Zwierzchowska, both Piotrowskis, Paw?owski, and the Wo?owskis, referring to the well-known “seventh point” of the Lwów disputation, all confirm the reality of these ritual crimes. This evidence makes such a great impression at court that the next day a mass lynching is only barely avoided. Kossakowska entreats So?tyk to come—and in the end he does, as a specialist in such concerns. He instructs the two women, Kossakowska and Potocka, in what view they ought to take of it. Kossakowska, who is one of the last to testify, mentions the crosses on the houses and the persecution of the new arrivals. The trial takes a long time, since everyone wants to learn as many details as possible about this Jewish iniquity. Pamphlets are read out, mostly those of Serafinowicz, a Jewish convert who, years later, confessed to Jewish crimes, but also the writings of Fathers Pikulski and Awedyk. Everything seems clear and obvious, and so it comes as no surprise that all of the accused are sentenced to death. They will be drawn and quartered, unless they agree to be baptized, in which case they will be shown mercy and beheaded instead. Four of the convicts decide on baptism. Just before their beheading, they are baptized ceremoniously in church, and afterward they are buried with great pomp in the Christian cemetery. Sender Zyskieluk manages to hang himself in his cell and—since in this way he avoided the real punishment—his body is dragged through the streets of Krasnystaw and then burned in the market square. Afterward there is nothing to be done besides drive the rest of the Jews out of town, which, before he hanged himself, Rabbi Zyskieluk put a curse on, all its inhabitants included.
In the summer, the children at the Wojs?awice estate and on the grange begin to get sick, but only the children of the neophytes, while the peasant children do not seem to be affected by this plague. Several of the neophyte children die. First, the Paw?owskis’ little girl, just a few months old, and then Wojtu? Majewski, and then his seven-year-old sister. By August, when the heat is at its peak, there is almost no family whose children have not been stricken. Kossakowska summons a doctor from Zamo??, but he is unable to help. He tells them to place warm compresses on their backs and chests. He manages to save little Zosia Szymanowska only by cutting a hole in her throat with a knife as she is starting to suffocate. It is an illness that passes from child to child—first they cough, then they get a fever, and then they cough to death. Kossakowska attends their small, humble funerals. They dig the little graves in the Catholic cemetery in Wojs?awice at a remove from the other graves, aware of their otherness. By the end of August, there is a funeral just about every day. Marianna Potocka is so alarmed that she has shrines built at the town’s five tollhouses to protect them from all the forces of evil: Saint Barbara from storms and conflagrations, Saint John of Nepomuk from floods, Saint Florian from fires, and Saint Tecla from any plagues. The fifth shrine is dedicated to Michael the Archangel, who is to protect the town from all manner of ill and spell and curse.
The eldest ?ab?cki, Moshe, dies too, leaving behind his extremely young wife, Teresa, with a child at her breast. They say when someone is about to die, a great black crow settles on the roof of that person’s house. No one has any doubt that this is the curse at work, and that it is powerful and terrible. After the departure of Moshe ?ab?cki, who knew how to lift herems and return them to their source, everyone feels defenseless. It seems to them that now everyone will die. This is why they remember Hayah Hirsh, now Lanckorońska, the prophetess. Lady Hana writes to her herself, with an urgent request: They must know what will happen next. She sends messengers with letters to Jacob in Cz?stochowa as well as to Hayah and the rest of the company in Warsaw, but no answer arrives. It is as if the messengers have simply vanished.
How Hayah prophesies
When she speaks in others’ voices, Hayah always keeps in front of her something that looks like a map, painted on a board. There are various mysterious signs on it, and a drawing of a sefirot tree, only quadrupled; it looks like an extremely ornate cross, like a four-branched snowflake that can’t exist in nature. She arranges on it pieces of bread with feathers stuck into them, and buttons, and seeds, and each one looks bizarre, like a human figurine, but nightmarish, indecent, somehow. Hayah has a pair of dice—one of them with numbers on it, and the other one with letters. On the board are some clumsily painted circles. The boundaries between them are blurred, indistinct; there are scattered letters and symbols, and in the corners there are animals, suns, and moons. There is a dog and a big fish, maybe a carp. The board must be old: in some places the paint has completely peeled off, leaving no understandable trace of what used to be there.
Now Hayah toys with the dice, rolling them around in her palms, staring at the board. You never know how long any of it is going to take, but then her eyelids start to blink and tremble, and the dice are rolled, revealing an answer. According to the prediction, Hayah then sets out the figures on the board, whispers something to herself, nudges them, changes their layout, sets some to the side, takes some others from somewhere else—the new ones even stranger than the last. It is hard to comprehend this odd game, looking at it from outside, since its configuration is constantly changing. And as she does these strange things, Hayah converses, inquiring after the children, the quality of this year’s jams, all the family members’ health. Then suddenly Hayah says, in the same tone she uses for the jam, that the king is going to die, and that there will be an interregnum. The women freeze amidst the potato peels; the children stop chasing each other around the table. Hayah stares at her figurines and speaks again:
“The new king will be the last king of Poland. Three seas will flood the nation. Warsaw will be left an island. Young ?ab?cka will give birth to a child whose father has died, a little girl, and she will become a great princess. Jacob will be freed by his greatest enemies, and with his closest allies, he will make an escape to the south. Everyone in this room right now will live in a great castle on a wide river, where they will wear sumptuous clothing and forget their language.”
Even Hayah seems to be surprised by what she’s saying. She has a funny expression on her face, as if she were stifling laughter or trying to hold back the words that keep coming out of her mouth. She grimaces.
Marianna Wo?owska, who has been putting eggs into a basket, says:
“I told you. The river is the Dniester. We’ll all go back to Ivanie, and that is where we’ll build our palaces. That great river is the Dniester.”
Edom is shaken to its foundations
After the death of Augustus III of Wettin, in October 1763, the bell rings all day. The monks take turns at the rope, while the crowd of pilgrims, not especially large at this time of year and diminished somewhat, too, by the chaos in the country, is suddenly overwhelmed by great terror—everyone lies on the ground with their arms spread out, until there is no longer any way to pass from the courtyard into the church.
Jacob learns of this from Roch, who comes right away and says it with some satisfaction.
“There will be a war. That is for certain, and they may take us all back again, since they’ve got no one watching over this Catholic country, and all the infidels and heretics are already out there, grasping for the Commonwealth.”