As I climbed the stairs to our apartment with the woman, I noticed that her dress was narrow and long. She had to take small steps and was unable to negotiate two stairs at a time. The heels of her shoes were high and shiny. Pharmacy fragrances clung to her. She took me by the sleeve, as if to lean on me for protection. Her gloved hand was both light and firm. A strange, forbidden warmth ran through me, which turned me into an absolute ass.
The meeting between the once-engaged couple was like something out of a fairy tale. It also reminded me of the story of Joseph and his brothers. The man didn’t recognize the woman at first. They looked at each other in amazement, alternating between forgetfulness and remembrance. Finally, the woman declared, “Yes, it’s you.”
“I recognized you right away,” the man said, intending it as a compliment.
“How long has it been? No, better don’t tell me,” the woman said.
“How the years fly by!”
“When did you start wearing glasses?”
“About three years ago. Maybe four.”
“Are you nearsighted, or what?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve become fat.”
While they were exchanging these banalities, Father perused a holy text, stroking his beard and rubbing his forehead. Just as I had been totally absorbed in the horse’s hindquarters before, I was now all eyes and ears regarding this couple who had almost become man and wife but had become estranged on account of a love affair. Both of them now had someone else, yet a closeness remained. They addressed each other in the familiar form. They stood face-to-face and couldn’t get their fill of looking at each other.
“What kind of man is your husband?” I heard him ask.
“A good man.”
“Are you happy with him?”
“One can’t always be happy,” she replied.
“Fania,” he said, “I’ve never forgotten the wrong I did.”
And his glasses clouded over as if someone had breathed a mouthful of vapor on them.
The woman did not reply at once. Her face began to twitch. I saw a mist in her eyes which might become a tear, but, too proud after twelve years to cry in his presence, she held it back.
She raised her head. “I’ve already forgotten everything.”
“Fania, God has punished me on account of you.”
“How can you say that? One can never be sure of such things.”
They talk; they murmur. Father waits, but he’s impatient. The talking and murmuring of this formerly engaged couple smacks of sin.
“You’re a married woman,” Father tells her. “And he, too, has a family. Give him forgiveness and the One Above will help both of you.”
“I forgive him,” the woman declares. “And God will surely forgive him.”
“It’s preferable for the forgiveness to be in writing,” Father says.
The word “forgiveness” makes me want to laugh. In Yiddish that word—mekhila—also has another meaning, and not a nice one: “rear end.” I want to burst out laughing like a little boy, but I restrain myself with all my might. Father writes a few words in Hebrew. He makes two copies. The man has to give her a declaration of forgiveness and she has to give one to him—and both have to sign them.
“I can sign only in Polish,” says the woman.
“All right, as long as it’s signed,” Father says.
She takes the pen in a grandiose manner, rests her finger on the holder, and, without removing her chamois glove, signs in a quavering calligraphy with her present husband’s last name. Her signature evinces education, wealth, and worldliness. Only people who live on Khlodna Street and have a marble entrance staircase and a bell on the door have signatures like this. The man writes his name in Yiddish, but his signature, too, has a modern flourish.
“What’s your name?” Father asks. “I can’t make it out.”
“Zigmunt.”
“How are you called up to the Torah?”
“To the Torah? … Zalman.”
“Sign again,” Father orders. “With your Hebrew name.”
The young man signs “Zalman.”
Father gets a ruble and I have a forty-kopeck coin in my pocket. The couple leaves the apartment together. It seems to me that Father wants to call them back and warn them that they are not allowed to go together, but before he can say a word, they are already on their way downstairs.
I run out to the balcony, waiting to see them emerge from the front gate. But it takes a long time and I don’t know what to think. Did they remain in the courtyard? Are they inside the gate? Or perhaps I missed them and they have already gone. I’m very impatient. Finally, they appear and he seems to be holding her by the arm. Not actually holding her, but supporting her elbow with his hand. Strange, how slowly they’re moving. They stop repeatedly. They go not toward Khlodna Street but toward Gnoyna. They’re so deep in conversation that they clearly don’t even know where they’re going.
I have already read the romances of the popular Yiddish writer Shomer, and my imagination is working overtime. Perhaps, I think, the man wants to take her to his castle. Perhaps he is a count. Perhaps she, the woman with him, is in disguise. Perhaps he will shoot her with a pistol and then take his own life. Perhaps the entire matter of forgiveness is only a ruse. Perhaps I should run down to the street and follow them. But no—they would recognize me. I remember the money in my pocket and decide to go to Tvarda Street to buy myself a storybook. Not one, but two. Not two, but six.
I run to Tvarda Street. The news vendor stands there wearing a little red cap. His small book rack is packed with books: Sherlock Holmes, Max Shpitzkopf, and titles like Terrible Secrets, The Secret of the Kaiser’s Court, the Captive Princess, The Enchanted Orphan Girl, The 1,200 Thieves. Each title pulls me like a magnet. Each booklet has its own mystery, cleverness, and bizarre intrigues. But I can’t buy them all. I have to choose.
