The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  When the refreshed violinists took up their instruments again, Meyer whispered to Guttle that it was time they were alone. They hugged her parents and the children, and Meyer took a plate and filled it with cookies and ruggelah, and carried it with him as they waved and left the temple. Seeing the plate, a half-drunk Otto Kracauer called out, “This is no time to be thinking of your stomach, Meyer Amschel.” The people around him laughed, and Guttle, eyes smiling with merriment, blushed. Holding hands, they walked up the lane for the first time as man and wife. Mercifully, no one, not even giggling children, followed; the adults made sure of that. The cookies were for the guards at the gate, Meyer told her, it never hurts to get on their good side.

  The sun was gone but in Guttle’s eyes the lane was gleaming with a unique light, as the mikveh had been the night before. She hoped that through her married eyes it would always be thus.

  They had almost reached the Hinterpfann when Sophie Marcus stepped out of the alley and began to waddle toward them. She was holding something large, covered with a cloth. Guttle and Meyer paused. “A special gift for the bride,” Frau Marcus said.

  Meyer smiled, but Guttle’s heart was pounding. Frau Marcus pulled the cloth from her gift. It was a white porcelain chamber pot, dotted with small pink flowers

  “How thoughtful,” Meyer said, bemused; it was an odd wedding gift, but practical.

  Guttle grabbed the plate of cookies from Meyer’s hands. Sophie Marcus lowered the chamber pot to her side. Just as her arms began to swing forward, to hurl its contents at the bride, Guttle threw the cookie plate in her face. Instinctively, Sophie dropped the pot and raised her hands to protect her eyes. The porcelain shattered on the cobbles, the waste splashing in every direction. The plate smashed on the cobbles as well, cookies mingling with turds. Guttle jumped back, looked at her gown; it had remained spotless, had somehow escaped the assault. Sophie’s own shoes and the bottom of her gray house dress were splattered. Seeing this, she fell to her knees, heedless of the stinking mess, and began to scream, to howl like an abandoned animal.

  “Are you all right?” Guttle asked, turning to Meyer.

  He was standing where he had been, astonished. “You expected this?”

  “I expected something. I didn’t know what.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t worry you. It might have been all in my head.”

  They were speaking loud over Sophie’s howls. “You’re my wife! From now on you’ll tell me!”

  “From now on!” Guttle agreed.

  People were running up the lane in response to the howls. The fat Cantor was in the lead; he had recognized his mother’s voice. Gazing at the smelly scene, taking in what had happened, he grabbed his mother and pulled her roughly to her feet. Jacob Marcus, not far behind, scanned the mess and shook his head. “I apologize for my wife,” he said. “I hope you will forgive our family. I assure you, such a thing will not happen again.”

  “You assure us?” Meyer said. “How can you assure us?”

  “You have my word.”

  Meyer nodded as the moneylender put his arm around his sobbing wife. With their son supporting her on the other side they half led and half dragged her, stumbling, down the lane.

  Guttle felt tears begin to flow down her cheeks. Shuddering at what might have been, she pressed her face into Meyer’s shoulder, and held it there. When she had calmed a little, she said, “I’m glad you were being generous.”

  “Generous?”

  “The cookies for the guards.”

  The other spectators stayed back, allowing the newlyweds space in which to recover, opening a path through which the grieving Marcus family passed.

  The Hinterpfann was empty. Kalman, and Moish’s family, would be spending the night down the lane, crowded in with friends — a wedding gift sweeter than cake. Opening the door, Meyer made sure to lock it behind them. The couple smiled at one another shyly, and hugged, and kissed, and, tired from the dancing and the wine, exhausted by the assault, they lay together still clothed on the new bed with its feather pillows, and fell asleep in one another’s arms.

  After perhaps an hour, Guttle awoke. She crept quietly off the bed and heated water, bathed, slipped naked into an ivory silk night gown, a gift from Dvorah, and crawled back into bed. When Meyer awoke soon after, he had little trouble finding her in the silk.

