The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

“I remember now. You don’t believe in emotion.”

  “That’s rather oversimplifying a complex idea.” He placed his stubby hand on top of hers on the table, in a manner he tried to make fatherly. “I like you, Brendel Isaacs.” He smiled at her for the first time. “That’s an emotion. And I dare say I’m enjoying it. Also, I adore my wife. That’s an emotion I would not want to live without. Fromet was a poor girl whom I married for love, not money — unlike most men.”

  “Do you have regrets?”

  “Four grown children, no regrets. My ideas about replacing emotion with reason — that’s in the context of philosophy, of religion. That’s what upsets the Rabbis — for no good reason, in my view. But you don’t need a speech right now.” He withdrew his hand.

  “How long will you be staying in the lane?”

  “A week, perhaps two. If I’m tolerated.”

  “Do you have a place to stay? I would invite you, but I have one room, and two boys.”

  “I have a letter of introduction to a Doctor Kirsch. From her father, who is a teacher in Berlin. I’m hoping she will find a place for me.”

  “Don’t you worry, Rebecca’s a dear. I expect she’ll put you up herself; she’s one of the few people with room. They even hold intellectual discussions in her living room some nights. You might be asked to participate.”

  “A salon in the Judengasse? I thank you for warning me.” He opened his purse and placed ten kreuzer on the table for the ruggelah “Now I should be going.”

  “That’s too much money.”

  “Whatever is extra is for the company,” Mendelssohn said.

  30

  Isidor Kracauer, wearing a butcher’s apron that once had been white, emerged from the plucking room with a chicken dangling from each hand, hung one on a vacant hook and slapped the other on the counter. From the yard outside came the sounds of dozens more of the birds raising a ruckus — either fearing they would be next, or grateful they had lived to squawk another day; Izzy was never sure which. He held up the chicken so Frau Metzenbaum, across the counter, could look at it. “There you are, the freshest of the freshly killed.”

  Frau Metzenbaum looked at the chicken as Izzy, holding it by the legs, let it revolve in the air. When she voiced no objection, he tore a sheet from a roll of brown paper, quickly wrapped the chicken, placed it on a scale. He noted the poundage and told her the price.

  “Your father used to weigh before he wrapped.”

  “I’m not my father. The paper weighs the same for every chicken. Next to nothing. You want me to unwrap it, the scale won’t show any difference, I guarantee.”

  “Never mind, I’m in a hurry.” She opened her purse. “I was just saying what your father used to do. So tell me, Isidor, how do you like being a butcher instead of a scholar?”

  “It’s much the same. Bloody battles, bloody beef.”

  It had been six months since his father’s heart seizure, since Izzy — the only one of the three brothers who was “loafing around not doing anything, like a shmegeggi” — had been recruited to run the slaughterhouse. His father still handled the money at home and kept the ledgers, but under Doctor’s orders he had slit the throat of his last chicken. Izzy had resigned as Schul-Klopper; the fire captain had that title now.

  Like a shmegeggi, Izzy thought, he had been wasting his time reading Maimonides, the Kabbalah, tales of the Ba’al Shem Tov. Storing them in his mind. Trying to make the disparate approaches to Judaism fit together. Now he was done with all that. He did not mind dipping his fingers into the blood of chickens and cows. He did not miss being the Schul-klopper, or the shammus. What he missed was getting excited by what he read. Being intrigued with life. He was twenty years old. He felt his mind had been quicker at fifteen, and his heart more passionate.

  The door to the dim slaughterhouse opened, tinkling the small brass bell above it. Emerging from the rectangle of light was Doctor Kirsch, followed by a stranger. Rebecca motioned Izzy out from behind the counter. “Isidor, I’d like you to meet someone. This is Moses Mendelssohn.”

  “You’re jesting.” His instinct was to glance quickly at the man’s back, to see if there was a hump — but that would have been obscenely rude. Instead he stood dumbfounded, not realizing that the visitor had extended his hand.

  “I hear you’re the local historian, when you’re not killing chickens.”

  “Moses Mendelssohn?” Izzy swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, before he could complete a sentence. He felt his face flushing. “I’ve read all your books. I don’t understand them, but I’ve read them.”

