The petty irritation of it has brought him to his senses, and now Father Benedykt Chmielowski, dean of Rohatyn, understands why he felt as if he was still asleep – he’s surrounded by fog the same greyish colour as his bedsheets an off-white already tainted by dirt, by those enormous stores of grey that are the lining of the world. One of them had even tried to argue that this preposterous excuse for an N was acceptable – nay, even preferable! – since its bar went from bottom to top, and from left to right, in the Christian way, and that Jewish would have been the opposite. And since these craftsmen are Jewish, they probably used some sort of Jewish style for the inscription, the letters looking ready to collapse under their frills.

How could they be so negligent? You really have to watch them constantly, supervise their each and every step.

Aggravated by this for the umpteenth time, the priest spins his head round, and the sight is enough to make him fully awake. Somehow, in the second line, they wrote the very first letter backwards, like a mirror image. He had, of course, requested they be done ornately: Those two craftsmen from Podhajce took an entire week to carve the letters into the wood. Above the doors, there is a rough inscription, which he sees without looking, already knowing what it says – he commissioned it, after all. The cold must have already set in, perhaps even a light frost already, spoiling the plums in the orchard. Behind him, the dark aperture of the doors, one side shut. Indeed, now he knows what’s there, and this awareness slowly starts to warm him up, and as his body comes back, he starts to be able to see through the fog. A good thing, the thing that’s brought him here – those words, those signs, each with a profound connection to his life. He feels for the bag slung over his shoulder, mechanically runs his fingers over the hard edges of the rectangle it contains, thickened like scars under the skin, and he remembers, slowly, what’s inside – that heavy, friendly form. He slips on the left one it’s warm and fits him perfectly, as though hand and glove have known each other many years. He stares perplexed at the sturdy boots sticking out from underneath his cassock, at the tattered front of his faded woollen overcoat, at the gloves he’s holding in his hands. He can’t remember rising, or getting dressed, or whether he’s had breakfast.

He’s used to getting up at dawn, but today he feels just half awake and has no idea how he even ended up here, alone in an ocean of fog. The vicar forane is standing on the porch of the presbytery, waiting for his carriage. It’s early morning, near the close of October.

The book of jacob olga