The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “Everyone expects the new Chief Rabbi will be Rabbi Simcha,” Yussel said. “He’s been your assistant for so long.”

  “Not everyone expects. You young people expect. Simcha is very modern. The old people like Jonah better. He’s been head of the yeshiva for many years. That’s what I’m waiting for. To hear who is chosen.”

  “To hear? Rabbi, it’s you who chooses.”

  The Rabbi’s dry lips formed a slight smile. He winced, and Yussel could imagine the cutting discomfort. “You think my mind is going, eh Yussel? It is not me who chooses. I am only the messenger. It is Yahweh who chooses.”

  Yussel did not know what to say. He felt better than when he had entered this dark room; his mind had been distracted from the bookseller. From his own fate.

  “That’s all I’m waiting for,” the Rabbi said wearily. “For Yahweh to tell me. Then I will give the word, and move on.”

  “Rabbi, I need to discuss my situation with someone. I need advice. I can’t keep it secret anymore.”

  “Tell whomever you trust. May Adonai look after you, Yussel Kahn. Now I must rest, and listen for His word.”

  Yussel stood, and turned to leave.

  “But one more thing, Yussel. Maybe it’s not what you think. Maybe they arrested the bookseller for something else, something less important. Maybe he killed his wife.”

  “I don’t think he killed his wife.”

  “Well, we can always hope,” the Rabbi said.

  41

  The four walls were solid stone, without windows. The ceiling was thick spruce. The floor was hard earth, upon which a thin mattress had been thrown. The only illumination was a single candle. The only furnishing beyond the mattress and the candleholder was a chamber pot. Stretched on the mattress, naked, his head near a corner, Yussel could touch two of the intersecting walls. They were cold and damp.

  I am Odysseus, who spied for the Greeks against the Trojans. Now I am trapped in this island cave, a prisoner of the beautiful Calypso. I can hear the sea sloshing, teasing my desire to escape. Seven years I am doomed to be imprisoned here. Some would call it Paradise. We make love, a goddess and a man. Yet it is a prison still. I long for home, for my fair Penelope. I feel her breath, as if she were here with me.

  Asleep in his arms, Brendel stirred. He pulled the rough sheet higher over her naked form, against the chill of the cellar. Her blonde ringlets whispered against his arm as she slept, like daffodils. He could feel each apple breath on his skin against the fetid smell of the earthen floor.

  Water sloshed in the well beneath the pump in the vestibule. At least, he thought, I am not in the Frankfurt prison across the river, with its stone rats and vermin and sadistic guards. Before they take me there, shall I flee?

  I am Socrates, convicted of treason, condemned to die in three days. Crito visits me in prison, urges me to escape. It would not take much money to buy off certain people, he says, and he has plenty. No. I shall not try to escape my prison. There is no time when injustice is justified. It is wrong to answer injustice with injustice. And surely, to bribe my captors so that they let me escape, is an injustice. I shall die as I have lived, unafraid. If hemlock is my fate, so be it. I shall drink it without pause. I shall not run.

  “What will you do?” Brendel had asked, her eyes rimmed red from her tears. “Where will you go? How will I find you? When could you come back? Should I go with you?”

  “I won’t leave you,” he had said, “except at the point of a sword.”

  “Perhaps you could hide, till they forget.” She implored him. “We need advice from clearer minds.”

  Her legs could hardly support her as she clung to him, as they walked slowly along the cobbles in the falling dusk.

  “We could hide you,” Guttle had said.

  “I will not hide.”

  “Just for tonight,” Brendel pleaded. ”Till we see if they come. So we can think.”

  “Perhaps they will accept payment to leave you be,” Meyer said. “It would profit them more than putting you in prison.”

  “And if they rejected your bribe? You would join me in an adjacent cell. Bribing an officer of the law is also considered treason. I won’t let you take that risk.”

