The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  Guttle remained in bed most of the Sabbath. After morning services, while the children played in the lane, Meyer strolled to the south gate and gazed out at the river, his mind dancing with numbers. He could not put pencil to paper on Shabbas, but nothing could prevent his mind from spinning its mathematical polka to the sweet music provided by Buderus, the carrot-haired Gentile angel. To discount notes of twenty-five thousand gulden at ten percent, he would need to put up twenty two thousand five hundred. He had been able to put away twenty thousand from his profits of the past five years, with the help of Guttle’s efficient housework — keeping their clothing in good repair, preparing simple meals. He’d been saving the money for just such an opportunity. The difference he could borrow from one of his brothers.

  On the river, while gray and white gulls whirled against the winter sky, he saw seamen from a three-masted ship that lay at anchor unloading huge bundles of cloth — cotton and silk that had been turned into bolts of fabric in the mills of England. Kalman and Moish made a nice living importing such cloth; if they could order in greater bulk, they would obtain a lower wholesale price, their own profits would increase, and he could turn a substantial profit for the Crown Prince. The Gentile bankers, he felt certain, would invest in bank notes or safe foreign currencies, items that carried little risk. Investing in the expanding import business could earn far larger profits — assuming a ship carrying your merchandise did not go down at sea, or get highjacked by pirates to a distant port. Though ordered in bulk, the fabric would be sold to merchants and tailors and dressmakers only in small lots, so the market would not be flooded and the price driven down.

  The wisp of a cloud floated through him. What if he lost money for the Prince, instead of making a profit? The answer to that was simple. He would make sure that he did not. He would read the markets as he read the Torah. Just as religiously.

  And Buderus not withstanding, he would not feel guilt about getting rich. Why should he?

  Watching the schooner unload at the busy quay stoked his effervescence. His good fortune, he felt certain, would help cure Guttle’s malaise, whatever it was that ailed her, as soon as she felt well enough to listen.

  Sunday morning, Guttle arose from her bed to feed the children breakfast. When they had gone out to play, and the baby Salomon was gurgling contentedly in his crib, Meyer sat across from her at the kitchen table, both of them sipping tea through crystals of honey; she was still in her robe, he had donned dark blue knee-breeches and a matching vest. Unable to hold back any longer, he told her of the offer from Buderus, from the Crown Prince. Guttle broke off a braid from the leftover challah on the table. When she spoke, it was not with the excitement he had expected.

  “You’re not going to do this, of course.”

  Meyer looked at her warily. This must be one of her teases; she was so good at that. But her lips held no hint of a smile.

  “Not going to do this? What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re going to thank the Crown Prince for his gracious offer, but tell him thank you, no. Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying. This is the opportunity I’ve been seeking for years. Why would I say no?.”

  Guttle lay her piece of challah on the table. “Meyer, this money is in payment for the peasants sent to fight in America. Like Georgi’s brother. You said so yourself. Surely you don’t want to get involved in that.”

  “I won’t be getting involved in anything.” His left hand rubbed his head in frustration, leaving his hair in disarray, giving him a rare unkempt look. “I’ll just be investing some money.”

  “Meyer, it’s not just some money. Surely you see that. This money pays for the bodies of the peasants. It pays for their blood.”

  “That’s not relevant, Guttle. The men already are in England. Maybe already on their way to America. If I turned down the offer, it wouldn’t change anything. The ships still would sail. Some of the men still would die. The only difference would be that Gentile bankers would be investing the money, would be making profits, would be earning the gratitude of the Crown Prince. Whether I do this or not doesn’t affect the peasants at all.”

  Guttle folded the collar of her gray robe up under her chin. “The money comes with blood on it. There’s no way to avoid acknowledging that.”

  “Nonsense.” Meyer stood and paced about. He was trying hard not to lose control, not to become overbearing. “This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. If I invest this money wisely, I’m sure to get more of Wilhelm’s business. Our lives could take a turn for the better.”

