The Master of the World extends his arm and overwhelms the sun with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and now the heat is over and the wind is blowing on the three travel companions. Shleiml the Cantor offers another explanation: “The famished sun has wasted away. And if the sun is not immune to hunger, what will become of Shleiml the Cantor, the orphaned matchstick?”
A single glance from Zizek is enough to make the Cantor brace himself at the back of the wagon. The journey has been long and uncomfortable; it seems that their vital organs do not have fixed locations, and a lung can suddenly replace the throat, or vice versa. Finally, they cross the bridge over the Shchara and approach Baranavichy’s main street. Now the silence is welcome. They must pretend to be strangers passing through the town and nothing more; just a father and daughter en route to Minsk, with a beggar they had picked up along the way. As they pass by the synagogue, Fanny takes Zizek’s arm, as a daughter would, but the pretence makes Zizek uneasy, and he recoils. Suddenly, they both realise how foreign they really are to one another and how far away from home they have ventured: Fanny from Natan-Berl and her children, and Zizek from his boat on the Yaselda. Melancholy strikes them. In their most desperate moments, when they were on the verge of despair, they were able to find solace in each other, but now merely linking arms is irksome, even if it is necessary for their safety. The more they avoid looking at one another, the more each of them is present in the other’s sight.
Twilight is the best time to enter a town where Jews comprise half the population. The year expects the High Holidays, the week anticipates the Sabbath and the day awaits prayer, so the Jews are quick to pack up their stalls and close their shops before gathering in the synagogue. Fortunately for the trio of travellers, they are not scrutinised, nobody turns to look at them. If they had arrived at midday, everybody in the town would have wondered who they were and where they were going. At the very least, they would have been invited to buy something. But at this time, not a single soul asks why they are passing through.
Even the peasants have left Baranavichy, returning to the nearby villages after selling their produce to their Jewish neighbours. Muzhiks do not have much of a nightlife. For them, nightfall does not mark the passage of time, but the occurrence of an event. Diurnal animals make way for nocturnal animals, colours fade and sounds multiply. The boughs of trees wave in unison, leaves hiss in the wind, frogs protest in chorus and packs of wolves begin to roam. The peasants prefer to sit out on their porches in the evening, their fingers wrapped around teacups and their bodies curled in comfortable chairs. Some of the muzhiks will gather to share some vodka, but come midnight bitterness will strike and they will return to their homes angry, and hopefully remember to take off their boots before falling asleep.
The three travellers pass through the town’s main street until they reach Marinska Street, and stop outside Patrick Adamsky’s tavern. Taverns and inns are always full at this time in the evening. It is the hour when idlers forget their laziness and make peace with their destinies or, in other words, bask in self-pity. Zizek asks Fanny and the hazan to wait for him in the cart while he goes to seek the owner’s help.
“Do you really trust him this much, Zizek Breshov?” Fanny whispers.
“I am sorry, but I trust him even more than that,” Zizek replies.
Zizek’s first few steps are hesitant; he opens the front door a crack, and surveys the tavern. It is more cramped and mustier than he remembers it. The walls are made of rough, rotten wood, and the rafters are in such a state that they barely support the upstairs rooms. Every step on the upper floor winds around Zizek’s nerves, and he thinks that the place seems busier than it used to be. The last time he was here, many years ago, the patrons of the inn lay idly on their beds and passed the time by counting the cockroach corpses and rat droppings that accumulated in the cracks in the wooden floor beneath them. But now, strange, unexpected sounds drift down from the top floor, the squeaks and muffled whimpers of adulterers or monks or God knows who else.
The dining hall downstairs is divided by garish Ottoman-style arches. A mural of Christ at Golgotha is so faded that the Saviour’s body appears to have melted in the sun and Mary Magdalene seems to be rejoicing at his misery. Icons are everywhere, little booths with flowers and gold-coloured frames, beneath which the “pilgrims” are sitting, praying for a jug of kvass.
In a corner, Zizek spots a bunch of card players, mere small fry, gambling with roubles they don’t have. One of them glances at his hand and laughs bitterly. At the other end of the room, three men are huddled in conversation, perhaps about politics, pointing their fingers at one another. Three other idlers are sitting alone at separate tables. One is leaning against the wall, owl-faced and empty-eyed. The second is so fat he cannot sit comfortably in his chair. And the third – well, five empty vodka glasses and a cheek flat against the table guarantee that he will not remain with them for much longer. In any event, there are no police officers here, and there are no women. Zizek walks in.
Patrick Adamsky descends the stairs from the upper floor, followed by a servant boy with a broom in his hand. “Over there,” Adamsky gestures without looking at the boy, and the servant scurries away to sweep one of the corners. Adamsky has an overpowering, authoritarian bearing, to which all his underlings have grown accustomed over the years, but Zizek cannot erase from his memory the image of the orphaned boy who was abducted with him by Leib Stein the khapper, the child catcher.