  “You could hide in our cellar, at least tonight,” Guttle said. “I’ll throw a rug over the trap door. There’s already a mattress, the boys sometimes play down there.”

  “I have to be with him tonight! What if it’s our last night together?” The tears cascaded down Brendel’s cheeks. She did not wipe them away.

  “I’ll give you a key,” Guttle said, wrapping her arms around her trembling friend.

  I am Boethius, in my Italian prison cell, under sentence of death. The charges of treason are false. But soft, here is the fair Philosophy, come to comfort me. “You are complaining of your condition, your treatment by Fortune. But it is your attitude that makes things seem wretched. Endure all with a calm mind and you will find yourself blessed.” “How can I feel blessed, imprisoned as I am?” Philosophy says, “Men seek riches, gems, beautiful clothes, which are good only in themselves and do not extend their goodness to their possessor. All other creatures of God are satisfied by their own intrinsic good; only humans, who should be above other creatures, lower themselves to seek value in worthless things. You all seek happiness, which indeed is the highest good. Happiness is to desire nothing further.” I reply, “I do not desire further — only not to be separated from the woman I love.” Consolation of Philosophy, I call the book that I am writing in prison. But do I still find consolation after they twist a cord around my forehead tighter and tighter, until my eyes pop? And then, without trial or evidence, summon an executioner, who clubs me in body and head until I am dead?

  “What if they stick you in that prison across the river?” Brendel had asked. “Will they let me see you? What if they hang you!”

  “It won’t be like that.” He had tried to assure her, unable to assure himself. “I’ll have an advocate. I’ ll have a trial. They’ll see what a piddling thing it was, to get early notice of inspections. Who was hurt by it?”

  To himself, he said: they will paint it as a corruption of the system. Therein will they find their treason.

  Brendel sniffled, wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing the tears. “The old Schul-Klopper. Before I came to the lane. Did he have an advocate? A trial?”

  Yussel looked at the dark green rug. None of them dared to answer.

  Reaching out in the cellar, he felt again the cold of the stone behind his head. His hand recoiled, as if he had touched his own mortality.

  Odysseus, Socrates, Boethius. Living these thousand years in poetry, in dialogues, in their own philosophies. Who will mourn the death of a carpenter?

  “Why did the Chief Rabbi need a spy?” Guttle asked.

  She and Meyer were standing on the terrace behind the vestibule — another rare attraction of the Green Shield. There had not been enough room for a second house to be built in the rear — just enough for a small structure that housed a privy, and a small room, in which the girls played house. The high ghetto wall separated the terrace from the city, but the view of the sky was wider here than in the lane, and Guttle liked to come out at night to look at the stars — which, according to Mendelssohn, knew God. Sometimes, when she was alone, she talked to them.

  Meyer, gazing at a three-quarter moon high in the night sky, replied, “My father used to tell me how, in the old days, the police would storm through the lane unannounced, carrying clubs, and beat up anyone who was violating the law. Some of the beatings were quite severe. Eleazar is old enough to remember them. I imagine he determined that so long as he was Chief Rabbi, we would not be surprised again.”

  “Was it worth it to risk Yussel’s life?”

  “Perhaps not. But who knows what terrible sight might be burned into Eleazar’s brain?”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “I think Yussel should leave, before the police come. But he’s s
tubborn, and proud. I don’t think he will.”

  “He and Brendel could go together. With her boys. To Berlin, maybe. There’s no ghetto there.”

  “Isn’t that where Dvorah is living?”

  “She’s isn’t Dvorah any more.”

  “I know how you feel, Guttela. I … ”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean she’s changed her name.”

  “Changed her name? How do you know?”

  “From her mother. We still don’t speak, but every time I pass near, she makes sure she’s telling someone, in a loud voice, about what a grand life Dvorah has in Berlin. Her big house, with a marble staircase and a grand ballroom, where they have parties that last until morning, and fancy dress balls thick with nobility. ‘My daughter, the Countess,’ Hannah says, so proudly. She thinks people here are impressed.”

