’ dirty shoes, and here, next to the floor, the racket quiets, and it’s easier to bear the tightness in his chest that out of nowhere folded him in half. Now, through the bodies that carpet the chapel floor, God ought to pass. But Jacob smells only the horse dung brought in on people’s shoes and rubbed into the cracks between the planks of the floor, and the distinctly unpleasant smell, ubiquitous at this time of year, of damp combined with wool and human sweat.
Jacob looks up and sees that the ornate cover over the picture has been lifted so that it is now almost completely exposed, and he expects that a light will shine from within it—a blinding light that cannot be borne by the human eye—but all he sees are two dark shapes against a silver backdrop. It takes him a while to realize those shapes are faces, a woman and a child, dark, impenetrable, as if they were leaning out of the deepest darkness.
Kazimierz lights a tallow candle—he has a package of them. It shines brighter than the oil lamps the monks have given them.
Jacob is sitting with his cheek pressed to the wall. Kazimierz is cleaning the shaving bowl. Floating in it are the short hairs of Jacob’s beard; Kazimierz has just finishing shaving him. Jacob’s hair is tousled, but it refuses to be made orderly. Kazimierz thinks that if things keep going like this, his master will resemble those warhorses with their matted, unkempt hair. Jacob is talking, partly to himself, partly to Kazimierz, who in a moment will start preparing dinner. He managed to get a little bit of good meat at the market—the butchers’ stalls are overfull now, just before the holidays. The Lord demanded pork, and Kazimierz has it. He turns the iron bowl upside down to create something like a grill. The meat has been marinating since morning. Jacob is playing with a nail, and soon he’s using it to scratch something into the wall.
“Kazimierz, do you know that delivery of the people from Egypt was only partial, because the one who got them out of there was a man, and the true delivery will come from a Virgin?”
“What virgin?” Kazimierz asks, only half paying attention, laying out the meat on the grill.
“That’s obvious. It’s obvious because once you sweep all the dust off all those stories and parables, all that chicanery, it’s clear as day. Have you seen the picture they have here? The dark shining face of the Jasna Góra Virgin is the Shekhinah.”
“How can a face shine darkly?” Kazimierz wonders astutely. The meat is roasting now—now he just has to watch the fire to make sure it stays the way it is and doesn’t get too hot.
“If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything,” Jacob says, annoyed. “David and Sabbatai were secretly women. It can’t come to salvation any way other than through a woman. I know that now, and that’s what I’m here for. From the beginning of the world, that Virgin has been dedicated to me alone, to no one else, because I can protect her.”
Kazimierz doesn’t really understand. He flips over the pieces of meat, carefully spreads fat on them.
Jacob isn’t sensitive to smells. He goes on:
“Here people are trying to paint her so they don’t forget about her, whereas she has to hide in the abyss. They miss the sight of her. But that is not her real face, since everyone sees her differently—we have senses that are imperfect, that’s why that is. But every day she will appear to us more clearly, down to her every detail.”
Jacob is silent awhile, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to say anything.
“The Virgin has many forms. She also manifests herself in the guise of the ayelet, the roe deer.”
“What do you mean? As an animal?” asks Kazimierz, concerned, but more with the meat than the conversation.
“I have been given her to take care of in exile here.”