replied Avromche with a shiver.
‘Now, now, Mr.Polack! Won’t you take something?’
‘Take something? Is there anything to take? What do
you know about such things? A young man, and a good-
* schikse: Christian girl.
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looking man, how happy you must be . . . I mean’, he
added, struggling to pull himself together a bit, ‘a young
man with such good sound teeth.’
‘As a matter of fact I have experienced it too.’
‘Have you? What did you do? I’m telling you—you’ve
experienced nothing like this.’
‘Oh yes, I held some brandy against the tooth.’
‘Brandy against the tooth,’ repeated Avromche slowly.
Instinctively he felt in need of warmth and resuscitation,
and suddenly it struck him as good advice. ‘Where can we
get brandy? Have you got some?’
With the quiet satisfaction laymen feel when their
proffered advice about an illness is accepted, the journey-
man went next door and brought back a blue flask and a
heavy broad-based quarter-pint glass.
As Avromche took the glass he wanted to say the
Jewish prayer but had the dreadful feeling he must not
presume to, that in thought and deed he had betrayed his
God and his people, and in desperation he emptied the
glass without preliminaries. Once over the first shock of
the unaccustomed drink, and feeling the warmth spread
through his veins, he said: ‘That did me good, after all.’
‘Not much got to the tooth,’ said the journeyman.
Avromche answered with a queer laugh: ‘It didn’t get
to the tooth, and yet it did get to the tooth!’
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‘Yes, it does one good all the same,’ the journeyman
said as he poured himself a glass too, and emptied it.
‘How would it get to the right tooth?’ continued Av-
romche. ‘If it could get to the right tooth I wouldn’t be here
and you wouldn’t be here, and so then it would not be
needed.’
The journeyman could make no sense of this dark
Talmudic speech and contented himself with replying:
‘Try another small one.’
‘Yes, but just a very small one.’
Avromche took another deep draught, and with thanks
to the journeyman declared he was much better now,
whereupon the journeyman wished him good night and
went back to his room.
But once the journeyman had gone so had the human
sympathy and the momentary distraction, and the fearful
reality broke with fresh and feverish power into Avromche’s
now drink-fuelled consciousness. It seemed impossible
things could be as they were, and yet it was impossible to
deny. It was as though some creature were with him in the
room, one moment lurking in a corner and next moment
hurling itself at him to grab him by the throat and dash him
to the floor. And all the while thoughts and memories
whirled past him in a frenzied ring dance, and he saw the
most diverse things at one and the same time: Emilie in
the square gliding away like a shadow, the young person in
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the box laughing in his face, the crowd in the lobby infinitely
far below, and their muttering and their laughter, and the
shrilling of the music from ‘Svend Dyring’s House’ together
with the revolution scene from ‘La Muette’; and in the
middle of it all his father arose, swaying in the air, deathly
pale, saying to him: ‘On account of the theatre you will yet
seek a nail from which to hang yourself! You are useless and
unnecessary on this earth!’ And whenever all began to fade
for a moment, then horror at the thought of the following
day loomed in the shape of another ghost leaping on him
from the corner.
It was impossible to endure, and impossible to shake
off. He could not even summon the strength to let out a
scream, but as in a nightmare stood wavering in the
middle of the dim room, with one sole half-formed wish:
to get away from this life which offered no place to hide.
What brings on the thought of suicide? The doctors say
it is a sickness, a sort of insanity. But how and at what
moment does our private innermost being pass from its
intrinsic unity to the discord which is insanity, and which
prompts the urge? And how of itself can insanity persuade
a person to hang himself, an undertaking which in sane
people’s eyes is demanding and requires considerable
practical sense? With all other methods of doing away
with oneself we have some sort of training. Everyone has
tried to prick or cut himself, drink something that makes
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him sick and so forth, and people who shoot themselves
have previously fired a gun or a pistol; but to hang oneself
by the neck from a nail or a hook lies beyond all possibility
of rehearsal, and yet people carry it out at the crucial
moment with assurance and a sort of uncanny ingenuity,
in the hour of madness.
