By the time he appears in the opening, it is already dark. They can’t quite see his face. He tells them to go quickly, so they go, stumbling over stones sticking out of the ground or over their own legs. Their eyes have grown accustomed to darkness, but now the night is bright somehow—is it the damp fog scattering the light of the stars and moon so, or is it this local earth the color of dried leaves that is shining? The peasant with the cart, who is waiting for them by the road, is soaked and angry. He wants more money; he didn’t know it was going to take this long.
Jacob doesn’t say a single word the whole way; he only talks when they are back in the tower, after casting off his soaked coat:
“That is the same cave where Shimon bar Yochai and his son hid before the Romans, and God miraculously delivered them food and ensured that their clothing never got destroyed,” he says. “It was here that Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar. This cave traveled here after us from Hebron, didn’t you realize? Deep inside, at the very bottom, is the grave of Adam and Eve.”
A silence falls, in which Jacob’s words try to find their places. It could be said that all the maps of the world are moving around over him, making a rustling sound, turning around, accommodating one another. This lasts for a while, and then the others clear their throats, and someone sighs; it seems as if order has been restored. Jacob says: Let us sing. And they sing together, just as they used to sing in Ivanie.
Two women stay the night with him, while he tells the rest who live in the town that the two Matuszewskis and Paw?owski are to have intercourse with Henrykowa Wo?owska. It is similar the following night: with Sofia Jakubowska are to be Paw?owski, both Wo?owskis, Dembowski, and also Jasskier.
Of failed legations and history laying siege to the monastery walls
The good run enjoyed by Nahman, or Piotr Jakubowski, does not last long. The effortfully prepared delegation to Moscow concluded in complete fiasco. The emissaries—Jakubowski and Wo?owski—were treated like criminals, murderers, traitors, for news had already reached Moscow from Poland of the fallen Messiah imprisoned in Cz?stochowa. They managed to meet with no one, despite their generously distributed gifts. In the end they were chased out like spies. They returned quietly and without any money left. Jacob punished them. He bade them stand before the company barefoot, in just their shirts, and then, kneeling, to beg everyone’s forgiveness for their ineptitude. Jakubowski bore it better than Franciszek Wo?owski. Marianna Wo?owska later told the other woman that her husband sobbed that night out of shame and humiliation, though of course it had all been through no fault of theirs.
Now they sense that the whole world is plotting against them, all of Europe. At this point the prison in Cz?stochowa seems to Nahman Jakubowski familiar and cozy, particularly since the Lord can, without restriction, go out into the town, and even on long walks in the cave, and the whole company has free access to him.
Now by day the chamber downstairs in the tower turns into a chancellery. Jacob dictates letters to true believers in Podolia, Moravia, and Germany, tells them of the Shekhinah hidden in the Jasna Góra picture and summons them for baptism en masse. The tone of these letters grows more apocalyptic by the month. Sometimes the scribe—Jakubowski or Czerniawski—finds that his hand trembles as he writes. In the evenings, meanwhile, the chancellery becomes a common room, the kind they used to have back in Ivanie, and after lessons only the chosen ones stay behind, and the “putting out of the candles” begins. One autumn day in 1768 during this ritual, the Paulines from the monastery try to get into the tower, and in the end they force the door. But they can’t see too much there in the dark. Yet evidently they have seen enough, for the next day the prior summons Jacob under guard and prohibits him henceforth from receiving anyone besides his immediate family.
“No women in the monastery, and no young boys,” says the prior, and as he says it, he covers his face with his hands.
He also brings back the ban on going into town, although as tends to be the case with bans, this one crumbles with the passage of time and the giving of generous gifts. In this time of growing civil unrest, the prior issues a categorical order to close the monastery all night, but in the end he is moved enough by Hana’s illness that he allows her and the children twenty-four-hour residence in the officer’s chamber.
News that something is going on in Podolia, by the Turkish border, reaches them through the so-called Korolówka Buttercup, Paw?owski’s brother-in-law, who circulates correspondence around Podolia and has eyes in the back of his head. First—a strange thing—his father, who is a tentmaker in Korolówka, received from Polish lords a great order of tents, which must certainly mean that they are preparing some sort of military movements. And Buttercup is right—soon they learn from Roch that a confederation against the king has surfaced, while the king is colluding with Russia in the little town of Bar. An emotional Roch tells them of standards: that on them appears Our Lady of Cz?stochowa, the very same, with her dark face and child in arms, and that the confederates wear coats with crosses on them and an inscription in black: “For faith and freedom.” Apparently, the royal army dispatched against the confederates either flees in the face of their religious zeal or crosses over to their side. Roch sews the torn-off buttons back onto his old uniform and polishes his shotgun, like all the other old soldiers in the monastery. Stones are laid at the base of the monastery walls, and the arrowslits, overgrown with bushes, are cleared and repaired.
The previously sleepy little town of Cz?stochowa slowly fills up with Jewish refugees from Podolia, as the Haydamak uprising there has unleashed pogroms. Jacob’s fame has reached the refugees, and so they also make their way to the holy Christian monument, believing that no violence will be able to reach inside it, and that in addition they can seek their refuge under the wing of the Jewish maybe-Messiah imprisoned here. They bring with them terrible stories: The Haydamaks, enraged and lawless, will not let anyone escape. The night sky is red from the glow of burning villages. When the prior’s regime relaxes somewhat, Jacob goes out to see the new arrivals every day and puts his hands on their heads, and the rumor spreads that he can heal them.
The whole of the Wieluńskie Przedmie?cie has now been transformed into a camp, with people living on the streets and on the long, narrow market square. Every day the Pauline Fathers bring them fresh water from the monastery, since it is said that the wells are unclean now, and everyone fears plague. Every morning the Fathers distribute loaves of bread, warm from the monastery’s bakery, and apples from its orchard, which this year are plentiful and lush.