At the Christian New Year, they head for Kopyczyńce, encountering on the road many richly bedecked sleighs going in the opposite direction, local magnates traveling solemnly and in high style to church. The horses slow to pass, and the members of each procession turn to look at one another in stunned silence. Jacob is wearing an open fur-lined overcoat with a broad collar and a dyed, fur-lined kalpak, and he looks like a king. The noblemen, meanwhile, shrouded in their own furs, look heavyset, squat, their hats adorned with feathers at the forehead, fastened by ornate, expensive brooches. The women, pale but for their cold red noses, look as though they’re drowning in their fur-lined robes.
In Kopyczyńce, the tables have already been set, and all the true believers from the village are waiting outside the home of Shlomo and his wife, Zytla, shuffling from foot to foot, stamping to keep the cold at bay, talking amongst themselves. The sky reddens as the sleighs pull up. The crowd quiets down and in rigid silence watches Jacob go inside. Just before he makes it to the door, he pauses, comes back, goes up to Rivka and her little daughter, and her husband, Shyle, and looks just above their heads, as if he has seen something there. This causes a stir, and even the chosen ones feel ill at ease. When he goes inside, Rivka starts to snivel, and so does her little girl, who is maybe three years old, and a lot of people suddenly start to cry, whether from stress or cold or exhaustion it isn’t clear. Some traveled all night. Some of them were also in Jezierzany before, and even Korolówka.
Inside, Jacob is ceremoniously received by Hayim from Warsaw, whom everyone respects because he runs a business in the capital. There, too, Jacob’s fame has spread, and people would like to know what’s going to happen now that the world is nearing its end. Jacob patiently explains all afternoon, so that the panes of the tiny little windows get white with steam, which the frost instantly transforms into filigreed palm trees.
That evening, those who peer in through the tiny windows can’t see much. The candle flames flicker and keep going out. The Holy Spirit descends into Jacob again: ruah haKodesh. Not much of it can be seen—just a bit of shadow on the wall from the candle flames, flickering, uncertain. A woman’s cry is interrupted.
When it’s over, Shlomo, in accordance with the ancient law, dispatches Zytla to Jacob’s bed. But Jacob is so tired that Zytla, wearing her good nightgown, clean and scented, feeling angry and rejected, has no choice but to go back to her husband.
In Hayim’s parents’ house, Jacob converts three people. Jacob likes Hayim very much because he has a zeal for organization, and the very next day, he gets to work. Now, from village to village, they are followed by a proper retinue, some dozen carts, people on horseback, and others on foot who can’t keep up with the rest of the caravan and don’t reach their destination until evening, tired and hungry; they sleep anywhere they can, in the barn, on the floor of the inn. Jacob is passed from one village to the next like a bizarre and holy wonder. Whenever they stop to rest, new people come and look in through the windows, listening to whatever he is saying. They don’t entirely understand him, but still they get tears in their eyes. They are moved not only by Jacob, whose gestures have gotten more brusque now, decisive, like he’s here for the moment but already elsewhere in his mind, with Abraham, with Sarah, with Sabbatai, with the great sages who have broken down the world into just the letters of which it is composed. There’s also a comet that has appeared in the sky and is getting bigger and bigger every day; it follows Jacob every evening, as if he were the comet’s son, a spark of light fallen from the sky. The procession goes through Trembowla, Soko?ów, Kozowa, P?aucza, Zborów, Z?oczów, Hanaczówka, and Busk. They all lift their heads to the sky. Jacob heals people by placing his hands on their heads, and lost things are found, abscesses diminish, women achieve long-awaited pregnancies, and the love between husbands and wives is restored. Cows give birth to twins with strange colorations, while chickens lay unusual eggs with two or even three yolks. Polish noblemen come to watch this Frank, this Turkish or Wallachian Jew, work miracles like no one’s ever seen before and talk about the end of the world. Will Christians be saved, too, or is this only the Jewish end of the world? It isn’t clear. They want to talk with him. In conversation via a translator—either Nahman or Hayim from Warsaw—the noblemen try to maintain their superiority, first calling him over to their carriages; Jacob goes up and answers politely. He starts by saying he’s a simple man, a simpleton, but just the way he looks at them makes them lose their self-assurance. Soon they are standing in the crowds with the others, differentiated only by their thick furs and the feathers in their hats.
In Busk, the whole town has spilled from its houses, burning torches; a severe frost has taken hold, and the snow creaks underfoot. Jacob spends an enjoyable week in the home of Nahman’s brother, Hayim, and his wife. The little boys follow Jacob around like a king’s pages. Here, Jacob sees a cerulean halo over almost everybody’s head. Just about the whole town is converted to the faith of the Holy Trinity, as Jacob himself calls it. By day, they bring him suffering children, that he might lay his hands on them. Then they send for him from Dawidów, and then they want him in Lwów. In Lwów, he gets to speak in a great hall, and a massive crowd comes to see him, but when he broaches the necessity of turning to the faith of Esau, that is, the Catholic faith, to bring about the Final Days, people start to leave, grumbling. The Jews of Lwów are wealthy, hostile, spoiled. Lwów is not as receptive to Jacob as the poor villages and towns. The rich and the satisfied are in no hurry for the Messiah; the Messiah is, after all, the one on whom the world must wait forever. The one who arrives is a false Messiah. The Messiah is the one who never arrives. That’s the whole point. When Jacob starts to speak in a Lwów synagogue, his audience drowns him out. So Jacob smashes the pulpit and throws it into the crowd, and then he has to run away because the crowd starts to close in on him in fury.
Even at the inn, he is not treated very well, although Hayim is paying a pretty price. The woman who keeps the inn snaps at Jacob rudely. He tells her to make sure to check her pockets, since she has a silver tymf there. She stops, astonished.
“How would I have that?”
He insists she reach into her pockets—all this takes place in the presence of witnesses. And she does pull out a coin, not as valuable since they started being counterfeited, but still, money. She looks at it, a bit embarrassed, then looks away and would like to leave, except that Jacob grabs her by the arm.
“You know exactly how you have that, don’t you?” asks Jacob without looking at her, because he is looking over the heads of the curious little crowd that has already gathered.
“Don’t say anything, mister, please,” begs the innkeeper, wresting her arm free.
But he has no intention of listening to her and is already shouting, raising his head high so that everyone can hear:
“She got it from a nobleman she sinned with last night.”