  “That’s all a person can ask.”

  “Doctor Kirsch, do you know that this man is the German Socrates?”

  “Hardly,” Mendelssohn said.

  “That’s what the newspapers say. Sometimes they say the German Plato.”

  “The newspapers like to exaggerate.”

  “He’s changing Judaism!” This, too, directed at Rebecca, as if he were not worthy of speaking directly to the philosopher.

  “Not yet.” She glanced at Mendelssohn. “I assume you would agree.”

  “Absolutely. I have theories, nothing more. Most people don’t agree with them.”

  “Including the Chief Rabbi,” Rebecca told Izzy. “We stopped by his study, to ask if Herr Mendelssohn could speak next week. The Rabbi said he preferred that the people heard two sides. He suggested a debate.”

  “Here in the Judengasse? You’re jesting!”

  Behind them, unseen, the door opened slowly, without the bell tinkling. Guttle had perfected the technique, to irritate Izzy, to surprise him sometimes. To keep their old, teasing relationship alive. He seemed to need it. She stood like a shade, unnoticed.

  “We appear to be taxing your vocabulary,” Rebecca said to Izzy. “The presence of the great can do that.” She touched his arm. “Why don’t you get me a chicken, so I can feed this man.”

  “For tonight? I don’t have a salted one.”

  “There’s no law against eating late,” Mendelssohn said.

  Guttle, overhearing, stepped forward and greeted Rebecca. “If you don’t have supper ready, come join Meyer and me. We have plenty.”

  Rebecca made the introduction. “My good friend, Guttle Rothschild. This is Moses Mendelssohn.”

  As Guttle’s mouth opened in wonder, Izzy, wrapping a chicken, called out from behind the counter, “Don’t say ‘You’re jesting!’ Herr Mendelssohn is tired of hearing that.”

  She recovered quickly. “I wasn’t going to say that.” She turned towards the visitor. “I was going to ask if he liked potato stew.”

  “I grew up on potato stew. It’s my favorite.”

  “You’re jesting!”

  The stranger, his dark eyes merry, smiled agreeably.

  “It has onions and carrots. And mushrooms.”

  “Just the way my Fromet makes it. With perhaps a pinch of garlic.”

  Relaxing, Guttle looked at Rebecca. “After evening services?”

  “We’ll bring a bread. And a bottle of wine.”

  “And some ruggelah,” Mendelssohn said.

  Noting the chicken on the Doctor’s account, Izzy came around and handed it to her.

  “The butcher is also invited,” Guttle said, “if he promises to leave his bloody apron behind, and wear his scholar’s cap.”

  Izzy flushed beneath his blond hair, which looked as always like a wild field of wheat. “I’m not a scholar any more.”

  “Being a kosher slaughterer is a fine and necessary profession,” Mendelssohn said. “But it has been my experience that intelligence is a lifelong disease. Once you start thinking, it can be very hard to stop.”

  When Lev had not come home from the hospital by the time darkness fell, Dvorah fed the twins and put them to bed, assuring them, as she always did, that their Papa would kiss them goodnight when he got home; if she did not tell them so each time he was late, they would not go to sleep. Often she grew irritated waiting for him, but not tonight; sh
e had only a few more pages to read in the book Paul had sent; she might be able to finish it and hide it among her things before Lev arrived. Lighting the oil lamp beside the chair in the bedroom, she fetched the book, and two carrots to eat that she had scraped clean, sat and began to read. The book enthralled her; how much this was because of the sad story, and how much because Paul had sent it as a gift along with that intimate note, she could not say. I am Werther, you are Lotte. The more she read, the more she realized what an expression of Paul’s love that was. When she reached the end, her eyes were wet with tears. Poor Werther! How she understood his pain!

  Pulling herself back to the real world, she hid the book in a drawer among her underthings, and she washed her face, lest Lev walk in and wonder why she’d been crying. She checked on the twins, making sure they both were asleep, then stripped off her clothing. Before donning her nightgown, she paused, naked, in front of her mirror, gazing at the body that had captured Lev and was now captivating Paul. She was twenty-five years old. Despite three pregnancies, she had been able to retain her voluptuous shape, partly with a diet of tea or coffee in the morning, carrots or an apple at night, and a small lunch between. She did not need more food than that; passion was her appetite.

