“Say, Wo?owski, what do you all go and see that Frank for, and send your children out there, when you’ve been baptized already in our churches? Everybody’s saying he’s a kind of patriarch and that you pay him contributions. And that none of you will even think of marrying a Catholic girl.”
Wo?owski tries to be as friendly as possible, patting him on the back as if they were on familiar terms:
“People exaggerate. The truth is we do marry amongst ourselves, but that’s how it is everywhere—we just know each other, and our women cook like our mothers cooked, and we all have the same customs. It’s natural.” Franciszek puts a bag on the scale and then supplements it with the porcelain weights. “My wife, for instance, makes the same sort of rolls as my mother, and there’s no one that could do that who wasn’t born in Podolia and into a Jewish family. Those rolls are why I married her. Jacob Frank gave us a hand when we were in need, and now we’re repaying him for that, out of gratitude. That’s a virtue, not a sin.”
Wo?owski rummages around in the weights, needing the smallest ones in order to weigh the dry hops down to a lot, or thirteen grams.
“Right you are,” says the wholesaler. “I married for cabbage with peas. You’d lick your fingers the way my wife makes it. But people are also saying that you all settle down next to each other, that all there has to be is some lord’s court, and there you are, with your inn, and your shops, and that you even make your own kind of music . . .”
“What’s the harm in that?” answers Wo?owski cheerfully, and enters the weight into its column. “That’s what trade is. You have to find somewhere where people will buy from you. You do it, but you wouldn’t allow me to?”
The wholesaler hands him a second bag, bigger this time, so that it barely even sits on the scale.
“What about children? They say you gave Frank’s sons higher educations at great cost, and that you called them barons, and that they were often seen here in Warsaw at masquerades and balls and comedies, roaming around in fancy carriages . . .”
“So you’re saying you don’t know of any Catholics who go to balls or masquerades? And have you seen the Potockis’ carriages?”
“Do not compare yourself with lords, Wo?owski.”
“I’m not comparing myself. There are poorer and richer ones among us. Some walk per pedes, others have fancy carriages. What of it?”
Wo?owski has had enough of this importuner now. He seems to be examining the dry hops, sniffing it and rolling it around in his fingers, but in fact he is looking around the courtyard. And in his voice this whole time there has been something like a stifled rage. Franciszek Wo?owski the younger closes up the scale and heads for the exit. The importuner reluctantly follows.
“And another thing that just occurred to me. Is it true you all hold secret rendezvous, windows covered, weird rituals?” he asks captiously. “That’s what people say.”
Franciszek is careful. He takes a moment to weigh his words, as if putting the right weights on the scale.
“We neophytes take special care to love our neighbors. For is that not a basic commandment for all Christians?” he asks rhetorically. The man nods at him. “Yes, it is true, we gather together and confer, you know, just like yesterday in my home: what kind of help we can provide for one another, what to invest in—we invite one another to weddings and baptisms. We talk of our children, of their schools. We stick together, and that is not only not bad, but it actually sets an example for other Christians.”
“I hope you do can do well for yourself, Mr. Wo?owski, amongst us,” the importuner says at last, somewhat disappointed, and they sit down to settle up for the hops.
When Franciszek finally manages to rid himself of him, he breathes a sigh of relief. But then right away he is back in a state of constant and exhausting high alert.
The atmosphere around them in Warsaw isn’t the best. Some have left for Wilno, like the younger Kaplińskis, or returned to Lwów, like the Matuszewskis, though it isn’t easy there, either. But the worst is probably in Warsaw. Everyone watches them and whispers. Barbara, his wife, says that Franciszek involves himself too much, which makes him visible. For instance, he took part in the Black Procession, demanding rights for the townspeople. He is also active in a merchant guild. He has a prospering brewery, he has a house, he guarantees other people’s loans—his name, multiplied by sons and cousins, sticks out. Yesterday, for example, Barbara found a piece of paper jammed in the doorframe with smudged, sloppy print:
Frank fills their heads with superstitions by the bucket,
Weird blessings so they’ll leave him down to their last ducat.
They worship him in Polish, wish him Shana Tova,
This man who was sentenced to life in Cz?stochowa.
Profiting off their vodka, he’ll go down in history,
But we’ve had enough of this folly, this mystery.
Once they’ve had their baptism, put an end to all this strife—
Just calm them down and let them live an ordinary life.
Heiliger Weg nach Offenbach
God’s true home is in Offenbach. This is what was told to a teenage Joseph von Sch?nfeld, nephew of Thomas Sch?nfeld of Prague, and with this, the preparations for his departure were under way. Admittedly, apart from the holy path that must be traveled by all true believers, there was also a certain practical reason: avoiding the army, in which the true believers, as Christians now, were required to serve. The path led through Dresden, where without any special justification boys could get letters of recommendation from Baron Eibeschütz, though for Joseph, with that last name of von Sch?nfeld—as his mother said—such a recommendation was not even necessary. With him went two other boys in his same situation.
When in June of 1796 they finally made it to Offenbach, they spent a whole day waiting for an audience with the Lady amongst the colorful international throng of young people. Some had already changed into eccentric uniforms and were drilling, others were just wandering around the courtyard, and when it started pouring, they were allowed to seek shelter under the roofs of the arcades. Joseph examined with interest the sculptures on the columns, each of them representing figures the clever boy easily identified from mythology. Among them was one he hated deeply, Mars—a thick-skulled knight in armor with a halberd, at whose feet stood Aries, the Zodiac sign governed by Mars, yet to Joseph it seemed that the ram was rather a symbol of those who, like sheep, follow generals’ orders and turn into cannon fodder. He was decidedly more drawn to the round, beautifully shaped Venus, upon whose curves he commented to his peers.
Not until evening were they received by the Lady.
She is a woman around forty years old, very elegantly dressed, with white, finely manicured hands, a tempest of still-dark hair pinned up into a high bun. While she reads their letter, Joseph gazes at her dog in fascination—tall and skinny, more like a monstrous grasshopper that never once takes its eyes off the boys. Finally the woman says: