The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  —Half the lane hated the school, it could have been anybody. It could have been more than one. A plot.

  —Whomever, they made a mitzvah. Good riddance to the school. And the goy. Now they can build three new houses on that land, there’s so many people wanting to buy. The rebbetzin will be rich.

  —Then the buyers will sell off apartments, and they, too, will be rich.

  —If they could afford to buy, they already were rich.

  —So they’ll be richer. It’s the way of the world. But they might just build another school.

  —So someone could burn it down again? They wouldn’t take a chance.

  —I suppose. What’s that?

  —What’s what?

  —Under your sleeve. When you waved your arm just now. It looked like a bandage wrap. You fell and hurt your wrist?

  —Oh, that. A little burn, from lighting the woodstove. It’s nothing.

  —Your wife doesn’t light the stove?

  —Not that time.

  —What did the Doctor say?

  —Who are you, the Inquisition? I told you it’s nothing. So what’s been going on, while I was sick with the grippe?

  —The Chief Rabbi, I hear, is planning a meeting.

  —Of course there will be a meeting. There always will be a meeting, until the Messiah comes.

  —And then?

  —That’s how we’ll know He’s the true Messiah. If He doesn’t call a meeting.

  —That’s a good one. So tell me, was it a nasty burn?

  —Forget that already. I have a question. In our holy Jewish cemetery, where did they bury the goy?

  —Right in the middle, I heard. They made a little room among the Beckers.

  Yussel Kahn was waiting for Guttle to appear. When she did, the cabinet maker stepped into the lane, holding a book. “Good morning,” he said. “If you have a moment, there is something I would like to show you.”

  Guttle with her vacant stare paused, waited.

  “I was reading an essay last night by a French writer, Montaigne. I would like to show you one sentence.” He opened the book to a marked page — marked with a sliver of wood from the last table Georgi had carved. Yussel read aloud: “He owed his life not to himself but to the world as an example.”

  The carpenter lowered the book. “He’s talking about the death of Socrates. But when I read that, I couldn’t help thinking of Georgi, rushing into the flames. That’s how he, too, died. As an example to the world.”

  Yussel saw no expression on Guttle’s face — this lively face that had once enchanted him, which appeared so worn now. She took the book from his hands, opened to the marked page, stared at it. When she handed him the book, her face still was empty. “Thank you, Yussel,” she said, in a voice without emotion, a voice that seemed far away, and she nodded to him, almost like a curtsy, Yussel thought, and resumed walking up the lane. He did not know if she had understood. The fair Ophelia.

  The shaking of the earth rippled the sleep in which she was drowning. She clawed her way to the surface. It was not the earth shaking, it was the bed; it was not Samson shaking the pillars of the deep, but Meyer Amschel beside her, head and shoulders racking, as if in pain. His back was to her. She placed a hand on him. His shivering skin stung her fingertips.

  “Meyer! What is it?”

  He did not reply. His torso trembled. She heard his tears as if they were shrieks.

  “Meyer! Tell me!”

  She had never seen him cry. She moved beside him, slipped her arm around his hip, pressed her belly to the curve of his back. He gripped her hand, held it to his chest.

  “You have married a horrible man,” he murmured.

  His words were muffled by the pillow, by the dark, by their own absurdity.

  “What are you saying?” Her mouth was at his shoulder. “You had a dream.”

  He squeezed her hand as if to break her bones. As if clinging to it for life. “I wish a thousand dreams. Instead of a single truth.” He pressed her hand to his lips. On her knuckles she could feel his tears.

  “You are a wonderful man. A wonderful husband. A wonderful father.”

  “I have done something terrible.”

  “What? When?”

  “In Hesse-Kassel.”

  The bottom fell from her stomach. The child within her had no support. She could hardly utter the words. “With a woman?”

  He twisted at once to face her, touched her hair. “No, Guttle, never! I would never betray you. You should never think such a thing.”

  “Then what?” Her relief gave way at once to deeper fright. What could be worse than that?

  “It was not you whom I betrayed. It was Yahweh.”

