Next to her lies Jacob—naked, skinnier, angular, dark, though the hair on his body is now completely gray, matted like a dog’s, and his eyes are sunken. His thin hips touch Hana’s body and his hand lies on her breast, as if embracing her. It occurs to Jakubowski that perhaps Jacob, too, has died, and he suddenly grows hot and falls on his knees before the bed, not feeling the impact of the stone floor, unable to hold in his sobbing any longer.
“Did you really believe we would not die?” Jacob asks him, rising from his wife’s body. He looks at Nahman, and his dark eyes don’t reflect the light of the holy candle, they are like the entrance to the cave. The question, which Jakubowski does not answer, sounds mocking, aggressive. Jakubowski regains control over himself and takes from the trunk a fresh shirt as well as a woolen Turkish tunic and starts dressing Jacob.
The cortege goes out past the walls the next morning before dawn. Around noon they are at the Makpela Cave. Both Wo?owskis, Paw?owski, and Matuszewski struggle to carry the casket inside.
Scraps: Being under siege
I will write of deaths.
First the eldest son passed, little seven-year-old Jacob, beloved by his father and being prepared as his successor. This was the end of November, and snow was already coming down. In the monastery, turned into a fortress, cold and deprivation reigned. In that time, the fortress already held its new commander, Kazimierz Pu?aski, and he, being on good terms with Jacob, and often conversing with him, allowed the funeral to take place in the cave. We already had our humble sepulcher there, where all of ours were buried, far from strangers’ cemeteries, though we had no intention of advertising it. We had taken this cave for ourselves, taken it away from the bats and the blind lizards, for it had wandered our way from the Land of Israel, as Jacob had discovered. And since Adam and Eve rested here, and Abraham and Sara, as well as the patriarchs, we began to bury our dead in it. The first was Reb Eli, our treasurer, and then Jacob’s children, and in the end, Hanele. If ever we had anything of value in Poland, it was this cave where we laid all our treasures, for it was also the door to the better worlds that were awaiting us.
Those were bad days, and they cannot possibly be justified before God. In the autumn of 1769, Pu?aski’s confederates started stalking Avacha. It did not help that their commander announced that she was the daughter of a Jewish mage, and that they ought rather to leave her in peace. Her beauty aroused universal interest. Once some senior officers saw her and asked Jacob for a visit with his daughter. Then one of them said that, on the basis of her beauty, she might as well be the Holy Virgin, which pleased Jacob a great deal. Ordinarily, however, he kept her hidden in the tower, and when the soldiers drank, he forbade her from going out even if she needed to. An evil spirit, however, entered into those soldiers, that motley crew, who often grew bored with sitting in the fortress and drank themselves into a veritable frenzy after smuggling in alcohol from town. As soon as Avacha would go out, they immediately blocked her path and tried to talk with her, and sometimes it got unsavory, so many men setting upon one woman, a young and beautiful one at that. She herself was surprised by all the interest she aroused, a mixture of fascination and hostile lustfulness. More than once it exceeded the usual whistles and comments, and it appeared that the whole garrison was unable to focus on anything other than stalking her. The intercession of Mr. Pu?aski did not help, though he strictly forbade anyone forcing themselves upon Eva Frank. But deprived of the activities in which they would normally be engaged, in a state of suspension and uncertainty over what is going to happen next, soldiers become an irrational mob over which there can be no control. I would prefer not to write about it—I would rather not say it at all—but out of obligation to the truth I will only mention that in the end, when it did happen, Jacob and Wo?owski and I took her to Warsaw, so that she returned only after her mother’s death and was then with her father to the end. On the night that she was being assaulted, she had a dream in which she was freed from the tower by a German man who was dressed in white. She was told in the dream that he was an emperor.
Those years of being under siege were difficult for me and for all of us. I was thankful to fate that as an envoy I often traveled between the capital and Cz?stochowa, which meant I felt less depressed than Jacob, who after years of relative freedom was now tormented by his imprisonment in the monastery. Almost all of our people had left their quarters in a hurry and returned to Warsaw, knowing that here we would soon be under siege. The Wielun′skie Przedmies′cie had emptied. Only Jan Wo?owski and Mateusz Matuszewski remained with the Lord.
After Hana’s death, Jacob fell ill, and I will confess that I thought this would be the end. I thought a great deal about why Job had said, “In my flesh I will see God”—that verse from Isaiah gave me no peace. For since a person’s body is neither lasting nor perfect, then he who created it must also be weak and miserable. That is what Job had in mind. That is what I thought, and the times to come would only strengthen this belief in me.
And so with Wo?owski and Matuszewski we agreed to send to Warsaw for Marianna and then Ignacowa, so that Jacob could suck from their breasts. That always helped him. I have before my eyes this same picture still: under Russian siege, as cannons thundered and the fortress walls crumbled, as the earth quaked and people fell like flies, the Lord in the officer’s chamber of the tower of his prison nursed upon a woman’s breast, and in this way, he repaired this calamitous world, so riddled with holes.
By the summer of 1772, there was no longer anything to defend. Cz?stochowa had been sacked, people were exhausted and hungry, and the monastery could barely function, lacking water and food. The commander, Pu?aski, had been accused of conspiring against the king after having ordered the fortress to surrender to the Russian troops. Praying on the Day of Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, on August 15, did not help. The brothers lay in the form of a cross on the dirty floor and waited for a miracle. In the evening after mass, white flags were hung on the fortress walls. We helped the monks hide the valuable paintings and votive offerings, and in the place of the holiest picture we hung a copy. The Russians entered a few days later and ordered the monks to be locked in the refectory; for several days their prayers and songs could be heard from in there. The prior lamented that for the first time in its whole history, the monastery had found itself in foreign hands, and that this doubtless heralded the end of the world.