The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  Locked in an attic for five years now, Sophie Marcus has become, for the children, a mirror image of Melka. They flee from her in exaggerated terror when every few days either her husband or her son Viktor or Viktor’s wife, the former Leah Licht, one hand firmly gripping Sophie’s arm, walks her in the lane for fresh air and exercise. Sometimes she is well behaved, and the walk passes without incident. Other days, with no immediate provocation, she begins to hurl epithets and curses at anyone she might encounter. At such times the hand of her escort tightens firmly around her arm and she is led back to the Marcus home, to the attic with its boarded window. While we in our innocence turned to Melka for solace, the children today use Sophie as a threat, warning in their games that “Sophie is right behind you, Sophie’s gonna steal you away.”

  Should I happen to be in the lane when Sophie is walking, I quickly duck into the nearest shop, so as not to set her off like fireworks. On those rare occasions when I wander far toward the south gate and pass the Marcus house, I cannot help but glance up at the boarded window behind which she sits — or prowls like a caged beast, or whatever it is she does. For hours afterward, as happened today, I am riven by guilt over my role in her imprisonment all those years ago. Though what I could have done differently, other than marry her son, I do not know.

  Georgi Kremm began an apprenticeship to the cabinet maker, starting off by sweeping floors and oiling furniture, then taking instruction in the fine art of carving. As weeks passed, the boy began to show an aptitude for the craft. Wood shavings curled and disappeared like the days, October became November. One mild evening in early December, Yussel came to the Hinterpfann with his apprentice to ask Guttle and Meyer for advice. He had heard from the Chief Rabbi, he said, that the Polizei would be inspecting the lane in a few days. He didn’t know if Georgi should be hidden, after so long a time, or should continue working as if nothing were amiss. They all quickly agreed that if he hid and were found, a lot of questions would be asked; that it would be better for him to work in plain sight, wearing his yarmulke. Most likely the boy would not be noticed.

  “The Rabbi warned you of this raid?” Meyer asked. “We haven’t heard of it.”

  Yussel’s face colored unaccountably. They had never known him to blush about anything other than Brendel. “He must have told me first because of the boy.”

  “That must be it,” Meyer said. He did not mention the cabinet maker’s evident discomfort, though he continued to wonder about it.

  The next morning, after Meyer had gone to the city, Guttle left baby Salomon with Amelia and walked to the bakery to buy bread. She saw a commotion going on in front of the cabinet maker’s shop. Several dozen men and a few women were gathered there, remonstrating about something with Yussel. As she got closer she could make out their words, spoken in loud and nasty tones. “The goy has to leave … What do we need him for? … We don’t owe the Gentiles anything.”

  “The boy is my apprentice, he’s not harming anyone,” Yussel told them, standing in front of the shop.

  Guttle reached the edge of the gathering. It was growing larger as people heard the shouts and came to watch. She didn’t understand why this was happening now, Georgi had been here two months without a problem.

  “There’s never been a goy living in the lane,” a man shouted. He wore a long black coat and a yarmulke, and had an untrimmed black beard, and seemed to be the leader of the group. Guttle recognized him as Jacob Marcus.

  “He’ll bring bad luck,” a woman called out.

  “As opposed to the good luck we have living here?” Yussel asked calmly.

  “Never mind luck,” a man said. It was Alexandre Licht, the shoemaker, wearing his red beret. “The police are coming tomorrow, the Rabbi says. What if they find the boy? We could all be in trouble.”

  “The council should throw him out,” someone yelled.

  “There’s the Chairman, let’s ask him,” another said as Lev Berkov strolled over from the hospital to observe the trouble. Doctor Berkov was the council’s rotating Chairman this year.

  “What about that, Doctor?”

  “The council has discussed this informally,” Lev told them. “There was no mood to order him out, as long as he behaves himself.”

  Guttle had not seen much of Lev in recent weeks. His face was drawn, weary, as if he knew there was trouble in his marriage, but could not be certain why.

  “What are we arguing for?” Jacob Marcus said. “When the police come tomorrow, we’ll just denounce him. The police will take him away, good riddance.”

  Guttle’s face reddened. She felt as if a window in her brain had blown open, and in a searing instant twenty-two years of training to be a proper woman had taken flight, like doves at the sound of a musket shot. In front of the cabinet maker’s a spruce coffin rested on the cobbles. She registered that Yussel had stopped making these, that he must be teaching the boy, and with both of them working, there would be no room to keep it inside. Sacrilege or not, she lifted her long skirt and climbed onto the coffin, one hand supporting her growing belly.

  “Gentlemen, listen to me!”

  “Look at her, she stands on a coffin,” a woman said loudly. “For shame! To insult the dead like that.”

  “I don’t mean to insult the dead,” Guttle said, as they quieted to listen. “I don’t know who this coffin is for. I apologize to the family if it is already marked. But I must be heard. Right now this coffin is empty. If we send Georgi away, we might be sending him to his grave. He’s only sixteen years old.”

  “Who cares? He’s a goy.”

  “Yes, Georgi is a Gentile. But he was not around when three quarters of Frankfurt’s Jews were slaughtered before the ghetto was built. He was not alive when these walls were erected. He did not take part in the Fettmilch riots more than a hundred years ago.”

  “His ancestors did.”

  “His ancestors most likely did not! They are country people. He is from a peasant family. They’re treated as badly as we are. Maybe worse.”

  “How could it be worse?” a man yelled.

  “Because he is being recruited to fight in a war. At least they don’t take our sons away.”

  A slight murmur ran through the crowd.

  “There’s another reason.” Guttle had never spoken before a crowd like this, but passion had muted her nerves. “The American colonists are fighting for their freedom. There are Jews among them, who are equal citizens in America. Most of you remember Ephraim Hess. He is now in America, fighting there. Crown Prince Wilhelm is forcing his peasants to go and fight against freedom. Is that the side we want to support?”

  “It’s not a question of America’s freedom,” the shoemaker said. “It’s for our own safety. If the police find him here, we all will suffer. Harboring a runaway is against the law.”

  Guttle began shaking her head before he finished. “There is no reason for the Frankfurt Constables to seek him out,” she said. “They don’t work for the Crown Prince of Hesse-Hanau. But if they do realize he’s not a Jew, the whole lane will not suffer. Yussel Kahn here will stand forth, I’m sure. He is the one employing the boy.”

  Yussel nodded, though he seemed to half wish she had not brought that up.

  “And I will step forward,” Guttle said, “because he is living in my house. No one else can be accused of harboring him.”

  Over the heads of the crowd she noticed several women in their aprons standing in front of the bakery, watching. One of them was her mother. Beside her was Yetta Liebmann.

  “They still could accuse the whole lane,” Marcus said. “They can do whatever they want. Listen, I’m tired of arguing. When the police come, we’ll denounce him. The police will take him. End of problem.” He turned as if to walk away.

  Guttle could not accept what she had heard. “Wait! My ears can’t believe what you said. You would denounce this boy to the police? Since when do Jews denounce people to the police because of their faith? They’ve been doing that to us for a thousand years. More.
Now you would have us begin? Shame on you! Shame on any of you who would dare to do such a thing.”

  Her chest was heaving, as if she had just run the length of the lane. She stopped speaking. Her head was wet with perspiration under her sheitl. Her armpits, her thighs, were moist. She looked at their faces, silent now — ashamed, she hoped — and climbed down from the coffin with shaky knees. She felt a fluttering in her womb. The baby alone was applauding.

  Murmuring among themselves, the people began to disperse. Guttle hoped she had won them over. Then Jacob Marcus fired his voice at her like a stone. “The goy has got to go!”

  Guttle walked home alone. She needed to wash. She wondered what Meyer would think of his wife, the public speaker, when he heard what she had done.

  Between the time he entered through the gate and the time he reached the Hinterpfann, Meyer heard. From Yetta Liebmann: “You sent my son Hersch from the lane, five years I haven’t seen him, just a few letters, and you take in a goy? Your wife makes such a speech, on a dead body? It’s a sin!” From Otto Kracauer he heard. “You’d better control your wife. People are asking who wears the tzitzis in that family.” Before even removing his coat, his three-cornered hat, Meyer asked Guttle, who was preparing dinner in the kitchen, “You actually did that? You stood on a coffin — a coffin! — and harangued people? How could you have done such a thing?”

  Guttle continued to stir with a long wooden spoon a stew that was simmering. “The coffin was empty,” she said calmly. “An empty coffin is just a box. Was I to remain silent? It was the right thing to do.”

  “It was not proper! You are a woman, and you were haranguing men. Men twice your age, three times. Scholars. Grandfathers. What happened to your manners?”

  “They want to denounce Georgi to the police. Do you think that’s right? How would you feel if the Constables took him away, sent him off to war.”

  “No matter what they want, your behavior was not proper.”

  He sat heavily on a chair, removed his hat, his wig, ran his hands through his hair. He stepped to the wash basin, rinsed his hands, dried them on a towel. In a weary voice, he murmured, “It was, perhaps, the moral thing to do.”

  Guttle turned to look at him, spoon in hand. “Therefore?”

  “I suppose it raises a question. Which is more important when there is a conflict between them — propriety, or morality?”

  “Is that such a hard question?”

  “Not for you. Maybe not for me. But lack of propriety makes people more upset.”

  “Lack of morality makes Yahweh more upset.”

  “Of course. But propriety has rules. Morality is subjective.”

  “Therefore propriety is the superior good? That doesn’t follow.”

  “I know,” Meyer said. “But propriety is visible in the lane. Morality exists only in the mind. It’s a rare case where the invisible has substance, and the visible does not.”

  Guttle turned back to stir her stew. Meyer came up behind her. “Did you really tell them that if the boy were caught, you would take responsibility?”

  “Whether I told them or not, I would have to do it. He’s in the lane because of me.”

  “What if they arrested you? Took you away to prison? What would happen to the children? Not to say me?”

  “This is a conversation we could have had two months ago. While Georgi was hiding in the slaughterhouse. Now there isn’t a point. It’s too late.”

  Meyer closed his eyes wearily, and stroked his short brown beard between his thumb and forefinger. “Unfortunately, with that I agree.”

  Putting down her spoon, Guttle took his hand in both of hers. “They won’t arrest him. Or me. Adonai won’t let that happen.”

  “Let’s hope not.” He put his arms around her, each absorbing the body warmth of the other. After seven years, this contact still shortened their breath. “What I wish,” Meyer said, “since you made your speech, is that I were there to see their faces.”

  Easing her rounded belly back slightly, touching his cheek, his beard, Guttle conceded, “If you were there, I might not have dared.”

  The police arrived the next morning, as Rabbi Eleazar had warned. Four Constables entered through the north gate and ambled down the lane, two on each side. Some houses they entered and inspected, others they passed by. Leaving baby Salomon with Moish’s wife, Guttle hurried to the bakery. She wanted to see what would happen with Georgi.

  The women in the lane were wearing their drabbest clothing, and no jewelry, which, like silk, was forbidden except for the Sabbath. The shoemaker, standing outside his shop, wore on his head not his red beret but a yarmulke; Frankfurt had forbidden Jews to wear berets. Violators of any rules could be fined. More serious infractions — such as a secret printing press — could send the owner to prison for life.

  Watching from the bakery, Guttle saw the police emerge from the first house. She hoped Avra had remembered to lock the shutters on Hiram’s window, the one that offered north light for his work. They appeared to skip the second house, but entered the Owl. She was confident they would find nothing amiss there. Georgi, working with Yussel across the lane, was her only concern. When they reached the Café, which was new since their last inspection, the officers stopped, and huddled together. Were they perceiving some violation? But starting businesses within the gates was permitted. Perhaps they were only debating whether to rest and drink coffee now, or on their way back. She saw Brendel take one step into the lane and smile at the Constables. Their decision made without another word, they followed her into the Café. Guttle grinned. Clever Brendel, doing her best to lift the Polizei into a pleasant mood.