  The tightness in her body began to ease, leaving mild aching in its place. Surely, this he was imagining. “How can that be, Meyer? You are a man of God.”

  Breathing deeply, he did not answer, but lay his head upon her chest. With her fingers she smoothed his hair, damp with sweat.

  “You haven’t told me,” she whispered.

  He offered no response, as if he had not heard, though his ear was near her lips. When at last he spoke she felt the words on her breast as much as she heard them through the dark.

  “I cannot speak of it.”

  She would have pulled him nearer if that were possible. “Not to me?”

  His silent sobs had leveled into breathing. His body no longer shook.

  “Not to anyone.” His words were heavy, like iron. “Perhaps, some time — if there comes a time.”

  Her own eyes began to water. She pressed her lips to his hair. What was this secret that blindly she now must help him carry?

  He revealed no more. He was asleep.

  How long she lay awake, his breath on her breast rippling in sluggish rhythm the lace of her gown, she could not say.

  In the darkness she sought her confidantes — Melka, Jennie. But they were gone, destroyed for her by the fire. Would Yahveh reveal to her Meyer’s betrayal?

  He appeared — if it were He — behind the closed lids of her waking eyes, in the image of a golden Torah, floating beneath a pewter cloud. Hiram was painting the Torah on canvas. Beside him, Izzy pointed at something she could not see.

  There was nothing of Meyer’s betrayal.

  Pondering what this image signified, she drifted to sleep on the rhythm of Meyer’s heart.

  When she awoke, in the damp and dark of morning, she knew she could not bear for one more day to view the remains of the fire. She put on an old house dress, tied a babushka around her head, lifted the bucket from beside the woodstove, and grabbed the scoop that she used to shovel ashes out of the stove. At once she set the scoop back where it had been, hanging from a nail on the wall beside the stove; it was much too small. Quietly, so as not to wake Meyer or the children, she left the house and walked the empty lane. First light was just visible in the sky above the walls when she reached the cemetery. She took one of the spades left inside the gates, carried it and the bucket across the lane to the ashen remains of the vanished River View. The lead coffin still was there, the charred woodstove, pieces of half-burned rafters, ashes ankle deep over the land. Setting the bucket down, she scooped ashes with the spade that normally was used for digging graves, and dumped them into the bucket. She scooped another shovelful, another. When the bucket was filled she carried it to the sewage trench and dumped the ashes in, just inside the south gate, where the trench sloped sharply down towards the river. She filled and emptied the bucket, again, again. Her body began to perspire. The work felt good. She felt cleaner for it somehow, even as her hands — and when she wiped her brow, her face — became smudged with gray.

  The sky brightened slightly, but she could smell rain coming. As she worked near the center of where the school had been, she noticed someone watching her from the cobbles. Then another person, and another. She did not know who they were, did not care, merely continued her work. But when a few minutes later she paused to rest, leaning on the shovel, wiping her swe
aty forehead with her forearms, she saw that Meyer had joined the onlookers. Beside him was Rabbi Simcha, and a moment later Rebecca — as Doctor or friend she could not tell. They seemed to be restraining her husband, urging him not to wade across the ashes to her. She brushed at droplets on her cheek, thought the rain had come. She was weeping for Meyer’s unknown grief.

  Taking up the spade, she filled the bucket, carried it to the trench and emptied it. When she turned back, her satisfaction waned. She had made only a narrow trough in the ashes; clearing the land would take her all day; perhaps many days. Ignoring feelings of defeat, she resumed her work, till she heard scraping in the gravel beneath the ashes at the opposite edge of the property, twenty metres away. She looked in that direction. A woman — no, a girl, also wearing a babushka — had materialized with a scoop and bucket of her own, was kneeling and scooping ashes. When her bucket was full she left footsteps in the ashes till she reached the path Guttle had made and followed it to the trench and emptied her bucket. As the girl passed on her way back, Guttle recognized her as Misha Marcus, who had hoped to marry Georgi. Up close, Misha’s face, framed by her dark blue kerchief, was softer than Guttle had remembered; in her eyes was a sadness that matched her own.

  As the two of them worked, without exchanging words, another girl appeared with a bucket and a scoop. Guttle recognized her as Reba Schlicter, Hannah’s youngest, now fourteen. Reba waved to Guttle, then without a word began to scoop the ashes. As the morning warmed, more kerchiefed women joined in; some Guttle did not know, others she recognized. Leah Marcus, who had married the Cantor, appeared with her rebellious younger sister — the one who had told her father the shoemaker that she hated him. They allowed much space around Guttle as they worked. No word was uttered as they shoveled the ashes, filled the buckets, emptied them into the sluggish current of the ditch, returned to scoop more ash.

  As the number of shovelers, all women, increased, working with the silence of the dead, Guttle saw that the number of onlookers also had grown. Rebecca, who owned this land, was gone, no doubt to the hospital, but Meyer and the Chief Rabbi still watched. It could not be such an entertaining spectacle, Guttle was thinking, when her bucket was darkened by a shadow. She stood upright to see who had come so near, and was startled to find herself facing the vast bulk of Sophie Marcus. Guttle tensed. Her grip on the shovel tightened. Was she going to have to hit this woman at last?

  Sophie did not speak, just gazed at Guttle. She extended her flabby arm. When Guttle didn’t understand, Sophie indicated the shovel. Guttle hesitated — should she arm her enemy? — and felt a cramp in her belly, the baby protesting the work she was doing. She peered into Sophie’s eyes, could read nothing there —neither hostility nor friendship. She handed her the spade. Sophie took it, reached for Guttle’s bucket, carried both several metres away, and began to scoop up ashes, like the others. Guttle watched her for a moment, looked around at all the women working, slowly made her way to the cobbles, to where Meyer stood.

  “Look how you all appear,” he said, pointing. “The ashes rising like mist, into the silence. It’s a painting.”

  “Except for the stove in the middle,” Guttle said, wiping her face on her sleeve. “I want to move that. But it’s heavy.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Meyer stepped into the ashes, getting his black shoes and white stockings covered with soot. Guttle looked down, patted her belly.

  “Of course, what was I thinking?” Meyer said. “I’ll go find the boys.”

  Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek. “Thank you for loving me,” she said. “Thank you for putting up with me.”

  His torment of the night, she knew, she must forget.

  Meyer folded her hands into his, looked into the eyes that had ensnared him so long ago, and at the sultry, down-curving lips. He said, “My pleasure, Madame R.”

  She watched in silence as he set off in search of their sons.

  Turning to resume her work, she noticed Jacob Marcus standing across the lane, inside the cemetery, watching from a distance the silent women working. With new resolve she crossed the sewage trench and approached the moneylender, who nodded in greeting but said nothing.

  “Herr Marcus,” Guttle asked, “would you do me the honor, this afternoon, of coming to my home for a glass of tea?”

  Marcus studied her face, raised his glance to where his Sophie was scooping ashes with women from the length the lane. He spoke then from behind his beard, saying, “Yes, Frau Rothschild. I think I could do that.”

  The event would be significant. That was clear from the way Yussel and the other carpenters lay a board floor in the center of the property, and built a platform with a lectern that stood just off the cobbles, and for days hammered together long rows of tiered benches at the rear and along both sides of the River View land. On the appointed day, music summoned them all, music from the instruments of the newly formed Judengasse Gratuitous Orchestra, so identified by a painted sign propped near where the players stood, between the tiers of benches and the outdoor wooden floor. Arshel Cohen was there, and six other men, playing violins, a bass fiddle, a saxophone, a trumpet. Brendel Kahn in a new green dress puffed at the shoulders gracefully glided her hands in front of them, her arms encased in white gloves to her elbows suggesting the necks of swans.

  The music swirling through the lane like a breeze lured them to the south end. It was a Sunday afternoon, the gates were locked, but they would have been there anyway. Tier after tier of the wooden benches filled quickly, almost all the men wearing black suits, the women in pastel Shabbas dresses of blue or green or lavender. Children climbed up and down the tiers until the seats were filled, then sat or sprawled on the ground or on the strange outdoor floor. The sky was a dark gray, and Rabbi Simcha was praying that rain would not fall, as he walked about, asking one person and then another to sit in a row of chairs, borrowed from the yeshiva, which had been lined up near the lectern: Guttle and Meyer, Jacob Marcus, Hiram Liebmann, and Isidor Kracauer, who had interrupted his rabbinical studies at Furth to return to the lane, amid hugs from Guttle and endless kisses from his young wife, Amelia.

  When the tiers were filled, and latecomers had crowded in the lane behind the lectern, Rabbi Simcha mounted the platform and welcomed them. “First of all, I want to thank the members of the Judengasse Gratuitous Orchestra for their invigorating music. Several weeks ago I asked Brendel Kahn, whom we know is a wonderful dancer, to form a small orchestra, because I wanted this occasion, though solemn, not to be somber. When I mentioned my idea to Brendel she was eager. But she was concerned that some people would object, would say that an orchestra is the last thing we need in the lane — that it would be gratuitous. To meet such objections, in a spirit of compromise, she has named the group the Judengasse Gratuitous Orchestra. We shall hear more music from them today, and I hope for a long time to come.”

  Brendel waved her baton and the musicians stroked and blasted three raucous chords of thanks, drawing laughter and cheers from the crowd, creating, at least for the moment, just the mood of good feeling that the Chief Rabbi wanted.

  “We are here today, as you know, because of what happened on this spot a month ago. We are here not to fight, I hope, but to come together. As I have said before, the existence, or not, of a secular school in the Judengasse is not among the official concerns of the Chief Rabbi. But the morale of the lane, the unity of we Jews, certainly is. With that explained, I will turn the discussion over to Frau Meyer Rothschild, the creator of the school for girls.”

  Guttle, wearing a loose blue dress over her convex belly, left her seat and moved behind the lectern. What whispering there was in the crowd she could not make out.

  “We all were horrified by what happened here,” she began, her hands clutching the lectern. “The terrible blaze that destroyed the Moses Mendelssohn Academy for Girls was not an accident. The fire captain has told us that. We do not know who lit the match. I no longer want to know. Adonai knows. The guilty person will
have to answer to Him.

  “But as I watched a few weeks ago women from all over the lane working together to clear the ashes, a deeper understanding of the fire came to me. At first it startled me. But I have come to believe it is true. Adonai, who is all powerful and all-knowing, in His wisdom created the blaze Himself.”

  There were gasps in the crowd, and cries of “Impossible.” Guttle had expected this, she had chosen her words to hold their attention.

  “Let me tell you why I believe this. The school for girls had become an unfortunate symbol in the lane. It was dividing neighbor from neighbor, child from parent. This was largely my fault, and I have grieved over it. But Adonai, if he grieved, also acted. He did not want Jew hating Jew, Jew fighting Jew. So in His wisdom He allowed the school to burn — not because he opposed the educating of girls, I believe, but to give us a chance to do it properly, in a way that unites us, not divides us.

  “With some trepidation, I must admit, I took this idea to the honorable Jacob Marcus. After several intense discussions, he agreed. Together we took our thoughts to Rabbi Simcha. Our mutual decision was that together we must rebuild the school.”

  “No! No! No!” came shouts from the crowd. Most remained silent, listening.

  “Here is why. Because if we do not, those opposed to the school would have won a victory over those who favored it — at the cost of a life, and a historic Torah — and bitterness would remain deep. But we have to rebuild it in a different manner, with more widespread approval. We discussed some of the objections to the school. One was that giving our girls a secular education that is denied to our boys could cause grave problems in the relations between the two, in future marriages — in the bedroom, if I may put it delicately. We agreed there is reason for concern. So the new secular school, we decided, should be available to both boys and girls.”

  “Shame! Shame!” someone yelled. Guttle held up her hand for silence.