By way of punishment, his uncle sent him instead to the ancestral estate of Antoni’s dearly departed mother, which was being run by a local steward. Antoni was informed that he would now learn the techniques of agronomy—tillage, harvest, birthing sheep, keeping chickens. The estate was called Bielewicze.
Antoni, still a teenager, a young lord, arrived at Bielewicze toward the end of winter, when the ground was still frozen. For the first few weeks he was so consumed by guilt and a sense of squandered opportunity that he barely left the house, praying fervently and rummaging around in the empty rooms for traces of the mother he had lost. In April, for the very first time, he made it to the mill.
The mill at Bielewicze was leased to Mendel Kozowicz, who had only daughters, one of whom was Malka. Malka was already betrothed to some good-for-nothing; their wedding was coming up. Antoni started visiting the mill daily, on the pretense of bringing in grain and checking on its grinding—all of a sudden he became a great landlord, returning to look in on the progress of that grain, checking the flour. He would take a pinch of it between his fingers and raise it to his nostrils to see whether the rye was stale, and he would emerge from the mill dusted in flour, looking like a white-haired old man. But he never cared as much about the flour as he did about Malka. She told him her name meant Queen, but she didn’t look like a queen, more like a princess—small, quick, with black eyes and uncommonly dry, warm skin, like a little lizard, so that when they brushed arms once, Antoni heard a rustle.
No one noticed the love affair. Maybe it was all those clouds of flour in the air, or maybe it was because the romance was a rather odd one. Two children who had fallen in love. She was just a little bit older than he was, but it was enough that she could show him which stones hid crawfish and where the agaric grew in the grove as they took their walks together. It was really more like two orphans joining forces.
During the summer harvest, Antoni was never seen in the fields, and he was rarely seen at home. By the Jewish New Year, in September, it was clear that Malka was pregnant, and someone—some madman—advised him to abduct her, christen her, and marry her, so that both families, presented with a fait accompli, would find their fury defused.
And so Antoni kidnapped Malka, and he took her to the city and there, having bribed a priest to quickly baptize her, Antoni married his princess. He and the sacristan were the witnesses at the christening. She was given the Christian name Ma?gorzata, the Polish version of Margaret.
But this was not enough. But this was nothing. As they stood side by side before the altar, anyone—the best example being Yente, who sees all—would have said this was a couple, a couple composed of a boy and a girl of around the same age. But in reality, there was a chasm between them that could never be filled, a chasm so deep that it reached clear to the center of the earth, maybe even farther. It would be hard to explain it in words. To say she was a Jew, and he a Christian? That wasn’t it. That meant very little. At its heart it was that they represented two types of people, which at first glance no one could see, two human beings similar to one another but diametrically opposed: for she would not be saved, while he would live eternally. While still in her earthly guise, she was in fact already ash and phantom. From the perspective of the miller Kozowicz, who rented the mill from Dominik, their differences were even bigger: Malka was a real person, whereas Antoni was a creature who merely resembled a person, false, not even worth paying attention to in the real world.
Unaware of these differences, the couple showed up just once at the mill at Bielewicze, but it was obvious that there would never be a place for them there. Malka’s father was so devastated by what had happened that he grew weak and fell ill. The family tried to lock Malka in their cellar, but she escaped.
Antoni and his young wife moved, then, to the Bielewicze estate, but it turned out to be just for a few months.
The servants greeted them with some reserve. Malka’s sisters started coming to see her right away; increasingly intrepid, they would peer under the tablecloths, rummage around in drawers, caress the bedcovers. They would sit down at the table together, five girls and one boy with barely any hair on his face yet. The young couple would make the sign of the cross, and Malka’s sisters would pray in their language. A republic of Jewish children. As the girls chirped in Yiddish, Antoni quickly grasped the tone, and the words came to his tongue as though of their own accord. It certainly seemed like they were a good family, a perfect family—just the children, without any prime mover.
After several months, disturbed by such a course of events, the steward sent letters to Uncle Dominik, who arrived as dark and stormy as a hail cloud. When young Antoni realized that he was about to receive a thrashing in the presence of his wife, now very much with child, the young couple packed up and went to the mill. Kozowicz, however, fearing his master, upon whom his livelihood depended, dispatched the two under cover of night to relatives in Lithuania. At this point their trail was lost.
Of what draws persons together, and certain clarifications regarding the transmigration of souls
Moliwda spends more and more time in the warehouse where Jacob works. Business takes place here during the morning hours, when the heat isn’t too bad yet, or late in the evening. For the couple of hours after the sun sets, there is wine instead of tea for long-standing clients.
Moliwda knows Osman of Czernowitz well. He knows him thanks to certain Turks—he won’t say from where, he’s vowed to keep it a secret. Mystery, concealment, masks. If one were to view these mysteries through Yente’s all-seeing eyes, one would soon understand that they met during the secret gatherings of the Bektashi.