  Late the next afternoon, Guttle sat in the chair of the wigmaker and midwife Celia Levitan, a cloth draped over her neck and shoulders, wondering why she was crying. Hair hurts when you pull it, not when you cut it, so why these tears? She had not thought she would mind, as long as Meyer didn’t. If Dvorah had hacked her auburn curls, they would have spurted real blood. Strike off Brendel’s blonde ringlets and they likely would leak sunshine. But her hair was ordinary dark brown, the same as most of the hair in the lane, and it dropped to the floor of Celia’s shop without a gurgle, without a murmur of dissent.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Celia assured her.

  “The rules were made by men,” Guttle said. “I’d think they’d want us to keep our hair.”

  … and felt Meyer’s gentle palms on her surging breasts.

  “They need to feel trusting of their wives. For flirting, there are unmarried girls.”

  Guttle did not think Meyer would feel jealous if she kept her hair. She never had asked him. If you were a faithful Jew, this was just something a bride did without questioning, like lighting the Sabbath candles.

  … like opening your thighs to his caress . . .

  Her mother, who had come with her, dabbed the tears from her cheeks with a handkerchief.

  “Just remember,” Celia reminded them, “it was Samson whose strength was in his hair, not Delilah.” To Guttle this sounded like trade talk, something Celia said to all the crying girls.

  The wigmaker stopped snipping when she appeared to be half way through. Guttle was nowhere near bald as her mother was under her sheitl, as she assumed all married women were. Celia lifted the nearest wig from a shelf and fitted it on Guttle’s head.

  “What are you doing?” Emmie asked.

  … moaning, moaning with pleasure . . .

  “Trying it for size. Don’t worry, I won’t make her a blonde.” She lifted off the yellow wig.

  “But she still has hair.”

  Guttle’s head remained covered by a dark crown, like many a newborn infant’s. The wigmaker had lopped off all the locks that previously had fallen onto Guttle’s neck and down her back; never again would she wear braids hanging in ribbons, or piled high, as she had at the wedding; there were no more long strands to get soaked in the rain. But a neatly trimmed cap of her own hair remained.

  “This is how the girls are doing it now,” Celia said.

  “But the Talmud … ” Emmie began.

  “The Talmud says, ‘A woman’s hair is a private part of her.’ That means you shouldn’t show your hair in public, the Rabbis say. For a married woman to show her hair in public is like going about naked. But trimming is all that’s necessary. The sheitl will cover this much.”

  Serenity settled upon Guttle. She had been willing to be bald — but this was better.

  Meyer Amschel … her husband. What a strange word that was.

  Her mother’s eyebrows were raised, and seemed to stay that way, but she didn’t argue with the wigmaker. Celia tried sheitl after sheitl on Guttle, in different shades of brown. All were styled the same, close-fitting on top, a simple roll at the neck; comfort was the important thing. They settled on a wig whose color was the same as her own hair — which made Guttle wonder again about this rule. She asked whose hair it was.

  “We’re not supposed to say,” Celia replied.

  When they had paid for the cutting and the sheitl, Celia swept the floor carefully, saving Guttle’s long locks in a sack. Some day in the future, another bride would be wearing them.

  30 August

  Sorry, book, I was too tired last night to write. Or this morning.
But one moment I must record. We were sitting on our bed. Meyer unbuttoned notch by notch my blue dress. Gently he folded it back off my shoulders. I imagined the curtains parting on a fine new play. A fine new opera. For only the second time, my breasts were revealed to him.

  He sat gazing at them, as if they were treasures. Then he said, ‘The circles of your nipples are like exquisite pink coins.’ I flashed with anger. Coins? Even on our second night? I wanted to smack his face. But when I looked at him, something was different. His eyes were still on my breasts, but they were not the eyes that I knew, they were wider, softer, the large brown eyes of a child. As I realized this I felt a catch in my chest, as if some knowledge of his soul had passed directly into mine. It by-passed my understanding, I could not say what it was. Only my soul knew.

  He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he was himself again. His lips fell upon my breast, his tongue played with it, his mouth engorged it. My anger melted away in a pleasure of such intensity as I had never felt before. It warms me still. I think in memory it always will. There is only one difficulty, I learned, with enjoying such fierce passion in the Judengasse. It is necessary to mute one’s cries, to stuff one’s fist into one’s mouth, lest the entire lane hear.

