Old Shorr departed not too long ago, she saw him dart past near her—a great sage, father of five sons and one daughter, grandfather of many grandchildren, now a blurred streak. She also saw a little child zip by. It was Immanuel, son of Jacob and Hana, not much more than a year old.
A letter with this news was smuggled to Jacob by Kazimierz. Hana wrote it in Turkish, in vague terms, as if to conceal a great secret. Or perhaps in embarrassment that this had happened to them? They were not supposed to die, after all. Ever. Jacob reads it several times. Each time he stands up and starts pacing the tower. A little piece of paper falls out of the letter, cut out crooked, with some kind of animal painted onto it in red. It might be a shaggy little dog. At the bottom it says: Rutka. He assumes it’s from his daughter, and only now does his throat clench, and his eyes fill with tears. But he doesn’t cry.
A letter from Nahman Jakubowski to the Lord in Cz?stochowa
It is not until he gets the next letter that Jacob is really thrown offbalance. From the first words, Nahman’s tone annoys him; he can hear his voice, tearful, pathetic, like the whining of a dog. If Nahman were here, Jacob would hit him in the face and watch the blood stream from his nose. It is a good thing he did not allow this traitor to come up to the little window when he was here.
. . . O Jacob, my name is, after all, Piotr Jakubowski, and that name is a testament to the extent to which I am yours. My heart came very near to breaking as I stood here, so close to You, yet unable either to see You or to hear Your voice. I had, by way of consolation, only the thought that You were so close, and that we were breathing one and the same air, and so I went up to the high wall that separates Your prison from the town. It seemed to me a veritable wailing wall. With sadness I learned of Your serious illness and can imagine the loneliness You must bear here, being so unaccustomed to not having people gathered around You.
You know that I constantly love You, and that I am ready to sacrifice everything for You. If I said something against You, it was not out of any ill will, but rather a deep sense of Your mission, of our calling, which consumed my mind completely. I also confess to fear, which with its power nearly knocked me, a coward, off my feet. You know how very miserable I am, but it was not for my flaws that You made me Your right-hand man, but for my better qualities, of which I might dare remind You now, were it not for the fact that I was forced to abandon You then.
Jacob casts the letter aside in anger and spits. Nahman’s voice falls silent in his head, but not for long. Jacob picks up the letter and keeps reading:
So many of us have now sought shelter, whether in the capital or under the protection of the wealthy, and there we are trying to live, and be guided by our own hands, believing in your imminent return and every day awaiting your arrival . . .
You Yourself once told us in Ivanie about two kinds of people. Of some you said that they were filled with darkness, people who believe that the world as it is is evil and unjust, and that we must simply adapt to it and play that game, become the same as the world. And of the other sort, you said that they are the ones suffused with light, people who believe that the world is evil and terrible, but that it can always be changed. And that we ought not to assimilate to this world, but rather to be strangers in it and command it to surrender to us and get better. This I recalled, standing at the base of that high wall. Yet now, Jacob, I number among the first kind. I have lost the will to live without You by my side. I also think I am not the only one to react in this way to Your disappearance. Only now do we see how very painful is Your absence. May God judge us, we thought we had killed You.
I came directly from Warsaw, where many of us went and settled in a perfect stupor, not knowing what had happened to You. At first many, I among them, followed Your Hana to Koby?ka, near Warsaw, a village that belongs to Bishop Za?uski, which had been set aside for us at Mrs. Kossakowska’s behest. But it was cramped for us there, and gloomy, the bishop’s house neglected and the bishop’s servants mistrustful of us. As it lies so close to Warsaw, gradually some wanted to take the initiative to seek some engagement there, so as not to sit around idle at the bishop’s expense, and not to wander around other people’s homes. Those who wished to return to Podolia, like the Rudnickis, quickly got organized, and Hirsh, or Rudnicki, went to check if it would be possible. But he soon realized, as we did after him, that there was nothing left for us there, that we will never return to our villages and homes now. All of it is gone. You were right that in being baptized, we were taking a step into the abyss. And we took that step, and then we were as though suspended in our fall, not knowing where and when the process of falling would end, nor indeed how. Would we be crushed to smithereens, or would we be saved? Would we emerge intact or broken?
The first thing that started was blame. Who said what and when. Our words were used against You, but we were not innocent. After baptism, many of us in desperation grasped for our new life as if it were a treasure. We changed our attire and hid our customs in deep closets, so as to pretend to be people we were not at all. Once more we are strangers, for even in the best clothes, with a cross on our breast, smooth-shaven and well-behaved whenever we open our mouths, you can recognize us by our accent. And so, fleeing our own foreignness, so mocked and despised, we became like puppets among men.
Slowly we are becoming selfish and indifferent, and although the company keeps together, the most basic things have become the most important: how to survive, how to handle ourselves in this struggle, how to feed the children and put a roof over their heads. Many of us would have tried for some sort of work, but there is no way to do so, for we do not know whether we will stay here, what the good Mrs. Kossakowska will come up with on our behalf, and whether it is even worth staying with her. Those who have money have managed to get by, like the Wo?owskis, who have made investments in Warsaw, but others, the poor, with whom you had us share in Ivanie, must now solicit aid. And if this continues, we will be scattered, and it will be like when a person blows onto a fistful of sand.