Once, a young man came in who looked like an artisan. He wore a little Jewish cap but a short jacket and buttoned shoes. His shirt had no collar, just a paper dickey from which a tin collar stud stuck out. He was unshaven and his cheeks were hollow. His aquiline nose was pale as though from an illness. His big black eyes shone with a mildness that reminded me of fasting and funerals. This is how mourners looked who came in to ask questions about sitting shiva and observing the thirty days of mourning.
Mother happened to be in the courtroom, and I sat over a Talmud and pretended to study.
“What can I do for you?” Father asked.
The youth began to stammer and turned red, then pale. “Rabbi, is it permissible to marry a prostitute?”
Mother was shocked. Father asked the young man a question and looked at me sternly.
“Leave the room!”
I went to the kitchen, and the young man remained in the courtroom for a long while. Afterward Mother came into the kitchen and said, “There are all kinds of lunatics in this world!”
Father decided that he could marry the prostitute. Not only was it permissible, but indeed it was a mitzvah to rescue a Jewish girl from sin. The young man needed no more. He immediately requested that Father officiate at the wedding. He left in high spirits and gaily slammed the door. Father came into the kitchen.
“What kind of madness is this?” Mother asked.
“He has—how do they say it over there?—fallen in love.”
“With a prostitute?”
“Well …”
Then Father returned to his holy text.
I don’t recall how much time passed before the wedding took place. The girl had to count the prescribed number of days after her menstrual cycle and then go to the ritual bath. All kinds of women helpers began swirling around her. Everyone on the street knew what was happening and they discussed it in the grocery, the butcher shop, even the synagogue. Usually, only a few people attended a small wedding. My father would almost always have to send me to the Hasidic shtibl to gather enough men for a minyan. But this time our apartment turned into a Viennese salon. Every minute our door opened and in walked a thief or a pimp. But most of the guests were promiscuous girls fancied up in silk and velvet, and wearing hats with ostrich feathers. The madams came, too.
The fact that an honest young man had fallen in love with a whore was a victory for the underworld, especially the women. They saw it as a sign that there was hope for them, the rejected ones, too. The madams donned their marriage wigs and shawls, which they wore to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The streetwalkers wore long-sleeved dresses without corsets. They kissed the mezuzah upon entering and politely greeted my mother. Mother stood there pale and disheveled. Our neighbors encircled her like a guard so that, God forbid, none of the impurity would rub off on her. But no change was visible on my father, who wasn’t bothered by any of this. He stood by his prayer stand studying a text and even wrote some comments on a sheet of paper. Everyone was waiting for the bride and groom.
From the balcony I could see people waiting on the sidewalk and by the gate. Several girls and madams joined me on the balcony. Suddenly there was a commotion. The couple had emerged from some courtyard, accompanied by an entire entourage. The bridegroom was spruced up in a new summer jacket and lacquered shoes. The bride, small and swarthy, looked like a girl from a fine middle-class family. The women on the balcony pulled out little hankies and began wiping away their tears.
“Look how pale she is!”
“Is she fasting?”
“She’s pretty as a picture!”
“I wish it’d happen to me!”
“God willing, may it happen to you!”
“Here they come! Here they come!”
“One should never lose hope!”
A huge pimp, blind in one eye and with a jagged scar on his forehead, kept order. A madam wearing a wide marriage wig shouted angrily at the girls and told them to stand near the wall. A girl with a face as pockmarked as a grater laughed with one eye and cried with the other. This wasn’t just a wedding but a show worthy of Kaminsky’s Yiddish Theater. Usually we didn’t need a sexton, but the pimps brought one of their own, a short man who mingled with the crowd. When the bride entered the apartment, all the women threw kisses at her. They grabbed her, they hugged her, they didn’t want to let her go. They showered her with good wishes. To each one she said the same thing: “God willing, may it happen to you.” Each time she said this, all the girls choked back a sob.
