When Cybula told Kora and Yagoda that he planned to ride to Miasto with Nosek, to be gone almost four months, Yagoda burst out crying and wailed that she would never see him again. Kora warned him that bandits infested the roads, as well as vicious smoks, babuks, and other devils who dragged people over the mountains to dark pits at the end of the world. But Cybula was firm: he had given his consent to Nosek, who had passed it on to Krol Rudy. Besides, the camp needed horses, wagons, plowshares, scythes, sickles, hoes, saws, hammers, and many other tools for the fields and their new houses. He also promised to bring back gifts for Kora and Yagoda. Kora allowed herself to be placated after a while, but hard as he tried, Cybula could not convince Yagoda that the trip would bring something good to her, to himself, to the camp. It was close to dawn when the three finally fell asleep.
Soon after sunrise Nosek came to awaken Cybula. Everything was ready: two horses for the men, a third horse to carry their supplies as well as Krol Rudy’s booty. For the first time in his life, Cybula carried a sword at his hip, and wore a hat with feathers, as well as the long cloak, a zupan, worn only by kniezes. He looked like one of the great heroes grandmothers told stories about on long winter nights. Krol Rudy and his kniezes took leave of the two emissaries. Cybula deftly climbed up on his horse. He kissed Yagoda, Kora, and the other women and girls, who came bearing baskets of flowers and fruit. Two rows of woyaks saluted the riders: they pulled out their swords, put them together to form an archway, and shouted words of praise. Nosek distributed to the children pretzels baked of the first harvest’s flour. Krol Rudy came, accompanied by Laska, who, although the weather was warm, had put shoes on her bare feet, as befitted the wife of a king. She kissed her father, and Nosek kissed her forehead and knelt before her. Krol Rudy shouted out, “May the gods be with you!” and he signaled the riders to begin their journey. Yagoda had promised Cybula not to cry, but she wailed nevertheless, even as she accompanied him to the road outside the camp.
Cybula, who had never left the region in which he was born, knew nothing of the road he was taking. He relied completely on Nosek, who said they must find a stream which flowed down from the mountain and follow it all the way. It was Nosek who had wandered in many lands for years, fought wars, met all kinds of people. Nosek rode on one horse, leading the other along, and Cybula rode behind, his eyes and ears watchful for surprise attacks. One hand held the reins as the other rested on the handle of his sword. The road meandered through a forest. It seemed to be more of a trail, too narrow even for one man, and now disappearing under moss, fallen pine needles, branches, cones. Previous travelers had carved some markings on tree trunks, but Cybula could not understand how these markings indicated direction. It was odd to have left the camp not as a man fleeing his enemies but as a pan, a kniez. And on whose mission? That of his former enemy, a king who had married his daughter and perhaps killed his wife. Even though events happened one by one, as one looked back on them they resembled a clever plan arranged by some godly sage who wanted no one to guess how it would end. If someone had told Cybula on the night of the massacre that the murderers’ leader would become his son-in-law, and would send him to a distant place, entrusted with his precious possessions, Cybula would have thought it madness. Yet the powers had seen fit to decree it all.
So that the horses were not overtaxed, the two men rode slowly and let them rest, graze, drink. They themselves also rested and ate. On the road they became even closer to each other than before. Each needed the other’s help. When one dozed off, the other stood guard. One evening, after the two had eaten and prepared to spend the night in the forest, off the road, but not too far away, Cybula said to Nosek, “All troubles come from men. What would happen if there were no men in the world? Women would never turn to robbing, and no one would have to fear being attacked in the night. Women are weak and are reluctant to leave their tents after dark.”
Nosek smiled. Cybula had such strange thoughts. Nosek answered in his simple way, “If there were no men, there would be no women, either.”
“Somehow I can’t imagine a woman with a sword or a spear, hurting another woman and stabbing her,” Cybula said.
“Female animals are just as bloodthirsty as male animals,” said Nosek. “A female wolf would tear apart a deer or a man as quickly as would a male wolf. Our own women kill small animals and fish. They don’t kill each other because we men do it for them.”
“Yes, true,” Cybula agreed, “but men are different from animals.”
“They are not so different. Women are lazy; they only appear to be softhearted. They send men out to face all the dangers, and they stay in their huts and warm themselves by the fire.”
A long while passed before Cybula answered: “You, Nosek, don’t like women.”
Nosek smiled. “Not much.”
“Why?”
“Ah, it’s hard to speak to them. If you say something that displeases them, immediately they raise a hue and cry. And they always complain about men: men don’t love them enough, don’t pamper them enough. Women hate each other, but still they always fall into each other’s arms and claim to be devoted. If one is ill, another comes immediately to fill her place in bed, next to the husband. It could be her own sister!”
“Are men any better?” Cybula asked.
“Men are more honest.”
“People say that you don’t want to marry. Is that true?” Cybula asked, and immediately regretted his words.
Nosek did not answer at once. Then he said, “I have become used to living without women. In the years when we were a fighting band, months would go by when we never saw them. Our woyaks would kill the old and ugly women, and the young ones would be so terrified, they could only scream and void. Some of them fought the men until they were covered with blood. There’s no pleasure in lying with a female who spits on you, curses you, and tries to gouge out your eyes.”
“Is it better to lie with a man?” Cybula asked.
“When two men do this, they are friends, not enemies,” Nosek answered.
Night fell; the stars came out. Nosek said, “We have ridden so far, and yet we see the very same stars.”
“You recognize the stars?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“By their position, how they stand together. It’s always the same.”
“What are they?” Cybula asked.
“Some sort of fires, I think. But they must be very large and not as small as they seem. I once saw these very same stars near the Vistula and in many other places. They move away, but they come back every year. Some in summer, some in winter.” Both men fell silent. It was hard to know whether Nosek was sleeping or awake. Cybula was already beginning to dream, when something bit him. He sat up with a start. Was it a snake? He was well aware that one could die from a snake’s bite. Even some mushrooms and berries had poison which killed if you ate them. Every minute, man put his life in danger. Cybula thought he heard a rustle, footsteps among the trees. Was it a wolf? A bear? He kept grabbing the handle of his sword, but of what use was a sword against a bear or a wolf? Cybula longed to talk more to Nosek, but he did not dare awaken him. Nosek, apparently, was not as attached to life as he was, or as gloomy as he, Cybula. Nosek did not burrow into the worries which gnawed at Cybula day and night.
They were lost. They could not find the stream which led to Miasto. They had ridden for hours and there was no one to ask. When they did chance on someone—a barefoot wanderer with a stick and a pack on his back—the fellow had never heard of Miasto. He did not quite understand the language in which they spoke to him. Now clouds gathered on the edge of the sky and darkened it. A cold wind blew. The horse carrying the supplies began to limp. Cybula looked for a cave to hide from the coming rain, but there were no caves in the valley. He blurted out, “The gods don’t want us to reach Miasto.”
“What does it have to do with the gods?” Nosek asked.
It started to rain, and the sprinkle quickly turned into a torrent. The two men and their horses rode deeper into the forest in search of cover. There was thunder and lightning. Wet animals rushed past them, frightened by the flooding waters. Cybula was too tired to pick up his bow and shoot at them. His mother had told him that thunder was caused by gods who quarreled and rolled stones at one another. But why should gods quarrel? And what was lightning? If it was fire, then why didn’t rain put it out? Cybula was asking himself the same questions he had asked as a child. From time to time a deer sped by, or a hare, a fox. It was odd: animals had only one way out—to run. But at least they did not commit the follies that men did: they did not go off in search of some town, did not try to sell someone else’s booty, did not set up kings, did not become kniezes. The horses, which were tied to two trees, also wanted to flee; they tugged at their straps trying to break free. Their large dark eyes—all pupil—looked at the two men with fear and wonder, but the men could ride no farther. Night was beginning to fall. Nosek said wryly, “If we die here, Krol Rudy will think we ran off with his gold.” And wet and miserable as his face was, he still managed to smile.
Both men sat quietly, their backs against the trees. Nosek arose, walked toward the horses, and from a bag tied to one of the saddles took out a chunk of meat and tore it in two. The horses could have easily bent their heads and eaten their fill, but they showed no hunger. Although Cybula was a hunter, accustomed to kill animals or lure them to traps, he also felt pity for them. He knew that their suffering was the same as man’s—the same helplessness, the same fear of ceasing to be and becoming carcasses. At that moment Cybula’s lot was the same as theirs, perhaps even worse than theirs. The horses were not restless, but he, Cybula, was in a hurry; if he was meant to die, let it happen soon. He longed to speak to Nosek, but Nosek kept stubbornly silent and behaved as if he clearly knew what not to do.
Cybula felt that he would not sleep a wink, but soon he was fast asleep. He was walking in a green meadow where horses, oxen, cows and calves grazed. A stream gurgled nearby. He was searching for a field, but whenever he thought he found it, the field kept moving away. He saw some people harvesting, but instead of tying the wheat in small bundles, they let it dry in the sun, heaping wheat on top of wheat, until it rose high above the treetops—a mountain of wheat! Cybula opened his eyes. The rain had stopped. He was wet and cold, but something of the warmth of the dream remained in his body. He looked around and saw Nosek busying himself with the horses. Cybula arose with better spirits, eager to resume the journey. He could sense that the day would grow warmer. He threw off his wet zupan and strolled over to Nosek naked.
“Shiva had a thorn in her hoof,” Nosek said. “No wonder she limped.”
“Did you pull it out?”
“Yes. She tried to bite me, but I managed to get it out.”
They dressed, mounted their horses, and soon after sunrise rode out of the forest.
Slowly the days became weeks; the full moon became a half-moon and the half-moon turned into a new moon. The trail they had followed now merged with a wider roadway, and soon they saw other riders, wagons, and carts. They had reached a region settled by people who spoke the Polish language in their own strange way, and no day passed without Cybula learning new words and expressions. He kept discovering things he had never seen before, passing fields, orchards, fish ponds, wells, stone mills to grind wheat and corn, stables for horses, pigsties, windmills, bridges to cross streams and even rivers. He saw huts with thatched roofs, and a few with wooden shingles. Soon he saw a high wall with large towers looming in the distance, and as he gaped and they approached, Nosek explained:
“This wall was built by the rulers of Miasto of stone and brick, and they have posted guards in the watchtowers to warn them of approaching enemies. The krols and kniezes are always fighting, invading each other’s gospodas, looting, and capturing slaves. Every settlement like Miasto has to be protected, and strangers like us will be stopped at the gate. If they allow us to enter, we shall have to pay a toll.”
Outside the walls, the fields stretched out, already harvested. Cattle, horses, and sheep grazed on the grassy plains. Even the smells were new to Cybula, a mixture of smoke, garbage, something rancid, and something good like fresh baked bread. Nosek explained that not everyone in Miasto was allowed to own an oven and that the baking was distributed among a number of town dwellers.
At the gate, Nosek told the guards their journey’s aim and paid the toll. Nosek spoke Polish, but he used words that Cybula could barely understand. Soon they were walking their horses down a street with houses on both sides. There were stores among the houses where bins of merchandise were displayed such as Cybula had never seen before. The ground was still muddy from yesterday’s rain and puddles dotted the street. The street teemed with people. Wagons, pulled by horses or oxen hitched to wooden yokes, passed by. Cybula had entered into a new world. Even the people seemed new to him: they were all busy, yet they did not seem to know one another. Nosek said, “I think this is their market day.”
