The truth is that I was never able to take much pleasure from that place in Brünn; it was the lifestyle of a lord, and not how it ought to have been. Jacob must have been disappointed that I was not excited about the vastness and exquisiteness of the palace as he proudly took me around his new estate opposite the cathedral, and as we went with the entire court to mass, and there among the pews we had our very own places, like real nobility. I remembered his other homes: the one rented in Salonika, that low windowless burrow that light could enter only once we had opened the door, and the wooden one in Giurgiu, with the roof of flat stones, its clay-patched walls covered in vines. In Ivanie, the one-room hut with the packed clay floor and that cobbled-together stove. And in Cz?stochowa, too, the stone cell with its window the size of a small handkerchief, always cold and damp. I couldn’t feel at home in Brünn, and slowly I started to become aware that I was getting older, and that all these novelties had ceased to appeal to me, and that, having been brought up in Busk in poverty, I would never grow accustomed to such riches. In the church, too—tall, slender, almost gaunt—I felt out of place. In such a church it is difficult to pray; the pictures and the sculptures, even if beautiful, are distant, and there is no way to view them slowly and in peace. The priest’s voice carries and reverberates in echoes off the walls—I never understand a thing. At the same time, it is a regime of kneeling, and that I have mastered quite well.
Jacob would always seat himself in the first row, ahead of me, in his sumptuous coat and that high hat of his. Next to him was Avachunia, gorgeous as the cake with icing they sell here out of glass cases like it were jewelry, with her hair carefully arranged beneath a hat so elaborate its details absorbed my entire attention. Next to Evunia was Zwierzchowska, charged here with overseeing the women in the stead of a weakening Wittel, and two maids. I would like to send my own Basia here to be a maid, so she could grow accustomed to the bigger world, as in Warsaw she will not learn or understand much, but she is still so young.
And I thought to myself, beholding all this, this whole new world that had opened up to Jacob in this foreign country: Was this the same Jacob? I had taken my last name from him, after all, Jakubowski, as if I were his property, his woman, but I did not find him now as I once had. He had gained weight and his hair was completely white, a legacy of his time in Cz?stochowa.
He received Wo?owski and me in his room, which was furnished in the Turkish fashion, and we sat on the floor. He complained that he could not drink much coffee anymore, for it dried out his stomach and in general greatly interfered with his health, which surprised me, for he always used to be as if he didn’t have a body at all.
And so those first days we spent looking around the area, going to mass and conversing, yet our conversations were barren in some way. I was uneasy. I tried hard to look at him as I had at that young man we had come across in Smyrna, and I reminded him of how he’d shed his skin entire and how, when we swam in the sea, he was able to save me from my own fear. “Is this what you are, Jacob?” I asked him one day, pretending I had had too much to drink, but in fact extremely alert to how he would respond. He seemed embarrassed. But then I thought that one would be a fool to expect people to remain as they once were, and that it is a kind of o’erpridefulness in us to treat ourselves as constant wholes, as if we were always the same person, for we are not.
As I was leaving Warsaw, there had been rumors among the true believers that the real Jacob had died in Cz?stochowa, and that the one who was now sitting before me had replaced him. Many believed this, and lately the rumors had intensified; I had no doubt that Ludwik Wo?owski, and young Kaplin′ski, Jacob’s brotherin-law (for the rumors had reached Wallachia, as well), who arrived just after we did, had come to investigate that very matter, in order to reassure our people in Warsaw and everywhere.
We sat at the table, and I saw how in the faint candlelight all were watching Jacob carefully, observing his every wrinkle. Ludwik Wo?owski, too, stared at him so, having not seen him for a long time and being no doubt shocked by the transformations. Suddenly Jacob stuck out his tongue at him. Ludwik turned crimson and spent the rest of the evening looking morose. Over supper, once we had discussed all that there was to discuss, I asked Jacob: “What is it you’re planning to do now? Just be here? What about the rest of us?”
“My greatest hope is that more Jews will come to me,” he responded. “For untold strength will come with them. In a single column there won’t be fewer than ten thousand . . .” So he spoke, and also of banners and uniforms, and of his wish for his own guard; the more wine he drank, the bigger his plans became. He said that we had to ready ourselves for war, and that these were times of trouble. Turkey had weakened, and Russia was growing stronger. “War is good for us—in muddied waters you can fish out a little something for yourself.” He grew more and more heated: “There will be a war between Austria and Turkey, that is certain—and what if we were to secure ourselves a coveted piece of land during all that wartime turmoil? For that we’ll need hard work and gold. The idea being that we could gather around thirty thousand people at our own cost, arranging with Turkey to support them in the war, and in exchange receive a piece of land for a small kingdom somewhere in Wallachia.”
Wo?owski added that Hayah had also prophesied in Warsaw—and several times in a row—great changes in the world, fire and conflagration.
“In Poland the king is weak, and chaos reigns—” Ludwiczek started.
“I’m done with Poland,” Jacob cut him off.
He said it bitterly, aggressively, the way he used to be, as if he were challenging me to a fight. And then everyone was going on about having our own land, talking over each other, the very idea having set their imaginations on fire. And the two Paw?owskis, who had also come with their wives, and even Kaplin′ski, Jacob’s brotherin-law, whom I considered to be an exceptionally prudent person, also took to this unrealistic vision. Nothing but politics mattered to them anymore.
“I’ve given up on having our own land,” I cried into the drunken, animatedly conversing little crowd—but no one heard me.
To my astonishment, Jacob bade Yeruhim Dembowski and me to record his evening chats. First Eva’s dreams were recorded by Antoni Czerniawski, son of those Czerniawskis of Wallachia who had looked after the money in Ivanie, and he filled a lovely little book with these. But I was surprised by this new request, since he had always rejected my previous pleas to sanction such recordkeeping.
Clearly he felt safe in Brünn. Maybe Moshe Dobrushka had influenced him, too. He would visit often and insist to Jacob that such writings, while they needn’t include things not intended for outside eyes, would give the growing number of Jacob’s followers insight into his thoughts and stories. Writing such a book would be an extremely noble act, said Moshe Dobrushka, especially for posterity.
First Yeruhim, that is, J?drzej Dembowski, would write, and then I. If we were not there, the Czerniawskis’ son Antoni would sit in for us, as he was a particularly clever boy, and thoroughly devoted to Jacob. And it was to be written in Polish, for we had long since abandoned our old language. Jacob himself spoke as he wished: in Polish, in Yiddish, sometimes whole sentences in Turkish, and he also made many Hebrew intercalations; I had to rewrite it all, for no one would have been able to make it out from my notes.