  Sophie Marcus, we have been told, has been locked away in the Marcus attic, the window boarded up against her own animal cries. They know of nothing else to do with her. Despite all that transpired, this saddens me. I cannot but think there was a time when she and her husband Jacob were young and in love, like Meyer and I.

  Perhaps, in three hundred years, she will become a legend, like Melka.

  Meyer is waiting for me. I must hurry. But first I want to see how my new name looks in writing.

  Guttle Rothschild

  Frau Meyer Amschel Rothschild

  I like it.

  Book Four: Wind in the Walls

  Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

  — Voltaire

  A thinking man is a depraved animal.

  — Rousseau

  29

  Guttle Rothschild was sitting on her bed, nursing her third child, Salomon, nine months old. Schönche, nearly four, was playing quietly on the floor with her favorite rag doll. Amschel, just turned two, was galloping about with a wooden horse that Yussel Kahn had carved for him. Delivering three children had broadened Guttle’s slender hips, suckling one then another for four years had filled out her breasts. Judging by the glances she received from young men in the lane, this had not destroyed her appeal. Meyer certainly had not complained.

  As the baby nursed, Guttle gazed with pleasure at a new addition to the bedroom — an oil painting of her wedding, which Meyer had purchased only a month before from Hiram Liebmann, as a gift for their fifth anniversary, and which now hung above their bed. Commissioned by Meyer, Hiram had rendered the scene just as she recalled it, even to the heaviness of Dvorah’s body as she stood up for Guttle with difficulty a week before she was delivered of twins. Guttle wondered again at the artist’s signature, nothing but Lieb, which Hiram had adopted as his painting name when he decided his work was good enough to sell. Who would have thought, she imagined Leo saying, that Hiram could paint as good as that young Wolf Mozart.

  A knock on the front door evoked a mild epithet from her lips. A customer in search of coins would be good, but the timing was a bother. Gently she removed her breast from the baby, buttoned her blouse, and set the child in the middle of the bed, hoping he wouldn’t cry.

  The intruder turned out to be not a customer but Dvorah, holding a small white package. Guttle led her through the office into the bedroom and resumed nursing the infant. Her friend sat beside her, gazing at Hiram’s painting.

  “I discover new details every time I look at it,” Dvorah said. “Who would have thought the deaf mute could make a painting like that?”

  “People learn things. People grow.”

  Unwrapping her package, Dvorah held the book so Guttle could see the cover. “Do you know this story?”

  “The Sorrows of Young Werther.” Guttle shook her head. “Where did you get it?”

  From the pocket of her dress Dvorah pulled a note she had shoved there. She smoothed the wrinkled paper and placed it in Guttle’s hand. The note was brief, Guttle read it aloud. “I am Werther, you are Lotte. You must let me see you.”

  Guttle looked at the back of the note paper. It was blank. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. It was in the book.”

  She looked again at the note. “What does it mean? Who is it from?”

  “It’s from Paul.”

  Frowning, Guttle shifted the baby to her other breast. “I thought you told him a long time ago to stop writing.”

  “I did. Three years ago he told me was marrying a distant cousin, and would stop. Last spring he wrote again, and said he had gotten a divorce. I thought I told you that. He said he could not be married happily to anyone but me.”

  “And you answered that?”

  “So as not to be rude. He is the son of the Countess, after all. Who is my mother’s best customer.”

  “Doesn’t he know you’re married? That you have two children? That you’re Jewish?”

  “Of course he knows. He’s been writing anyway. Of the wonderful things we could do together outside the ghetto.”

  “He’s mad.”

  “He admits to that. Madly in love, he wrote in the last letter. That one I didn’t answer.”

  “What about your mother? The letters used to upset her. With good reason.”

  “I warned him about that. I wrote him that Mama might become angry enough to tell the Countess. Or my husband.”

  “Yet he sent the book.”

  “Not to Mama’s house. To Brendel, at the Café.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Read it, I suppose. There’s no harm in that. Did you see who wrote it? J. W. Goethe. That’s Paul’s friend Wolfgang. They came to the lane together that first time. You remember.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It was right after that horse kicked you in the head.”