As they walked along, doors opened and women emptied out slop pails, peels of onions, radishes, cucumbers, other vegetables and fruit. A man came out of one door hobbling on crutches. A blind man sat on a step humming to himself. Outside a house Cybula saw a large block of wood, and a man wearing a bloodied apron chopping meat and bones with an ax. He was selling chunks of a slaughtered ox or pig. An unpleasant odor arose from the meat and Nosek explained, “Here people have no time to hunt. They buy their meat from a butcher.”
“Why does the meat smell?”
“It takes time for an animal to be slaughtered and skinned and brought to the butcher. The butcher does not always sell the meat in one day, and what remains the next day or on days after that must still be sold.”
Dogs gathered among the women, sniffing the air. When a sliver of meat or bone dropped to the ground, they pounced on it, grabbing and tearing it from each other’s mouth. The butcher picked up a heavy stick and began to chase after the dogs, hitting those he could reach. Cybula noticed that the meat was weighed on a scale, and when a woman received her portion, she handed some coins to the butcher. Nosek told him that this was money, copper groschens.
Until now Cybula had believed he knew human nature, understood people’s needs and conduct. But the people he saw here were different. They were pressed together in heaps as if the town were an anthill. He and Nosek could steer their horses through the crowds only with difficulty. Pedestrians and wagons were coming from all directions. A man balanced two buckets of water on a wooden yoke braced over his shoulders, shouting, “Let the water man through!” The houses were built one next to the other and had rooms for workers to practice their crafts. One made shoes, another sewed clothes, a third cut hides. Nosek and his two horses were already far ahead; the street was not wide enough for the men to walk side by side. Here in town the air was hot, heavy, and stifling. Through four-cornered holes in the walls—windows—and through open doors Cybula could glimpse half-naked women and naked children. One woman was nursing a child at her huge breast, another cooked by a fire which blazed not in an oven but on top of it. Here and there a room had a wooden floor, but in most rooms the ground was muddy and filthy. How could people live like this, Cybula wondered. The huts in the Lesnik camp were larger, roomier, and not as cluttered as these with beds, cribs, tables, benches, barrels of clean water, and vats with foul water and scum. Children came out to the street to answer nature’s calls.
They left the narrow street and entered a large open square which Nosek called “the market.” Here there was a well and the houses were higher than before, stories piled one upon the other. In open stalls and on the ground merchants spread out and exhibited their wares: earthen jugs, pots, sheepskins, fur hats, fringed shawls, kerchiefs, tubs of honey, baskets of mushrooms, beans, peas, turnips, radishes, cucumbers. Nosek explained that those who came to the market to shop were not kniezes’ slaves but kmiecies, small landowners. They paid tithes to the noblemen, and they were free. Often they had parobeks, servants who worked in the fields or helped with the housework. Nosek stopped a passerby to ask where an inn might be found, explaining to Cybula that one did not spend the night out of doors but stayed in a guesthouse. The guesthouse pointed out to them was a wooden structure of two stories, so tall that Cybula was certain that it was about ready to collapse. Two people came out to greet the new guests, and Nosek—estimating their stay at six to seven days—asked for the price. While one of the innkeepers was conferring with Nosek, the other led the horses away after the leather bags which held Krol Rudy’s valuables were removed by Cybula. After a great deal of talk, a bargain was struck and a price agreed on. They would receive a private room with a door they could lock and a window overlooking the market. They would also take two meals a day at the inn. From a small pouch hanging around his neck Nosek removed a coin and made a down payment. As a child Cybula had learned how to figure out words whose meanings were hidden, but he was utterly bewildered now. It occurred to him that had Nosek not been an honest man, he could have sold Cybula as a slave. He felt completely helpless.
