Bored by the listlessness of the monastery, he got drunk every evening and encouraged his noncommissioned officers to take up with the prisoner’s young daughter. Once, in a fit of drunken generosity, weary of this place where he felt no less a prisoner than that strange Jew, he sent the neophytes a basket of hard-won victuals as well as a barrel of inferior wine out of the brothers’ stores. Frank sent him a polite thank-you as well as a striking Turkish knife with a silver hilt set with pieces of turquoise—a present worth a great deal more than that basket of food and some vinegary wine. Lubomirski mislaid the knife somewhere along the way, but when he fell on hard times and wound up in Vienna, he suddenly remembered its existence.
After the fall of Jasna Góra, he returned to Warsaw. People said that at the Partition Sejm, he was the one to drag Tadeusz Reytan out of the doorway where he had lain in an attempt to prevent the ratification of the First Partition of Poland, and that then he had demarcated the new boundaries of the Kingdom of Poland, mutilating the nation, crippling it. Which is why, in Warsaw, his acquaintances started to cross the street at the sight of him. And there Lubomirski led a life of dissolution, squandering the rest of his fortune and taking out massive loans, in a city that was deep in chaos. He drank, played cards, and was called a “libertine,” a fashionable recent word, even though for as long as possible he associated mostly with the ultra-Catholics. When in 1781 a list of his debts was published, it contained the names of over a hundred different creditors. The meticulously calculated sums were astronomical: two million, six hundred and ninety-nine thousand, two hundred and ninety-nine Polish zlotys. He was bankrupt, maybe the most bankrupt person anywhere in Europe. A few years later, he learned from one of his old friends, old Kossakowska, that the court of Jacob Frank had moved to Offenbach.
Suddenly that knife set with turquoise, lost or given as a gift to some prostitute, cut from all the chaos of the prince’s thoughts a single astonishing idea—that as it turned out he must have something in common with those people, since he kept running into them everywhere he turned, every few years, since after all he had seen them for the first time in Kamieniec, when they were still Jews, hidden behind their great beards, and then, once baptized, when all through winter, at the request of that ball-breaker Kossakowska, they lived on his estate. There must be some invisible force that links human fates, for otherwise it would be impossible to explain such coincidences as meeting them again in Cz?stochowa. Now Lubomirski, with practically nowhere else to live, is happy to believe in the invisible threads of fate, but, above all, he has a great deal of faith in himself. He has a deep conviction that the path of his life is straight and orderly, rather like a path cut with a saber through a field of grain. His only regret is that he never exchanged a single word with Jacob Frank in Cz?stochowa. Still, that tarnished old Cz?stochowa prisoner now has his own castle and court. And doubtless the reason he has those things is so that he can save Prince Lubomirski, who must now flee from Warsaw.
Only bold, unusual ideas have any chance of coming to fruition—this he has been taught throughout his entire turbulent life. For Prince Lubomirski’s whole life has been made up of just such unusual decisions that the regular rabble could never possibly comprehend.
It was similar this time around. He sent a letter to his old friend from his time serving Prussia, Prince Frederick Karol Lichnowski, asking him to recommend him to Frank, now that Frank had somehow attained such dizzying heights. He asked Lichnowski to mention their old acquaintance, without going into too much detail, and his prickly situation now. Soon he had from his friend a quickly written and enthusiastic note that said that the Baron Dobrucki-Frank would be honored, that he could offer His Majesty the Prince the command of his guard, as he would in such a manner further elevate the splendor of his court. Frank also offered the prince an apartment in the nicest quarter of town, a carriage, and an aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel.
And so the best thing that could possibly happen happened, for the prince did not even have the money to make the journey to Offenbach, and he had to fight out the loan of some post horses at every stop he made.
Of the dollhouse
“Dear friend—I think I can call you that now,” says Sophie von La Roche with the directness she is known for. She takes a confused Eva by the elbow and leads her to the table where the others have sat down already. They are primarily burghers and Offenbach entrepreneurs—such as, for instance, André and Bernard, descendants of Huguenots taken in by an ancestor of the Duke of Isenburg over a hundred years ago, just as now this duke has welcomed Frank and his court.
Visitors mill around the living room, and through the open door to the next room several musicians are seen tuning their instruments. Eva Frank and Anusia Paw?owska sit. Eva, as always when she feels insecure and wants to seem like she is confident, even a little churlish, slightly puffs out her lips.
“You see, there is always some commotion around here. How am I to work? Yesterday, however, André, our friend, brought in from Vienna the most fashionable sheet music, which we’ll practice. Do you ladies play an instrument? We need a clarinet.”
“I have no talent for music,” says Eva. “My father attached great importance to a musical education, but . . . well. Perhaps I could accompany you on the clavichord?”
Now they inquire after her father.
“My father begs your forgiveness, he rarely leaves the house these days. He is ailing.”
Sophie von La Roche, handing them cups of hot chocolate, asks with concern:
“Does he need a doctor? One of the best is in Frankfurt, I’d be happy to send him a note!”
“No, thank you, there’s no need, we have our own doctors.”
There is a moment of silence, as though everyone now needs to contemplate carefully all that Eva Frank has said—what “we” means, and the implications of “our own doctors.” Praise be to God, however, that the first bars of music are beginning to enter from the room adjacent. Eva lets the air out of her lungs and purses her lips. Sheets of music are lying on the coffee table, evidently straight from the printer’s, their pages as yet uncut. Eva reaches for them and reads: Musikalischer Spass für zwei Vio? linen, Bratsche, zwei Korner und Bass, geschrieben in Wien. W. A. Mozart.
The tea drunk from the round cup tastes delicious. Eva is not used to this drink—Sophie von La Roche makes a mental note of it. Do not all Russians drink tea?