The rabbi stole away from the village. How convenient that the moon was not shining. He did not take the highway but walked along the back roads, with which he had been familiar as a boy. He did not wear his velvet hat. He had found a cap and a gaberdine from the days when he was a bachelor.
Actually, the rabbi was no longer the same man. He felt that he was possessed by a demon who thought and chattered in its own peculiar manner. Now he passed through fields and a forest. Even though it was Saturday night, when the Evil Ones run rampant, the rabbi felt bolder and stronger. He no longer feared dogs or robbers. He arrived at the station only to learn that he would have to wait for a train until dawn. He sat down on a bench, near a peasant who lay snoring. The rabbi had recited neither the Evening Prayer nor the Shema. I will shave off my beard, too, he decided. He was aware that his escape could not remain a secret and that his Hasidim might seek him out and find him. Briefly, he considered leaving Poland.
He fell asleep and was awakened by the ringing of a bell. The train had arrived. Earlier, he had bought a fourth-class ticket because in those carriages there is never any illumination; the passengers sit or stand in the dark. He was apprehensive of encountering citizens of Bechev, but the car was full of Gentiles. One of them struck a match, and the rabbi saw peasants wearing four-cornered hats, brown caftans, linen trousers—most of them barefoot or with rags on their feet. There was no window in the car, only a round opening. When the sun rose, it cast a purple light on the bedraggled lot of men, who were smoking cheap tobacco, eating coarse bread with lard, and washing it down with vodka. Their wives reclined on the baggage and dozed.
The rabbi had heard about the pogroms in Russia. Bumpkins such as these killed men, raped women, plundered, and tortured children. The rabbi huddled in a corner. He tried to cover his nose from the stench. “God, is this your world?” he asked. “Did you attempt to give them the Torah on Mount Seir and Mount Paran? Is it among them that you have dispersed your chosen people?” The wheels clammered along the rails. Smoke from the locomotive seeped through the round hole. It reeked of coal, oil, and some indiscernible smoldering substance. “Can I become one of these?” the rabbi asked himself. “If God doesn’t exist, neither did Jesus.”
The rabbi felt a strong urge to urinate but there were no facilities. These passengers seemed to be flea- and lice-ridden. He felt an itch beneath his shirt. He began to regret having left Bechev. “Who prevented me from being an infidel there?” he asked himself. “At least I had my own bed. And what will I do in Warsaw? I have been impetuous. I forgot that a heretic too needs food and a pillow under his head. My few rubles will not last long. Simcha David is a pauper himself.” The rabbi had been informed that Simcha David was starving, wore tattered clothes, and in addition was stubborn and impractical. “Well, and what did he expect? There is no lack of charlatans in Warsaw.”
The rabbi’s legs ached and he lowered himself to the floor. He shoved the visor of his cap lower on his forehead. Jews boarded the train at various stations; someone might recognize him. Suddenly he heard familiar words. “Oh, my God, the soul which Thou gavest me is pure; Thou didst create it, Thou didst form it, Thou didst breathe it into me; Thou preservest it within me; and Thou wilt take it from me but wilt restore it unto me hereafter …” “A lie, a brazen lie,” something in the rabbi exclaimed. “All have the same spirit—a man, an animal. Ecclesiastes himself admitted this; therefore, the sages wanted to censor him. Well, but what is a spirit? Who formed the spirit? What do the worldly books say about that?”
The rabbi slept and dreamed that it was Yom Kippur. He stood in the synagogue yard along with a group of Jews who wore white robes and prayer shawls. Someone had locked the synagogue, but why? The rabbi lifted his eyes to the sky and instead of one moon he saw two, three, five. What was that? The moons seemed to rush toward one another. They became larger and more radiant. Lightning struck, thunder rolled, and the sky blazed in flames. The Jews emitted a howling lament: “Woe, Evil is prevailing!”