For the first time in his life, Cybula climbed up stairs. They were dark and Nosek had to guide him as if he were blind. He hurried ahead and opened a door, and Cybula entered a room with whitewashed walls, a wooden floor, and a window through which he could see the market below. It seemed as if he were up in the sky, near the clouds. People and horses below appeared small. In the room he saw a bed—a sack stuffed with hay on the floor—and a pillow whose torn pillowcase revealed more hay. There was a pitcher of water near the wall, and an earthen vessel near the bed. Nosek told Cybula to use it whenever he needed to relieve himself. Cybula’s head was reeling. He felt the room swaying and the walls spinning. Nosek conducted himself like a man accustomed to travel. He took a swig from the water pitcher, sat himself down on a bench, and untied Krol Rudy’s bags. He took out handfuls of coins, gold chains, brooches, bracelets, rings. For each item he had a name.
During his years of looting and killing, Krol Rudy had amassed a fortune, but had never made any use of it. Nosek had been the only kniez who never looted or raped. He wandered about with these Poles because he could not find a place to settle. He learned a great deal during those years. Among the woyaks, who kept changing with the years, he always found someone like himself whom he could befriend. He had no craving whatever for jewelry. He knew that the other kniezes had their own hidden bags of loot.
As Nosek counted the coins, examining each item separately, he wondered exactly what he could get for this treasure. Was there a set price for everything? He knew what he and Krol Rudy wanted to acquire—healthy horses, several mares, a stallion to mate with them, a carriage, swords, spears, knives, daggers, royal garments, perhaps a crown. Krol Rudy had also quietly instructed Nosek to bring him a young slave girl. Lying with Laska did not satisfy him lately. He craved a young wench who would submit to all his desires, dance for him, drink with him, tell him stories about demons and witches. Nosek had promised not to reveal this to Cybula. Nosek also had to buy plenty of seed for the camp, not only wheat and corn, but barley, oats, millet, beans. But could he actually purchase these things? Nosek was not as clever in trade as Cybula believed him to be, but he knew there were always swindlers and thieves. So the day was spent counting and reckoning. Nosek also explained that in distant cities there were men who could keep accounts and inscribe words with quills on parchment, or with chalk on boards.
In the evening the innkeeper came to announce that a meal had been prepared for the guests. In their room he lit the wick of a small clay lamp filled with seed oil. He carried a candle in a candlestick to light their way down. Cybula had never seen a candlestick, though in camp they sometimes used wax candles with wicks braided from sheep wool. The innkeeper now led Cybula and Nosek into a large chamber where they saw a long table with benches along both sides. Guests were already seated at the table and maids served them food in large wooden bowls. The guests were all men. How could it be otherwise? Women did not travel, because they did not ride horses. When Cybula and Nosek appeared in their long zupans, there was a moment’s hush, then the din returned.
The guests made room at the table for the new arrivals. Everyone asked who they were and where they came from. Nosek responded to all their questions, while Cybula listened in silence. When they heard that the two came from a tribe of former Lesniks who had recently become Poles, they were astonished. They asked Nosek where this camp was located, and he could only point out the direction with his finger and add that it was beyond the mountains. They all spoke at once. When the maids came in carrying dishes of meat, the guests pinched them, even strained to grab hold of a breast, and the wenches laughed.
When the guests wanted to know why the two men undertook their long journey, Nosek told them that he had goods to sell and wanted to buy horses, weapons, a carriage, seeds. A new Polish kingdom had been created at the foot of the mountains. The talk soon shifted to trade. Every man was eager to grab a bargain, raise his worth, enlarge his fortune, become powerful and rich.
Cybula had promised Yagoda that his journey would last no more than four months, but the moon changed five times and the two emissaries were still in Miasto. Snow now covered the town and an epidemic was spreading. Children died by the score. Nosek, after he bought five horses, was paying for their feed while the carriage he had ordered was being readied. It was no trifle to make an axle, wheels, seats, a trestle. Wheelmakers and smiths toiled from sunrise to sunset, but still their work was not finished. Since few guests stayed at the inn in winter, Cybula and Nosek were often alone. The cook prepared their meals and the maids waited only on them. The innkeeper gave them two quilts stuffed with down.
