by Ilan Stavans
“But it’s a lie, because a husband is like a king and all couples are fine after a year or so.”
“No, no, and no. It’s never too late to marry or to die, Pappinyu.”
“Oy vey iz mir! May the one whose name is blessed forgive your affront, my son! You’re very stubborn, and I worry night and day about how you’ll end up.”
And while he wails, pulling hairs out of his long black beard, I run away to help Momma with the town fair, where she buys us used clothes . . .
That whole week was full of tension and whispers. Finally, on Friday night, when the rest of the family sleeps, he speaks. He looks worried.
“Where does one begin such unpleasant business? My dear sweet daughter, I want to consult you on a very delicate matter.” In a low voice: “Please don’t get upset. But ah . . . Manuel Rabinovich, the engineer, destined to be your husband, and from such a good family too, grandson of wise people! Well, anyway, he asked for a dowry, a house, car, office, and if possible, some cash . . .”
The father, knowing full well his daughter’s wickedly complicated personality, has to tell her the whole truth . . . Should he get a bank loan? What does she think?
“Well, I’m not surprised. It is customary, after all. The problem is I still like him even after six months. Elegant, handsome, first kiss and out together, in a group, of course, to places like that fabulous Montmartre in Baruta with its European music and the naughty Pasapoga with its mambos and guarachas.”
“Thanks for the warning, Dad. If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything.” Of course, in historical terms, a dowry was after all a justifiable institution even under a Marxist focus . . . but it had nothing to do with love. “Tell me, Dad, how much did you make when you married?”
“Your mother with three cotton dresses. . . .”
“Well, that’s just about what I think you should fork over . . .” At times, Max could seem primitive and abrupt in his reactions, but he had never been a good peddler. He was unable to sell his daughter. His smile, overflowing with impishness, signed a pact of complicity. On that point at least, there was never any argument.
It was a long way to Warsaw. And to be honest, it was none too sweet. But then again, I guess it could have been worse. On the way to Prztyk and Gora Kalwaria, I befriended a couple of coachmen. I’ve heard it said that God should protect us from forced exile and from coachmen, but even though these were pretty rough guys, I could tell they weren’t totally stupid. Look, these unfortunate men travel for so long facing their horses that after a while they themselves become like animals.
Anyway, I really liked Nisale, the frisky one. After listening to all my Oy yoy yoy-ings over my calf pains, one afternoon he asked me: “Tell me, young sir, you seem quite learned. What do we really need our legs for? After all, to Hebrew school we are taken, to our wedding we are driven, to our grave we are carried, to the temple we never go, and in front of all pretty gentile girls we prostrate ourselves . . . So, what do you think, do we need them for anything?”
“Yes, Nisale. We need them to take us to America the Golden!”
He remained pensive. Probably not half as old as he looked with those smooth toothless gums. I took great care to keep to myself my ideas about the feet being the very center of a penitent’s soul. Like Joel, the bearded one dressed in rags, who showed up one day at my village. “May his body be feverish for nine years!” “A pox on him!” “He should only grow like an onion, with his head buried in the ground!” they all cursed him. Only a few of the women gave him some stale bread and water, moved by his misfortune.
To make a long story short, Momma, teary eyed, tells me about the great Joel, born in the big city of Vilna, whose voice, at thirteen, was already legendary throughout the country. He sang the prayers with the virtuosity of the chosen. One day a famous gentile composer hears him at an event and, overwhelmed, begs the parents to allow him to be the child’s teacher. Years later, while in the capital singing profane tunes, Joel meets Katiuska, a Polish princess. They fall madly in love. So at the age of twenty-two, Joel abandons his singing career, and rejected by his people, he who had been so pious and devout decides to atone for his sins. He goes from village to village, dragging himself to each and every little broken-down house until he gets to ours. What grief his broken-down body bears! And even you two, my very own parents, watch him suspiciously between the slits of the window shutters.