  “No doubt some of them are.”

  “She’s calls herself Countess Madeleine von Brunwald.”

  “Madeleine?”

  “There’s not one thing remaining of the girl I used to love.”

  Meyer put his arm around her shoulder. “I think there is one thing.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Your love.”

  She pulled away from him. “Have you been reading my diary?”

  “You ask me such a thing? In all the years since I gave you that first empty book, I have never once looked. What do you have now, a dozen books? That’s your private domain. You think I don’t respect that?”

  “I have sixteen books.”

  “I don’t have to read your books, you know. After all these years, I can read your face.”

  “Not always.”

  “Always about Dvorah. But what is that sly look you’re giving me?”

  “Some things you never guess until I tell you.”

  As he studied her face, his jaw fell open. “Guttela! You’re pregnant!”

  Looking up at the stars, she spoke to a particularly bright one. “I have to admit, he’s getting to know me better.”

  His arms encircled her waist while she still gazed heavenward. Perhaps it was not a star, it did not twinkle like one. Perhaps it was a planet. Venus.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “For a moment, I wanted to dance. Now that we have our own dance floor, under the sky. Isn’t that terrible? For a moment I forgot about Yussel, and the police. The mind tries to flee from such things.”

  Chastely, he kissed her cheek.

  “I, too, just had an awful thought,” Guttle said. “While I was looking at that star. Or maybe it’s a wonderful thought. I’m not sure.”

  “How can you not be sure?”

  “If I was Brendel … if I was afraid the police might take Yussel away … the thought struck me that, down in the cellar, they might have started a baby.”

  Meyer took her hand. Together in silence, slowly, they walked the length of the terrace to the ghetto wall, their sharp moon shadows beside them, rippling on the terrace stones. Guttle touched the wall, peered along its base. “Is there someplace we can buy good earth?”

  “How do you mean, earth?”

  “Fertile soil.”

  “I imagine Zig Zigmund could get some, where he buys his hay. What for?”

  “I want to fill pots with earth, and plant flowers out here.”

  “Will they receive enough sunlight to live?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s like getting pregnant. We plant a seed, and take our chances.”

  “Shhhh. Don’t talk like that.”

  “It’s all right, Meyer, it’s just the truth. We both know that by now.”

  He put a finger to her lips, and held her close.

  After a few moments, Guttle said, “Wait a minute! That must be what he meant.”

  “What who meant?”

  “What you said before, about how the Chief Rabbi may have seen people beaten. I can never forget what he told me when I found the Schul-Klopper’s body. He said, ‘Perhaps he died that another might live.’ I always assumed he meant some specific person. But it must have been because of his spying — that he died because of that, and maybe someone in the lane — anyone — was not killed because of that.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “What’s the matter? You look sad.”

  “Not sad. Wistful, perhaps. It was more mysterious the other way. More romantic. When I took it as a prediction. About a certain unknown individual.”

  “Unfortunately, life is not romantic.”

  “You think not?” She took his hand, her eyes returning to the stars. “Perhaps it depends on how we view it.”

  “Do you think I’ve grown too pragmatic?” He drew her hand to his lips, kissed it, then kissed her temple. “Lucky for me, you are romantic enough for both of us.”

  Leading him toward the house, her gaze still exploring the night sky, Guttle said, “It’s time we went to bed. Don’t you agree?”

  With his eyes open, Rabbi Avram Eleazar could not see Adonai; only with his eyes closed could he see Adonai. At such times, he could see that Adonai was invisible.

  Angels, on the other hand, were not invisible, just difficult to see with his eyes closed — which was the only time they appeared. Once he passed away, he assumed, this would change; that’s how he would know he was dead.

  His eyes were closed now, his head resting on his pillows, while in the kitchen Gilda heated chicken soup; he had been able to eat nothing else for days.

  When he heard the voice, he was elated and frightened at once.

