The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  — It won’t be the end of it.

  — How do you know?

  — You don’t hit a philosopher and that’s the end of it. Otherwise they all would get hit.

  Thus did gossip pre-empt, that first day, discussion of the debate.

  Guttle’s beige cotton dress, one of her favorites — what else do you wear to such a distinguished debate? — was soiled with mud, her left sleeve was torn half off. Her bare shoulder gleamed in the lamplight from the windows as they walked home. Neither she nor Meyer spoke. Her insides felt muddy as her dress, her heart had been torn from its moorings and cast adrift like a small boat in a storm.

  Amelia and the Gentile boy were talking in the kitchen when they arrived. The boy said goodnight and went upstairs to his room.

  “What happened!” Amelia asked, startled to see mud on her sister’s cheek.

  “She’s fine,” Meyer said. “Please go home now. Thank you for watching the children.”

  Amelia peered at Guttle, who said nothing, who was too upset to speak. “She doesn’t look fine.”

  “Go,” Guttle said, softly. She kissed her sister’s forehead, keeping her dirty hands at her sides. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  When Amelia had gone, Guttle sat at the table, staring at nothing. Meyer made tea and placed a glass in front of her, and sat beside her with his own glass. From outside they heard a light rain beginning to bounce off the chimney. Meyer stroked Guttle’s hand. The knuckles were scraped raw. Drying blood streaked the drying mud. “You should wash that,” he said. Guttle did not respond. Her mind was in a different place, seeking Melka, or Jennie Aron, or Madame Antoine — any secret female friend. “I’m going to lose her,” she murmured.

  “Lose who? Do you know what that was about?”

  She did not realize she had spoken aloud. Meyer’s question brought her back to the crying of her knuckles, and the rain. She shook her head.

  “You’re her best friend, surely you know something. A person doesn’t just break down like that, for no reason.”

  Her eyes still were far away, her voice a monotone. “It’s woman business.”

  “Mein Gott! Is she sick?”

  Guttle closed her eyes, breathed deeply. “Not how you mean.”

  “If it’s a woman’s thing, I won’t pry.” He stood, leaving his glass of tea untouched. “I go to Mannheim tomorrow. I need to go to bed. Shall I help you clean yourself?”

  She touched his arm, her torn sleeve hanging like a broken limb. “I can do it. You go. I may sit up awhile, if that’s all right.”

  Never in the five years of their marriage had she not come to bed with him. They would lie together, hand in hand, discussing the events of the day, till gently he turned toward her with a slowly rising passion, or away from her to sleep.

  “Of course.” He kissed her hair. “Don’t stay up too long. The baby will be crying early.”

  She sipped her tea, now cold. The scrape on her knuckles was stinging worse. She rose and took off her muddied dress and dropped it on the floor, removed her scuffed shoes and soiled stockings. In her chemise, she poured water from a pitcher over the back of her hands, blotted them with a towel, sat again at the table, sucking her knuckles for solace. Absorbing the skin and blood of Dvorah’s pain.

  By the time she went to bed faint light was crawling in over the window sill. She slept through Meyer’s departure for schul and then for work — a rarity. Only the baby’s hungry cries awakened her. As she cradled him to her breast, sympathy for Dvorah’s plight gave way to anger. The world was a meaner place this morning than it had been the day before, and it was Dvorah’s fault. Guttle had no hunger for breakfast. Meyer had fed the children — another rarity. Dressing quickly, she asked Georgi to stay with Schönche and Amschel, and she carried the baby into the alley. When she saw Dvorah’s daughter Ruthie pass on the way to her sewing lesson, Guttle walked down the lane to where Dvorah and Lev and the twins resided, past the communal baths, above a shoemaker’s shop. The twin boy David would be in heder. She lingered amid the smell of tanned leather, nodded to the cobbler, Alexandre Licht, as he hammered at his bench, wearing his familiar red beret, unused nails protruding from his mouth, then climbed a flight of stairs and knocked on the door.