Dear parents, in this letter I can finally tell you that as I felt his childlike face and white hair wandering feverishly around the alleys of my childhood, I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. A leper without sores.
I was reminded of the story of the king and the two men who guarded his orchard: one blind and one cripple:
“I see some delicious ripe fruit, but I can’t reach it with only one leg,” says the cripple.
“So what do you need two legs for? If you stand on my shoulders, we’ll both eat juicy apples. I don’t need eyes to taste them. Why should you need two legs?” And that’s exactly what they did. When the king found out, he questioned his guards.
“Your Highness, how could it have been me? I can’t climb or walk.”
“Do you believe, your Worship, that I could have picked them without seeing?”
The king ordered the cripple to get on the shoulders of the blind man and then sentenced both to die.
Body and soul must always go together, Poppa. I have finally realized that if succumbing to pleasure sickens one’s head, then one ends up with pain like Joel’s and in an asylum in Warsaw. I will never be a cantor like my brother, nor a mohel like you, Pappinyu, much less one of those chosen to study God’s words fifteen hours a day. Now and with this letter, I can finally tell you one of the reasons I left home without kissing you good-bye. Please try to understand. Just like you can’t dance at two weddings at the same time, I don’t want to separate my heart from my head. Poppa, Momma, dear little brothers and sisters, please don’t cry when you think of me . . .
“That’s what we need our feet for, Nisale, to save ourselves in America . . .”
CUBA
Jesus
PINKHES BERNIKER (1908–1956)
Translated from the Yiddish by Alan Astro
Pinkhes Berniker immigrated to Cuba to join his older brother, Chaim, who had started Dos Fraye Vort, the first Yiddish newspaper in Cuba. In 1931 he moved to the United States, where he worked as director of a Hebrew school in Rochester, New York. In 1935, a collection of his stories, Shtile Lebns (Quiet Lives), was published in Vilna. “Jesus” is a striking piece on Jewish-gentile relations.
HE DIDN’T TAKE it seriously the first few times his roommates suggested that he start peddling images of Jesus, or Yoshke, as he preferred to call him. He thought they were kidding. How could they be serious? Were they fools? What could they mean? How could they possibly think that he should schlep the goyish icons through the streets of Havana? What was he, a boy, a young lad who knew nothing of the world? How could they imagine that he—a middle-aged Jew with a beard and side curls, who had been ordained as a rabbi, who had devoted all the days of his life to Torah and to divine service—could all of a sudden peddle icons and spread word of Jesus of Nazareth? No, even they couldn’t be serious about that! So he thought, and he didn’t even try to answer them. He just sighed quietly, wiped the sweat off his face, and sat without moving, sure that they wouldn’t bring up such a notion again.
Later he realized he’d been mistaken. Those roommates of his had been very serious. Not daring to propose the idea outright, they had begun by alluding to it, joking about it. He had remained silent and, contrary to their expectations, hadn’t jumped up from his seat as though he had been scorched. So they had begun to broach the subject directly, insisting that he not even try another livelihood, even if one presented itself. He, of all people, was in just the right position to turn the greatest profit from peddling the “gods.” No one else could approach his success. “For every god you sell, you’ll clear a tho
usand percent profit.”
“And the Cubans love to buy gods.” “Especially from you, Rabbi Joseph, who looks so much like the bastard, pardon the comparison.” “You’ll see how eager they’ll be to buy from you.” “And they’ll pay whatever you ask.” “Listen to me, Rabbi Joseph, just try it! You’ll see! They’ll sacrifice everything they have for you! People who don’t even need a god will buy one from you!” Thus his roommates urged him to become a god peddler. They couldn’t stand to see him half-starved, in total distress, bereft of the slightest prospects. And they really did believe that selling the gods would solve his problems.
