Jacob is visibly angered by this. He sighs and looks down, and all the women keep perfectly silent, afraid. But the Lord says nothing, ignoring his wife’s little outburst—of course it won’t be her, Hana is already pregnant. She will soon give birth. Besides, she is his wife. At this sudden rejection, Hana’s eyes fill with tears, and she leaves him when the others do. The elder Wo?owska puts her arm around her, but she doesn’t say anything.
On the way back down the hill from the monastery, back into town past the pilgrims, Zwierzchowska, who will not take part in this process of selection, since she is with the Lord every day, argues—loudly, almost casually—that in the first instance they must establish which of the women would actually like to stay with Jacob. Almost everyone volunteers, except for the two Wo?owska women. There is an uproar, and in that moment of excitement, they switch to Yiddish; now they are speaking in their own language, in frenetic whispers.
“I’ll do it,” says Eva Jezierzańska. “I love him more than life itself.” But the others get upset.
“I’d be glad to do it, too,” Marianna Piotrowska volunteers. “You know I don’t have children. Maybe with him I could.”
“I could do it, too. I was with him in Ivanie. And he’s my brother-inlaw,” says Paw?owska.
And she has a daughter with him. Everyone knows that.
Zwierzchowska tells them to hush, for the pilgrims rushing by, uttering frantic prayers, have already begun to stare at these young ladies having their heated conversation.
“We can deliberate at home,” she decrees.
The Lord asks daily whether they have determined yet which of them it will be, yet they cannot come to an agreement. In the end, they vote, and it falls to Henrykowa Wo?owska, who is nice and cheerful and also pretty, but who now stands stunned and crimson, her head bowed. But Eva Jezierzańska refuses to accept the result, and there must be unanimity.
“It’s either me or no one,” she says.
And so Lewińska, whom Jacob particularly likes for her calm and her prudence, goes to the monastery and requests a visit with him. She begs Jacob to make the choice himself, because they cannot. Then the Lord flies into such a rage that he refuses to see any of them for one whole month. Finally, Hana gets involved and cleverly asks Jacob which of them strikes him as the most suitable. He suggests Klara Lanckorońska.
Several days later, when they are sitting down to their shared meal in the officer’s room, a satisfied Jacob tells Klara Lanckorońska to be the first to dip her spoon into the soup. Klara bows her head, and her light pink cheeks flush a deep red. They all wait with their spoons in their hands.
“Klara, you start,” says the Lord again, but she refuses, as if he were urging her to commit the greatest sin.
Finally, Jacob throws down his own spoon and stands up from the table.
“If you won’t listen to me when it comes to such trifles, what is going to happen when I tell you to do something more? Can I count on you or not? Are you like those idiot sheep? Those hares?”
They keep silent, heads low.
“I put something like a glass before you. I am the film on the back of that glass—I am the coating. It is thanks to me that that glass was a mirror, and that you saw yourselves in it. But then I had to remove that film, and now you are left with just ordinary glass.”
Come evening he has a new idea for them. He summons Wittel Matuszewska, who has served as his right hand since his disavowal of Jakubowski, formerly known as Nahman.
“I want the brothers who have wives who are not ours to cast those women aside and take new wives from among the true believers. And I want the women who married men who are not ours to take husbands from among our brothers. I want this to happen publicly. And if anyone asks you why, just tell them I commanded it.”
“Jacob, that cannot happen,” says Wittel Matuszewska, shocked. “Those are bonded pairs. They can do a lot for you, but you can’t ask them to leave their wives and husbands.”
“You have already forgotten everything,” says Jacob, and pounds his fist into the wall. “All of you. You’re no longer true believers. You’ve had it too good.” Blood oozes from his scraped knuckles. “It has to happen like this, Wittel. Do you understand?”
Just as Jacob said, in July of 1763, in a little house on Wieluńskie Przedmie?cie, a son is born to him and receives the name Jacob. A month later, Hana has left her childbed, and in the officer’s chamber at the top of the tower, in the Jasna Góra monastery, there follows a solemn union of the spouses in the presence of everyone.
For the birth of another son, Roch, in September of 1764, many of Jacob’s followers come to Cz?stochowa. The true believers come back from where they have been scattered—scraps from Wojs?awice, from Rohatyn, from Busk and Lwów, all of them wishing to settle down nearer to Jacob, perhaps in Cz?stochowa itself. Friends come, as well, from Turkey and Wallachia, by now convinced that Jacob’s imprisonment in Edom’s very holiest site definitively fulfills the prophecy.
Before, in August of 1763, Frank sends to Warsaw for Jakubowski, who comes immediately. He approaches the Lord hunched over, as if expecting a blow, as if readying himself for pain, but suddenly, the Lord himself kneels down before him. The hush is absolute.
Then the company debates in low voices around the sides of the room whether the Lord did this as a joke or out of some real deference to Piotr Jakubowski, once called Nahman of Busk.
Daily life in prison and of keeping children in a box
Wajge?e Nahman, now Sofia Jakubowska, often goes outside the city, into the forest, and there she searches for a linden branch thick enough but still fresh and filled with sap. Nobody can ever tell why she chooses this one and not that one. But she knows. She brings it home, to Wieluńskie Przedmie?cie, where the Jakubowskis are renting a room, and she sits with it in the back of the house, where nobody can see her. She takes a sharp penknife and starts carving the shape of a person out of the wood. By the time you can see the arms and the neck, and the head, Wajge?e is unable to hold back her tears, and the sobs escape her like a spasm, like phlegm to be coughed up. In tears, she paints the figure’s eyes, which will always be closed, and the tiny lips; she dresses it in the little outfit of her dead child and hides it under a bench. She returns to this place often to play with this doll, like a little girl. She holds it to her, puts it to her breast, whispers to it, and in the end, this activity does soothe her—a sign that God has had mercy upon her and taken away her pain. Then she puts the doll inside a special box hidden away in the attic, where the other dolls are kept. There are four of them now, some large, some small. Two Nahman isn’t even aware they had conceived. They came out of her too early, too small, while he was traveling somewhere. She wrapped them up in linen and buried them in the forest.
When they lie down to sleep, she whimpers into her pillow. She turns to face Nahman, places his hand on her naked breast.
“Sleep with me.”
Nahman clears his throat and pats her head:
“Don’t be afraid. He will give you strength and health and allow your body to get pregnant.”