  “Go away.” Dvorah’s voice sounded as if it were coming from Mainz, or beyond.

  “It’s Guttle. Let me in.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m not leaving. You need to talk before you explode.”

  She stood there till she heard the padding of feet across the wooden floor. The door was unlocked from inside, and opened. Dvorah still was wearing her lavender dress from the night before, covered with dried mud and now a grid of wrinkles from being slept in as well. It looked like one of those plowed fields across the river that were visible through the south gate. Her hair resembled an auburn mop. Guttle closed the door and followed Dvorah into her bedroom, and watched as she climbed into bed and pulled the floral quilt to her chin. Guttle shifted baby Salomon from one arm to the other.

  “I already exploded, don’t you think?”

  “That was outward. If you explode inward it could be worse.”

  “How could it be worse? I don’t dare show my face in the lane.”

  “So you’ll spend the rest of your life in bed?”

  Dvorah made no response.

  “Those rides you’ve been taking with Paul. I’ve been wanting to ask you. The last time, you came home with white powder on your shoulders. On your collar. What was that?”

  “White powder? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oh. I know. It must have been powder from his wig.”

  “So, you lied to me!” Guttle said. “Those rides. They were not just rides.”

  Her head on the pillow, Dvorah closed her eyes. She did not say Guttle was right. She did not say Guttle was wrong.

  “How could you do that?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  Dvorah opened her eyes, raised herself on the bed, sat with her legs crossed in front of her. “When I’m making supper, Paul is in my head. When we’re having conversation at the table with the twins, I have to fight to concentrate. My head is thinking of where Paul is. The same when Lev talks to me — which is rare enough. I want it to be Paul, making me laugh. Making me feel wanted. Even now, talking to you, I’m wondering what he’s doing. Who he’s with.” Flushed, as if overheated, she pushed away the quilt. Her toenails were painted red. Guttle had never seen that before. “All morning I’ve been picturing that beautiful book floating away with the turds. It’s probably in the river by now, being eaten by fish.”

  “Fish don’t eat books. Bookworms, maybe.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I know. What did you tell Lev?”

  “Nothing. Just that I’ve been under a strain. He gave me a powder to sleep.”

  “That’s all? No questions?”

  “He’s got a serious case in the hospital. Someone may die. I don’t even know who. He always has a serious case to think about.”

  “He’s a Doctor. He helps people.”

  “That doesn’t help me. He married a selfish person.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. One day I’ll have to tell Lev. Ask him to grant me a divorce. Take the twins and move into the town, and marry Paul.”

  “A divorce? How can you even think such a thing? I’ve never heard of a divorce in the lane.”

  “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Are you sure Paul wants that? You’re not just his Jewish doxy?”

  “You think that little of me? He’s already proposed marriage.”

  “To marry him, you would have to convert. Become a Christian.”

  “It won’t change what’s in my heart.”

  “I’ve never heard you say that before — that Adonai is in your heart.”

  “Guttle, Guttle. Three children
, a fourth on the way, and you’re still an innocent.” She put her hands on Guttle’s shoulders. “I didn’t say Adonai was in my heart. Haven’t you been listening? It’s Paul who’s in my heart.”

  “Suppose what you’re feeling is the lure of forbidden fruit. You won’t be able to come back when you’ve had enough.”

  “I’ve thought of that. Am I supposed to be stronger than Eve was?”

  Guttle began to arrange Dvorah’s curls. “Well, it’s not the Garden of Eden you’d be leaving.” She pressed her thumb hard against Dvorah’s lips. “Aside from, you should pardon the expression, Jesus, what does Paul offer that Lev doesn’t?”

  “You need me to tell you? Theater. Picnics in the park. Fancy dress balls. Silk every day of the week, if I want. Fresh air for me and my children to breathe — they own a chateau in the Black Forest. Sailing on lakes in the mountains. A trip every year to Paris, where the fashions are. But I can put it in a simpler way. No walls. No gates. That’s what Paul has to offer.”

  “He’s your Melka.”

  “But he’s not, don’t you see? He’s real.”

  Guttle breathed deeply, looked around the room, then, reluctantly, back at her friend. She wished Paul von Brunwald never had entered the lane. He had come, like almost all the Gentiles who passed through the gates, just out of curiosity. To look at the Jews in the zoo. Now this. “You make it sound so nice. Mountains. Lakes. Paris. Who wouldn’t want those things? It makes me a little jealous, I hate to admit. But look at the price. Look what you’d be giving up.”

  “Look out the window, Guttle. That’s what I’d be giving up.”

  “That, and your children.”

  “What are you talking about? The children are coming with me.”

  “Paul wants that?”

  “Of course. We’re a family.”

  “What about Lev? He’ll never let you take them.”

  “Of course he will. He can hardly raise them by himself.”

  Something glistening and bright beneath the edge of the bed had been distracting Guttle. She reached to the floor, drew up a small silver flask. Liquid sloshed inside it. She peered at an engraving on one face — two standing lions holding aloft a quarter moon. If pressed, she would guess it was the escutcheon of the House of Brunwald. “And this? ”

  Dvorah took the flask, shoved it under her pillow. “It keeps me from shaking. Sometimes it keeps me from screaming.”

  “Not last night.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Why did you have the book with you?”

  “It’s always in my purse. It’s like having a bit of Paul with me.” She ran her fingers along the pattern of a white flower on the quilt. “That’s why I lost control. When he attacked the book, it was as if were attacking Paul. When he called it garbage, I felt he was trying to destroy our love. It was a dumb thing to do, I know. But I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Guttle closed her eyes. Such consuming, distracting passion must be terrible, like a deadly disease. But was it also wonderful?

  “What did people say?” Dvorah asked.

  “I was too busy wrestling to listen. Most people already were gone.”

  “Then there won’t be a lot of gossip?”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. It’s the ones who didn’t see that whisper.”

  Lying down again, Dvorah pulled the quilt over her face.

  “When will you do all this?”

  From beneath the quilt she mumbled a muffled, “I don’t know.” She exposed her face, tucked the quilt beneath her chin. “Not during the High Holy Days. That would make people hate me. After that, Paul is going to Rome for a month with his mother; she has a sister there. I have to wait until they come back.”

  Guttle stretched her legs as if they were cramped. The weight on her heart was pulling on her tongue; she did not know what more to say.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Guttle. I’m not as strong as you are. You could live in the lane for a hundred years, if you had to. I can’t. I need to get out.”

  Strong? Is it really strength that lets me endure, Guttle wondered, or is it the same complacency I see all around?

  “The children will be missing me,” she said. “Georgi is watching them. I have to go.” Lifting the baby into her arms, she kissed Dvorah’s cheek, very lightly, and tried to ignore the tears she thought she could see forming in Dvorah’s eyes.

  Down in the lane, she was angry with herself. She had gone to Dvorah planning to yell at her, to tell her to stop destroying her family, to shake righteousness into her. That wasn’t what she had done. Why not?

  “It’s not my life,” she told the baby in her arms.

  But she knew that Dvorah’s absence, if indeed she left, would leave a gap in her life as long and as foul as the ditch. She felt now as she had felt six years earlier, in the instant when she saw the black stallion bearing hard upon her. There was no way to escape the impact — not then, not now. She could only try to minimize the hurt. It was to absorb pain that women had been made. Only Lev could stop Dvorah, by not granting her a divorce. But what Jewish man would not, if his wife flung in his face her naked body entwined in sunny meadows or bleak hotels with the naked body of another man — a Christian, no less? Not that the shape of his uncut manhood would matter. Guttle shuddered; she had heard that Gentile men demanded all manner of obscene behavior; she wasn’t sure if this was true, or a libel, like the blood libel against the Jews.

  Back then she’d been told she had saved three children by stopping the galloping horse. Now she saw no way of stopping anything.