  Lifting her curls above her head, placing one alluring leg in front of the other, she saw in the mirror through her large dark eyes the eternal Jewess, but with red hair instead of black. Smiling seductively, she admitted that she admired her body as much as any male. Brendel Isaacs had a disarming way with men, but even Brendel’s lovely body — she had seen it at the mikveh — could not quite compare with hers.

  The click of the front door opening warned her that Lev was home; she had not heard him mount the stairs. For an instant she wavered between quickly pulling on her gown, or letting him find her like this, unabashedly admiring herself. Feeling brash, she stayed as she was, to see how he would react.

  While Dvorah was reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, Lev had been examining a patient. Her large, bulbous tumor had reminded him of the Black Death, and he had been recalling its deadly history as he walked home: how in the thirteen hundreds it had wiped out in two years one-third of the population of Europe; how people had suffered horribly before they died, with painful buboes under their arms and in their groins; how the streets of the cities, Frankfurt included, had been littered with so many corpses the burial men could not keep up with them; how anyone who came near the victims became infected; how, seeking an explanation for this scourge, the populace of Europe had turned to its usual scapegoat: the Jews. They decided that the Jews had caused this suffering and death by poisoning the wells; never mind that Jews had been ravaged by the disease as much as anyone. Seeking revenge, mobs had begun attacking Jews, beating them, killing them. The attacks became an excuse for herding the Jews behind walls and gates — for the Jews’ own “protection.” The Jews then were made to pay for this protection: in the Judengasse, twenty thousand gulden per year. Four centuries later, the medical schools still had no idea of what had caused the Black Death — or why it had disappeared.

  All this was swirling through Berkov’s mind as he climbed the stairs quietly, so as not to wake the twins, and opened the apartment door. Not seeing his wife in the kitchen, he looked in the bedroom, and found Dvorah standing naked in front of her mirror. The sight made his breath clutch. “At last, a healthy body,” he said, wearily. Setting down his bag of instruments, he kissed her cheek, took her in his arms. He leaned down and pressed his face to her breast, and kissed her nipple.

  “Is that all you see?” Dvorah asked into his hair. “A healthy body?”

  “You know better,” he murmured, and kissed the other nipple, again, again. “It’s the body of my dreams.”

  “I hope it’s the only one.” Immediately she regretted the words. Paul von Brunwald was too much on her mind.

  Discouraged by her tone, Lev withdrew his lips. She found her nightgown, pulled it over her head. He watched as it caught on her hair for a moment before she could pull it down.

  “As a matter of fact, it’s not. That’s why I’m so tired these past few days.”

  Dvorah was astonished — not only that this could happen — that Lev could desire another woman — but that he would admit to it. For an instant, her mind reeled with dizziness.

  “I’ve been dreaming of Mrs. Metzenbaum,” he said, taking off his shirt to wash.

  She still liked to see the dark hair on his chest, almost as thick and curly as the hair on his head. How she once had loved to rest her head on that chest! When — why — had she stopped enjoying that?

  Her disbelief had become confusion. “Bea Metzenbaum? Isn’t she rather large?”

  “Too large. That’s why I couldn’t feel the growth in her stomach until the other day. It’s as big as an apple. It’s causing her terrible pain. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I can call in a surgeon to amputate a shattered leg, a gangrenous arm. But you can’t cut off a stomach.

  “This is what you’ve been dreaming about?”

  “Almost every night. In the dream she’s already dead. I’m at the burial. Her husband picks up rocks and begins to throw them at me. At first he misses. Then they begin to hit.”

  “You’ve been kicking in your sleep. You never used to do that.”

  “Probably when the rocks hit. He begins to throw bigger ones. He tells me I killed his wife. Then he pulls a gravestone out of the ground — I think it’s one of the Beckers — and he is going to crush me with it. That’s when I wake up.”