Father sat down to write the marriage contract, but then came a tense moment. He began whispering to the sexton. He consulted a holy text. It was senseless to write that the bride was a virgin, but neither was she a divorcee or a widow. Exactly what was done and whether they wrote into the document that the bride was to receive one hundred gulden or two hundred I do not remember.
Four pimps held the staves of the wedding canopy. Since both bride and groom were orphans, they were led to the wedding canopy by the brothel owners and the madams. Everything was done according to Jewish law and tradition. The bridegroom wore a white linen robe, as was the custom. The bride’s face was covered by a veil. Father recited the blessings and let the bride and groom sip some wine. When the groom put the ring on the bride’s outstretched index finger, saying, “Behold thou art consecrated unto me …,” all the prostitutes burst into tears. Even as a child I was amazed by how quickly women start laughing and crying.
After the ceremony everyone kissed and exchanged good wishes. The table was covered with wines, cognac, liquors, all kinds of drinks. Slices of sponge cake were offered as well. The women gingerly picked up pieces of cake with two fingers, pinkies out, taking small bites and little, sips like high-class ladies. Today was their day. Today they weren’t just whores who lived miserable lives in cellars but friends who had been invited to a wedding. The pimps drank brandy out of tea glasses and began stammering as men do when they become tipsy.
One pimp ran over to Father and yelled, “Rabbi, you are a precious Jew!”
“It’s enough just to be a Jew,” Father replied.
“Rabbi, I’ll take whatever punishments are destined for you!”
“Oh, God forbid … one must not talk that way.”
“Rabbi, I’m not worth the mud on the soles of your shoes.”
Father began looking into his holy books. He wanted these people to leave so he could resume studying. But they were in no rush. They drank and drank. One of the brothelkeepers kept insisting that Father have a drink, too.
“I’m not allowed to drink,” Father said. “I have a stomach virus, may it not happen to you.”
“Rabbi, it’s only forty proof, not ninety proof.”
“I can’t. The doctor forbade it.”
“What do they know? Doctors don’t know a thing!”
After a lot of talk, Father finally tasted one solitary drop. The women wanted to take Mother into their circle, but she had already left the apartment. Mother had no intention of mingling with that crowd. I got wine, whiskey, and so much cake and cookies that I stuffed my pockets with them.
The apartment eventually began to empty I went out onto the balcony and watched the bride and groom being escorted in parade-like fashion back to the courtyard from which they had been led out earlier.
Only when everyone had left did Mother return. It wasn’t warm outside, but she opened all the windows to air out the rooms. She threw the leftover cakes and drinks into the garbage. For days afterward Mother went about agitated.
“I’d like to see the day when I can tell this street goodbye,” she said.
I heard people discussing this couple for a long, long time. Wonderful things were said about them. A former prostitute was leading the life of a decent wife. She went to the ritual bath every month. She bought glatt kosher meat at the butcher’s. She went to the synagogue every Sabbath and holiday. Then I heard that she was pregnant, and then that she had given birth. The women neighbors said that
she never even looked at other men. From time to time I saw her husband. The glitter of the wedding day had left him, and he went about once more without a collar, wearing only a paper dickey. Once in a store I heard a woman ask, “But how can a man live with her when he knows where she has bounced around?”
“Repentance helps for everything!” a woman wearing a bonnet replied.
“Still, it’s disgusting …”
“Perhaps he loves her,” another woman called out.
“What’s there to love? She’s as thin as a stick.”
“Every man has his likes.”
“May God not punish me for my words!” the woman shopkeeper said. “Mouth, be quiet!” And she slapped her lips with two fingers.
From that time on I paid more attention to the girls who stood at the gates and by the lampposts. Some looked vulgar, fleshy, mean; their heavily mascaraed eyes snickered with a depraved impudence. Others seemed to be so quiet, sad, and shrunken. One of the prostitutes spoke Yiddish with a Lithuanian pronunciation, which was an absolute novelty for us. She came into Esther’s candy store and said, “What have you got that’s delicious? How about a piece of cheesecake! I’ve got a hole in my stomach a yard long!”
