The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “I am gratified,” Meyer said. “Also flattered.”

  “Well you might be. When I made the suggestion, Wilhelm replied, ‘The Jew Rothschild? He deals in coins. What does he know of banking?’ I allowed that you were hoping to expand your business in that direction. I assume I was correct.”

  “You were quite correct, sir.”

  “Never mind the sir. I told the crown Prince that I had confidence in your financial skills, and that this would be a good test of them. He was not enthusiastic, I tell you honestly. ‘Very well, Buderus, test your wings,’ were his exact words. Then he added, ‘If this is a disaster, I shall remember who suggested the Jew.’ I tell you this, Rothschild, only to make clear that if you agree to participate, my future could be at risk as well as yours.”

  “May I ask why you are doing this?”

  “I have asked myself that question all morning.” He glanced towards the open door, got up and closed it before resuming his seat. “In strict confidence, I will tell you that there are several treasury officers more senior than I — but none with much understanding of the burgeoning world of trade. I have been seeking a way to call attention to my abilities. These British notes are an opportunity for me. The other bankers no doubt were selected by my superiors. You will be my iron in the fire. If you agree.”

  “That’s a great deal of confidence you place in me.”

  “I’ve watched how you operate your coin business. Your instincts are impeccable. My instinct is to harness your instinct. For the benefit of us both. And of the Crown Prince, of course — for the benefit of Wilhelm most of all.” He sipped at his coffee, the steam no longer visible. “There, that was much better than writing it all down. You see — it must have been instinct that brought you here today.”

  “Or the warming of the weather.”

  “Don’t belittle yourself. Do you have any questions?”

  Meyer twisted a loose button on his coat; he would have to show it to Guttle. “Only one. Several times you hinted that I might not agree to this wonderful opportunity. Why is that?”

  “How shall I phrase it?” Buderus scratched idly on the unfinished letter with his quill. “I understand that you Jews are not averse to making money, only to enjoying it.”

  Meyer studied the young man, who was at least five years his junior. “Perhaps I am the exception.”

  Nodding twice, Buderus stood and came out from behind his desk. “We shall expect you here at eleven on Tuesday next. Should you decide not to participate, don’t bother with a courier. If you don’t appear, I will know your decision.”

  “If I may, you have doubted me again. Perhaps you think I fear such a test.”

  Buderus escorted him to the door. “Perhaps that’s it,” he said.

  On his way home, Meyer stopped at the small farm of the widow Kremm, Georgi’s mother. Yussel had begun paying the boy for his work, and Georgi was sending most of his pay home. The widow had graying hair and a haggard appearance, like a rag doll discarded in the rain.

  “He is well?” she asked, as she took the envelope of money.

  “He is very well, Frau Kremm.”

  “He hasn’t turned into a Jew yet? Hasn’t grown horns, or a tail?”

  Anger flashed through him. He fought to control it. This ignorant woman was not worthy of his rage. He did not speak.

  “Better my boy should go for a soldier. He’s not a coward, you know. You shouldn’t think that. His father was killed in the Seven Years’ War, and Georgi is just as brave. It’s the beatings by his uncle he’s hiding from.”

  “Beatings?”

  “Listen to my mouth. I have to go sweep the floor.”

  “Shall I give Georgi your greetings?”

  “If he wants my greetings he can come home, where he belongs.”

  She disappeared inside the small house, whose outer walls were badly in need of paint; Georgi’s uncle clearly had little concern about that. Leaving the unkempt yard and a brown field beside it waiting for seed, Meyer felt new sadness for the boy. Family tyrants could be as evil as princely ones. Georgi might be in no hurry to leave.

