“Your Excellency, I did not come here to pester. I came to ask for your brotherly counsel. What is to be done?” he opens dramatically.
From his bag, he pulls out a package of sorts, wrapped in a grubby linen cloth, and sets it down in front of him, keeping his hands on it as he explains his business.
The issue goes back many years, to when the vicar forane was still preceptor for the magnate’s son on the estate of Joseph Jab?onowski. In his free moments, he had been given license to make use of the castle’s library. He would go there often, whenever his charge was otherwise occupied, and he spent every spare instant he had reading in that font of good knowledge. Even back then he was starting to take notes and copy out whole passages from books, and what with his terrific memory, he also managed to retain a lot.
Now, as yet another edition of his book has been printed—Father Chmielowski jabs at the package with his forefinger—this ancient case has reared its ugly head again: he is accused of having stolen both the idea and a number of the facts and interpretations from a manuscript by Prince Jab?onowski, which supposedly had lain for all to see on the table in the library, where the priest could easily have cribbed from it at will.
The priest falls silent for a moment, unable to catch his breath, while the bishop, alarmed by his fervor, leans toward him over the desk and glances uneasily at the package, trying to remember “this ancient case.”
“How could I have cribbed?” exclaims the vicar forane. “What does ‘cribbed’ even mean? My entire project is a thesaurus stultitiae—a collection of foolish little things! I gathered all of the knowledge of mankind in my volumes—so how would I not have borrowed from other sources? How would I not have perused? Aristotle’s wisdom or Sigebert’s chronicles or Saint Augustine’s holy works cannot belong to any one person! Even if he is a magnate, and his holdings include vast treasures, still, knowledge does not belong to him, and it cannot be stamped or imprinted or staked off like a field! As though he doesn’t have enough already, he has to ruin the one thing I do have—my good name and the reader’s esteem. When, omni modo crescendi neglecto, with great effort I brought the work to completion, now he wants to destroy its reception with such libel? Dicit: Fur es! That I would have stolen his idea! How innovative of an idea is it to write down a few interesting things? Whatever curiosis I have found wherever, I have sine invidia, with no jealousy whatsoever, brought it out onto the stage of my Athens. And what is wrong with that? Anyone could have had the same idea. Just show me where!”
Here the vicar forane in a single movement liberates the tome from its packaging and holds this fresh edition of New Athens up to the bishop’s eyes. The pungent smell of printer’s ink assaults their nostrils.
“This is the fourth edition, is it not?” Bishop Dembowski says, trying to calm him down.
“Well, exactly! People read this more frequently than you might think, My Dearest Excellency. In many noble houses, and amongst certain of the townspeople, this book sits in the living room, and persons young and old alike will reach for it, and bit by bit, nolens volens, they soak up information on the world.”
At this Bishop Dembowski falls deep into thought; wisdom, after all, is merely the ability to mete out judgments.
“Perhaps the allegations are unwarranted, but the person making them is a highly respectable man,” he says, though a moment later he adds, “Although he is quarrelsome and embittered. What am I to do?”
Father Chmielowski would like the Church’s support for his book. Especially since he is, after all, one of its officers. He stands bravely in the ranks of the faithful and works for the good of the Church, not caring for his own advantage. He reminds the bishop that the Commonwealth is a destitute country when it comes to books. Apparently there are as many as six hundred thousand nobles in it, while a paltry three hundred titles are published every year, leaving the elites to enrich their minds how, exactly? Peasants cannot read, by definition, such is their lot that books are irrelevant to them. The Jews have their own—most of them don’t know Latin. For a moment he is silent, and then, staring at the threads on his cassock that once held buttons, he says:
“Your Excellency, you promised two years ago that you would make a contribution to this publication. My Athens is a treasure trove of information that everyone must have.”
The priest does not want to say it, lest the bishop suspect him of pride, but he would be delighted to see the book in every landed estate, read by everyone, for that is how he has been writing it: for everyone. Why could women not sit down with it? Some of its pages would even be suitable for children . . . although not just any pages, he mentally notes.
The bishop clears his throat and leans back a bit, so Father Chmielowski adds, in a quieter, slightly less fervent voice:
“But nothing came of that. I paid for everything myself, giving the Jesuit printers all of the money I had set aside for my old age.”
The bishop thinks that he must somehow extricate himself from the absurd demands of this old acquaintance. No money—where would he get it?—and no public backing. The bishop hasn’t even read this book, and he doesn’t particularly like Chmielowski. He is too disorganized to be a good writer, and he certainly doesn’t strike the bishop as a wise man. And if they are talking of aid, it ought to be to the Church, not from it.
“Father, you live by your pen, so use it to defend yourself,” he says. “Write your explication, put your arguments down in some sort of manifesto.” He sees that the priest’s face is growing longer and sadder, and, pitying the old man, he quickly adds in a softer tone, “I’ll support you among the Jesuits, but don’t advertise it publicly.”
The priest obviously did not expect this sort of reception, but before he can say more, a secretary who looks like an overgrown rodent appears in the doorway, and so Chmielowski just picks up his package and leaves. He tries to exit slowly and with dignity so no one can tell how deeply disappointed he is.
Roshko takes him home, shrouded in furs. The snow is up to the roofs of the thatched cottages, and the sleigh glides lightly, as though they were flying. The sun reflects off every snowflake, blinding the priest. Just before they reach Rohatyn a cavalcade of sleighs and sleds emerges from that brightness, bearing many Jews, then noisily vanishes into the blinding white. The priest does not yet know that a long-awaited letter has arrived for him at home.
What El?bieta Dru?backa writes to Father Chmielowski in February of 1756 from Rzemień on the Wis?oka