  Youngsters were playing in the lane. She had passed a dozen or more, but now she took notice of them. The twins — Dvorah had said she would take the twins. That won’t happen. Lev would never agree. And without them, Dvorah would stay. Would put her precious nobleman behind her, would get her senses back. Lev might still divorce her, but she would stay in the lane to be with David and Ruth. She was only twenty-four. The men would be lining up.

  But what kind of men? Those who thought she was a whore?

  She nuzzled Salomon’s cheek. “I hope you didn’t listen at Dvorah’s,” she told his large and trusting brown eyes. “I would never do that to you.” The baby gurgled happily, as if he understood.

  When she reached the Café, Brendel was standing outside; it was midmorning, there were no customers. Brendel raised her eyebrows, a question clear as the spoken word, asking if Guttle had found out anything. Guttle merely shrugged. Then she paused, asked a question herself. “Do you know if Herr Mendelssohn is all right? Did he come to the Café this morning?”

  “Ate four ruggelah. Said he was glad he doesn’t eat with his nose. ‘Then you’ll live?’ I asked him. He said he would — so long as there are no more critics lurking.”

  Brendel chucked the baby under the chin. “Reminds me of mine when they were babes. How is Dvorah? You want some tea or something?”

  Guttle sighed, long and deep. “A glass of tea would be nice.”

  “With milk?”

  “With milk. But Brendel — please, no questions.”

  “Sit, dearie,” Brendel said. “It’s on the way. One hot tea, sans questions.”

  “Sans? What is sans?”

  “It means without, in French. Herr Mendelssohn told me.”

  Guttle sat, cradling the baby in her arm. “Sans,” she echoed, as Brendel went for the tea. The lane sans Dvorah. It had a softer sweeter sound then the Hebrew, bli, or the German, ohne. But was that a sentence that should be soft? It sounded better the other ways. The lane bli Dvorah. The lane ohne Dvorah. Whatever the language, she could not picture it. She saw only emptiness. Blowing her breath across the top of the glass that Brendel had set before her, she sipped at her tea and formulated her first philosophic principle, Guttle’s First Law of Probabilities: If it is impossible to conceive of, it will not happen. She hoped her philosophy was better than her French.

  Early that afternoon, holding his small satchel of clothing in one hand
and a bag of ruggeleh in the other, a plaster on his injured nose, Moses Mendelssohn left the lane. He was escorted to the north gate by some of his new friends, most of them women — Guttle, Brendel, Rebecca, Avra, and a few of the younger men— Izzy, Hiram, Rabbi Simcha. The women waved handkerchiefs as he passed through the gate. The Constables sneered at his hump. Some of the beggars who were sprawled outside the gate offered to eat it. When the philosopher was perhaps thirty metres away, he turned and nodded, and the women again waved their handkerchiefs, which resembled small windblown flags.

  The Judengasse, after three centuries, would never be the same.

  35

  Guttle dreamed that night about the Schul-Klopper. This had not happened for a long time. In her dream she tripped over Solomon Gruen’s outstretched leg, just as she had in real life when she was younger. But when she peered at him in the dream, he began to raise his head, to sit up on the cobbles. Angry, Guttle swung her pitcher of milk at him, slammed him in the head, hard, again, again, till he fell back to the cobbles. Until he was truly dead

  She awoke chilled from perspiration. She did not know if dreams still meant anything, as they did in the books of Moses. Usually she gave herself a headache if she tried to figure them out. But this one she thought was obvious. The Schul-Klopper represented all the traditions of the lane — which in fact he had. But she had been much impressed with Moses Mendelssohn’s remarks, especially about girls going to school. Would that, as Rabbi Eleazar had suggested, be a death blow to the Jewish people?.

  Later, preoccupied with this question, she went out and walked the lane. Knots of old men with beards could be overheard ridiculing what Herr Mendelssohn had said. But no women were discussing it. She knew why. If women opposed what he’d said, they might offend their female friends who welcomed it. If they sided with what he had said, they would earn the fierce anger of their husbands, fathers, brothers. So they remained silent, as she had with Meyer during their breakfast — a silence that left tension thick as fog clogging the lane.

  19 October