Finally Father Pikulski suggested he go and visit Shorr. The big house with the shop on the market square. As he said this, he gave Chmielowski a wry, almost derisive look—unless Chmielowski was imagining it, of course. Perhaps he should have arranged to get his Jewish books through Pikulski, despite not liking him very much. Had he done so, he wouldn’t be standing here, sweating and embarrassed. But Father Chmielowski has a bit of a rebellious streak, so here he is. And there is something else a little irrational in it, too, an element of wordplay. Who would have believed that such things had any impact on the world? The priest has been working diligently on one particular passage in Kircher, on the great ox Shorobor. Perhaps the similarity between the two names—Shorr and Shorobor—is what brought him here. Bewildering are the determinations of the Lord.
Where are the famous books, where is this figure inspiring such fear and respect? The shop looks like it belongs to an ordinary merchant, though its owner is supposedly descended from a renowned rabbi and sage, the venerable Zalman Naftali Shorr. They sell garlic, herbs, pots full of spices, canisters and jars containing so many seasonings, crushed, ground, or in their original form, like these vanilla pods and nutmegs and cloves. On the shelves, there are bolts of cloth arranged over hay—these look like silk and satin, very bold and alluring, and the priest wonders if he might not need something, but now his attention is drawn to the clumsy label on a hefty dark green canister: Thea. He knows what he will ask for now when someone finally comes back—some of this herb, which lifts his spirits, which helps him to continue working without getting tired. And it assists with his digestion. He might buy a few cloves, too, to use in his evening mulled wine. The last few nights were so cold that his freezing feet prevented him from focusing on his writing. He casts around for some sort of bench.
Then everything happens all at once: from behind the shelves appears a stocky man with a beard, wearing a long woolen garment and Turkish shoes with pointed toes. A thin dark blue coat is draped over his shoulders. He squints as if he’s just emerged from deep inside a well. Jeremiah peeks out from behind him, along with two other faces that resemble Jeremiah’s, rosy and curious. And meanwhile, at the door that leads to the market square, there is now a scrawny boy, out of breath, perhaps even a young man—his facial hair is abundant, a light-colored goatee. He leans against the doorframe and pants—he must have run here as fast as he could. He looks the priest up and down and smiles a big, impish smile, revealing healthy, widely spaced teeth. The priest can’t quite tell if it’s a mocking smile or not. He prefers the distinguished figure in the coat, and it is to him that he says, with exceptional politeness:
“My dear sir, please forgive this intrusion . . .”
The man in the coat regards him tensely at first, but the expression on his face slowly changes, revealing something like a smile. All of a sudden the dean realizes that the other man can’t understand him, so he tries again, this time in Latin, blissfully certain he has now found his counterpart.
The man in the coat slowly shifts his gaze to the breathless boy in the doorway, who steps right into the room then, pulling at his dark jacket.
“I’ll translate,” the boy declares in an unexpectedly deep voice that has a bit of a Ruthenian lilt to it. Pointing a stubby finger at the dean, he says something in great excitement to the man in the coat.
It had not occurred to the priest that he might need an interpreter—he simply hadn’t thought of it. Now he feels uncomfortable but has no idea how to get out of this delicate situation—before you know it the whole marketplace could hear of it. He would certainly prefer to get out of here, out into the chilly fog that smells of manure. He is beginning to feel trapped in this low-ceilinged room, in this air that is thick with the smell of spices, and to top it all off, here’s somebody off the street poking his head in, trying to see what’s going on.
“I’d like to have a word with the venerable Elisha Shorr, if I may be permitted,” says the dean. “In private.”
The Jews are stunned. They exchange a few words. Jeremiah vanishes and only after the longest and most intolerable silence does he reemerge. But evidently the priest is to be admitted, because now they lead him back behind the shelves. He is followed by whispers, the soft patter of children’s feet, and stifled giggling—and now it seems that behind these thin walls there are veritable crowds of other people peeking in through the cracks in the wood, trying to catch a glimpse of Rohatyn’s vicar forane wandering the interior of a Jewish home. It turns out, too, that the little store on the square is no more than a single enclave of a much vaster structure, a kind of beehive with many rooms, hallways, stairs. The house turns out to be extensive, built up around an inner courtyard, which the priest glimpses out of the corner of his eye through a window when they briefly pause.
“I am Hry?ko,” pipes up the young man with the narrow beard. Father Chmielowski realizes that even if he did wish to retreat now, he could not possibly find his way back out of the beehive. This realization makes him perspire, and just then a door creaks open, and in the doorway stands a trim man in his prime, his face bright, smooth, impenetrable, with a gray beard, a garment that goes down to his knees, and on his feet woolen socks and black pantofles.
“That’s the Rabbi Elisha Shorr,” Hry?ko whispers, thrilled.
The room is small and sparsely furnished. In its center, there is a broad table with a book open atop it, and next to it, in several piles, some others—the priest’s eyes prowl their spines, trying to make out their titles. He doesn’t know much about Jews in general; he only knows these Rohatyn Jews by sight.
Father Chmielowski thinks suddenly how nice it is that both of them are of moderate height. With tall men, he always feels a little ill at ease. As they stand facing one another, it seems to the priest that the rabbi must also be pleased that they have this in common. Then the rabbi sits down, smiles, and gestures for the priest to do the same.
“With your permission and under these unlikely circumstances I come to Your Excellency altogether incognito, having heard such wonders of your wisdom and great erudition . . .”
Hry?ko pauses in the middle of the sentence and asks the priest:
“In-cog-neat?”
“And how! Which means that I implore discretion.”
“But what is that? Implore? Disc . . . ration?”
Appalled, the priest falls silent. What an interpreter he’s wound up with—one who understands nothing he says. So how are they supposed to talk? In Chinese? He will have to attempt to speak simply:
“I ask that this be kept a secret, for I do not conceal that I am the vicar forane of Rohatyn, a Catholic priest. But more importantly, I am an author.” Chmielowski emphasizes the word “author” by raising his finger. “And I would rather talk here today not as a member of the clergy, but as an author, who has been hard at work on a certain opuscule . . .”
“Opus . . . ?” ventures the hesitant voice of Hry?ko.
“. . . a minor work.”
“Oh. Please forgive me, Father, I’m unskilled in the Polish language, all I know is the normal words, the kind people use. I only know whatever I’ve heard around the horses.”
“From the horses?” snaps the priest, a bit excessively perhaps, but he is angry with this terrible interpreter.
“Well, because it’s horses I handle. By trade.”