And who has come?
His sons Roch and Joseph have come here permanently; they arrived with trunks and servants. But if they had hoped to find at their father’s side some power due to them by birthright, they have made a grave mistake. They were given lovely rooms, but for gold to cover any expense they must, like everyone, ask Czerniawski. Praise be to God, the Lord is generous toward his children. Piotr Jakubowski also came to Offenbach with two of his daughters, Anna and Rozalia, having realized after the death of his wife that there was nothing left for him to do in Warsaw (though the eldest girl stayed) and deciding to join in the Lord’s care. Now he lives in a little room on the highest floor, with a single little window and a slanting wall, and there—as Czerniawski commanded—he dedicates himself to editing the words of the Lord and to his own eccentric studies. When Czerniawski stops by this little nook at times when Jakubowski isn’t in it, he finds on the small table a stack of papers he is not ashamed to rifle through. He understands nothing of Jakubowski’s Hebrew calculations, drawings, and sketches. He also finds some strange prophecies, written in a shaky hand, a chronicle of events reaching back far into the past, and handsewn pages, the first of which bears the title Scraps. Czerniawski flips through them, intrigued, not understanding what they are scraps of, what they could have belonged to before.
Antoni Czerniawski, son of Israel Osman of Czernowitz, the Turkish Jew who led Frank’s company across the Dniester, does not take after his father at all. Where the father was dark-complexioned, skinny, violent, the son is a little overweight, calm, attentive. He is a quiet man, small in stature, very focused, with a frowning, worried forehead that ages him. In spite of his relative youth, he has already acquired quite the belly, and this makes his whole figure appear somewhat massive. He has thick black hair down to his shoulders, and a beard he trims every so often. And his is the one beard in the whole of the Offenbach castle that the Lord does not find fault with. The Lord trusts him without limit and entrusts to him the care of their finances, which isn’t easy—their income, though ample, is very irregular, while their expenses remain, unfortunately, quite regular indeed. He also performs the duties of a secretary and has a habit of walking into any room whenever he pleases, without knocking or announcing his arrival. His dark brown eyes check every detail. His sentences are short and concrete. He sometimes smiles slightly, not so much with his mouth as with his eyes, which turn into narrow slits.
It was he, Czerniawski, who proved himself worthy of the hand of the Lord’s youngest sister, Ruta. He believes he was given “a treasure.” Ruta, or Anna Czerniawska, is a sensible and intelligent woman. The former closeness of his own sister, Eva Jezierzańska, with Jacob makes Czerniawski feel kind of like a brother-in-law twice over, and at that point it’s the same as being a brother. Eva Jezierzańska has long since lost her husband and become sort of like the Lord’s wife. Now, when Jacob is ill, this is how Antoni Czerniawski regards him—like an older brother who has lost his strength. Antoni himself does not have any predisposition for ruling. He prefers to keep things organized. The only thing that sometimes makes him lose control is the prospect of good food. Once a week he sends a cart to Bürgel and Sachsenhausen for eggs and poultry, especially guinea fowls, which he loves most. He also has an extensive tab in town with the cheese purveyor, Kugler. Czerniawski cannot resist that cheese. He buys up the local wine by the barrel. This is what is running through his mind—barrels of wine and dozens and dozens of eggs—as he walks the quiet castle corridors.
Czerniawski realizes that out of all the stories that have happened on earth so far, the story of their machna and their company under Jacob’s leadership is exceptional; he usually thinks in the plural, the “we” reminiscent of a kind of pyramid, the pinnacle of which is Jacob, the base of which this whole crowd here in Offenbach, floating around the galleries without any occupation, practicing parade steps to the point of extreme boredom—but out there, too, in Warsaw, and all over Moravia, in Altona and Germany, in the Czech city of Prague (though those are more like offshoots of the selfsame “we”). And when he looks through the chronicle Jakubowski has written (Czerniawski tells him to be more consistent in it, to establish certain facts with the other elders, such as Jan Wo?owski, who has also come down to Offenbach, and Yeruhim Dembowski, who has been here from the start), he realizes that the story of this “us” truly is extraordinary. He is confirmed in this when in the evenings the Lord tells his tales, and he and Jakubowski write them down, until out of these stories Jacob’s life starts to emerge—a life that is simultaneously the life of this “us.” Then Czerniawski becomes one of those who greatly regret that they were born too late and that they could not accompany the Lord on his dangerous journeys, sleep with him in the desert and survive with him that maritime adventure. That is the story everyone likes best, as the Lord does a good job parodying Jakubowski, imitating his shrieking, and Jakubowski becomes recognizable to all as the inglorious hero of that sea squall.
“He promised, bawling to high heaven, that he’d never let another drop of wine pass his lips,” howls the Lord, and they with him—even Jakubowski gets a chuckle out of this. “Then he promised to be a Jan Wo?owski—the Cossack, as he’s called—who is a mustachioed elder now, but back then he used to sneak out of the sultan’s lands and smuggle money in barrels over the border.”