Shaken, the rabbi awoke. The train had arrived in Warsaw. He had not been in Warsaw since his father—blessed be his memory—fell ill and went there to see Dr. Frankel a few months before his demise. Father and son had then traveled in a special carriage. Sextons and court members had accompanied them. A crowd of Hasidim had waited at the station. His father was led to the house of a rich follower on Twarda Street. In his living room Father interpreted the Torah. Now Nechemia walked along the platform carrying his own valise. Some of the passengers ran, others dragged their luggage. Porters shouted. A gendarme appeared with a sword on one side, a revolver on the other, his chest covered with medals, his square face red and fat. His tallowy eyes measured the rabbi with suspicion, hatred, and with something that reminded the rabbi of a predatory beast.
The rabbi entered the city. Trolley cars clanged their bells, droshkies converged, the coachmen flicked their whips, the horses galloped over the cobblestones. There was a stench of pitch, refuse, and smoke. “This is the world?” the rabbi asked himself. “Here the Messiah is supposed to come?” He searched in his breast pocket for the scrap of paper bearing Simcha David’s address, but it had vanished. “Are the demons playing with me already?” The rabbi returned his hand to the pocket and withdrew the paper he had been searching for. Yes, a demon was mocking him. But if there is no God, how can there be an Evil Host? He stopped a passer-by and asked for directions to Simcha David’s street.
The man gave them. “What a distance!” he said.
IV
Each time the rabbi asked how to reach Smotcha Street, where Simcha David lived, he was advised to take a trolley car or a droshky, but the trolley seemed too formidable and a droshky was too expensive. Besides, the driver might be a Gentile. The rabbi spoke no Polish. He stopped to rest every few minutes. He hadn’t eaten breakfast; still, he didn’t know whether or not he was hungry. His mouth watered and he felt a dryness in his throat. The smell of freshly baked rolls, bagels, boiled milk, and smoked herring drifted from the courtyards. He passed by stores that sold leather, hardware, dry-goods, and ready-made clothes. The salesmen vied for customers, tore at their sleeves, winking and interspersing their Yiddish with Polish. Saleswomen called out in a singsong, “Apples, pears, plums, potato kugel, hot peas and beans.” A wagon laden with kindling tried to pass through a narrow gate. A cart piled high with sacks of flour forced its way through another gate. A madman—barefoot, wearing a caftan with one sleeve missing and a torn cap—was being chased by a bevy of boys. They called taunts and threw pebbles at him.
“Mother cooked a kitten,” a young boy sang out in a high-pitched voice. Blond sidelocks hung down from his octagonal cap.
The rabbi proceeded to cross the street and was nearly run down by an express wagon drawn by two Belgian horses. Women wrung their hands and scolded him. A man with a dirty gray beard who carried a sack on his shoulders said, “You’ll have to recite a thanksgiving benediction this Saturday.”
“So, thanksgiving.” The rabbi spoke to himself. “And what does he carry in the sack—his portion in Paradise?”
He finally reached Smotcha Street. Someone pointed out the gate number to him. At the gate a girl was selling onion rolls. He entered a courtyard where children were playing tag around a huge, freshly tarred garbage receptacle. Nearby, a dyer dipped a red skirt in a kettle filled with black dye. In an open window a girl was airing a feather bed, beating it with a stick. The first people he asked knew nothing of Simcha David. Then one woman said, “He must live in the attic.”
The rabbi was unaccustomed to so many steps. He had to stop to catch his breath. Refuse littered the stairway. Apartment doors stood ajar. A tailor was sewing on a machine. One flat contained a line of weaving looms where girls with bits of cotton in their hair deftly knotted threads. On the higher stories, holes gaped in the plastered walls and the smell became stifling. Suddenly the rabbi saw Simcha David. He had emerged from a dark corridor, capless, in a short jacket spattered with paint and clay. He
had yellow hair and yellow eyebrows. He carried a bundle. The rabbi was amazed that he recognized his brother; he looked so much like a Gentile. “Simcha David!” he called.
Simcha David stared. “A familiar face, but—”
“Take a good look.”
Simcha David shrugged. “Who are you?”