I heard housemaids in the courtyard saying that the pimps rode around at night in coaches grabbing innocent girls, orphans, and girls from the provinces. They were forced into prostitution and then put aboard ships bound for Buenos Aires. There they had flings with black people. Then a worm would enter their blood and pieces of flesh would fall from their bodies.
These stories were sweet and appalling at the same time. Things were happening in this world. There were secrets not only in heaven above but also down here on earth. I had a burning desire to grow up all the more quickly so I could learn all these heavenly and earthly secrets, to which little boys had no access …
REB LAYZER GRAVITZER
Our income limped along, so from time to time my father gave private Talmud lessons to one youngster or another to help pay the rent. One such boy was Dovidl. He had no father and his mother had remarried somewhere in greater Poland. Dovidl was raised by his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer, and he brought a measure of the secular world into our house.
Dovidl was eighteen years old, a handsome youth with black curly hair cut in the “German” fashion. He wore a rather short gaberdine with a slit in the back that reached only to his knees, a collar, a tie, a dickey, and polished chamois shoes. Except for his gaberdine, which looked like a frock coat, Dovidl wore Western-style clothes. His cloth cap was so small it lay on his hair like a tiny pot lid. He wore pince-nez glasses, which hung on a little gilt chain, and of course he had a watch and chain in his vest. He also studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory. It seemed that he wore this slit gaberdine and the small Jewish cap only when he came to study with Father, for Father would not have given Talmud lessons to anyone in modern dress.
This Dovidl was highly accomplished. He was fluent in Russian, Polish, German, and even French, but he spoke Yiddish best of all. He was a fountain of bon mots and witticisms that he had heard from merchants, traveling salesmen, and business agents. He had no great love of learning, but his grandfather had asked Father to give him Talmud lessons several times a week. Dovidl often brought his violin along and would entertain the entire family with the Saturday night “Hamavdil,” a Wallachian dance tune, or other traditional melodies. Jokes streamed from him as though he kept them up his sleeve. He could even excel at Talmud when he put his mind to it, which he seldom did.
Even stranger than Dovidl was his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer. Wondrous things were said about him: He looked like a rich man and conducted himself like a millionaire—but reportedly he had more debts than hair on his head. He declared bankruptcy every year, sometimes twice a year. Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a large man with a big paunch, a straight neck, and a leonine head. His white beard was sparse, as was fashionable among wealthy Jews. He wore a hat with a high crown, a collar without a tie, and a somewhat shortened gaberdine. His face was always ruddy. From under his bushy brows gazed a pair of dark eyes, cold as steel.
Everything Reb Layzer Gravitzer did was grandiose. When he blew his thick nose, it resounded throughout the entire apartment. When he spoke, his voice thundered. Each time Reb Layzer Gravitzer came to visit us there was a tumult in the street. He’d arrive in a droshky with rubber wheels. Instead of paying the coachman the usual forty groschen, he’d pay fifty. Poor people besieged him from all sides and he’d hand out four- and six-groschen coins. Even before he knocked, the door was opened for him. The doorway seemed too narrow and low for such a big man. He discussed Torah with Father and wanted very badly to catch him in an error. The truth of the matter was that Father was almost always right. Reb Layzer Gravitzer had already forgotten a lot. But my father was not overly proud and he’d say, good-naturedly, “Well, we’ll have a look at the text.”
How did Reb Layzer Gravitzer make a living? How could he run such a big house filled with sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and maids? What enabled him to travel a couple of times a year to his rebbe, offer generous gifts, bring expensive wine, and pay for the upkeep and lodgings of poor students? In Warsaw, it was estimated that he spent several hundred rubles a week. Where did the money come from?
