In the fortress are some soldiers from the king’s troops captured by the confederates, and many of them serve without much zeal. One of them, a captain of the Mirów guard, three officers of which have already been killed by the Muscovites, comes to Jacob for advice one day, which gives rise to a new trend—from now on, many of them start going to Jacob for counsel, the wise Jew who isn’t a Jew exactly, who is a sort of indefinable prophet, whose mysteriousness is enhanced by his imprisonment in such a strange place. This captain, who is slender, fair-haired, and winsomely polite, asks Jacob in great confidence what he is to do, for he is young, and he is scared of death. They are sitting on stones, turned toward each other, on the northern side of the tower, where the soldiers tend to piss on the wall.
“Tell me, mister, am I to run away to Warsaw, where I come from, and make myself into a deserter and a coward, or fight for the fatherland and let myself be killed for the good of the country?”
Jacob’s advice is concrete. This officer is to go to the market in Cz?stochowa and buy up little items of value—watches, rings. Since there is a war on, he will get it all for cheap. And he is to keep it as a safeguard, should everything go wrong.
“War is a jumble between marketplace and nightmare,” Jacob Frank tells him. “Throw around those securities, buy your way out of the front line, pay bribes so you eat well—respect yourself, that’s how you’ll fend off death. It’s no kind of heroism to let yourself get killed.”
He pats the young officer on the back, and for the briefest moment the young officer leans into Jacob’s collar.
“Mister, I’m so scared.”
Of the passing of Lady Hana in February of 1770 and of her final resting place
“I shall view it as an eccentricity,” says the prior. “I’ll not oppose you on this question, since the prisoner isn’t ours, but the Holy Church’s. As the woman is baptized, I would try for a place for her in the cemetery in town—we do not bury laypersons here.”
The prior looks out the window and sees the aging confederates drilling with their sabers. The monastery really looks more like a garrison now. As usual, Jakubowski places a purse on the table.
It is Hana’s second day lying in the officer’s chamber in the tower. It seems like an awfully long time; no one has any peace, knowing she has not yet been taken by the earth. It is Jakubowski’s second time going to the prior to request permission to bury the deceased in the cave, something he has done before—many times before, in fact, and again recently when little Jacob died. But Hana is not a small child, nor is she some second-rate neophyte. She is, after all, the wife of Jacob Frank.
Hana died of grief. Last year she gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Josepha Frances. No sooner was she baptized than she died. First Hana lost her strength due to some unexplained bleeding that lasted a long time after her last labor, never letting up. Then she came down with a fever, too, and a painful swelling of the bones. Zwierzchowska, who was taking care of her, said that it was from the cold that came in through the stones. The down bedding that arrived from Warsaw did not help. The damp was omnipresent here. Her joints grew so swollen that in the end Hana could scarcely move at all. Then little Jacob died. The children were buried in the cave without a priest, furtively, and after those two deaths Hana did not rise again. Jacob had Wo?owski take Avacha to Warsaw, while the ailing Hana was to be brought out to take sun in front of the house in Cz?stochowa. It was only there that they could really see how pale she was, how ruined. Her skin, always a light olive, was now gray and looked like it was covered in a layer of ash. For a time, willow bark extract helped; the girls would go into the nearby forests for it. The willow grew there down the balks in even rows, bright switches sticking out of their misshapen, stocky trunks. What an ugly tree, that willow, Hana would say, all spread out and disheveled, like a decrepit, crippled old woman. And yet for some time this ugly plant did help her. The women would cut off the switches and pry the bark from them. At home they boiled the bark in water and gave the decoction to the patient to drink. One of the Pauline Fathers tried to treat Hana with a vodka-andhoney rub, but his cure did not work, either.
Now it is cool and damp. The earth has a troubling smell of the grave. From the fields around Cz?stochowa the distant horizon is visible, like a single string hung between sky and earth on which the wind is strumming the same monotonous, gloomy sound, over and over.
No one dares look in on Jacob. They stand huddled on the stairs, pale, their lips like dark dashes, circles under their eyes from their unceasing vigil; no one has eaten since yesterday, the pots are cold; even the children have fallen silent. Jakubowski presses his cheek to the wall of this cursed tower. One of the women nudges him, so he puts his hands on his forehead instead and starts to pray, and the others join in instantly. He imagines that even if the firmament of heaven were built of the same rough, wet stone, his prayer would be able to break through it, word by word. First they say the Lord’s Prayer, then they sing the Yigdal.
All eyes are on him, on Nahman-Piotr Jakubowski. They know that it’s just possible that the Lord will let him in. So Jakubowski cracks the heavy door on its rotten hinges. He can feel the others pushing in over his shoulder to take a peek inside. They’re most likely expecting a miracle, the Lord in his white robe floating over the earth, and Her Ladyship alive and radiant in his arms. Jakubowski stifles a sigh that isn’t far from a sob, but he knows he must get ahold of himself because whatever he does now, the others will do, too. He squeezes into the tiny opening and instantly shuts the door behind him. All but one of the candles have long since gone out. Her Ladyship is lying just as before she died; she has not risen, nothing has changed except that now there can be no doubt she is a corpse. Her jaw has dropped, opening her mouth, her eyes are half closed, the glow of the holy candle flickering over their slippery surface, and Her Ladyship’s skin is gray, dour.