The Heathen: A Novel

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i iMAGINE A GREEN OASIS intheSaharaDesert.Imaginein today’s world—a world of gold, silver, copper, rags converted into banknotes—a large family, poor yet happy. Into this family twenty-six years ago, at one o’clock in the morning, in the middle of the most beautiful August night lit up by the most beautiful full moon, a child of the male sex was born—the ninth child in the family. And yet—an amazing, extraordinary thing—it was received with such joy and blessings as might have greeted the longed-for first issue of a fading dynasty, the long-awaited heir to a vast fortune. But no! Such a comparison is blasphemy: the child was received with the same love as every child begotten in love. That child was me. No grievous accusation hung over the cradle that had been prepared for me. No complaint from an elder sister that there was new trouble in the house bringing fresh hardships; or from a brother—fast approaching his coming of age—that there was now another hand to wrestle with over his expected inheritance; or from my other brothers and sisters that there would be times when they would have to keep quiet, listen to reason and forgo affection; or from my mother that the new life she had created would diminish her own—that sleepless nights lay in store for her, suckling, weaning, the labours of rearing a child; or even from my father that times were hard, that it would be tough to raise me—that he no longer had either the strength or the means to contemplate my future profession. It was an amazing thing—a hundred times amazing—that there was none of this. Narcyza Żmichowska  My mother and sisters had made me napkins from old underclothes. As a surprise, one of my brothers had made a new wickerwork cradle.And my father, when the good midwife brought me to him on a pillow, made the sign of the cross over me: “Unto the world a child is born”: these were his only words. And with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips he hastened to his wife as fast as he could, kissed her hand and did not leave her until she had fallen peacefully asleep, weak but still radiating joy of ineffable sweetness, her newborn babe by her side. So that was what my birth was like. For a long time I did not have a name: I was called “little one,” “little son,” “poppet,” while family conferences about what I should be called dragged on for ages. Teresa, the youngest before me of my brothers and sisters, was to settle any doubt. When one of our older brothers told her the story of Jacob’s sons from the biblical scenes on our old icons, she was filled with such affection for the youngest son that when the evening conversation turned once more to my approaching baptism the little girl, seated at that moment beside my cradle, solemnly raised her finger and announced in a resolute voice: “You, little one, will be Beniaminek.”23 From that moment on I was called Benjamin. Kind Terenia! They had forgotten to tell her that Benjamin was initially called “Benoni” in accordance with his mother’s preference and that Benoni meant “son of pain”24 ; but my mother and brothers and sisters seized onTerenia’s idea because it appealed to their hearts, and my father too sanctioned it—for it was the name of his own great hero, his ideal among famous men: Benjamin Franklin.25 From his veneration of Franklin you can surmise my father’s whole character, even if you are only slightly adept at reading those hidden—yet always logical—links between a person’s tastes and sympathies and the essence of their nature. As to myself, I possess—in this respect at least—an instinct that never fails. Once, on a visit to the Louvre, I saw a handsome young man pause for a long time before Velázquez’s Cato and study it with the calmest of faces while Cato rent his breast, bloodily, horribly. 26 I said to myself at once: “that is an evil man.” And my words proved right: he was an anatomist of the human heart. I encountered him later in a court of law as an interested spectator, T h e h e...