How did Avromche come to hang himself? He stood
on the very brink of madness, but had yet to go over the
precipice. His dead father pointed to a nail from which to
hang himself, but hardly ever had Avromche taken it for
anything more than a figure of speech. He wished himself
out of life, but still had not lost all sense of self-preserva-
tion, that instinctual love of the self as a person alive. An
apparent trifle tipped the balance. He saw—as the horrify-
ing ring dance still whirled about him—something on the
wall, something solid resembling a human figure. It was
his own old coat hanging there, but at once it seemed to
him he had company, that something human was in there
with him, and he formed but one great wish: to get to it.
After an age which to him seemed endless, by exerting all
his strength he managed one step towards his salvation
and felt inside it—and it was empty, just the husk of a
human, perhaps his own father. Through his dismayed
and terrified fingertips a sensation mounted to his brain
and unleashed the madness. With extraordinary speed and
assurance he remembered the maidservant had recently
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run up new clothes lines outside the window, and with
equal certainty he recalled there was a great nail in the
ceiling. In a trice he had seized the clothes line and—
hanged himself. But this time too he had made more
noise than he knew, and he was barely strung up before
the journeyman was inside the room and had cut him
down.
So Avromche did not die by the noose, though he was
still more dead than alive. The journeyman raised the
alarm, and
had him taken to hospital.
The townspeople received the mysterious news of his
marriage almost at the same time as they heard that he had
been taken to hospital in either a state of madness or a
fever. The latter swallowed up the former, for when some-
one is struck low by an everyday mishap he ceases to be of
interest. With the Sass family this was not quite the case.
Sympathy for him in his illness did indeed have to battle
hard against their resentment at the fact he had so craftily
got married on the sly, for all that there was something
mightily surprising and hard to credit about the marriage
itself. They obtained the most impeccable information
from town, and were none the wiser. At his lodgings
they were told he had been raving and had tried to take
his own life, but both the journeyman and his master and
the entire family were much astonished when asked about
his wife. In the foyer, too, they confirmed they had seen
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Nattergal and had heard his declaration, but no one had
sighted his wife in the throng. Even had someone picked
out Emilie amongst other female figures near him, she
would have seemed the person least likely to be his partner
through life. One or two people remarked offhandedly that
it was probably none other than Gitte Sass whom Av-
romche had married, and the Sass family, who had gone
hunting for his wife all over town, were to their amaze-
ment redirected to their own house. That in a sense she
was indeed at home, in the kitchen, and that one little
question there might have put them on the right track,
occurred to none of them.
Meantime, the one person who could have best solved
everything, had he so wished, was lying in hospital; and
since at first no one really knew how things stood with his
head, no visits were allowed. There he lay, shielded from
the world by his very illness, the hospital his sanctuary,
and in the rapidly ensuing state of bliss, that feeling of both
powerlessness and new life which as a rule accompanies
recuperation, recent events appeared to him to have no
blame attached, shrouded in a veil of mystery. He realized,
to his delight, that he was not married and had not aban-
doned the community; anyone could come and enquire
for themselves: though he himself had said so, it was still
untrue. So why had he said it? Here his head started to
spin. He hoped Emilie would keep quiet about his love,
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just as she had kept quiet about the word Suss; nonetheless
this was the point which troubled him most: he had no idea
whether he had betrayed his love to her or to anyone else.
Madame Sass, on the other hand, had had time enough
to recover, and to get over her initial resentment at his
craftiness, and time to begin to doubt it, and to ponder
many possibilities. If he was not yet married he still could
be; such things had been known to happen; there were
enough widows and spinsters a schathren could recom-
mend to him.* All the town knew he was a man of means.
How could she have forgotten, walked about with her eyes
wide open and overlooked the fact? His new coat! If it
wasn’t a sign he had already celebrated marriage—and all
things considered that was unlikely—then it was a sure
sign he could ‘change his ways’. She just could not believe
herself. It would serve her right if he really was married,
she fully deserved the mortification of seeing both him and
his money borne off by another family who had never
looked after him, who wouldn’t have opened their door to
him that time he was rejected by his own father. But was
he in fact married now, or was he not married? For the
present all depended on that. At last came the moment
schathren: marriage broker.
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when she could ask. She was sitting at his bedside, and did
ask, or rather did not, but said:
“Avromche, everybody’s saying your illness is because you
let yourself run to seed, and you have no one to look after you.”
‘Who’d look after me?’ answered Avromche with
immense weariness and a feigned immense innocence.
But immediately he grew dreadfully scared, for she could
answer: What about our maid Emilie? Terror made him so
deathly pale and grey-blue that Madame Sass did not press
the matter for fear his illness had overcome him. But once
she was home she said to herself: ‘He’s no more married
than the back of my hand!’
On her next visit, she said: ‘Avromche, could you bear
it if I were to discuss your future with you?’
He had no objection to the future so long as the past
was left in peace. He answered: ‘My future is the celebra-
tion of my levaie.’
‘Fiddlesticks! There’s nothing wrong with you! Never
have you looked better than now.’
Avromche didn’t worry his head about fathoming what
this two-edged compliment portended, but lay curled like
a snail, listening.
She went on: ‘We have spoken about your future before—
do you remember? When my dear husband was alive?’
levaie: funeral.
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‘Gebenscht soll er sein! If anyone is in Gan Eiden he is.’
‘If God is merciful he will be. Do you know what he
would say if he was alive now?’
Again Avromche was overcome with terror, for he
expected the answer: ‘Leizer, God rest his soul, would say
you should not make a fool of yourself with our maid.’ All
he managed to say was: ‘He would speak gently’.
She answered with a grave and portentous nod: ‘He
would speak gently. He would say: “Avromche, you are too
good to have to go out in the rain and cold every night, and
fall ill and die in hospital. You need someone to be there
for you and look after you, and be good to you in a home
of your own. You need to get married, Avromche.”’
Now it was edging closer, now it was only a hair’s
breadth away, now it would come, scornfully, crushingly:
To our maid! He groaned: ‘It is all up with me’, and shut
his eyes before the thunderbolt.
‘Nonsense, Avromche! It’s never all up. Do you believe
my son Isak is an honest and worthy and decent hard-
working man?’
What was this? She was speaking of her son! Her mind
was not on the dread subject! Avromche opened his eyes.
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked.
Genbenscht soll er sein: Blessings upon him; Gan Eiden: the Garden of Eden.
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Nightingale n 255
‘Und wie do I believe it!’
‘And do you think he is proficient in his geschaeft?’
/>
‘Kol Jisroel should have a son like Isak! What more can
I say?’
‘Well now. Isak wants to set himself up. You put in
your little bit of capital and go into partnership with him,
and our Lord will see to the rest.’
Now Avromche fully understood. He understood he
was saved, he felt it to be a miracle, and in return for so
unexpectedly finding his indiscretion undiscovered he
found marrying Gitte a small price to pay. He hastened
to address a silent blessing to God, and asked, almost
without thinking: ‘What will Gitte say?’
‘Gitte’, replied Madame Sass, ‘is a sensible girl and has
long reached the age of discretion. So what do I matter?’
The next day Gitte came on her own.
She said, without preamble: ‘Pollok, Mother says the
two of us are to marry.’
Avromche replied: ‘She said the same to me.’
She went on: ‘We are children no longer, Pollok. You’re
getting a poor spinster past her prime. Well, you know
that. But there is something I must ask you.’
‘If I can answer, then ask, Gitte.’
und wie: And how!; geschaeft: business; Kol Jisroel: all Israel.
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‘You can answer. You are the only one who can,
and the only one who must. Is it a sin to be fond of a
Christian—I mean really fond, in love with a Christian?’
Avromche had thought they were entirely on safe
ground; now the question so knocked him back he nearly
fainted. But managing to pull himself together he mounted
a modest defence: ‘A sin?’ he replied. ‘There are greater
sins.’
‘But if I’d been in love with a Christian, then what?’
‘You!’ exclaimed Avromche, and a novel prospect
arose before his eyes: he was a man, he was woman’s
master and judge. And then just as quickly he grew uneasy:
was it not a trap? Otherwise what kind of story was this?
He dared not utter a word.
She paid him no heed, but went on: ‘It would be to sin
against God if I were to hide something from the husband
He intends to give me.’
So she meant it in all seriousness, and the thought
incited Avromche.
‘Who is this man?’ he cried ‘What kind of a man is he?
How did you meet the man?’
‘He was an officer.’
‘An officer!’—Soldiers were created for our sins, and
officers for our greater sins!—‘An officer! How did you
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