The more persistent they became, the more pensive he grew. He didn’t answer them, for what could he say? Could he cut out his heart and show them how it bled, how every word they uttered made a sharp incision in it, tearing at it painfully? How could they understand what he felt if they didn’t know how he’d been trained, what his position had been in the old country? He was consumed with self-pity. The world had stuck out its long, ugly tongue at him. Rabbi Joseph, so diligent a pupil that he’d been hailed as the prodigy from Eyshishok, was now supposed to spread tidings of Jesus of Nazareth throughout the world?!
He couldn’t resign himself to his lot. Every day, in the blue, tropical dawn, he dragged himself through the narrow streets of Old Havana, offering his labor to one Jewish-owned factory after another, promising to do whatever it would take to earn a pittance. He was rejected everywhere. How could they let a venerably bearded Jew work in a factory? Who would dare holler at him? How could they prod him, ordering him around as necessary? “How could someone like you work in a factory?” “In the Talmudic academy of Volozhin, did they teach shoe making?” “Rabbi, you’re too noble to work here.” They looked at him with pity, not knowing how to help.
“Why? Wasn’t the great Rabbi Yokhanan a shoemaker?” he asked, pleading for mercy. “That was then, this is now.”
“And what about now? Wouldn’t Rabbi Yokhanan still need to eat?” That was what he wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t. He was already too discouraged. The unanimous rejections tortured him more than the constant hunger. And the charity, the sympathy, offered by all became harder to bear. It wouldn’t have humiliated him had it not been for the presence, in a faraway Lithuanian town, of a wife and three small children who needed to eat. “Send some money, at least for bread.” Thus his wife had written to him in a recent letter. And the word bread had swelled up and grown blurry from the teardrop that had fallen on it from the eye of a helpless mother.
Joseph recalled the words from The Ethics of the Fathers: “If I am not for me, who will be for me?”
“I must harden myself. I must find work!” He called out these words, forcing himself onto the street. Pale, thin, with a despairing mien, he posted himself at a factory door, glancing around helplessly, hoping to catch sight of the owner. From among the workers, a middle-aged Jew ran up to the door and pressed a few pennies into his palm. Joseph froze. His eyes popped out of his head; his mouth gaped open. The couple of cents fell from his hand. Like a madman, he ran from the factory. Late that night, when his roommates returned, he pulled himself off his cot, stared at them momentarily, and said, “Children, tomorrow you will help me sell the gods.” They wanted to ask him what had happened, but, glimpsing the pain in his eyes, they could not move their tongues.
Binding both packages of gods together, he left between them a length of rope to place on his neck, thereby lightening the load. He had only to hold onto the packages with his hands, lest they bump into his sides and stomach.
The uppermost image on his right side portrayed Mother Mary cuddling the newborn child, and the one on his left showed Jesus already grown. Between the two images he himself looked like the Son of God. His eyes were larger than life, and his face was paler than ever. Deep, superhuman suffering shone forth from him, a reflection of the pain visited on Jesus of Nazareth as he was led to the cross.
The day was burning hot. Pearls of sweat shone on his mild, pale face, and his clothes stuck to his tortured body. He stopped for a while, disentangling his nightmarish thoughts, slowly removing the rope from his neck, straightening his back racked with pain, and scraping away the sweat that bit into his burning face. He wiped tears from the corner of one eye.
He saw, far off, the low wooden cabins in the next village. In the surrounding silence, from time to time, there came the cries of the village children. Feeling a bit more cheerful, he slowly loaded his body with the two packages of gods. Trembling, he strode onward, onward. He was noticed first by the lean, pale children playing in the street. They immediately stopped their games and stiffened in amazement. The tropical fire in their black eyes burst forth as they caught sight of him. Never had they seen such a man.
“¡Mamá, mamá, un Jesús viene!” “A Jesus is coming!” Each started running home. “¡Mira! ¡Mira!” The children’s voices rang through the village.
From windows and doors along the road, women leaned their heads out, murmuring excitedly to one another: “¡Santa María!” “¡Qué milagro!” “¡Dios mío!” They all whispered in astonishment, unable to turn their straining eyes away from the extraordinary man.
