Moliwda begins his new life by shaving. Sharpening the razor, he watches out the window as anxious crowds gather along the street. Everyone continues to be shocked and outraged. Gestures have grown bolder, words higher-flying: God, the Republic, victim, death, honor, heart . . . Every syllable is stressed. In the evening, he can hear their monotonous prayers, recited in tired, resigned voices, as well as impassioned shouts.
Moliwda begins by writing and translating letters the king’s diplomatic services sends out across Europe. He composes them and writes them out over and over, mindlessly. He translates mindlessly, too. He watches the universal commotion like he would puppet theater. And the play is about trade. About the market that is the world. People invest in goods, in all variety of matter, and in all its variations—possessions, power that will bring earnings and offer confidence, pleasures for the body, valuable objects that beyond their price are totally useless, food and drink, intercourse. In other words, in everything that ordinary people understand as life. And everybody wants it, from the peasant to the king. Somewhere beyond all this robe-tearing and throwing yourself on the pyre looms a warm chamber and a richly set table. It seems to Moliwda that Bishop So?tyk, already hailed as the greatest hero, is a kind of Herostratus who has fanned the flames for his own glory, since his act in the Sejm, which might seem heroic, served no purpose, contributed nothing to the common good. And this fanatical resistance to Russia’s demands regarding religious dissenters is incomprehensible to Moliwda. Everything Tsarina Catherine might say is treated in advance as an attack on the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, and yet you hardly need any special powers of discernment in order to see that such is the spirit of the times—rights for other denominations, for example. There are certain things that are black and white, but most are gray. He is not the only one in the royal chancellery who thinks this way.
Going home, he looks over the prostitutes, who even in this turbulent time do not leave their posts on D?uga Street, and he wonders: What exactly is this thing called life?
And even though they cannot answer this question, he often makes use of their services, because since his departure from the monastery, Moliwda has been terrified of being alone.
Of wandering caves
When you get out of the little town, heading southeast, the road leads first through a dense forest, where in addition to the trees white stones grow. They grow slowly, but with time, as the earth gets older, they will come out onto the surface completely, the soil won’t be necessary anymore, since there will be no people, and all that will remain will be just those white rocks, and then it will turn out that they are the bones of the earth.
You can see that the landscape changes right outside the town—it is dark gray, rough, and made up of tiny, lightweight pebbles, as if they’d been ground in a mill. Pines grow here, and tall mullein, which peasant women make decoctions out of to lighten their hair. The dry grass crackles underfoot.
Immediately past the forest begin the hills with their many white rocks, from which the castle ruins rise. When they see it for the first time, they all think that this castle cannot have been built by human hands, but rather that it was formed by the very same force, the very same hand that built the world. This structure resembles the fortress of the ba?akaben, those limping, rich little men who live underground, of whom the sages tell in the holy books. Yes, this must be their property, along with all the land around Cz?stochowa—bizarre, rocky, so full of mysterious passageways and hiding places.
But Ezdra, a Cz?stochowa Jew who is friendly to Frank and his company, who sells them most of their provisions, saves the biggest revelation for last. This, here, is a cave.
“What do you think?” asks Ezdra triumphantly, smiling and revealing his teeth, turned brown by tobacco.
The entrance to the cave is hidden in the bushes that grow over the hillside. Ezdra invites them inside, as if it were his own residence, but sticking their heads inside is enough for them; you can’t see anything anyway. Ezdra produces a torch from somewhere and lights it. After a few steps, the opening behind them disappears, and the torchlight shows the inside—damp walls, strange, beautiful, glistening, as though made of some ore unknown to man—of a smooth mineral that has solidified into icicles and droplets, of wonderful rock in a beautiful reddish hue, interwoven with threads of a different color, white and gray. And the deeper inside they go, the more the insides look alive, as if they were going into a stranger’s stomach, as if they were traveling down intestines, stomachs, kidneys. The echo of their steps reverberates off the walls, grows like thunder and comes back in pieces. Suddenly from somewhere a gust of wind blows out the rotten torch they’re carrying, and they are enveloped in darkness.
“El Shaddai,” Jakubowski says in a whisper.
They freeze, and now you can hear their uncertain, shallow breaths, the roar of the blood in their veins, the beating of their hearts. You can hear Nahman Jakubowski’s stomach growling; you can hear Ezdra swallowing saliva. The silence is so dense that they can feel on their skin its cold, slick touch. Yes, without any doubt, God is here.
Zwierzchowska, who very naturally has taken over the rule of their entire company, parceled out into Cz?stochowa houses as they are, is preparing a generous gift for the prior—silver candlesticks and a crystal chandelier so valuable that the prior cannot possibly turn down their request. They have already gone on walks together around the monastery, after all. What harm would it do to go a little farther? The prior hesitates, but the glint of the silver and the sparkling of the crystal convinces him. He gives his permission. The monastery is having some financial troubles. It should be quiet, only Jacob with two companions. Hana and the children stay behind, under guard.
The moment has arrived. October 27, 1768, the day after the birth of Jacob’s son Joseph. The Lord goes out for the first time beyond the town’s walls. He puts on Czerniawski’s long coat and pulls a hat down so that the brim comes right to his eyes. At the tollhouse a cart awaits, and a peasant hired to drive it; they go down the sandy, uneven road in silence.
Jacob goes into the cave alone, telling the others to wait. Czerniawski and Jakubowski set up a little camp at the entrance, but the fire they build barely smolders. The day is rainy and damp. Their kapotas get wet from all this standing around in the drizzle. Jacob does not return until evening. In the weak flames, skewered apples swell to bursting.