It is exceptional. Leaning in over the polished inside, they can see all of Brünn in that bowl, the roofs, the church towers, the narrow little streets running up and down the hill, the trees’ crowns, the market with all of its stalls. And this is no dead old picture—everything moves, why, look at Alte Schmiedegasse, that four-horse-drawn carriage, and over there, those nuns leading the orphans, and there, the workers laying pavement. Someone sticks out a finger to try to touch the picture but withdraws it in shock at once: this view of the city has no material character at all. Fingertips feel just the chill of polished stone.
“You will be able to keep an eye on the whole city, Lord. It is a great invention, though there is no magic nor Kabbalah in it. It is a product of the human imagination.”
Moshe is impudent. He dares to push Jacob in the direction of the bowl, and Jacob gives in to him without protest.
“Seeing, while not being seen—that is truly a divine privilege,” Moshe fawns.
Moshe-Thomas gains with this invention the admiration of the youth. Seeing that the Lord is so positively inclined toward him, they begin to treat him a bit like the Lord’s son. Especially since the majority of them do not know his real sons. They are back in Warsaw now, the Lord has sent them away, and both were relieved to return to Poland, where they are under the care of Jakubowski and Wo?owski.
Jacob looks at Moshe from the window; he examines him very closely. He sees him part the sides of his French jacket, spread his legs wide, in their white silk stockings, in order to draw something with a stick on the ground for the young people gathered around him. He leans in, and you can see the top of his head. His lovely curls only suffer under that wig. His facial hair is barely visible, his skin smooth, olive-hued, flawless. His mother spoiled him too much. Sheyndel spoils her children, and they grow up like little princelings, very sure of themselves, confident, comely. Insolent. But life will take its toll on them.
When he leans out slightly, Jacob notices Avacha, who is also observing this scene from her window, watching this dandy. In her body there is always that same submissiveness, for she does not carry herself like a queen, although he has tried over and over to teach her: spine straight, head high, better to err on the side of too high than too low—after all, she has a beautiful neck, and skin like silk. He has taught her one thing by day, however, and something else by night. Sometimes night breaks forth in the middle of the day, and then her submissiveness attracts him. A slight trembling of her eyelids, her beautiful, completely dark eyes, so dark that when they reflect the light, it looks like they are covered in glistening icing.
Suddenly Thomas, as though knowing perfectly well he is being observed, raises his eyes, and Jacob doesn’t have time to move. Their eyes meet for a moment.
Thomas does not notice that, from a different window, Eva is observing him, too.
Come evening, when the Lord is retiring to bed, he sees that the young people have all gathered around Thomas Dobrushka again. There is Eva, Anusia Paw?owska, and Agata Wo?owska, along with the younger Franciszek Wo?owski. This time Thomas is showing them a snuffbox, as though intending to offer them tobacco. When Franciszek reaches out and touches the lid, however, the snuffbox opens with a clatter, and out of it hops a little bird, which flaps its wings and chirps. Franciszek pulls his hand back, frightened, while the rest of the company bursts into unrestrained laughter. In the end, Franciszek, too, starts laughing. After a while Zwierzchowska—who, according to her custom, is making her rounds of the palace and inviting everyone to put out their candles—looks into the room. Entertained, they call her in.
“Go on, show her,” the young people tell Thomas.
“Auntie, have some tobacco,” they call.
Thomas holds out to her a small, rectangular object, beautifully decorated. After a moment’s hesitation, amused, sensing that a little trick may be in store, Zwierzchowska reaches for the snuffbox.
“Auntie, just press here,” Thomas begins in German, but, reprimanded by her gaze, he switches to his funny accented Polish: “Niech ciocia naci?nie tu.”
She takes the snuffbox, and the little bird dances that same mechanical dance just for her, and Zwierzchowska, completely losing her seriousness, squeals like a little girl.
A thousand compliments, or: Of the wedding of Moshe Dobrushka, or Thomas von Sch?nfeld
The wedding of Moshe Dobrushka to Elke von Popper takes place in Vienna in May of 1775, after the period of mourning for Solomon has ended. Gardens near the Prater are rented for the purpose. As the groom’s father is deceased, he is walked down the aisle by Michael Denis, his friend and the translator of Macpherson’s famous Works of Ossian, as well as the publisher Adolf Ferdinand von Sch?nfeld, who has come from Prague for this wedding. Before the groom makes his appearance at the church, there is a small Masonic ritual; his brothers from the lodge, all dressed in black, lead him into this new stage of his life with great gravity. Von Sch?nfeld thinks of Moshe as a son, and he has in fact just embarked upon the complicated bureaucratic procedure of receiving Thomas within the Sch?nfeld coat of arms. Moshe will become Thomas von Sch?nfeld.
Now, however, there is a party under way. Aside from the magnificence of the tables, which hold food and enormous bouquets of May flowers, the main attraction is the pavilion, where there is an extraordinary collection of butterflies on display. The man responsible for this is Michael Denis, the groom’s employer. Eva’s female cousins take her there, and now, leaning over the vitrines, they all admire these wonderful dead creatures pinned onto silk.
“You are a butterfly, too,” Esther, the youngest Dobrushka child, says to Eva. This bit of praise lodges in Eva’s memory, and she thinks about it for a long time after. For butterflies come from chrysalises, from ugly worms, plump and misshapen, a process that is also documented in one of the vitrines. This reminds Eva Frank of herself when she was Esther’s age—fifteen—in the dark gray dress her father made her wear in Cz?stochowa so she wouldn’t attract the soldiers’ attention. She remembers the chill of the stone tower, and her mother’s contorted joints. An inexplicable sadness overwhelms her, and a yearning for her mother. She doesn’t want to think about that, and has been trying to forget. Which has been going fairly well so far.
In the evening, when the lanterns are lit in the garden, she stands in a group, a little tipsy from the wine, listening to the voluble Count von Sch?nfeld, who, dressed in his long, dark green jacket, raising his glass of wine, turns playfully to the not especially pretty but very intelligent bride: