“Sin of the Adamites?”
“Oh, you know . . . ,” says Pikulski, suddenly flushing and repeatedly clearing his throat, but the bishop, in some spontaneous act of mercy, allows him to not finish the sentence. Nonetheless Father Pikulski soon resumes: “They had to let this Frank out of jail, but now he’s operating out of Turkey. During the Jewish fast he was riding around in his carriage proclaiming to his followers that since theirs was the true God, and they believed in him completely, why would they hide? He said: ‘Come, let us reveal ourselves and show them all. Let them see who we are.’ Then, in the midst of the fast—this strict Jewish fast—he poured everyone vodka and served them pork and pastries.”
“Where did they come from, so suddenly, and in such a quantity?” the bishop wonders, wiggling his toes inside their furred slippers. He had already heard about how some Jewish heretics have been defying the Torah’s rules, convinced they’d been invalidated by the arrival of the Messiah. But what does that have to do with us? thinks the bishop. They are foreigners, and their religion is bizarre and convoluted. It’s an internal dispute—let them go after each other. But now he’s hearing other things as well: that apparently they’ve been availing themselves of curses and spells, that they’ve been trying to coax wine out of walls, using the mysterious powers described in the Book of Creation. Apparently they meet at out-of-the-way bazaars and recognize one another by means of a range of secret signs—for instance, by inscribing the initials of their prophet, S.T., on books, stalls, and even on their wares. And furthermore—this the bishop made sure to make note of—they do business with each other and support one another in closed societies. He had heard that when one of them is accused of shady dealings of some sort, the others all testify to his integrity, putting the blame on someone outside the group.
“I still haven’t finished writing the report for Your Excellency,” Pikulski blurts. “The Zohar is also a commentary, another kind of commentary, I would say, mystical, not having to do with the law, but rather with questions of how the world came into being, of God Himself . . .”
“Blasphemies,” says the bishop. “Let’s get back to work.”
But Father Pikulski is still standing there. He’s some ten years younger than the bishop, maybe more, but he looks quite aged. It must be because he’s so thin, thinks the bishop.
“It’s a good thing Your Excellency sent to Lwów for me,” Father Pikulski says. “I am at Your Excellency’s disposition, and I don’t think Your Excellency would find another soul better versed in Jews than I am, or in this Jewish heresy.”
Having said this, Father Pikulski flushes, clears his throat, and lowers his head. He worries he may have gone too far, and thereby committed the sin of pride.
The bishop doesn’t notice Father Pikulski’s embarrassment. He is wondering why he is so cold, as though his blood were not reaching his body’s extremities, as though it were flowing too slowly—but why would his blood have become so reluctant?
The bishop has had enough problems with the local Jews. What an infernal tribe, insidious and insistent—whenever you throw them out, they come slinking back around the edges, so there’s nothing you can do about them short of something decisive, irreversible. Nothing else helps.
Had the bishop himself not brought about the royal decree against the Jews in the eighth year of performing his office, that is, Anno Domini 1748? He had so pestered the king about it, sending letters and filing petition after petition until at last the king had issued his edict: All the Jews of Kamieniec would have to leave within twenty-four hours. Their homes would go to the town, and their school would be razed. The Armenian merchants played their part in it, for the Jews had raised their ire by undercutting them on prices and trading in an unofficial, even illicit manner. The Armenians repaid the bishop handsomely. But the problem did not go away. Thrown out of Kamieniec, the Jews moved to Karvasary and Zinkowcy, immediately violating the restriction on them settling closer than three miles from town, and yet no one seemed to care to do a thing about it, and the authorities turned a blind eye. They would still come into town each day, so as to do at least a little bit of business. They’d send their women. Worse, their customers began to follow them out past Smotrycz to Zinkowcy, where they created an illegal market that diminished the size of the Kamieniec market. More complaints were lodged against them, not least that Jewesses from Karvasary were brought in to make those bagels of theirs, although this, too, was prohibited. Why do I have to be the one to handle all of this? the bishop thinks.
“They say the laws of the Torah no longer apply to them,” Father Pikulski goes on. “And that the form of Judaism based on the Talmud is a religion of deception. There can be no more talk of a Messiah to come—the Jews have been waiting in vain for the Messiah . . . They also say that God exists in three parts, and that this God lived on earth in human form.”
“Well, of course. That they’re right about.” The bishop perks up. “The Messiah won’t come now because he already came. But you’re not going to tell me, my good man, that they believe in Jesus Christ.” The bishop crosses himself. “Now give me that letter from those crazy people.”
He looks over the document as though expecting something special: seals, watermarks . . .
“Do they know Latin?” says the bishop suspiciously, reading the letter these Contra-Talmudists have submitted to him, which is unquestionably written in a learned hand. “Who writes for them?”
“They say it is a man named Kossakowski, but from which Kossakowskis he comes, I know not. I do have it on good authority that they are paying him quite well.”
Of Father Chmielowski’s defense of his good name before the bishop
Father Chmielowski rushes up to the bishop, delicately kisses his hand; the bishop, meanwhile, raises his eyes to the heavens—whether in a blessing for this new arrival or a gesture of boredom, it would be difficult to say. Pikulski also greets the priest—effusively, for him—by bowing low and extending his hand to shake Father Chmielowski’s briefly. The old priest—ill-shaven, white-haired, wearing a ragged cassock (appallingly, some of the buttons are missing), and carrying an old bag that has lost its strap so he has to hold it under his arm—smiles broadly.
“I hear you’re staying with His Excellency for good,” he says congenially, but evidently Pikulski detects some reproof in this, for his face turns red again.
The vicar forane launches into his supplication right away. He does so boldly since he knows the bishop well, from when the bishop was just an ordinary priest.