  The branches of the lindens and the poplars alongside the road were not yet budding, but Meyer, trying to recapture his earlier mood, envisioned their future greenery. Carriage traffic was heavy on the highway to Frankfurt. His progress slowed. He grew impatient to tell Guttle of his good fortune. He had no doubt that he could invest as well — most likely better — than the other bankers. His joy at this unexpected stake was a limitless balm until, where two roads intersected, he was stalled completely by the traffic of coaches and wagons and defecating horses, and he recalled the odd words of Buderus at the palace. Jews are not averse to making money — only to enjoying it. What did he mean by that? Only a fool would not enjoy it. Never mind spending, it was the making itself, the accumulation, that gladdened the blood.

  As Meyer rode home to the lane, Guttle walked slowly from the bakery carrying a challah for the erev Shabbas meal. Her back ached from supporting the seven-month child in her womb. Her breasts were sore. Her swollen ankles throbbed. She was tired. Not yet twenty-three years old, she felt this day like an elderly woman, grumpy and out of sorts. Worse, she feared that something was wrong with the child inside her.

  Rebecca had assured her that the baby was alive. The midwife had told her that all women felt this way. But her pregnancy felt somehow different from the ones before. It was Dvorah she wanted to talk to. Dvorah would understand. They would hug, her fears would dissipate, soon she would be making jokes, making Dvorah giggle.

  Yet her mood did not improve when Hannah Schlicter intercepted her in front of the Pfann.

  “Guttle, did you see the carriage of the Countess outside the gate this morning?”

  Guttle hadn’t. “Was she ordering more dresses?”

  “She tried on the dress I made her for Dvorah’s wedding. It will be in three weeks, you know.”

  Guttle said nothing.

  “The dress fit perfectly, but it was a disaster. I lost my best customer. The Countess said she won’t be coming back. She said I’ll be family now, Paul’s mother-in-law, so she can’t be treating me like some poor dressmaker. I told her that would only make me a poorer dressmaker. She didn’t think it was funny. Why should she, it wasn’t meant to be funny.”

  “I’m sorry,” Guttle said, shifting her challah from her right arm to her left.

  “Listen, darling, I had a letter from Dvorah today. Would you like to read it?”

  “Another time.”

  “That’s what you said the last time. But you never did. She wants to come see you, take you for a ride in her coach, talk to you.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “She’s your best friend.”

  “She was.”

  “So she became a Christian. She doesn’t really believe in it. Besides, what’s that to you? You have a Gentile boy living in your house.”

  “He didn’t abandon God. He didn’t abandon his children.”

  “He abandoned his mother, I understand.”

  “He didn’t. He sends his pay to her.”

  “Never mind, this is about Dvorah. You love her. She loves you. She didn’t abandon the twins, they go to see her once a month, that’s all Lev would allow. He won’t let her come to the lane. She’s nervous about the wedding, you need to see her, listen to her talk. Like in the old days.”

  “She’s out of my life now. It was her choice.”

  “You’ll at least write to her, then? That much you owe her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You think I was not hurt by what she did? Her mother? Moving away. Becoming a Christian. Leaving the twins like that. I cried my heart out for days. But then it was over. We get on with life. We accept. Who are you to condemn her so?”

  Cold sweat broke out on Guttle’s face. She began to feel faint. Hannah did not appear to notice.

  “I’m ashamed of you, Guttle Schnapper. That you would ignore a friend in need.”r />
  “My name is Rothschild.”

  “You’re a cruel woman, young lady. By any name.”

  Guttle put her hand against the wall for support. Faintness melted her muscles. The bread dropped to the cobbles. Hannah looked at her pale face and at the round bread rolling on the stones toward the ditch, and turned abruptly and walked back to her house. Barely able to move, her belly fluttering, Guttle watched the challah come to a stop just short of the ditch. Her body was drenched in sweat. She did not know if she could fetch the bread, if she could bend over without toppling. She dared not let go of the wall.

  Who was she to condemn Dvorah so? Was Hannah right? Was she being stupid in cutting off the friend she loved so much? The friend for whom she longed?

  No! There were laws of morality. There were lines you could not cross. Without moral restraints, without a conscience, humans would not be worthy. Not of one another, and not of Yahweh. Dvorah had crossed those lines beyond all measuring, simply for her own pleasure — hurting her children, her husband, her mother, her sisters. Aside from killing another human, how much worse could a person act?