  “There you are. I remember Paul, but not his friend.”

  “They say the book has made him famous.”

  “Good for him.” She lay Salomon down on the bed. “Dvorah, you seem a little too excited. It makes me nervous.”

  “Please don’t worry about me,” Dvorah said. She kissed Guttle’s cheek, and squeezed her hand.

  When Dvorah left, Guttle went upstairs and read a fairy tale to the other children until they fell asleep for their afternoon naps. Returning to the office, she sat at the desk and resumed work on Meyer’s new catalogue. In five years it had grown from a single page to sixteen, a grand listing of Greek, Roman, Dutch, Russian and other coins, plus medals and statues. Some of the statues were encrusted with rubies or diamonds. To his best customers, Meyer now sent the catalogues bound in leather and embossed with their own names. No matter how costly the merchandise, he still sent it out on approval. None had yet been stolen.

  As keeper of the ledgers, Guttle knew that Meyer was not getting rich, that he had nowhere near the money her father had, and nothing like the bankers at the south end. Most of the profits he poured back into the business, buying more coins, more antiques. But she was careful to keep household expenses down, and they were comfortable.

  Carefully she transcribed in German on the catalogue form the descriptions of the unusual coins, which Meyer had scrawled on scraps of paper in Judendeutch. His spelling was bad, his grammar was worse — and when he went to call on nobles to make deals, his heavy Judengasse accent could hardly go unnoticed. Yet no one was better than Meyer about closing a deal — and he almost always did.

  After half an hour of work, she stood up, feeling suddenly tired. Sometimes this was caused by the flickering flames in the lamps, but not today. She knew this feeling well. She had vomited the past three mornings while Meyer was in schul. More to the point, the Lady from Paris had
not made an appearance in two months. Guttle had not yet told Meyer Amschel, but she was certain that once again she was with child.

  Dread thoughts flashed through her mind, as they had for days now, as they had after Salomon was conceived. How Dvorah, still reveling in the twins, had lost two babies, with much bleeding. How Sara Greinz from the bakery had married one of the young heder teachers when she was eighteen years old, and had died in childbirth ten months later, along with her newborn son. With three healthy, if painful, deliveries in succession, Guttle could not help wondering when the fearful odds would turn on her.

  Early that morning Meyer had hired a roan mare from Ziggy Zigmund’s stable beyond the slaughterhouse and the herring shop and ridden it at an easy pace toward Hanau, ten kilometres southeast of Frankfurt. He was feeling buoyant, as he always did when a cache of new treasure loomed; he’d received word that a dealer in Hanau had been in receipt of a collection of rare coins from Sweden and Russia, and he hoped to get first look.

  The coins at the Hanau dealer exceeded his expectations. He purchased most of the collection, which was the legacy of a Swedish Prince, along with a gold Russian sword, its handle studded with rubies. At once he thought of Wilhelm. If he could get to see the crown Prince today, he could offer him the sword at a good price, and still turn a fine profit for half a day’s work; he would not have to list it in the new catalogue that Guttle had begun preparing, would not have to risk sending it out on approval.

  The palace of the Crown Prince stood at the end of a long dirt lane lined on both sides with soaring poplar trees, two kilometres outside the town. It was a sweeping three-story building of cut stones, surrounded by hedges and gardens. The courtyards and pools were embraced by statuary of mythic females draped in veils, or not draped at all. Meyer left his horse at the stables, his new coin purchases in the saddle bags, except for the Russian sword in its scabbard, which he carried with him. He gained entry through the front gate by virtue of his status as court agent, as he had several times before. In the courtyards, he saw palace aides dressed in black and household servants in white moving among courtiers in bright plumage whose style echoed that of the Crown Prince, as if that might gain them favor in his eyes. The one exception was Carl Friedrich Buderus, the man Meyer had come to see. In his sparse office on the first level, Buderus, a clean-shaven young fellow, with wavy hair the color of fresh carrots, was dressed as always in chocolate brown. It lent him a serious air, Meyer thought, which no doubt he wanted to cultivate as an ambitious aide in the department of the treasury. He and Buderus had struck up an easy friendship on his previous visits, the young man undisturbed by the fact that Meyer was a Jew.