Some of the rooms in the cave are filled with crystals that come out of the walls and down from the ceilings. People say that these are frozen drops of light that got stuck down in the ground and stopped shining. But as soon as they are touched with a candle flame, they will light up again, showing their eternal, silent interior.
In one of these rooms lies Yente. The damp, alighting on her skin for so many years, is now fully adhered to her bones, crystallizing, sparkling, shining bright. Its glow grows deep into her body and renders her almost translucent. Yente transforms slowly into crystal and, in a few million more years, she will be a diamond. Meanwhile, her eyes are still moving, and a smile slowly spreads across her face, not directed at anybody now. That long pinkish crystal, grown into the rock, which lights up from time to time from the sparingly used oil lamps, shows a blurred and indistinct interior. The children, who have become used to life in the cave and are already able to venture deep inside it, say that that piece of the rock is alive. If you tried to shine a light on it, all the way inside, you would see a tiny human face in there, but of course no one takes this seriously, especially since nearly a year and a half spent in the dark has permanently debilitated their eyesight.
The adults go out from time to time for provisions, but they never venture as far as any of the nearby villages. The villagers treat them like ghosts, leaving for them, as if by accident, through some oversight, bags of flour or potatoes out behind their barns.
In April 1944, someone throws a bottle into the hole leading into the cave; inside the bottle is a piece of paper that says, in a clumsy hand, “Germans gone.”
They come out blinded, shielding their eyes from the light.
They have all survived, and in the postwar chaos, most of them manage to emigrate to Canada, where they tell their story, so improbable that few believe them.
Yente sees the forest’s undergrowth, small clumps of blackberries, the bright leaves of young oaks at the entrance to the cave, and then the whole hill and the village, and the roads down which dart vehicles. She sees the flash of the Dniester, like the flash of the blade of a knife, and the other rivers that carry water out to seas, and the seas, laden with great ships transporting goods. And she sees the lighthouses communicating by means of little scraps of light. For a moment, she pauses on her journey upward, thinking she can hear somebody calling her. Who might still know Yente’s name? Down below, she makes out a sitting figure, her face lit up by some white glow, hair peculiar, attire eccentric—yet nothing has surprised Yente in an awfully long time; she has lost that ability. She just watches letters appear out of nowhere from under this figure’s fingers on a bright flat rectangle of light, lining up obediently in little rows. The only thing Yente can think of that is like this is tracks in the snow—since the dead lose their ability to read, one of death’s most unfortunate consequences . . . And so poor Yente is unable to recognize her own name in this YENTE YENTE YENTE displayed now on the screen. She therefore loses interest and vanishes somewhere up above.
Here, however, where we are, there is a buzzing sound, the grim sound of matter, and the world falls into obscurity, and the earth goes out. There can be no doubt that the world is made of darkness. Now we find ourselves on the side of darkness.
Nonetheless it is written that any person who toils over matters of Messiahs, even failed ones, even just to tell their stories, will be treated just the same as he who studies the eternal mysteries of light.
A Note on Sources
It’s a good thing the novel has traditionally been understood as a fiction, since that means its author is generally not expected to furnish a complete bibliography. In this case in particular, that would take up entirely too much space.
Anyone interested in the story told in this book should first of all obtain Aleksander Kraushar’s Frank i franki?ci polscy 1726–1816: Monogra? fia historyczna, published in 1895, as well as that record of the “chats” given by Frank himself, Ksi?ga S?ów Pańskich: Ezoteryczne wyk?ady Jakuba Franka, edited by Jan Doktór (1997). There is an English translation of the latter, done by Harris Lenowitz, called The Collection of the Words of the Lord, by Jacob Frank. The amplest historical and political context that might permit a greater understanding of the phenomenon of Frankism in Poland is given by Pawe? Maciejko’s The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011, as I was writing my novel. An article on the doctrine of Sabbatai Tzvi by the same author showed me what, at its very essence, Frankism might be. The three paradoxes seen through the lens of Sabbatian theology, taken up by Nahman (“Of what draws persons together, and certain clarifications regarding the transmigration of souls”), were borrowed (with the author’s permission) from Maciejko’s earlier work, “Coitus interruptus in And I Came this Day unto the Fountain,” in R. Jonathan Eibeschütz’s And I Came this Day unto the Fountain, a volume also edited and introduced by Pawel Maciejko, published in Los Angeles in 2014.
The foundational reading that then organized all other study of subjects connected to Judaism was of course Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.
I found a detailed account of the blood libel in Markowa Wolica in 1752, along with a number of relevant documents, in Kazimierz Rudnicki’s Biskup Kajetan So?tyk 1715–1788, published in Kraków in 1906 as volume 5 of Monografia w zakresie dziejów nowo?ytnych, edited by Szymon Askenazy. I based the testimonies during the Lwów dispute on Gaudenty Pikulski’s S?d ?ydowski we lwowskim ko?ciele Archikatedralnym 1759 r. (fourth edition, published in 1906).
My psychological portrait of Katarzyna Kossakowska was inspired by her brief appearance in Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s Macocha, as well as by the extensive correspondence conducted by the real Kossakowska herself. Moliwda’s character owes much to Andrzej ?u?awski and his book Moliwda (1994). And I drew much of my information on Thomas von Sch?nfeld from Krzysztof Rutkowski’s book Ko?ció? ?wi?tego Rocha: Przepowie?ci (2001).
It brought me great joy to work on the character of Father Benedykt Chmielowski, vicar forane of Rohatyn, later canon of Kiev, first Polish encyclopedist. To anyone interested I do highly recommend reading Nowe Ateny albo Akademia Wszelkiej sciencyi pe?na, wonderfully selected and edited by Maria and Jan Józef Lipscy in 1966. Truth be told, this fantastic work is overdue for a new edition. Father Chmielowski’s encounter with the terrific—though no longer well-known to a general public—Baroque poet El?bieta Dru?backa is not recorded anywhere, but according to all the laws of probability it could certainly have happened, for after all they moved in similar orbits, in terms of both time and place.