“Your brother, Nechemia.”
Simcha David didn’t even blink. His pale blue eyes looked dull, sad, ready for all the bizarre things time might bring. Two deep wrinkles had formed at the corners of his mouth. He was no longer the prodigy of Bechev but a shabby laborer. After a while he said, “Yes, it’s you. What’s wrong?”
“I’ve chosen to follow you.”
“Well, I can’t stop now. I have to meet someone. They’re waiting for me. I’m late already. I’ll let you into my room so you can rest. We’ll talk later.”
“So be it.”
“ ‘I had not thought to see thy face,’ ” Simcha David quoted from Genesis.
“Nu, I thought you had already forgotten everything,” the rabbi said. He was more embarrassed by his brother’s quoting the Bible than by his coolness.
Simcha David opened the door of a room so tiny it reminded the rabbi of a cage. The ceiling hung crookedly. Along the walls leaned canvases, frames, rolls of paper. It smelled of paint and turpentine. There was no bed, only a dilapidated couch.
Simcha David asked, “What do you want to do in Warsaw? These are hard times.” He left without waiting for a reply.
Why is he in such a rush, the rabbi wondered. He sat on the couch and looked around. Nearly all the paintings were of females—some nude, some half nude. On a little table lay brushes and a palette. This must be the way he makes a living, the rabbi thought. It was clear to him now that he had acted in folly. He shouldn’t have come here. One can suffer pain anywhere.
The rabbi waited for an hour, two, but Simcha David didn’t return. Hunger gnawed at him. “Today is a day of fast for me—a heretic’s fast,” he told himself. A voice inside him teased, “You deserve what you’re getting.” “I don’t repent,” the rabbi retorted. He was ready to wrangle with the Angel of God as he once struggled with the Lord of Evil.
The rabbi picked up a book from the floor. It was in Yiddish. He read a story about a saint who, instead of going to the Evening Prayer, gathered kindling for a widow. What is this—morality or mockery? The rabbi had expected to read a denial of God and the Messiah. He picked up a pamphlet whose pages were falling out, and read about colonists in Palestine. Young Jews plowed, sowed, dried swamps, planted eucalyptus trees, fought the Bedouins. One of these pioneers had perished and the writer called him a martyr. The rabbi sat bewildered. If there’s no Creator, why go to the Holy Land? And what do they mean by a martyr?
The rabbi grew tired and lay down. “Such Jewishness is not for me,” he said. “I’d rather convert!” But where did one convert? Besides, to convert, one had to pretend belief in the Nazarene. It seemed that the world was full of faith. If you didn’t believe in one God, you must believe in another. The Cossacks sacrificed themselves for the czar. Those who wanted to dethrone the czar sacrificed themselves for the revolution. But where were the real heretics, those who believed in nothing? He had not come to Warsaw to barter one faith for another.
V
The rabbi waited for three hours, but Simcha David didn’t come back. This is how the modern ones are, he brooded. Their promise is not a promise; they have no sense of kinship or friendship. Actually, what they worship is the ego. These thoughts perturbed him—wasn’t he one of them now? But how does one curb the brain from thinking? He gazed about the room. What could thieves find of value here? The naked females? He went out the door, closed it, and walked down the stairs. He took his valise with him. He was dizzy and walked unsteadily. On the street, he passed a restaurant but was ashamed to enter. He didn’t even know how to order a meal. Did all the patrons sit at the same table? Did men eat together with women? People might ridicule his appearance. He returned to the gate of the house where Simcha David lived and bought two rolls. But where could he eat them? He remembered the proverb “One who eats in the street resembles a dog.” He stood in the gateway and bit into the roll.
He had already committed sins that were punishable by death, but eating without washing his hands and without reciting a benediction disturbed him. He found it difficult to swallow. Well, it’s a matter of habit, the rabbi comforted himself. One must get accustomed even to being a transgressor. He ate one roll and put the other into his pocket. He walked aimlessly. On one street, three funeral processions drove past him. The first hearse was followed by several men. A few droshkies rode after the second. No one accompanied the third. “Well, it doesn’t make any difference to them,” the rabbi said to himself. “ ‘For the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward,’ ” he quoted Ecclesiastes.