  “Our lives are fine now. We don’t need blood on our hands.”

  “Stop with the blood already.” Now he was truly angry, his face was reddening. A different kind of man, he thought, would slap her. “When Wilhelm’s father dies, Wilhelm will become the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. The treasury there is a hundred times bigger than at Hanau. Friedrich has been hiring out his peasants to fight in every war in Europe for forty years. The money is in his treasury — along with his rents, his profits from his fields, from his investments. If one day I am offered to invest that money, how would I separate one source from another? It’s all intermingled.”

  “That’s in the future. If it happens, you’re smart enough to figure out something.”

  “Guttle, in business everything is intermingled. Besides, if I turn down this offer from Wilhelm, there won’t be any future for me. Not with him. Not now, not later.”

  “It won’t be the end of the world.”

  “It would be the end my dream! Of our dreams! If the law ever changes, if the gates are unlocked, only those with money will be able to move out. This is our chance to stop adding to our money, and start multiplying it. That’s what’s at stake here.”

  “You won’t just be sending men off to die, which is bad enough,” Guttle said. “You’ll be sending them off to kill other men.”

  “I won’t be sending them anywhere! They’re already sent!” He gripped the back of his chair. “I have to say this, Guttle. Today, maybe for the first time since we’ve known each other, you have disappointed me.”

  “I have disappointed you?” She lost control, began to shout at him. “How can you say such a thing? What about being a good person! What about morality!”

  His voice rose to the anger of hers. “This is not about morality! This is business!”

  Shaking her head, Guttle stood, hugged herself as if she were chilled. When she spoke her voice sounded tired, worn out. “My ankles are hurting. I’m going back to bed.” At the top of the stairs, before she descended, she said quietly, “I hope you won’t disappoint me.”

  “What? What was that you said?” But she was gone, moving carefully down the stairs, gripping the rope balustrade tightly, as if below her were an abyss.

  He slammed his fist against the table. The challah and the two tea glasses jumped. He sprang down the stairs two at a time and out into the lane without a coat. A chill wind blowing from the south rippled the loose white sleeves of his shirt. Angrily he strode down the lane, ignoring people who offered greetings. Not stopping till he reached the locked south gate, locked because it was Sunday. He gripped its iron bars like a prisoner in a cell. He looked at the gray river trembling beneath the wind. The ship from yesterday was gone. Turning, he entered the cemetery, walked about among the stones of all the thousands who had been born in the lane, and had died in the lane. He read names. He read dates. He read encomiums. Hours passed before his anger abated, before he dared return to the Hinterpfann.

  38

  —Oh mein Gott! Do you see?

  —For shame! For shame!

  —Look at that one. And that one.

  —And this one here, do you see?

  —If you’d get your nose out of the way, I could see.

  —How could he draw such things?

  —How could she display such things?

  —Women will see.

  —And children!

  —He left
off her face. Whom do you think it is?

  —I tell you one thing, my wife it’s not.

  —Look at her … her you-knows. It’s someone young.

  —But not too young.

  —He almost shows … oh, mein goodness!

  —And he’s deaf, he won’t hear the children cry.

  —Why would you think the children will cry when they look?

  —They’ll cry when their mamas spank them.

  —Here comes the Chief Rabbi, and Simcha. Someone must have sent for them.

  Rabbi Eleazar took a quick gander at the drawings, and approached Avra, who was standing in the doorway. “You must put those away. At once.”

  “Why?”

  “They are a disgrace. They are obscene.”

  “They depict the creation of God. Was Adonai a disgrace? Was Adonai obscene?”

  The throng around the drawings was growing larger as word spread. People stood on their toes to see over the heads of those in front of them.

  “You go too far, young lady. Adam and Eve, though created naked, put on clothes.”

  ”You know better than I do, Rabbi — they put on clothes because they ate of the forbidden fruit. Because they disobeyed the will of God — and became ashamed of their bodies. It was not Yahweh’s intent that they be ashamed of His work.”