I spend my last kopeck and carry home a stack of books. The street and the boys no longer concern me at all. I have only one wish: that my joy not be interrupted, that I have the time to read everything from beginning to end.
And at some point I muse that I, too, would like to write a storybook—full of secrets and mysteries, full of counts and orphan girls and enchanted thieves, starring a bride and groom named Fania and Zigmunt who haven’t seen each other for twelve years and who then meet at a rabbi’s house, whereupon their love is rekindled and begins to burn like a hellish fire.
A HASIDIC REBBE ON THE STREET
A Hasidic rebbe, whom I portrayed in my book In My Father’s Court, lived on our street. But one day a new rebbe moved in. While the first was a grandson of the Kozhenitzer Rebbe, this one, from the provinces, was connected to the Kotzk court and related to the Rebbe of Kotzk’s family.
The new rebbe had come to pay my father a visit. Short, young, with a little blond beard, he wore a tattered silk gaberdine and a shabby high fur hat.
The fact that this new rebbe had moved to a street where a rebbe already lived was considered an improper act of competition. But where should a rebbe live? There was no need for them in the gentile quarter, and a Hasidic rebbe had already established his residence on the Jewish street.
The other Hasidic rebbe was already old, eighty or more. What did an old man need? But the new rebbe had a young wife and a houseful of children: girls with braids and boys with sidecurls down to their shoulders. Unlike the old rebbe, the new one was a scholar. He could have been a rebbe with a court of followers, but where could one find Hasidim for so many rebbes? So he just remained what people called a “grandson” or a “descendant” of a noted rebbe.
To succeed in a trade one must have luck, but it was immediately apparent that the young rebbe had no mazel. He looked too refined, too wise, too aristocratic for the simple women on the street. No one came to him. No one believed that he could intervene with God on their behalf. The old rebbe, then, had nothing to fear: the new one took no one away from him.
The new rebbe wanted me
to befriend his little boys, and I went to play with them. The rooms in the apartment were half empty. A young woman, her head covered with a silk kerchief, was puttering around in the kitchen. The little girls were teaching each other the aleph-beys and copying lines of Hebrew script from a penmanship manual. The boys were swaying over Talmuds. Everything was fine and orderly in the apartment, but no one visited. No one knocked on the door. When someone did knock, it was a beggar going from door to door. The rebbetzin gave him a groschen or a piece of sugar.
The rebbe, who had a pale face, blue eyes, and a high forehead, wandered about the apartment in a silk robe. He had all the attributes of a Hasidic rebbe: fine familial lineage, scholarly ability, a talent for preaching and sharing the bread at his table, and perhaps even for producing a miraculous feat. But no one needed him. All the bankruptcy of the Hasidic courts radiated out of him.
One day the rebbe came to talk to Father. Sitting at the table, he said, “The Jews in your street have no regard for me.”
“They don’t come to you?”
“They don’t even stick their nose in the door.”
“They don’t need us,” Father said in sympathy, using the plural.
“The waters have risen up to here,” the rebbe said, quoting the psalms, pointing to his thin throat, long and white as a girl’s.
“Can I help you in any way?” Father asked.
“No, no.”
Mother brought in the usual glass of tea and Sabbath biscuits. The rebbe held the glass with long, thin fingers. He looked at Mother with his kindly Jewish eyes, which seemed to say, Look what’s become of us …
Suddenly the rebbe declared, “Rabbi, I’m going to America.”
Father looked confused. “To America?”
“Yes. America.”
“What will you do in America?”
“I’m going to rid myself of humiliation. I’m going to become a tailor.”
Father seemed embarrassed by these words. “Some fine tailor!”
The rebbe took hold of his beard. “What do you think? Will I be a good tailor? In America one doesn’t have to sew an entire garment. It’s enough if you sew on a button or a loop.”
“It’s not for you. Not for you.”
“And is starving with my family any better? ‘Rather skin a carcass in the market,’ says the Talmud, ‘than depend on charity.’”
“Still … what about your children?”
“One can also be a Jew in America.”
“Yes, but …”
“In America, people walk around upside down,” I called out.
Father cast a rather angry glance at me. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“But I read it in The Book of the Covenant.”5
“You read, but you didn’t understand,” the rebbe said. He explained that people everywhere walk with their heads up and their feet on the ground. But pertaining to heavenly bodies, one cannot say precisely what is up and what is down. It was clear from the rebbe’s words that he had dipped into secular books.
Then Father asked, “Well … do you know any foreign languages?”
“I know Russian, Polish, and German, too.”
“How?”
“I looked into books.”
“Hmmm … it’s not a good situation.”
The rebbe kept his word. I don’t know how, but he obtained passage for his entire family. A little sign that had hung on the gate stating that the rebbe lived there had been removed. I witnessed a quiet revolution at his house. The rebbetzin removed her silk kerchief and donned a wig. The boys’ sidecurls were shortened. The rebbe had discarded his silk gaberdine and now wore a ribbed cotton cloak. It was clear that he was not going to America to be a rebbe but would indeed learn tailoring.
