His uncle, whose hand they had to kiss, kneeling, by way of greeting, had a second wife, dangerously young—she created around herself an atmosphere completely incomprehensible to young Antoni, an atmosphere of theater, of pretense. She came from very poor, disreputable nobility, and so had to strive for some better version of herself. She was ridiculous in her efforts. When guests came to their estate, she would stroke her nephews’ faces with ostentatious tenderness, gently grabbing them by the ears and boasting, “Oh, yes, little Antoni, life will smile on this one.” After the guests left, she would stow the boys’ elegant garments in the wardrobe in the hallway, as if one day other orphans left by other dead relatives might show up, this time of superior provenance.
The flight of his lover, the sea, and this memory from his childhood make Moliwda feel frighteningly lonely. His only relief will come, not too long from now, from the Wallachian Bogomils, whom many stubbornly, and erroneously, maintain are Filippians. They will give him some respite from the torment of having a self broken in two (what a strange ailment—no one seems to suffer from it anymore, and there is no way to speak of it, and no one to tell). And all this has happened because Moliwda is fully convinced by now that his life has reached its natural conclusion, and that there won’t be any other world.
11.
How in the town of Craiova Moliwda-Kossakowski runs into Jacob
Two years later, in the spring of 1753, Moliwda is thirty-five years old and a little thinner due to the diet of the Bogomils. He has pale, watery eyes that are hard to read. His beard is sparse, reddish gray, the color of a jute sack, and his face is tanned from the sun. On his head is a very dirty white Turkish turban.
Moliwda is about to go and see this madman, this holy fool all the Jews keep talking about, saying how the soul of the Messiah has entered him, which is why he doesn’t act like a normal person. He’s seen many like this already, as if the soul of the Messiah enjoyed incarnating in someone new every couple of days.
He doesn’t get too close. He stays on the other side of the street, leaning against the wall, filling his pipe with the relaxed, languorous movements of a Turk. Smoking, he watches all of the commotion. It’s mostly young men milling around, Jews and Turks. Something’s going on inside the building, and now a cluster of the young whippersnappers are pushing their way through the door, you can hear bursts of laughter.
When he’s finished smoking, Moliwda decides to go inside, too. He has to bend down to pass through the dark hallway until he reaches the courtyard, where a small well has been converted into something like a fountain. It’s cool here, and some men are lying under a tree with broad leaves, almost all of them in Turkish clothing, but there are a few, too, in Jewish gabardines, who don’t sit on the ground, but rather on stools. There are also some dressed in the Wallachian style, and clean-shaven burghers, and two Greeks, recognizable by their characteristic wool coats. For a moment those gathered look at Moliwda with suspicion, and finally a thin man with a pockmarked face comes up to him and demands to know what it is he’s come for. Moliwda responds in perfect Turkish: “To listen.” The man backs off, but the mistrust in his eyes remains. He glances over at Moliwda every so often. They must think he’s a spy. Let them think so.
In the center of a loose semicircle stands a tall, well-built man, dressed like a Turk. He speaks carelessly, in a voice that carries and vibrates so that it would be difficult to interrupt him. He speaks Turkish, slowly, with a strange foreign accent. It’s not the accent of a learned man—more like a merchant’s accent, or even a vagabond’s. He uses words that sound straight out of the horse trade, but Greek and Hebrew words creep in, no doubt ones he has been taught. Moliwda grimaces, as the clash is too great and makes an unpleasant impression. This can’t be anything, really, he thinks, but then suddenly it dawns on him that this is the language of all these people around him, this mix of people who are always on the road, instead of some language carefully assembled in a single place for the benefit of a few. This is why it’s hard to figure out what sort of accent it is. Moliwda doesn’t know yet that in every language Jacob speaks you can detect a foreign accent.
Jacob Frank’s face is oblong, and he’s fairly light-skinned for a Turkish Jew; his skin is rough, especially his cheeks, which are covered in tiny pits that must be scars, like an attestation of some calamity, as if a flame had harmed his face at some point in the distant past. There is something unsettling about that face, thinks Moliwda, and it also arouses an involuntary respect—Jacob’s gaze is completely impenetrable.
In great astonishment, Kossakowski recognizes the old man sitting closest to this supposed prophet, smoking a pipe, closing his eyes each time he takes a drag. His beard is thick, gray, yellowed from the tobacco; the old man is not wearing a turban, but rather a simple Turkish cap, from beneath which sticks out hair that is as wild as it is gray. He gives himself a little time to remember where he has seen him before.
“What a small world,” he says to the old man in Turkish, trying to sound nonchalant. The old man turns to him and after a moment a hearty smile bursts forth out of his thick gray beard.
“Well, well, look at that, our great lord, the aristocrat,” Reb Mordke says ironically, indicating Moliwda with his finger and addressing a oneeyed man who is dark as an Arab. “So you managed to break free, I see.” He laughs loudly, delighted by the twist of finding not only Moliwda but himself back in Jacob’s company again. They embrace and clap each other’s shoulders. They greet each other more enthusiastically than they might have had they been old friends.