Cybula was growing accustomed to living in town, and it often struck him as unbelievable that he had once been a hunter and cave dweller. Still, he missed Yagoda. He often awoke during the night, lay still for a long time, and thought about her. Did she still love him? Had she found someone new? In his thoughts he spoke to Yagoda, told her how much he longed for her, and promised to return to her, bearing gifts, with renewed love, as soon as his tasks were accomplished. He swore that never again would he leave her. But could she hear his promises? Sometimes he suspected that she no longer loved him, that she lay in the arms of another. At such moments so much sorrow overcame him that he thought of putting an end to his life. A number of times he told Nosek that he could wait no longer and he was ready to return alone to the camp. But Nosek dissuaded him: Cybula would freeze to death on the unknown way, he would be devoured by wolves.
One of the maids, Gloska, began to pursue Cybula. When Nosek was away at the smith’s or the wheelmaker’s, Gloska stealthily came to Cybula, took him to an upstairs room, and gave herself to him. Sometimes she submitted to him behind the stove, standing up. The other maids also teased him. And as if that was not enough, Nosek purchased a concubine named Kosoka. He pretended to want her for himself, but Cybula was well aware that Nosek felt no lust for women. He finally admitted he had bought her for Krol Rudy.
Kosoka said that she came from a remote region—from a tribe known as Tatars. Many tribes lived in that region—Kalmucks, Cossacks, and others with unpronounceable names. A woyak had captured her when she was still a child and she had lost her virginity. The woyak rode with her over the steppes; he stole, looted, sometimes murdered. He stole a horse, was caught, and finally hanged—while Kosoka was forced to stand by and watch. She was sold to another man, who sold her again. By the time she was fourteen, she had had many men. Twice she became pregnant, and twice she miscarried. She bore one infant, which she threw into the garbage pit. Kosoka had slanted eyes—black and fiery—white teeth, and shining black hair. She spoke Russian, Polish, Tatar, the languages of those who roamed the steppes and taigas and tundra. Some of her captors taught her to speak their own language. In all of them Kosoka could intone incantations, invoke devils, babuks, demons, imps. She came from a region where they ate horsemeat and milked mares. The men bought their wives with sheep. She boasted that by witchcraft she could stop a cow from giving milk, hens from laying eggs. She could make bees abandon their beehive, she could make a rooster stand still as if glued to the ground. She could close up a woman’s womb, cause men to lose their vigor. Nosek had bought her from a pockmarked old woman with a blind eye and a lump on her forehead as large as a goose egg. The truth is that Kosoka herself helped to arrange the sale. She took twelve coins for herself and gave only six to the old woman.
Kosoka was a born storyteller and remembered everything she learned from the old Tatar men in the evenings as they sang by the fire. Nosek had no patience with her small talk, but Cybula liked to ask her questions and listen to her rambling answers. She sang mournful tunes which resembled the yodeling of the Lesnik shepherds in the mountains. She told him stories of men with curved swords and women whose faces were veiled. Kosoka’s father was an old man who had a long white beard and two wives, one old and the other young. When Kosoka was six, because of some sin that the young wife, Kosoka’s mother, had committed, Kosoka’s father chopped off her head.
Cybula became quite attached to Kosoka and her stories, even though he suspected that they were not all true. But Cybula decided that even if she was lying, he loved to hear and to be with her. When he asked for Nosek’s permission, Nosek said, “Do with her what you like, but don’t make her pregnant, because then she would lose all value to Krol Rudy.” Cybula told Nosek that he had taught himself to spill his seed on her belly and between her breasts. All the while Cybula lay with her, Kosoka went on chattering. In the heat of passion, she sometimes cried out and said that soon she would die. She wanted her soul to fly to the end of the world, where darkness covered the earth and her mother’s spirit awaited her. At other times, her lust caused her to sing whining songs which she herself did not understand. She liked to tell how the woyak—the one who was hanged—used to whip her. When she said or did something to annoy him, he beat her with his stick. Later he licked the blood off her body. He told her that he had eaten the flesh of his enemy and had killed his own brother. Kosoka could read in the palm of a man’s hand what his destiny would bring. She foresaw Cybula’s end, but would not tell him what it was. She told him things about his dead wife, Yasna, and about Kora and Yagoda which she could not have known on her own.
