The numbers he saw in Podolski’s accounts give him no peace, and he has his own bills in mind—he was a fabric supplier to the royal court, and he was moving pretty high up, but that is over now. He was left with bales of expensive, luxurious materials—no one will buy them from him. Confident in his lucky streak, he put all his savings into the collection for Brünn, believing that in so doing he was aiding his own success and that of his family, but now, suddenly, he sees everything completely differently. As if the scales have fallen from his eyes. Why isn’t his Magda writing to him? Until now he hasn’t wanted to think about it—he was busy—but deep down in his brain a suspicion grows, almost a certainty, and it is like a malignant tumor, as if he had rotting meat in his head: she is with someone else.
Goliński doesn’t sleep all night, tossing and turning, hearing voices, like echoes of that violent argument, and again he sees Jakubowski’s averted gaze, and he feels hot all over. He can sense it, he knows it, even though his brain does not want to recognize it fully. Again he counts up his debts, and, half asleep, he sees the mice that nibble at his stocks of crimson brocade and bales of damask.
The following day, on an empty stomach, he walks to D?uga Street, to the Jakubowskis’. Jakubowski opens the door, still half asleep, wearing a nightshirt and a dressing gown, looking gaunt and tired, his feet in their dirty socks rubbing one against the other. Wajge?e, in her nightshirt and the woolen scarf she has thrown over it, sets about lighting the stove without a word. Jakubowski looks at him for some time, then finally asks:
“What do you want from me, Goliński?”
“Tell me what happened there. What is going on with my wife, Magda?”
Jakubowski looks down at his socks.
“Come in.”
Nahman’s—Piotr Jakubowski’s—little apartment is cluttered. Here and there are baskets, boxes. It smells like boiled cabbage. They sit down at the table, and Jakubowski scoops the pages off it. He carefully wipes his pen and stores it in its case. Scraps of wine sediment are visible at the base of a glass.
“What is going on with her? Tell me!”
“What do you think is going on with her? How am I supposed to know? I’ve been traveling, don’t you know that? I haven’t been sitting around with the women.”
“But you have been in Brünn.”
A gust of wind strikes the window; its panes shake menacingly. Jakubowski stands and closes the shutters. It gets darker in the room.
“Remember, we used to sleep in the same bed at the Besht’s,” says Goliński, as if accusing him of something.
Jakubowski sighs.
“You know how things are there. You have seen it with your own eyes. You were there in Cz?stochowa, you were there in Ivanie. No one is going to supervise your wife there. She is a free woman.”
“I was never that close. I was never one of you ‘brothers.’”
“But you saw.” Jakubowski says this as if heartbroken Goliński were to blame for it all. “She asked for it herself. She’s with the Lord’s stableman now, Szymanowski. He’s kind of like a Cossack when he gets on a horse . . .”
“A Cossack,” Goliński mechanically repeats after him. He is shattered now.
“I am telling you this, Goliński, in the name of our many years of friendship, your support after the death of my son, and also because we shared a bed at the Besht’s . . .”
“I know.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t get so worked up about it, because what did you expect? They are doing everything for our greater good . . . With the greatest emperor in the world. The great court . . . If you want her to return, she will return.”
Goliński stands up and starts walking around the small room, two steps in one direction, two steps in the other. Then he stops, takes a deep breath, and starts sobbing.
“She didn’t ask for it herself, I know that for certain . . . They must have forced her.”
Nahman reaches for another glass from the cupboard and pours wine into it.
“You could sell all your stock in Brünn—you’d lose a little on it, brocade isn’t the concern it once was. But you’d get some of your money back at least.”
Goliński packs up within the hour and takes out promissory notes to cover the journey. A few days later, he finds himself in Brünn, dirty and tired. Having placed the product he has with him in storage, he goes at once to Petersburger Gasse, to the house by the cathedral, with a hat pulled down over his forehead, asking several people for directions along the way. Each of them points out the way to him. He is intending to knock and go in, announcing himself like a person of importance would, but suddenly a suspiciousness sets in, and he feels as if he’s about to go into battle, so he stands at the gate opposite, and although it is early, and the streets are filled with the long shadows of morning, he continues to just stand there, pulling his hat down even farther, and to wait.
First the gate opens, and a cart leaves, taking out rubbish and waste, and then some women exit. Goliński does not know them; they are carrying wicker baskets and going up the hill, no doubt to the market. Then a cart with vegetables pulls up, and then there is a rider on a horse. Finally from somewhere a carriage is brought up, it goes inside but doesn’t leave again until almost noon, when there is suddenly movement at the gate. Goliński thinks he sees two women: one of them is Zwierzchowska, who is giving something to a messenger, or a post officer, and the other one is the elder Czerniawska. Curtains part in some windows on the second floor, and someone’s face flashes there, but Goliński can’t see whose. His stomach is aching from hunger, but he’s afraid to leave—he might miss something important. Just before noon the gate opens again, and a little procession forms on the street, mostly young people, going to the cathedral for mass, but—again—he doesn’t recognize a soul. Only at the end does he see the familiar Dembowski, in Polish attire, with his wife. They walk in silence and disappear inside the cathedral. Goliński understands that neither Frank nor Avacha is here. He grabs the sleeve of one of the youths dashing by and asks:
“Where is your master?”
“In Vienna, with the emperor,” the young man answers gleefully.
Goliński spends that night in an inn that is luxuriously clean yet inexpensive. He is able to wash up there and get a good night’s rest. He sleeps like a rock. The next day, early, he sets off for Vienna, propelled by the same anxiety.
It takes him all day to get to the Lord’s residence on the Graben. At the entrance to the house there are guards, dressed oddly in bright green and red livery, in hats with bunches of feathers. They hold halberds. There is no way for him to get inside. He asks to be announced; no response comes. In the evening a rich carriage drives up, accompanied by several men on horseback. When he tries to approach, the guard stops him quite violently.
“I am Jacob Goliński. The Lord knows me, I have to see him.”
They tell him to leave a note in the morning.
“The Lord receives visitors in the afternoon,” says one of the valets in his weird livery.
Eine Anzeige, or: A denunciation