He turned right and went by long, narrow dry-goods stores lit up inside by gas lamps although it was midday. From wagons nearly as large as houses, men were unloading rolls of woolens, alpaca, cottons, and prints. A porter walked along with a basket on his shoulders, his back bent under the load. High-school boys in uniforms with gilded buttons and insignias on their caps toted books strapped to their shoulders. The rabbi stopped. If you didn’t believe in God, why raise children, why support wives? According to logic, a nonbeliever should care only for his own body and for no one else.
He walked on. In the next block a bookstore displayed books in Hebrew and Yiddish: The Generations and Their Interpreters, The Mysteries of Paris, The Little Man, Masturbation, How to Prevent Consumption. One book was titled How the Universe Came into Being. I’m going to buy it, the rabbi decided. There were a few customers inside. The bookseller, a man with gold-rimmed glasses attached to a ribbon, was talking to a man who had long hair and wore a hat with a wide brim and a cape on his shoulders. The rabbi stopped at the shelves and browsed among the books.
A salesgirl approached him and asked, “What do you want—a prayer book, a benedictor?”
The rabbi blushed. “I noticed a book in the window but I’ve already forgotten its name.”
“Come out, show it to me,” the girl said, winking at the man with the gold-rimmed glasses. She smiled and dimples formed in her cheeks.
The rabbi had an impulse to run away. He pointed out the book.
“Masturbation?” the girl asked.
“No.”
“Vichna Dvosha Goes to America?”
“No, the one in the middle.”
“How the Universe Came into Being? Let’s go back inside.” The girl whispered to the store owner, who now stood behind the counter. He scratched his forehead. “It’s the last copy.”
“Shall I take it from the window?” the girl asked.
“But why do you need that book in particular?” the store owner said. “It’s out of date. The universe didn’t come into being the way the author describes. Nobody was there to tell.”
The girl burst out laughing. The man in the cape asked, “Where do you come from, the provinces?”
“Yes.”
“For what did you come to Warsaw? To buy merchandise for your store?”
“Yes, merchandise.”
“What kind of merchandise?”
The rabbi wanted to answer that it was no business of his, but it wasn’t in his nature to be insolent. He said, “I want to know what the heretics are saying.”
The girl laughed again. The merchant took off his glasses. The man in the cape stared at him with his big black eyes. “That’s all you need?”
“I want to know.”
“Well, he wants to know. Will they allow you to read it? If they catch you with such a book, they’ll throw you out of the study house.”
“No one will know,” the rabbi replied. He realized that he was speaking like a child, not like an adult.
“Well, I guess the Enlightenment is still alive, the same as fifty years ago,” the man in the cape said to the owner. “This
is the way they used to come to Vilna and ask, ‘How was the world created? Why does the sun shine? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ ” He turned to the rabbi. “We don’t know, my dear man, we don’t know. We have to live without faith and without knowledge.”
“So why are you Jews?” the rabbi asked.
“We have to be Jews. An entire people cannot become assimilated. Besides, the Gentiles don’t want us. There are several hundred converts in Warsaw and the Polish press attacks them constantly. And what would conversion accomplish? We have to remain a people.”
“Where can I get the book?” the rabbi asked.
“Who knows. It’s out of print. Anyway, it only states that the universe evolved. As to how it evolved, how life was created, and all the rest, nobody has an inkling.”
“So why are you unbelievers?”
“My dear man, we have no time to engage in discussions with you. I have one copy and I don’t want to stir the dust,” the owner said. “Come back in a few weeks when we redo the window. The universe won’t turn sour in that short a time.”
“Please forgive me.”
“My dear fellow, there are no unbelievers any more,” said the man in the cape. “In my time there were a few, but the old ones have died and the new generation is practical. They want to improve the world but don’t know how to go about it. Do you at least earn a living from your store?”