  “Sorry to bother you, Rabbi, but it is time for you to choose.”

  The voice sounded familiar. He could barely discern a shape in the misty blue field behind his eyes. “Who speaks to me like that? Who gives me orders?”

  “It is the cherub Leo.”

  “The cherub Leo? I’ve never heard of a cherub Leo.”

  “Tell him your whole name. There are a thousand Leos.” This voice was feminine, and sounded further away.

  “It is the cherub Leo Liebmann.”

  “Leo Liebmann? From the Judengasse? Good for you, Leo! And whose was that other voice I heard?”

  “You heard? She’s not supposed to talk to humans. That was the angel Yetta.”

  “Angel? You mean your Yetta is not yet a cherub?”

  “What can I tell you?” the cherub Leo said.

  The voice in the background spoke up. “Tell him the truth. You’d better.”

  “The truth is, an angel is higher than a cherub.”

  “How can they be higher?”

  “Cherubs can talk to humans. Angels can talk to God.”

  “Leo, if angels can talk to Yahweh, have Yetta ask Him about the Judengasse. How much longer before the gates go away?”

  “She asked him the first day she was here. He has it under consideration.”

  “Under consideration? It’s been three hundred and fifteen years already.”

  “It seems He has many things to consider. Which reminds me of why I’m talking to you. It’s time for you to pick your new Chief Rabbi. If you understand what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I understand. So tell me, does death hurt?”

  “No need to be afraid. Just name Rabbi Simcha as your choice, and you can join us, without pain.”

  “Simcha? Why Rabbi Simcha? He’s much too modern. My choice is Rabbi Jonah.”

  “You don’t understand how it works, Rabbi. I thought you would. Yahweh’s choice is Rabbi Simcha.”

  “That’s the wrong choice. How do you know that’s Yahweh’s choice? You just said you can’t speak to Him.”

  “Yahweh told the angel Yetta. She instructed me to tell you.”

  “It’s a mistake. Let me speak to Him.”

  “Speak to Yahweh? I just told you, only angels speak to Him. You tell me. I tell the angel Yetta. Yetta tells Yahweh.”

  “Only if it’s important,” he heard her voice in the background say.

  “The new
Chief Rabbi? Of course it’s important. Listen, Leo, tell Yetta to tell Yahweh that I’m choosing Rabbi Jonah. Tell Him I’m closer to the situation.”

  “Closer than Adonai?”

  “Just tell Him.”

  “He might not appreciate it.”

  “I’m still the Chief Rabbi, am I not? Jonah will do just fine.”

  “Jonah will do what fine?” The voice was Gilda’s as she carried into the room a bowl of hot soup.

  “You heard me, rebbetzin?”

  “You were talking in your sleep.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “Have it your way. Look, I brought you some nice soup, to make you well.”

  The Rabbi thought: It’s decided now. I won’t be getting well. But there’s no need to alarm Gilda. Instead, he told her, “The soup is delicious.”

  “You haven’t tasted it yet,” Gilda said.

  “You can’t ask him, of course,” Guttle had said. “But you can tell him that if he happened to be interested, you would be interested. But if not, then to ignore what you said. He’ll be flattered, without having to give a direct answer.”

  Rebecca hugged Guttle, kissed her cheek. “I wished I’d had the nerve to speak with you last week. I bought a bottle of this new wine from France — champagne, they call it. I was going to ask him then. But I became frightened. What if he has no such thoughts about me? I would feel like a fool. So I sat all through dinner and I didn’t dare.”

  “Nothing’s lost,” Guttle said. “You’ll tell him tonight. If he becomes Chief Rabbi, he ought to have a wife.”

  “Wife. The word alone sends chills through my body. I’m thirty-nine years old. What were you, sixteen when you married? I think it’s easier then.”

  Guttle smiled at Rebecca’s flushed cheek. The Doctor seemed to be a young girl again. “You’ll be fine.”