“I don’t trust anyone anymore,” says Jacob, and with that, his head disappears from view.
And that is all Shlomo Wo?owski gets out of his visit to Jacob. The next day he goes to the picture of the Virgin Mary. It is six in the morning, the sun is rising, the day will be sunny, the sky is a lovely pink color, and a silver mist rises over the fields, and into the monastery flow waves of the aroma of damp and calamus. He stands among the sleepy crowd. When the trumpets sound, people prostrate themselves on the cold floor, bent over their knees. Wo?owski does the same, and with his forehead he feels the chill of the stone. At the sound of the trumpets, the picture’s silver veil is raised, and Shlomo sees from afar a small rectangle containing a barely outlined silhouette with a black face. A woman next to him starts to sob, and this spreads to almost everyone. Wo?owski is overwhelmed by the same emotions as the rest of the crowd, compounded further by the intoxicating smell of May flowers, human sweat, the rags, the dust. He spends the whole morning working on Kazimierz, trying to get him to stay and serve the Lord, until someone else can replace him. In the afternoon, Roch passes him a letter written in Hebrew in a thick roll like a pack of tobacco. Immediately after, Shlomo Franciszek Wo?owski departs from the monastery, leaving Kazimierz some money and making a sizable donation through the prior.
Upupa dicit
A few days later, a chest of things comes to Jacob in the monastery. He doesn’t know who it’s from. The chest spends its first whole day with the prior, who searches it thoroughly with the brothers. The monks examine the clothes, the Turkish scarf, the leather shoes with fur inside, the thin linen underwear, dried figs, dates, a wool rug, a down cushion covered in yellow damask. There is also paper for writing and pens of a higher quality than the prior has ever seen in his life. He spends a long time contemplating the contents of the chest and isn’t sure whether he should allow the prisoner such luxuries. He is not an ordinary prisoner, on the one hand, but on the other, such extravagance in a monastery, where the priests all live so modestly—is that not taking things a bit too far? Which is why the prior keeps going back to the chest and unfolding the fine woolen scarf, holding it out in his hands; it is almost without adornment, but so delicate it resembles silk. And these figs! When he is left alone for a moment, telling himself that this is just a test, he puts one of them in his mouth and holds it there for a long time, until his mouth fills with saliva that flows into his stomach, together with the flavor of the fig, filling his whole body with pleasure at the unparalleled sweetness. How good are these figs that smell of the sun, not like those hard ones of which the monastery recently acquired a small quantity, from a Jewish merchant with a spice shop on the outskirts of town.
The prior also finds two books, which he reaches for suspiciously, smelling heretical treatises—those he will of course never let through. But when he picks them up, he is surprised to see that the first one is in Polish, and that it was written by a priest. The father hasn’t heard this name before, Benedykt Chmielowski, but that doesn’t mean anything, since he has no time for secular reading—this is a book for laypeople, not an episcopal book, not a prayer book. The second is a beautifully illustrated edition of Comenius’s Orbis Pictus, in which every word appears in four languages, making it a useful study tool. And as the prisoner himself had mentioned it, and similar suggestions had been made by the nunciature—to teach the prisoner Polish—then why not let him learn it from both Comenius and from this New Athens? The prior himself, flipping through the volume, is interested to read a page opened at random.
How curious, thinks the prior. That could come in handy in life. His religious materials do not contain this kind of information. He didn’t know the Hoopoe saith (Upupa dicit).
Of Jacob’s learning to read and where the Poles come from
A separate chamber is designated as a classroom by the head guard at the prior’s request. Two tables and two stools have been brought in. There is also a carafe of water and two soldiers’ cups, as well as a narrow cot and a bench. Hooks stick out of the stone wall for hanging clothing. The two windows don’t let in enough light, and it is always cold. Every hour they have to go outside to warm up.
Brother Grzegorz has been appointed as Jacob’s teacher. He is a gentle, middle-aged monk, patient and agreeable. Jacob’s bigger mistakes, the words he completely garbles, cause his cheeks to turn red—whether out of stifled anger or simply embarrassment. The lessons started with how to say “God bless” in Polish, “Szcz??? Bo?e,” which is tough to pronounce and to write. Then they wrote out the Lord’s Prayer, until they finally got to simple conversations. Since the monastery does not have any books in Polish, and they have no particular need for Latin, Jacob brought Brother Grzegorz the book that had been recently delivered to him, Benedykt Chmielowski’s New Athens. Brother Grzegorz became a great fan of this vast volume and started secretly borrowing it from Jacob to read, no doubt feeling somewhat guilty about it, on the pretext of preparing texts to read together.
The lessons take place every day after morning mass, in which Jacob is permitted to participate. Brother Grzegorz brings in to the tower that reeks of damp the smell of incense and the rank oil with which they make their paint; his fingers are often stained colorfully, since they have begun the big paintings in the chapel, and Brother Grzegorz assists in mixing the paints.
“How are you today, sir?” He always starts with the same phrase, settling onto his stool and spreading his papers before him.
“All right,” answers Jacob. “I been waiting you, Brother Grzegorz.”
Pronouncing that name isn’t easy for him, but by May, Jacob is doing it almost perfectly.
“I have been waiting for you,” the monk corrects him.
Now they turn to chapter 10, “Of the Kingdom of Poland.”
In Sarmatia a precious Pearl appears to be the KINGDOM OF POLAND, of the S?owieński Nations the most renowned. Poland takes its Name from the Pola, or Fields, where the Polacy, or Poles, desired both to live and die; or else from a Polo Arctico, i.e., the North Star, to which the Kingdom of Poland corresponded, as Hispania is called Hesperia after the Western star Hesperus. To others it seems that this Name was given to Poles from the Pole Castle olim located on the Borders of Pomerania. There is that and there is the Opinion of the Authors that Polacy are Polachy, i.e., Lech’s Descendants should be known as such. Paprocki, meanwhile, ingeniose reasons that after Mieczys?aw I Polish Prince, when Poles Accepted the Holy Faith and acceded in droves to Holy Baptism, then the Czech Priests so invoked would ask: Are you polani? I.e., Have you been baptized? Then those who had been baptized responded: We are polani, hence polani, that is, Poloni went to the Poles in nomen gloriosum.