He goes on to say that in his library in Firlejów he has two more titles by the great Kircher, Arca No? and Mundus subterraneus, kept under lock and key, too valuable to consult on a daily basis. He knows there are other titles, too, but with these he is familiar only through the mentions he has seen here and there. And he has built up a collection of numerous oldworld thinkers, including, he says, hoping to win Shorr over, “by the Jewish historiographer Josephus.”
They pour him kompot from a pitcher and offer him a plate of dried figs and dates. The priest places them in his mouth with great reverence—it’s been a long time since he had any, and their unearthly sweetness immediately restores his strength. He thinks he needs to state his business, that it’s high time, so he swallows the sweetness and cuts to the chase; yet before he has finished, he understands that he’s been hasty, and that he won’t get what he wants.
Perhaps it is the sudden change in Hry?ko’s manner that tips him off. He would bet, as well, that the boy is inserting his own words as he translates, be they warnings or the contrary, ad libs intended to help the priest’s case. Elisha Shorr edges into his chair and leans his head back, closing his eyes, seemingly endeavoring to consult his inner depths.
This continues until the priest, without intending to, exchanges a significant glance with the young interpreter.
“The rabbi is listening to the voices of his elders,” whispers the interpreter, and the priest nods knowingly, although in fact he still does not know what is going on. Perhaps this Jew really is in some sort of magic contact with assorted demons—he knows they have quite a few of them amongst the Jews, all those lamias and Liliths. Shorr’s hesitation, and his shut eyes, make the priest think it really would have been better not to have come at all, the situation being such a delicate and unusual one. He hopes he has not exposed himself to infamy.
Shorr gets up and turns toward the wall, bows his head, and remains thus for a moment. The priest grows impatient—is this a sign that he should leave? Hry?ko shuts his eyes, too. Have they fallen asleep? The priest clears his throat discreetly. This silence of theirs has robbed him of whatever remained of his confidence. Now he really is sorry he came.
Suddenly Shorr, as if nothing had happened, starts toward the cabinets and opens one. Solemnly he extracts a thick folio bearing the same symbols as all the other books, and he sets it on the table in front of the priest. He opens the book backward, and the priest sees the beautifully made title page . . .
“Sefer ha?Zohar,” Shorr says piously, and then he puts the book back inside the cabinet.
“Who could read it for you, anyway, Father . . . ,” Hry?ko says, to cheer him up.
The priest leaves two volumes of his New Athens on Shorr’s table as an enticement to exchange in the future. He taps them with his index finger and then points to himself, aiming right in the middle of his chest: “I wrote this. They ought to read it—if only they knew the language. They’d learn a lot about the world.” He awaits a reaction, but Shorr only raises his eyebrows a little.
Father Chmielowski and Hry?ko walk out into the chilly and unpleasant air together. Hry?ko is still babbling on about something; the priest, meanwhile, is sizing him up: his youthful face covered in the light-colored down of what will become a beard, his long, curled eyelashes, which lend him something of the aspect of a child, his peasant clothing.
“Are you Jewish?”
“Oh, no . . . ,” says Hry?ko, shrugging. “I’m from here, from Rohatyn, from that house just over there. Orthodox, in theory.”
“Then how’d you learn their language?”
Hry?ko moves closer to the priest, and they walk almost shoulder to shoulder—evidently he feels he has been encouraged to adopt this sort of familiarity. He says his mother and father were taken by the plague of 1746. They had done business with the Shorrs—his father was a tanner—and when he died, Shorr took Hry?ko, his grandmother, and his younger brother under his protection, paying off the Father’s debts and generally providing for this trio of neighbors. And besides, living in the neighborhood, you interact more with Jews than you do with your own, and you talk their language—Hry?ko himself doesn’t even really know when he learned it, but now he uses it as fluently as if it were his own, which comes in pretty handy for trade and such, since the Jews, especially the older ones, are wary of Polish and Ruthenian. The Jews are not what people say they are—especially not the Shorrs. There are a lot of them, and their home is nice and warm and welcoming, always something to eat and a little glass of vodka when it’s cold. Now Hry?ko is learning his father’s trade: the world will always need leather.
“But don’t you have any Christian kin?”
“I do, I do, but a long way away, and they don’t seem to mind us too much. Oh, there you go—my brother, O?e?.” A little boy who looks like he’s about eight, covered in freckles, comes running up to them then. “No reason for you to concern yourself, good Father,” says Hry?ko cheerfully. “God created man with eyes in the front, not the back of the head, and that means we’ve got to think about what’s to come, not what has been.”
The priest does indeed consider this evidence of God’s ingenuity, although he can’t quite recall where in the Scripture it is actually written.
“Learn their language well enough with them, and you’ll translate those books.”
“Not me, Your Excellency, no, sir, I’m not one for reading. I find it boring! I’d rather trade, I like that. Horses best. Or like the Shorrs—vodka, beer.”
“Oh, dear, so they’ve corrupted you already . . . ,” says the priest.
“What do you mean? You think alcohol is worse than other wares? People need to drink, life is hard!”
He rambles on about something or other, trailing after the priest, although Father Chmielowski would happily be rid of him at this point. He stands facing the marketplace, looking around for Roshko, first among the sheepskin coats and then over the whole of the square, but more people have arrived, and there’s no chance of finding his driver. So he decides to go on alone to his carriage. Meanwhile, his interpreter has entered so fully into his role that he continues to explain things, clearly delighted that he can. He says that there is to be a great wedding in the Shorrs’ home, since Elisha’s son (the very one the priest saw in the shop, the one he was calling Jeremiah, whose real name turns out to be Isaac) is marrying the daughter of some Moravian Jews. Soon the whole family will be here, and all the relatives from around these parts—Busk, Podhajce, Jezierzany, Kopyczyńce, but also Lwów and maybe even Kraków, though it’s late in the year, and to his mind—to Hry?ko’s mind—it would be better to wed in the summer. And Hry?ko, ever loquacious, goes on, saying it would be great if the Father could come to a wedding like that, too, and then he evidently pictures it, because he bursts out laughing, the same laugh that the priest initially mistook for mockery. Father Chmielowski gives Hry?ko a grosz.
Hry?ko looks at the grosz and in a moment is gone. The priest stands there but will soon take the plunge into the marketplace as though into choppy waters, drowning in it as he pursues the delicious smell of those terrines that were available somewhere around here.
2.