Once, when I went to his house, I saw him reading a newspaper. He even peeked into a novel. It seemed as if he were saying silently: Since God doesn’t need me, I don’t need Him. The boys ran about, yelling and fooling around, and their father let them. It was strange, but the rebbe’s appearance had changed—he looked stronger and more manly. Now he discussed mundane matters with his wife. Then someone knocked on the door and I watched a bizarre scene unfold.
A woman came in and asked, “Does the rebbe live here?”
The rebbetzin asked her what she wanted.
“Alas, my child is very ill!” the woman began crying and wringing her hands.
Instead of her being escorted to the rebbe’s study, the rebbe came to see her in the kitchen. He asked her what ailed the child. When she replied, the rebbe said, “Why have you come to me? Go to a doctor.”
“Holy rabbi, first God and then you.”
“I can’t help you in any way,” the rebbe said.
“Holy saint!”
“I am not a saint. I’m a plain Jew.”
“Aren’t you the rebbe?” The woman stopped crying for a moment.
“I’m a rebbe no longer!”
The woman wanted to give the rebbe a gulden, but he refused to take it, saying, “Take the gulden, see a doctor, and buy medicine.”
Just then the youngest boy whispered into my ear: “In America I’m going to cut off my sidecurls.”
“Will your father let you?”
“He himself said so. He’s also going to send me to public school.”
“To public school?”
“Yes … public school.”
The rebbe wasn’t merely emigrating to America, he was conducting a strike against God. His face expressed rebelliousness and impatience. The look in the rebbetzin’s eyes seemed to radiate hatred. And strangely, the rebbe never even came to bid farewell to Father.
Sad news concerning the rebbe soon made its way to us. Someone reported that he had seen the family at the Vienna train station. The rebbetzin was wearing a hat. The boys’ sidecurls had been cut off. The rebbe wore Western-style clothes and a fedora in the German fashion.
For a while we heard nothing more and then someone from Brussels wrote a letter to a relative in Warsaw stating that he had met the family there. One of the rebbe’s daughters had had an eye problem which needed treatment. The rebbe had eaten in a restaurant that was not glatt kosher, a place where truly pious Jews would not even set foot.
More time passed with no news of the rebbe. Then one of the Jews on our street got a letter from his brother in New York saying that the rebbe was working alongside him in the same shop. He had shaved off his beard. He worked all day long standing next to gentile girls.
Every fresh bit of news was a blow to Father, but he did not get angry. True, one could not wage war against the Almighty, and this rebbe was not conducting himself properly. Nevertheless, sometimes one has to address God with a sharp word. He shouldn’t assume that He can do what He wishes to Jews and they will routinely stretch their necks out for slaughter. If He wants Jews, He should provide them with a livelihood. If He wants Torah and Yiddishkeit, He should see to it that they are held in high regard.
In fact, while Father didn’t articulate this, one could see in his eyes something akin to triumph mingled with sorrow. It seemed to me that Father’s thoughts went something like this: If such a fine young man from such a glorious family lineage could abandon the straight and narrow path, it would be noted in heaven that the situation of the Jews was critical and that the Messiah would have to come.
I, too, was pleased with this news. It showed that everything was falling apart. Who knows? Perhaps they would also let me cut off my sidecurls. Perhaps Father, too, would go to America. I had a strong desire to go somewhere—every time I heard a train whistle, the longing was reawakened. In my fantasy I saw the rebbe in a factory, bareheaded, clean-shaven, a gentile girl on either side of him. The rebbe was sewing buttons, singing a song like the ones the journeymen sang in their workshops. The rebbetzin’s hair was not covered. Their sons, my friends, went to public school and wrote on the Sabbath. Who knows, perhaps they even ate unkosher food. I fancied that when the rebbe came home from work, the rebbetzin told him,
Today I cooked noodles and ham …
A year or more must have passed. Then out of the blue we got a letter from the rebbe declaring that it had indeed been his ambition to be a worker. For a long time he had slaved away at the factory, but he didn’t have the strength for it. Then someone suggested that he study slaughtering. The rebbe wrote to Father asking him to send him the slaughterer’s handbook, Tevuos Shor.
The letter pleased Father and he showed it to the men in the Hasidic shtibl. “See, he’s a scion of the pious, after all,” he said.
But I didn’t take kindly to that sort of submissiveness. I wanted the rebbe to convert. I wanted his boys to become Christians. I was overflowing with modern rebelliousness and a mad desire for upheaval, extraordinary news, weird changes. I dreamed that the moon had fallen, the sun was extinguished, an earthquake had rocked Warsaw—even that the hill in Krashinsky Park suddenly started to spew fire and become what The Book of the Covenant called a volcano.
“Papa, how would you look without a beard?” I once asked Father.
Father cast a frightened look at me. “Don’t talk nonsense!”
I imagined Father without a beard, without a mustache, and wearing a straw hat, checkered trousers, and yellow shoes. I began laughing and crying at once. A pair of scissors or a razor could have made Father beardless. Just trimming down Father’s gaberdine would make him look fashionably German. He, too, could have been placed among gentile girls and been told to sew buttons … Suddenly I took hold of Father’s beard and tugged it.