  “That was in Paradise. Does the Judengasse look like Paradise to you?”

  “All the more reason we need to look at beauty. Why must anyone get upset at these images? Women see them every month, for real, in the mikveh. Men see them every night, in their wives. And touch them.”

  “Not children.”

  “What house is so large that a boy has not glimpsed his mother washing, or a girl her father?”

  “Such drawings undermine the Jewish spirit. The life of the mind.”

  “Only if we allow them to.”

  “Enough talking. As the Chief Rabbi, I order you to take them down.”

  “You have no such authority. Where is it written that you do?”

  “It is by common consent.”

  “My husband is an artist. Artists work beyond common consent.”

  His face darkening beneath his high black hat like a beet from the fields, the Chief Rabbi turned to Rabbi Simcha for help. Simcha, one palm on a pockmarked cheek, said nothing. The Chief Rabbi turned and strode off angrily towards his study. Simcha took a few moments to look at the drawings. Before following his superior, he rolled his eyes at Doctor Kirsch, whom he noticed in the crowd wearing an amused expression. Rebecca, ever curious, left the throng and intercepted Simcha before he had gone ten metres. “What do you think, Rabbi?” she asked him.

  “What do I think? I think Moses Mendelssohn has struck again.”

  “Mendelssohn?”

  “The Mendelssohn Rebellion, I call it. Time was when the women in the lane were content to scrub the floors and cook the chickens and have the babies, and bring the children up to be like their mothers and fathers — the boys as students of the Torah, the girls as, well, as their wives. Then Mendelssohn came here — what, about six months ago? Look what’s happened since. We have a Gentile living in the lane — invited in by the daughter of the Court Jew; she even mounts a coffin and harangues the old men who don’t want him here, who consider his presence an abomination. The Doctor’s wife runs off from her husband and children to marry a Christian — the son of a Count, no less. A Café owned by a woman — a woman more or less living in sin — which most people had been shunning, suddenly begins to prosper after Mendelssohn gives it his blessing. Now some other woman — I hope I never know who, how could I look her in the eye again? — some woman has disrobed to her skin for the artist, and another daughter of the Court Jew flaunts the drawings in public; she disobeys the Chief Rabbi, even argues with him. Nothing like this has happened in the lane in three hundred years.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “I didn’t say if it was good or bad. Only that it was new.”

  The Doctor ran her fingers through her lustrous black hair. “I never though to link those things. Perhaps because I’ve been close with some of these women, and seen their ambivalence, their pain. Tell me, Rabbi, what you think of this Mendelssohn’s Rebellion, if that’s what it is.”

  “What do I think?” He glanced down the lane, where the sturdy black figure of the Chief Rabbi was diminishing in size as he neared the synagogue. “Clearly it’s scandalous. It’s like a wind blowing the yarmulkes right off our heads, as the Chief Rabbi might say.”

  “I know what the Chief Rabbi would say. I just heard him. What about Emil Simcha?”

  He glanced toward the synagogue, then back at Rebecca. Lowering his voice, he said, “Just between us, Doctor, it’s making life interesting. There are worse things than scandalous.” He touched the top of his head, making sure his yarmulke was still on. With a small, rueful smile that softened his scarred face, he added, “Not that it wasn’t interesting before. The compression from the walls makes sure of that.”

  Together they began to walk down the lane, the Doctor towards the hospital, the Rabbi towards his study. “At least I became a Doctor long before Mendelssohn spoke,” Rebecca said. “I’d hate to be a crowd follower.”

  “That was in Berlin, am I right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Your father encouraged you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Isn’t your father an acquaintance of Mendelssohn?”

  Taken by surprise, Rebecca inclined her head, smiling gamely in defeat, her dark eyes merry. As they reached the hospital, she said, “You’ve really thought this through.”

  Simcha shrugged modestly. “That’s what we Rabbis do. That’s what we’re for.”

  Up the lane, in front of Hiram’s drawings, some art lovers had left, others had come to look, and the old men, with nothing better to do, continued to speculate.