Joseph approached one of the houses and pointed to the image of Jesus, mutely suggesting that they buy a god from him. But the hot-blooded tropical women thought he was indicating how closely the image resembled him. Filled with awe, they gestured that he should enter. “¡Entre, señor!” said each one separately, with rare submissiveness. He entered the house, took the burden off his neck, and seated himself on the rocking chair they offered him. Looking at no one, he began untying the gods. No one in the household dared to sit. Along with some neighbors who had sneaked in, they encircled him and devoured him with their wide-open eyes.
“¿Tienes hijo?” “Do you have a son?” a young shiksa asked, trembling.
“I have two,” he answered.
“And are they as handsome as you?” asked another girl excitedly.
“I myself don’t know.”
“¡Mira, él mismo tampoco sabe!” “He himself doesn’t know!” A strange shame overtook the girls. They looked at each other momentarily, then burst into embarrassed laughter: “Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!” Their hoarse guffaws echoed through the modest home.
“What’s going on?” asked the mothers, glancing unkindly toward the man.
“Nothing!” said the girls, embracing each other, then repeating ecstatically, “¡El mismo tampoco sabe! ¡El mismo tampoco sabe! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!” Their suffocating laughter resonated as each tucked herself more closely into her girlfriend’s body.
“And what’s your name?” One of the girls tore herself from her friend’s embrace.
“José . . .”
“What?” asked several of the women in unison.
“José . . .”
“José, Jesús!”
The village women began to murmur, winking more than speaking.
One of the shiksas was unable to restrain herself: “And what’s your son’s name?”
“Juan . . .
“Juan, Juan,” the shiksas began to repeat, drooling. Embarrassed, they pushed each other into the next room, wildly, bizarrely. There was a momentary silence. Those watching were still under the spell of what had taken place. Joseph, however, was out of patience.
“Nu, ¿compran? Are you going to buy or not?” he asked, raising his eyes, filled with the sorrow of the world. He could say no more in Spanish, but no more was necessary. Every woman purchased a god from him by paying an initial installment—from which he already cleared a handsome profit—and promising the rest later.
Home he went, with only the rope. All the gods had been sold. He had never felt so light, so unencumbered. He had no packages to carry, and a hope had arisen within him that he would be forever free from hunger and want.
Later he himself was astonished at how he had changed, at how indifferently he could contemplate Jesus’s beard. He went to a Cuban barber and had his bl
ond beard trimmed in the likeness of Jesus.
“Your mother must have been very pious!” said the barber to him, with great conviction.
“How can you tell?”
“When she conceived you, she couldn’t have stepped away from the image of Jesus.”
“Perhaps.” Joseph was delighted.
How could he act this way? He didn’t know. The Christian women, his customers in the villages all around, waited for him as Jews await the Messiah. They worshiped him, and he earned from them more than he could ever have dreamed.
They had no idea who he was. He never told them he was a Jew, and he still wondered how he could deny his Jewish background. He learned a little Spanish, especially verses from the New Testament, and spoke with the peasant women like a true santo, a saint. Once, when a customer asked him, “¿Qué eres tú?” “What are you?” he rolled his eyes to the heavens and started to say, drawing out his words, “What difference does it make who I am? All are God’s children.”
“And the judíos? The Jews?” asked the women, unable to restrain themselves.
“The judíos are also God’s children. They’re just the sinful ones. They crucified our Señor Jesús, but they are still God’s children. Jesús himself has forgiven them.” He ended with a pious sigh.
“And do you yourself love the judíos?”
“Certainly.”
“¿De veras?” “Really?”
“¿Y qué?” “What of it?” He put on a wounded expression and soon conceded, “My love for them isn’t as deep as for the Christians, but I do love them. A sinner can be brought back to the righteous path through love, as our Señor Jesús said.”
“¡Tiene razón!” “He’s right!”
“¡Y bien que sí!” “And how!”
“¡Es un verdadero santo!” “He’s a true saint!” All the women drank in his words.