  “Why would he say you killed his wife?”

  “Because I know she’s going to die — and I can’t cure her.”

  Brushing her hair, Dvorah moved closer to him. “You’ve had patients before who you couldn’t cure. Who died. Why is this time different?”

  “I don’t know.” He pressed his face into her curls, something he loved to do, to smell the soap. “I don’t know.”

  With unusual sudden insight, Dvorah knew. She shuddered, her nipples grew hard as seeds under her gown, as if she were cold. Unlike Guttle, she was not an inward thinker; she rarely considered what dreams might mean; they were much too confusing. But this once, she knew. The meaning scorched the room like lightning. It made her want to hide. His dream was not about Bea. It was about her — about them. Lev knew nothing, but some part of him, perhaps his trusting soul, knew everything. His soul suspected that her love for him was dying. And that he was guilty, because he could not cure her wanderlust.

  She left him there to wash, went to the kitchen. So much for her own need. A stomach tumor had defeated all she had to offer. It was not the first time something like this had happened. She knew it would not be the last. She feared the competition of no woman except the dying. With them she could not compete.

  When they went to bed, Lev fell asleep within minutes. Dvorah turned on her side, her eyelashes wet.

  Flickering street lamps, newly installed in the center of the city, made the boy nervous. He slunk like a dog along the outskirts, till he could smell the river. In an open field he heard a pack of wild curs yelping as they tore something apart. Frightened, he circled a low building — and saw a Constable not twenty metres away, guarding a large iron gate. He ducked behind the building — and discerned in the darkness a narrow door. When he touched it lightly, paint splinters shed. He saw no windows, no lights, but heard chickens begin to squawk. It was a comforting sound. He yanked at the handle. The door was locked, but it creaked. He pulled again with all his strength. The door broke open. Quickly he slipped inside. The aroma of fresh sawdust enveloped him.

  Guttle had fed the children early and put them to bed, so there would be room enough at the table. Also, so they would not find it necessary to comment on the visitor’s hump.

  Mendelssohn was filled with questions about the lane — the people, the restrictions, the houses, the heders, the businesses. Keeping their elbows close to their ribs — the table was more comfortable for four — the others answe
red his queries between spoonfuls of stew and bites of the bread Doctor Kirsch had brought, and sips of red wine. When the philosopher had run out of questions, Meyer Amschel, refilling the glasses, recounted the recruiting scene he had witnessed that afternoon.

  “An abomination,” Mendelssohn said. “Imagine what it must be like, the Prince owning your body. But there is a consistency to the recruiting — a consistency and an irony, both.”

  “How do you mean?” Rebecca asked.

  “The colonists in America are fighting for their independence. The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, I’m sure you’ve read of them in the newspapers. They’re rebelling against the perceived tyranny of King George. Wilhelm is sending his peasants to fight the rebels. This is consistent with his position as Crown Prince. On the other hand, it is the opposite side of what the enslaved peasants might choose, were they given a choice.”

  “It make me wonder how the Crown Prince deals with his conscience,” Guttle said, “knowing he is making money by sending men off to die. It’s like selling souls to the devil.”

  “I don’t imagine it troubles him,” Mendelssohn said. “Such has been the behavior of Princes since men invented them — or, more accurately, since they invented themselves.”

  “These ‘winds of freedom,’ from America,” Meyer asked, “—we’ve been hearing about them for years. Do you expect they will ever reach Europe?”

  “Absolutely. I visited Paris last spring. Freedom and equality already are the talk of the salons. Soon the talk will reach the streets. It will be just idle chatter at first, but one day some spark will ignite it into action. Exactly when, no one can say.”

  “Aren’t the people happy with the new King and Queen?” Guttle still felt the affection born five years earlier for the Archduchess Antoine, when during the royal procession their eyes had met with mutual empathy. She still felt an odd identification with the French Queen — something she dared not mention to anyone, not even Meyer, and could hardly explain to herself. The distant Antoine had joined Jennie Aron and the mythic Melka in Guttle’s personal pantheon — someone in whom she could confide in absentia, without rebuke. Speaking to a Torah named Melekh had not sufficed.