  —The question remains, who is it?

  —It’s not skinny Avra.

  —It could be her sister, Guttle Rothschild.

  —Except Guttle is pregnant out to here.

  —You know what I think? A lot of wives will get pregnant tonight.

  —From looking at pictures you don’t get pregnant.

  —You’d be surprised.

  —I know who! There’s only one woman who would drop her drawers in front of the deaf mute.

  —Who is that?

  —The shiksa whore. The Doctor’s former wife.

  —She left the lane months ago.

  —Maybe he drew her months ago.

  —Then why not show them before?

  —He waited till she wasn’t Jewish.

  —What, something changes then?

  —You know what? Looking at these is making my mouth go dry.

  —I know what you mean. You want to go to the Café?

  —My thought precisely. We’ll have Brendel fix us a nice glass of tea.

  Guttle lay awake in the dark. She and Meyer had not said a word to one another since their fight. In the morning it would be two days. Nothing like this had ever happened before. She was frightened for her marriage. He was due at Hesse-Hanau at eleven in the morning — if he was going. He would have to leave early. He lay beside her, his broad back turned. She did not know if he was awake or asleep. She did not want to find out. Her body was stiff, tense. Not, she assumed, like the naked torso in the drawings in the lane. She had heard about them from Avra, who had come to see how she was feeling. Avra who had faced down the Chief Rabbi — the Chief Rabbi! — with chutzpah. Or had it been true courage? Guttle was not sure about the prerogatives of art. All she knew was that just now her own body was not a thing of beauty. She felt heavier than when she had borne the other children; her arms and legs were thicker, her every movement was sluggish. She felt more like a cow in a barn than a wife in bed. Why did she have to become pregnant every time Meyer sneezed? It was not his fault, a man had to sneeze, Yahweh had made him that way. She loved her three children, like Meyer she wante
d more, and yet … She felt a pain wrack through her womb and her back, as if it would cut her spine in half.

  When she had fallen asleep she had dreamed of the trench running red with her menstrual blood. She’d been awakened by pain and sat upright, near to tears, from the pain or the nightmare, she was not certain which. Something was wrong with the baby inside her; she could tell. Something was different this time. That was why she could not get warm, why her entire body ached, why she was so tired. She had tried talking to Melka, but Melka was Melekh, a King, a Torah, a man, and didn’t want to hear of such things. She tried talking to Jennie Aron, but Jennie was a virgin, knew nothing of giving birth — burned to death, a far worse pain And the Archduchess, Marie Antoinette, ridiculed for being childless after six years of marriage. Guttle wondered which was worse, the pain of ridicule or the pain of labor, of giving birth, the punishment visited by Yahweh on Eve. “I am not Eve!” she cried aloud. Beside her Meyer stirred, but when she became silent again he did not turn to her.

  My soul is divided, she thought. I am twenty-three years old and I am still a child, talking to girls who are imaginary, or distant, or dead — yet I am becoming a mother to my sisters, and to their friends; they come to me for advice, as if I had the wisdom of someone twice my years. Is that because I am Meyer’s wife? Because I am my father’s daughter? “Let’s see what Guttle thinks,” they say. But why? Is this wisdom, that I believe in Torah and Talmud and all the traditions of my people, yet I stand upon a coffin and scold the elders? Is this wisdom, that I cut myself off from the friend I love the most, and then pine for her smile, her touch, the very color of her hair? Is this wisdom, that the man I married is a tireless worker who wants to make us rich, and I meddle in the business he knows so well?

  But how can I not speak the truth — at least the truth as it seems to me? If I don’t, then I cease to exist. The ‘me’ in me disappears. I become just a tiny part of a pointless untruthful beast called the Judengasse. Or called humanity. Surely that can’t be what Yahweh wanted when He created us in His image. If I do not speak the truth, and my children don’t, and their children don’t, then what is the purpose of bearing children at all? Then humans are only an endless procession of lies. That can’t be what Yahweh intended.