They all agree after the telling of that dream that what it means is the end of their financial woes.
The Lord saw on a great field thousands of Uhlans, all of them true believers, and his sons, Roch and Joseph, were their commanders. The Lord’s interpretation: I will leave Brünn and will finally occupy my proper place, and then many gentlemen and Jews will come to me in order to be baptized.
The Lord saw Count Wessel, from whom he tried to rent a palace in Pilica, sitting atop a small table in his carriage. The Lord’s interpretation: Aid will come in gold, and the count’s request will be carried out, for he had asked for his daughter to become one of Eva’s ladies-in-waiting.
The Lord saw a beautiful maiden sitting upstairs, and all around her were herbs and fresh, lush grass. Between her legs came a source of pure, cold fresh water. An untold quantity of persons stood and drank from that source. And he, too, drank, but discreetly, so as not to draw attention to himself. The exposition of that dream takes place in the evening in Eva’s bedroom; lately she has been very depressed. The dream must mean one thing: that she will finally be married.
Eva waits for a sign from the emperor. But it doesn’t come. Since his mother’s funeral, he has not sent for her. And he no doubt won’t. Even though she knew things would turn out this way, she still feels rotten and abandoned. She has lost weight. She does not wish to go to Vienna, her memories are too painful there, though her friend the Countess Wessel has tried explaining to her that, having been the emperor’s lover, she may now have anyone and everything she wants. Eva goes for the empress’s funeral, but so great is the crowd that her new dress disappears in it, along with her hat, her beautiful eyes, and her Eastern charm.
The empress is beautifully dressed for the casket, her dead heft drowned in a foam of lace. Eva Frank gets close enough to see the tips of her blue fingers folded on her chest. From then on, she has fearfully beheld her own each day, worrying that this blueness is a sign of impending demise. People whisper at the funeral about what caused Maria Theresa’s death. Apparently the empress slumped down in her armchair and started to choke. One of her ladies-in-waiting said in a dramatic whisper that the young emperor, cold-blooded as always, had taken the time to remark upon her ungraceful arrangement in the chair. “Your Majesty has positioned herself poorly,” he is said to have said. “Just well enough to die,” the empress apparently retorted, and then she actually died.
Eva promises herself that she will also die with dignity. “Preferably young,” she says, though it irritates her father. Jacob claims that now that Joseph is the sole ruler, he will finally do what he wants, and he believes that what he wants is to marry Eva.
He tells her to get her wardrobe ready, since she will soon return to court. But Eva knows she will not be returning. She is afraid to tell her father of it, which is why she spends her evenings with Anusia Paw?owska, mending torn lace.
Eva has been biting her cuticles for some time. Sometimes her fingers are so torn up she must wear gloves to hide them.
Of the lovemaking of Franciszek Wo?owski
Franciszek Wo?owski, Shlomo’s firstborn son, also known as ?ukasz Franciszek Wo?owski, is a calm, tall, handsome young man, a year older than Eva; he speaks slowly, carefully. He went to Polish schools and dreamed of attending university, but he did not succeed. Yet he has read a great deal on his own and knows about a great many subjects. He speaks Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and German, each of these in his own particular way, since he has a slight speech defect. He does not want to stay on with his father in Warsaw and be a brewer. After all, he does have a noble title. He wants to do great, important things, even if he doesn’t yet know what things. By the time he comes to Brünn, he is already of marrying age. As the son of one of the oldest and most important brothers, he has privileges. He’s given a double room—he’ll be sharing it with his cousin. The cousin, several years younger than he, has just graduated from the Piarist college, which makes Franciszek very jealous.
His father had already written to Jacob Frank on the matter of his son’s marriage; perhaps he did not address it directly, but the letter was exceptionally warm and full of recollections, harking back to Elisha Shorr—may he rest in peace—as well as assurances of brotherly love, which might have suggested that the Wo?owskis were counting on something that would cement the links between the Warsaw machna and the court in Brünn. There is something so obvious about this idea, and such a marriage was mentioned so many times back in Ivanie, when the children were little still. What could be unexpected about Franciszek coming to ask for Eva’s hand?
Franciszek calmly waits until they invite him into their rooms in the evening. Finally, dressed very neatly, he greets the Lord and Eva heartily, and then, after a somewhat challenging conversation (he has never been good at talking freely), he is allowed to turn the pages of Eva’s score as she plays her newly purchased instrument. Soon Franciszek, as his parents so desired, has fallen in love, though it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that Eva has yet to even register the presence of this page-turner.
“Doesn’t it bother you that she’s been off in Vienna taking her turn among the cabbages?” his cousin asks him once they are both in bed, tired from a full day’s Hussaring and drills. Franciszek isn’t suited for the martial life at all.
“She was taking her turn among the cabbages with the emperor. Besides, you don’t call it cabbages when it’s the emperor. The emperor flirts, the emperor has romantic liaisons . . . ,” Franciszek answers sagely.
“And you want her to be your wife?”
“Of course I do. She was assigned to me, with my father being the true believer closest to the Lord, the oldest of the brothers.”
“Mine, too—mine is maybe even closer. He was with him in Cz?stochowa, and then he ran away over the wall when Her Ladyship Hana passed away.”
“Why would he run away?”
“That’s what he said, that he was so scared he jumped down off the wall.”
Franciszek Wo?owski the younger responds calmly to this, as is his tendency:
“Our fathers believed that since they were with the Lord, death couldn’t touch them. Now it’s hard to understand that.”
“They believed they were immortal?” His cousin’s voice switches to an incredulous treble.
“Why does that surprise you so much? You believe it, too.”
“Well, yes, but not on earth. In the Heavenly Kingdom.”
“Which is where?”
“I don’t know. After death. What do you think happens?”
Of Samuel Ascherbach, son of Gitla and Asher