After long delays and after the artisan who worked on Nosek’s carriage had broken every promise, it became clear that the carriage would not be ready before spring. They had to leave. Nosek decided to spend three days buying as many goods as the horses could carry and then return to the camp. They had come with three horses, and now they had seven. Nosek traded Krol Rudy’s silver and gold to a goldsmith for seeds, horses, hammers, nails, pitchforks to rake and pile hay, and shears to shear sheep. Nosek was planning to raise sheep as well as cattle. Requiring no effort at all, meadows surrounding the camp grew lush grasses and leaves. Horses, oxen, cows, sheep could graze and grow strong during the summer months. Only hay—their winter feed—would have to be provided.
The innkeeper, Dworak, and his wife, Pociecha, had often said that the tradesmen and craftsmen of Miasto swindled Nosek, sold their merchandise at the highest value and bought his at the lowest. Now that Cybula and Nosek were planning to leave, the innkeeper promised to secure from the tradesmen the goods for which high payments had already been made. Cybula and Nosek would come back for these goods and the carriage in the spring. Dworak seemed to be an honest man, but some gossip told Nosek that he, too, was dishonest. After Miasto, Cybula could see that the few Lesniks who stayed behind in the mountains refusing to join the Poles were right. He resolved to join them as soon as he could.
Several days before Nosek and Cybula planned to leave Miasto and return to their camp, Nosek gave Cybula two gold coins to buy gifts. For Laska Nosek had bought a gold bracelet. Cybula could not decide what gift to buy Yagoda, and he settled, finally, on shoes. He never forgot how beautiful Laska had looked in her shoes when she came to see him off. But to have shoes made for Yagoda required the measurements of her feet. Cybula knew only that Yagoda’s feet were small, smaller than her mother’s or Laska’s or those of his dead wife, Yasna. Several times he had passed the huts where the shoemakers worked, and he now made up his mind to enter. It was a cold, dreary day. The sun was about to set in the west, throwing a reddish light on the snow through a gap in the clouds.
A small shoemaker sat on a low bench in the room, cutting a sole out of a piece of hide. He was short and dark-skinned, a type seldom seen in Miasto. His eyes were black, as was his beard. He wore a sheepskin hat. He could not have been a Pole, nor did he resemble one of the Lesniks. He might have come from Kosoka’s land. He was so absorbed in his work that he did not look up and see Cybula. Suddenly he started, put down the hide and the knife, stretched out his hands, and began to wash and rub them in the snow outside his door. He wiped them on some rag skin and stood facing the wall. What was he doing? Could he be urinating, Cybula wondered. But no, he stood for some time with his head bowed and murmured to himself. From time to time he rocked backward and forward. After a while he raised his hand, made a fist, and clapped the left side of his chest. Cybula looked on with amazement. Cybula decided he must be a sorcerer or a madman. The little shoemaker stood before the wall for a long time. Then he bowed down low and took a few steps backward. Only then did he raise his eyes and see Cybula, but he still continued to murmur. Cybula said, “What are you doing? To whom are you speaking? I want to order a pair of shoes for a girl.”
The man mumbled a while longer. Then he said, “Where is the girl? I must measure her feet. Besides, night will soon fall. Come back with her, pan, tomorrow morning.”
The man spoke the language, but it sounded strange. The words came out clipped; his voice was not the voice of the Miasto people. He added, “Soon I will close my door.”
No one had ever addressed Cybula as pan. He asked, “How did you know I was a pan?”
