They return empty-handed several months later—such experienced ambassadors, and they didn’t even obtain a meeting with the sultan, squandering whole weeks in the process. In the spring of 1775, when Jacob considers himself the emperor’s greatest friend, he sends a second delegation to Stamboul. This time Nahman Piotr Jakubowski goes with Ludwik Wo?owski, Jan Wo?owski’s son. They come back from Turkey in the autumn, their mission having failed again. Not only did they obtain no audience with the sultan, but something much worse occurred: at the instigation of the Stamboul Jews, they were accused of heresy and spent three months in a Stamboul prison, which caused Jakubowski to develop an illness in his lungs. Furthermore, the sultan’s officials confiscated all the money they had brought as tribute to the sultan, a considerable sum. Jacob ignored the desperate letters from their cell—maybe he was sick, maybe he was too busy at the emperor’s court. It is also possible, as Jakubowski adamantly insists, that no news from Turkey ever reached him. The mission’s objective was the same: to win over the sultan, promise him unswerving dedication, reveal to him the benefits of such close access to the emperor, speak to him of the reward there would be if . . . Well, Jakubowski would know how to do it, he’s the best at Turkish, and at painting vivid pictures of their visions.
They have come back thin and exhausted; in order to be able to pay for their return, they had to take out loans in Stamboul. Jakubowski is dry as burlap, coughing. Wo?owski’s face is clouded.
The Lord does not even acknowledge them. In the evening, according to the old ritual, he orders Jakubowski beaten for losing the money.
“I have no use for you, Jakubowski. You’re an obstinate old mule,” he says. “You’re only suitable for writing—not for the real work a person must do.”
Jakubowski tries to stick up for himself, but he sounds like a ten-yearold boy.
“So why did you send me, then? Don’t you have someone younger, who speaks languages better?”
All punishment here goes like this: The person to be punished is laid down on a table, wearing only a shirt, and all of the true believers who have gathered, brothers and sisters, must lash his back with a switch. The Lord begins, usually slashing without mercy, and after him go the men, but striking less forcefully, while the women usually close their eyes and administer blows that are more symbolic than anything, as if they were tapping the person with palm branches (unless one of them has some reason of her own for hitting harder). And this is how it goes with Jakubowski, too. Doubtless some blows do hurt him, but all in all, he isn’t badly wounded. When it is over, he drags himself down off the table. He does not answer Jacob’s calls to stay. His shirt hangs almost to his knees, open in the front. His face is absent. People say Jakubowski has grown eccentric in his advancing age. Now he walks out the door, not even looking back.
Following his departure, there is a silence that lasts just a little too long, and everyone’s heads drop, so the Lord begins to speak and continues without interruption, fast, so that it’s difficult to write it, and Dembowski, left alone with that task now, eventually sets aside his pen. He says that the world will always pose a threat to them, which is why they have to stick together and support each other. They have to give up their old understanding of all things, because that old world has already ended. The new one has come, but it is even more ruthless and hostile than the one it has replaced. These are exceptional times, and they, too, must be exceptional. They must live together, close together, and they must form bonds with one another, not with outsiders, so that they make up one great family. Part of this family will constitute the core, and the rest will surround them. Goods should be treated as common, and only managed by individuals, and he who has the most will share with he who has the least. That is how it was in Ivanie, and that is how it must be here. Always. As long as you all share what you have, as long as you exist as a machna and are a mystery to others. This mystery, this secret, must absolutely be kept at all costs. The less others know about you, the better. They will invent all kinds of extraordinary stories about you, yes—but that is good, let them invent their stories. But on the outside, you must never give a reason for customs or the law to be transgressed.
Jacob tells them to stand in a circle and put their hands on each other’s shoulders, with their heads slightly bowed and their eyes focused on a point in the middle of the circle.
“We have two goals,” says Jacob. “The first one is making our way to Daat, to the knowledge that will permit us to attain eternal life, and then we will break free of the prison of the world. We can accomplish this in a manner that is very mundane—our own place on the earth, a country into which we can introduce our own laws. And since the world is craving war now, and arming itself, the old order has already fallen, and we, too, must join in with the commotion, so as to gain something from it for ourselves. This is why you must regard my Hussars and my banners without any suspicion. He who has banners and an army, even a modest one, is considered to be a true ruler in this world.”
Then they sing the Yigdal, the same song they sang back in Ivanie. And in conclusion, as they are just preparing to leave, Jacob tells them about the dream he had last night, about King Stanis?aw Poniatowski. That he chased after him and Avacha and wanted to fight. He also saw in this dream that he, Jacob, was led into an Orthodox church that had been completely scorched inside.
The return of Bishop So?tyk
In the winter of 1773, a crowd moves from Warsaw to the river. The company, including bishops, crosses the frozen ice to reach an island, where it waits for Bishop So?tyk as if he were a holy martyr. The church banners stiffen in the cold. Clouds of steam rise from mouths as they sing hymns. Warsaw townswomen wear fur bonnets and are wrapped in fur-lined capes, shrouded further in woolen headscarves. The men wear fur-lined cloaks down to the ground—they are carters, salesmen, craftsmen, cooks, aristocrats. All of them are freezing.
At last, a carriage appears, accompanied by military escort. Everyone rushes to get a glimpse inside, but the curtains are drawn. When the carriage stops, the crowd kneels in the middle of the river, right there in the snow.
The bishop appears just for a moment, supported on either side, wrapped in a long purple coat lined with light-colored fur probably taken from Siberian creatures. He looks big, even heavier than before. Over the heads of the faithful he makes the sign of the cross, and a woeful song bursts forth into the frozen air. It is hard to understand the lyrics, since everyone is singing at their own pace, some slower, some faster, so their intonations overlap and drown each other out.
For a brief moment the bishop’s face is visible—it is changed, strangely gray. Instantly people start to whisper that he must have been tortured there, and that is why he looks this way. Then he vanishes into the carriage, which slowly moves along the ice toward Warsaw’s Old Town.
Soon rumors spread all over Warsaw that out there, in Kolyma, in that frozen hell, Bishop So?tyk lost his senses, his clarity of thought returning to him only now and then. Some who knew him before suggest that even when the Russians took him, he wasn’t sound of mind. They say that he is among those whose opinions of themselves are so high that it completely blinds them, and wherever they look they see only themselves. And their conviction of their own importance deprives them of their reason and their power of judgment. Bishop So?tyk is absolutely one of these people, and therefore it hardly matters whether he has lost his senses in Siberia or not.
What’s happening among the Lord’s Warsaw machna