  Guttle visited with her mother in the bakery. Emmie had not said a word about her speech, and did not do so now; she acted as if it had not occurred. Ten minutes passed before the Constables had finished their coffee — free of charge, most likely — and continued with their inspections. Every shopkeeper wished they would hurry; people tended to stay at home, and not shop, while the police were in the lane. But the Constables were in no rush. They paused to look in the window of every pawnbroker, seeking a good bargain; there were more pawnbrokers in the lane than in the rest of Frankfurt combined; they were the principal attraction in the Judengasse for Gentiles in need of cash. They by-passed the hospital, not wanting to expose themselves to disease. That’s where we could have put the boy, Guttle thought, much too late. Further along, they entered the shoemaker’s shop. When they emerged, one of the policeman was holding by the edge, as if it were a dead skunk, the cobbler’s red beret. “I wasn’t wearing it,” he protested.

  “That’s why there’s no fine —but we must save you from temptation,” the officer said, and he tossed the cap into the flowing ditch. Alexandre Licht had spoken against the Gentile boy, but still Guttle felt sad for him as he stepped to the ditch and watched his proud possession, a part of his identity, curl with liquid and sink into the passing morass.

  The officers across the lane had been taking longer with their inspections, perhaps being more thorough — but now they were approaching the cabinet maker’s. Guttle saw Jacob Marcus leave his table and begin to meander up the lane. Her pulse quickened. Was he merely curious, or would he denounce the boy?

  Wanting to see what transpired inside, she crossed the lane and entered the shop. “I’m just a customer,” she said to Yussel, at the same time waving to Georgi. She began to examine a carved table. To her glancing eye, Georgi, in his yarmulke and tzitzis, looked as Jewish as anyone; after two months out of the sunlight, his skin already had faded to the Judengasse pallor above an incipient beard.

  The boy picked up a broom and began to sweep up the curls of wood shavings on the floor, just as the two Constables entered. Nodding to Yussel, they seemed to inhale with pleasure the wood smells of the shop, an oasis from the sewage stench, as their eyes roamed about, taking in the tools, the pieces in progress, the cans of polish. Then one of them focused on the boy.

  “You never had an apprentice befor
e,” the officer, a thin, pinch-faced fellow, said.

  Guttle was stricken with fear. She wanted to close her eyes, but forced herself to watch.

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Yussel said.

  “How long has he been working for you?”

  Turning away, she became engrossed in a half-finished mahogany desk.

  “About two months.”

  “What is your name?” the officer said to the boy, and he sniffed the air, as if at the body odor of a Jew.

  The boy stopped sweeping. If he was afraid, he did not show it. “Georgi Pinsky.”

  “Did you make that coffin?”

  Georgi nodded.

  “He’s got a lot to learn,” the Constable said to Yussel. “This looks like a trough for pigs.”

  Georgi’s face flushed. The second officer, a shorter, rounder fellow, appeared to find the remark very funny. He laughed loudly. He asked, “Are you hiding any pigs in the Judengasse?” He laughed again, at his own joke.

  “Upstairs,” the first officer said, pointing. “Let’s see if there are thirsty pigs up there.”

  As they climbed the stairs, Guttle tried to relax. Turning to leave, she saw Jacob Marcus across the lane, talking with the shoemaker. She decided to stay where she was. If they were going to denounce the boy, they would have to do it in front of her.

  She could hear the footsteps of the police moving higher, to the top floor. Immediately, strong words filtered down, loud but indistinct. There was some kind of problem. She looked at Yussel, questioningly. He put a finger to his lips. A moment later they heard the sound of hammering. Guttle was afraid for the boy again.

  The footstep descended the three flights of stairs. The thin policeman was holding several gulden notes. He paused to fold them into a pouch on his belt, then turned and yelled up the stairwell. “Ten gulden today. Next time, you go to prison.”

  He looked at Yussel and Guttle. “Air for the children!” he muttered, shaking his head, and without another glance at Georgi he led the other Constable out of the shop.