  And so —No!

  Her body was trembling within a skin of sweat as she leaned against the wall and thought these thoughts. She wiped her brow with her sleeve.

  She wanted to hug Dvorah.

  A young girl ran to the challah and carried it to Guttle. She was Reba Schlicter, Hannah’s youngest, one of Guttle’s favorites. Guttle thanked her. “Do you miss your sister?”

  “A lot.”

  “Me, too,” Guttle said.

  When Meyer entered the lane moments later, he found his wife leaning against the wall, holding the bread. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Guttle. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m feeling faint, that’s all. Help me to the house. I need to lie down.”

  Meyer took the bread, she leaned on his shoulder as they walked down the alley. In the house he removed her shoes and she lay on the bed, shivering. He covered her with a blanket. Her eyes were closed as he stood watching her, tinged with fear.

  The children he would send across to Guttle’s mother for Sabbath dinner. The wonderful news from Buderus he would have to store in his chest till she felt better.

  Brendel would come on a Saturday morning, she had told Avra, when the Café was closed, when the men and many of the women were in schul, when few would notice her visit. Would that be all right? That would be fine; the artist worked every day; he did not respect the Sabbath. Bereft of ears, tongue, father, brother, he felt that he owed God nothing.

  She could come this Sabbath, Brendel had told Avra, would that be convenient? That would be fine. He was eager to start on figure studies, as the great masters had done.

  North light streamed through the open shutters. Paper was piled neatly beside his easel, alongside sharpened charcoal sticks. He did not hear her light, flying footsteps on the stairs — he would not have heard had they been slow and heavy — but he saw Avra open the door. He saw a smile both shy and adventurous beneath her blonde ringlets and blue cap. She said something to his wife. Avra nodded, they chatted in a world to which he was not privy, a world beyond the open studio door through which he was watching. In her animated face, her sparkling green eyes, she exuded what sunlight there was in the lane, even on the darkest days. It was her face, more than her chocolate, that inspired him each morning to wrestle with another day.

  He would not sketch her face. That was their agreement. Her torso must be headless, she had a reputation to protect, and two young boys. Her portrait would be fine another time. Without her body.

  Where would she undress? Avra led her into Yetta’s room; his mother was at schul.

  He had known that the cabinet maker would not object. Could not. It was Yussel who had brought him as a wedding gift a book of etchings of the masters. Most of them had sketched the female form. He allowed himself a private smile. None had sketched Brendel Isaacs.

  Barefoot, she stepped into his room, his studio, wearing one of Avra’s robes. His wife watched from the doorway, to see if she was needed. He motioned Brendel to a place two metres in front of him, where they had positioned Hersch’s old bed in the gray light pouring from the window. He nodded to her, very slightly, as if he were an old hand at this. Her face flushed a pale pink, but only for a moment, as she opened the robe and let it drop to the floor. The light caressed her body with sheen and shadow. His room, not the schul, had become God’s temple.

  He raised a hand for her not to move as he studied her, as he began to sketch. He noted the angle at which her shoulders sloped. How her breasts offered themselves, two matching undercurves, one slightly smaller than the other, something he had not expected. Around her nipples were not magenta discs, like Avra’s, but pale pink flowers of soft flesh, the petals uneven, a pinkness made by a cherry dropped in milk; the pink nipples themselves shyly trying to hide their emerging heads. He sketched the slope of her flesh as it curved into her waist and out again to her hips. Beneath her navel her nether hair was a pale brown fuzz, a perfect triangle, unlike his wife’s dark diamond. Her left thigh caught the light from the window, then rounded into deep shadow. He drew, smudged the charcoal for shading with his fingers, with the side of his hand, stepped back from the easel, looked at the sketch and at her, idly noticed Avra still watching from the doorway, returned to the easel to add a line here, to soften a line there. Unclipped the paper from the easel, set it on the floor, clipped another sheet in place. He motioned her to the bed. She sat, resting for a moment, then reclined on her side, facing him, moving her lithe arms slowly, sensuously, as if posing unclothed had come as a birthright with her form. He raised a hand when he saw what he wanted, not just her shape but the negative space beyond and between, and she paused and held the pose. Quickly he began to sketch. His manhood, he was glad to note, was behaving itself. Avra, not only his wife but his manager, had been wise in making love to him at dawn.

