Asher in a Viennese café, or: Was ist Aufkl?rung? 1784
Of the healthful aspects of prophesying
Of figurines made out of bread
The rejected proposal of Franciszek Wo?owski the younger
A final audience with the emperor
Thomas von Sch?nfeld and his games
Scraps: Jacob Frank’s sons, and Moliwda
Last days in Brünn
Moliwda in search of his life’s center
The next chapter in the history of His Lordship Antoni Kossakowski, also known as Moliwda
29.
Of the little insect-like people who inhabit Offenbach am Main
Of Isenburger Schloss and its freezing residents
Of boiled eggs and Prince Lubomirski
How Zwierzchowska the She-Wolf maintains order in the castle
The knife set with turquoise
Of the dollhouse
The dangerous smell of the raspberry bush and muscate
Of Thomas von Sch?nfeld’s big plans
Who the Lord is when he is no longer who he is
Of Roch Frank’s sins
Of neshika, God’s kiss
Gossip, letters, denunciations, decrees, and reports
30.
The death of a Polish princess, step by step
A Warsaw table for thirty people
Of ordinary life
Heiliger Weg nach Offenbach
Of women soaking their legs
Scraps: Of the light
VII. THE BOOK OF NAMES
31.
Jakubowski and the books of death
Eva Frank saves Offenbach from Napoleonic looting
The skull
Of a meeting in Vienna
Samuel Ascherbach and his sisters
The Za?uski Brothers’ Library and Canon Benedykt Chmielowski
The martyrdom of Junius Frey
The children
A lovely little girl plays the spinet
Of a certain manuscript
The travels of New Athens
Yente
A Note on Sources
Author’s Acknowledgments
Translator’s Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Translator
Copyright Page
Prologue
Once swallowed, the piece of paper lodges in her esophagus, near her heart. Saliva-soaked. The specially prepared black ink dissolves slowly now, the letters losing their shapes. Within the human body, the word splits in two: substance and essence. When the former goes, the latter, formlessly abiding, may be absorbed into the body’s tissues, since essences always seek carriers in matter—even if this is to be the cause of many misfortunes.
Yente wakes up. But she was just almost dead! She feels this distinctly now, like a pain, like the river’s current—a tremor, a clamor, a rush.
With a delicate vibration, her heart resumes its weak but regular beating, capable. Warmth is restored to her bony, withered chest. Yente blinks and just barely lifts her eyelids again. She sees the agonized face of Elisha Shorr, who leans in over her. She tries to smile, but that much power over her face she can’t quite summon. Elisha Shorr’s brow is furrowed, his gaze brimming with resentment. His lips move, but no sound reaches Yente. Old Shorr’s big hands appear from somewhere, reaching for her neck, then move beneath her threadbare blanket. Clumsily he rolls her body onto the side, so he can check the bedding. Yente can’t feel his exertions, no—she senses only warmth, and the presence of a sweaty, bearded man.
Then suddenly, as though from some unexpected impact, Yente sees everything from above: herself, the balding top of Old Shorr’s head—in his struggle with her body, he has lost his cap.
And this is how it is now, how it will be: Yente sees all.
I.
The Book of
FOG
1.
1752, Rohatyn
It’s early morning, near the close of October. The vicar forane is standing on the porch of the presbytery, waiting for his carriage. He’s used to getting up at dawn, but today he feels just half awake and has no idea how he even ended up here, alone in an ocean of fog. He can’t remember rising, or getting dressed, or whether he’s had breakfast. He stares perplexed at the sturdy boots sticking out from underneath his cassock, at the tattered front of his faded woolen overcoat, at the gloves he’s holding in his hands. He slips on the left one; it’s warm and fits him perfectly, as though hand and glove have known each other many years. He breathes a sigh of relief. He feels for the bag slung over his shoulder, mechanically runs his fingers over the hard edges of the rectangle it contains, thickened like scars under the skin, and he remembers, slowly, what’s inside—that heavy, friendly form. A good thing, the thing that’s brought him here—those words, those signs, each with a profound connection to his life. Indeed, now he knows what’s there, and this awareness slowly starts to warm him up, and as his body comes back, he starts to be able to see through the fog. Behind him, the dark aperture of the doors, one side shut. The cold must have already set in, perhaps even a light frost already, spoiling the plums in the orchard. Above the doors, there is a rough inscription, which he sees without looking, already knowing what it says—he commissioned it, after all. Those two craftsmen from Podhajce took an entire week to carve the letters into the wood. He had, of course, requested they be done ornately:
HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW. ИO USE TO MILK IS YOUR SORROW
Somehow, in the second line, they wrote the very first letter backward, like a mirror image. Aggravated by this for the umpteenth time, the priest spins his head around, and the sight is enough to make him fully awake. That backward И . . . How could they be so negligent? You really have to watch them constantly, supervise their each and every step. And since these craftsmen are Jewish, they probably used some sort of Jewish style for the inscription, the letters looking ready to collapse under their frills. One of them had even tried to argue that this preposterous excuse for an N was acceptable—nay, even preferable!—since its bar went from bottom to top, and from left to right, in the Christian way, and that Jewish would have been the opposite. The petty irritation of it has brought him to his senses, and now Father Benedykt Chmielowski, dean of Rohatyn, understands why he felt as if he was still asleep—he’s surrounded by fog the same grayish color as his bedsheets; an off-white already tainted by dirt, by those enormous stores of gray that are the lining of the world. The fog is motionless, covering the whole of the courtyard completely; through it loom the familiar shapes of the big pear tree, the solid stone fence, and, farther still, the wicker cart. He knows it’s just an ordinary cloud, tumbled from the sky and landed with its belly on the ground. He was reading about this yesterday in Comenius.