He had lots of businesses, but Reb Layzer Gravitzer lived on bankruptcies and shady transactions that could have landed him in jail. It was also rumored that he either dealt in or made counterfeit brand labels. People whispered that Reb Layzer Gravitzer bought packets of tea, removed the customs tax stamps by machine, and then mixed the tea with one of inferior quality. He was also supposedly a partner in an illegal lottery. But even though all Warsaw and Lodz knew that Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a bankrupt, a swindler, a schemer the like of which Poland had never seen, he nevertheless always had partners and credit. It was said that he could persuade a stone to give milk. If not for his huge expenses and investments in all kinds of risky enterprises he would have been a millionaire.
Reb Layzer Gravitzer loved two things: prestige and danger. Some people had actually witnessed him lighting his cigar with a five-ruble note. If there was a chance Reb Layzer Gravitzer might get his skull cracked open over a deal and be imprisoned to boot, he’d throw himself headlong into it. He had countless enemies. The rich men of Warsaw and Lodz had often tried to drive him from the marketplace, to get him out of the way, and indeed throw him in jail. Could there have been a greater punishment for Reb Layzer Gravitzer than being forced to wear a prison uniform, wooden clogs, and a round cap, and live among thieves and murderers? Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew that imprisonment was lurking over him. Troops of enemies encircled him. Investigating judges and prosecutors had sworn that they would ruin him. But Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew the law; in fact, he knew the entire legal code. He slipped out of every net and trial. He instructed his lawyers how to argue and what to do. Had Reb Layzer Gravitzer studied jurisprudence at a university, he surely would have been a legal genius. But he used his knowledge only for his own purposes.
Aside from saving his skin through legal trickery, Reb Layzer Gravitzer had also mastered the art of fleeing. Often, when the police came to arrest him, he would escape through a back door, or even out a window and down a ladder. When things got extremely dangerous, Reb Layzer Gravitzer would hide somewhere and lie low for a while. He had hiding places no one knew of, not even his own family. Folks said that illegal merchandise and all kinds of contraband were bricked into every wall of his house. It is superfluous to say that he gave bribes and weekly payoffs to people on the street from the local cop all the way up to the district police commander and even higher. On holidays he sent them wine, cognac, brandy, and money. The word was that there were only two high authorities in Warsaw that Reb Layzer Gravitzer could not buy off: the minister of police and the governor general. He had tried, but with no success.
It was hard to find two people who were more diametrically opposite than Reb Layzer Gravitze
r and my father. But Layzer Gravitzer had chosen my father to teach his grandson. Of course, he ended owing my father money. To whom did he not owe money?
Once Reb Layzer Gravitzer mentioned to my father that he had a sacred text that Father could not find anywhere in Warsaw. Father asked to borrow the book and Reb Layzer Gravitzer agreed to lend it to him. And that is how it happened that I was sent to Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s house. Before I went, Mother put a clean shirt on me and combed out my sidecurls. She told me to behave properly and not talk nonsense. Reb Layzer Gravitzer could have sent the book with his grandson, but apparently he wanted someone from our family to see how lavishly he lived.
I no longer recall where he resided, but I do remember walking through an imposing main entrance and climbing up a marble staircase. On each of the enormous doors, decorated with carvings and cornices, was affixed a brass plate with an engraved name. Doctors and dentists lived here. From behind one door I heard someone playing a piano. I rang the bell, but a long time passed before the door was opened a crack and someone peeked at me over a chain. After casting a sharp and searching glance at me, a man asked who I was and what I wanted. Then he told me to wait.
That wait was the longest I had ever experienced. First, I waited for the door to be opened, and then I waited in the corridor. The corridor was full of doors, each one with frosted glass. Telephones rang. Behind those doors women spoke, laughed, sang, and whispered. Then came a leonine roar and I recognized Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s voice. Someone led me from one room to another to show me, I suspect, how spacious the apartment was. Finally, I was brought into a huge room lined with bookcases.
“Who are you?” Reb Layzer Gravitzer thundered, cocking his long, hairy ear.