  He placed the sketch on the floor, fastened another sheet of paper on the easel. Her back, her buttocks, her legs extended, her legs bent at the knee, one by one the sketch pile grew, each drawing without a head. A terrible image occurred to him — the severed head of the blacksmith from Mainz lying on the beach. And then a connection he had never made before — that the head had belonged to Brendel’s husband, the father of her boys.

  He set the charcoal down and waved at her to relax. She slipped into the robe, they entered the kitchen, he gave her a glass of water. They found his wife in his mother’s room, where much of his work — framed by Yussel Kahn — was stacked in the space where his father ‘s bed had been. Avra was removing his sketches of the lane from their frames.

  “Why are you doing that?” He saw Brendel’s lips move as she spoke to Avra and motioned the question to him.

  “To put the new sketches in. The ones that Hiram likes. We’ll display them in the lane on Monday.”

  “In the lane?”

  “Where else?”

  “People will be shocked. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “We could use some excitement,” Avra said.

  “But the Rabbis … the children. What will you tell them?”

  “Art needs no defense. Besides, your body is the work of Yahweh. How can they be ashamed of that?”

  “But they will be.”

  “So, let them do the defending.”

  “I didn’t realize . . .” Brendel said.

  “No face, as you and Hiram agreed.”

  “It will become a guessing game!”

  Avra grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “How awful!” She was rubbing her forehead with her hand.

  “Listen to me,” Avra said. “The lane is awful. The locked gates are awful. The laws against the Jews are awful. Your beauty is not awful. The beauty inside our clothing is revealed only in bedrooms, at night, in the dark. But it’s a part of the life of the lane, and that is Hiram’s subject. How can he not show that? The children you’re concer
ned about — they don’t come from starter dough.”

  “I don’t see you posing nude.”

  “My body no one would look at twice.”

  Following the conversation by reading their lips and their hand motions, Hiram stepped closer to Avra, kissed her temple, pointed to himself, smiling. He would look at her twice.

  “You can’t sell them!” Brendel was near to tears now. “I never agreed to that! Imagine men hanging these in their bedrooms. Their wives would hate me!”

  “I doubt any married man would dare.”

  “Who, then? Bachelors? That would be worse!”

  Avra pondered, looked at Hiram. “Very well, we’ll just display his talent. They won’t be for sale.”

  “It’s more than his talent you’re displaying!”

  Hiram spoke to Avra quickly with his hands. Avra frowned, but translated. “He doesn’t want to upset you. He says he won’t show them without your permission.”

  Brendel wiped perspiration from her forehead, tried to slow her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest beneath her robe.

  “It’s not as if you’re ashamed of your body,” Avra said.

  Brendel’s eyes flashed at her. “Why should I be ashamed of it!”

  “Exactly. Why should anyone?”

  Cocking her head to the side, squinting at Avra, Brendel said, “I think I know Guttle well. You I don’t know at all.”

  “Few people do.

  Slowly Brendel began to look at the drawings, one by one. Most she placed carefully in one pile. A few she set aside — those that showed the confluence of her thighs, her triangle of private hair. “You can show all but these,” she said.

  Hiram, understanding, nodded his head.

  “A guessing game.” Brendel turned to Avra. “Will you help me bake this week? I suspect I’ll be selling lots of ruggelah. And mun cake. And strudel. Lots of everything.”

  Hiram raised two fingers at her, pointed to the studio. Two more drawings? Brendel shook her head, no, and went to Yetta’s bedroom to dress.