“Ah, we know, we know. You live at the inn with the other pan, the one who bought horses and ordered a carriage. People think Miasto is big, but where I come from it would be thought of as very small. The merchants here are not honest. You two were cheated. But don’t tell them that I told you. They will kill me immediately, those ruffians. They are evil people—thieves, robbers, murderers. They serve idols, not the true God. They carve a piece of wood or a stone, then bow to it and worship it. It is a lifeless idol, not a living God.”
“Who are you? What is your name? Do you come from Miasto?” Cybula asked.
“No. My name is Ben Dosa and I am a Jew.”
“What is a Jew?” Cybula asked.
“A son of the people whom God chose above all others, and to whom he gave the land of Israel. But our forefathers sinned, and they were driven out of the land.”
He said all this without stopping, using words which Cybula did not understand. He had already learned from his talks with Kosoka that those who came from foreign regions spoke a mixed-up tongue and scrambled words.
“What is the name of the place you come from?”
“Ah, pan, you would not know it. It is a city and it is called Sura.”
“Where is it?”
“Far far away. The land is called Babylon. It is never as cold as it is here. And there is no snow, only rain.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I did not come by my own will. There I was a merchant, not a shoemaker. I boarded a ship intending to go to Sidon, but bandits took all my possessions and sold me to Canaanites who sailed the seas. I labored heavily for them, and they forced pig meat on me, which I am not permitted to eat. I worked for them for many weeks and months until I became ill. When a slave falls ill and can no longer work, the Canaanites throw him into the sea. This is how all idol worshippers behave. They are beasts. I thought my end was near, but God the Creator of all things took pity on me and I recovered. And so they dragged me from place to place, until we reached the region where the Vistula flows into the sea. There I was sold to men who spoke Polish; I was handed from master to master until I was brought to Miasto to become a shoemaker. My master takes the money I earn and gives me bread, sometimes a radish, an onion, a cucumber. I cannot eat the meat he gives me because it is unclean.”
“What does that mean, unclean?” Cybula asked.
“It means that the animal was slaughtered against God’s will. We call it trayf or n’velah.”
“Who is this God?” Cybula asked.
“The creator of heaven and earth, as well as of man and all the animals,” Ben Dosa said.
“Where is he?” Cybula asked.
“He’s in heaven, on earth, in the depths of the sea, in the heart of all good men, on the mountaintops, deep in the valleys.”
“Was he on that ship where they made you eat pig meat?”
“He is everywhere. Come back tomorrow with the girl.”
“The girl is not here.”
“Where is she?”
“Back in the camp, in the mountains.”
“How can I make shoes for her if I don’t know the size of her feet?”
“She has small feet, the smallest in the camp.”
“What is she—a child?”
“No, an adult.”
“I cannot make the shoes you ask for. What one man calls small another calls large. I have to take measurements, otherwise the shoes will come out too loose or too tight. I will have taken your coins and given you nothing. I would be cheating you.”
“Well, then come with me to our camp and take the measurements there,” Cybula said.
The man sat up excitedly. “Do you really mean this, pan?”
Cybula thought for a moment. “Yes, really. We have many animal skins, but we have no shoemaker. Our women make shoes for themselves from the skins of animals, but their crude work cannot compare with the shoes made here in town. We need a shoemaker. We can give you a hut and provide you with food, and if you wish, you can take one of our sisters or daughters to be your wife.”
“Ah, I am not permitted to eat your meat, and I am not permitted to take for a wife a woman who worships idols. Besides, I left a wife and children back in Sura.”
“I see. But they are there and you are here,” Cybula said.
“Yes, but God is everywhere,” Ben Dosa said. “He sits in heaven on his throne of glory and sees all that happens here on earth. He knows even what thoughts a man has deep in his heart. Flesh and blood can be deceived, but not God, who is eternal and lives forever.” A while later he added, “Come tomorrow, pan. Perhaps I’ll go with you to the mountains, if they let me free. This town is full of evil men. Perhaps God has sent you to me.”