The Glatstein Chronicles

by Jacob Glatstein

  The poet recited a poem about spring. His sad, lilting voice caressed and smoothed out the inharmonious lines. Strongly influenced by poets of the sort that asked “the little birch trees to pray for me,” he appealed to the flowers and spring breezes to bestow I no longer remember which of their favors on him. We all thought highly of him and placed great hopes on his becoming our local star. Even I, who had already written whole packs of poems and stories, considered myself his inferior. I envied his melancholy lines that quivered like a stammer and proclaimed themselves poetry before one grasped the sense of the words.

  The poet’s father was a wealthy man. The family lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood in one of the new apartment houses with mirrored hallways and couches on the landings, one of those buildings that everyone had run to gawk at while it was under construction. Their apartment was something to see—large, mirrored drawing rooms, heavy furniture, blue and red plush chairs, tall vases, cages with singing canaries, and a young, good-natured stepmother who looked as if she might be the poet’s older sister and who perfectly suited the modern decor. She went out of her way to be nice to her “child” and his friends. The poet had an ornately carved writing desk, where he kept his cache of poems, all copied in his meticulous handwriting. His very first poem, which he declaimed to me tearfully in his beautifully furnished study, was called “The Young Mother Is Dead,” and as its title suggested, it was a free adaptation of the Yiddish poem, “The Old Cantor Is Dead.” The poet made no secret of his debt, indeed, he boasted about how well he had mastered its melodious tone, and I commended him on his fidelity to the original. I simply found it hard to reconcile his tearful melancholy with the rich household, and felt that even if he was truly mourning his mother, it was ungracious of him to write an elegy when there was such a kind, agreeable, and understanding stepmother on the premises. At the time, I was writing nationalistic poetry and erotic fiction, but I regarded myself as a lower-ranking member in our little group of literary talents, and all because I envied the poet his divine gift for sorrow when, it seemed to me, he had everything in the world anyone could want.

  We all enjoyed the poem about spring, even more than the actual season itself. The only dissent came from our professional cynic, who dismissed it with a coarse jibe, citing whole passages from Homer in Russian and Heine in German to bolster his case. However much we took pleasure in his epigrammatic proficiency, the poem in no way suffered in our esteem.

  We also talked about my forthcoming journey, and my friends admitted to envy, though they also pitied me for falling into the “land of yellow journalism.” At night, we continued our walks to the Saxony Gardens along class-divided routes, one street serving the proletariat, working men and women, the other, the route of high-school students of both sexes, externs, and assorted functionaries. Once inside the Gardens, we took to the dark paths, chasing every silhouette of a brown-skirted schoolgirl uniform.

  On some mornings I took walks across the fields, going as far as the sandy stretch where my rich Aunt Khome lived in her own cottage, with her own chickens, a few ducks, even an occasional turkey, and two fair-sized maidservants, with calloused bare feet and hands that smelled of parsley, onions, and parsnips. The older one would often drag me to a secluded spot far from the house, across the tracks by the train station. There she would look into my eyes, her breath hot as fire, and sing me peasant love songs. Should I try to snuggle up against her, her voice took on a cold, husky tone, as she admonished me, “No, Yankele, no.”

  Two weeks before my departure, I received a piece of bad news that dashed all the anticipated pleasure of the trip. All along I had been expecting that I wouldn’t be traveling alone but with a ship’s companion, a female one at that. She was a year and a half younger than I, tall, slender, and fair, with a turned-up Gentile nose and such deep brown eyes that whenever I saw her I couldn’t get over the contrast between her warm eyes and her icy blond hair. She already swayed like a woman, her haunches moving rhythmically, like millstones. She had unusually lively, chiseled legs, a rather wide mouth with thin lips that compensated for their thinness with a smile as bold as a wink. Her people were common stock, a family of butchers. Her mother and father, uncles and aunts, all had red hands with big, blood-stained nails, red faces, heavy feet, and coarse voices. She alone was delicate and refined. Her smile bore the traces of generations of forebears who knew what they wanted and knew how to get it, but on her lips the coarser desire emerged as gentler insinuation, with an added “I beg your pardon.”

  They were our neighbors on the new street where we had moved, across from the butcher shops, both Jewish and Gentile, that displayed hanging calf and ox heads, with their pitiful, open, dead, velvety eyes. Even their family name—or, as we called it, “the German name”—was butcherlike.

  In those days, many Jewish high-school girls were under the influence of Tolstoyan morality, and before it even came to a kiss, one had to wade through long passages from the New Testament: “Whosoever looketh at a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” One had to negotiate a complicated process of moral deliberation before one could even think of committing a sin—and sinning in this instance meant no more than holding hands, looking into the beloved’s eyes and declaiming poetry in the dark. I no longer remember which came to us first, the chicken or the egg, meaning Saninism or Tolstoyism, but both codes swirled around us, like the fiery swords protecting the Garden of Eden. At times one inclined to the hedonistic Sanin, with his urgings to seize the moment; at other times, to Tolstoy, with his belief that every action in this life must be a preparation for the Kingdom of Heaven to come. When all this morality-playing became tiresome, one let go a bit of one’s dignity and made the acquaintance of a seamstress or a stocking maker. Of course, their fingers were notched with needle stabs, but they more than made up for it with their heartrending Jewish folk songs, arms ready for a warm embrace, and the modest request that you “Fear God and the tongues of the righteous.” Everything else in the joyful union of two young people came to pass with no need for prefatory babblings from the New Testament.

  My mother was aware—but derived no pleasure from the knowledge—that I had my eye on the butcher’s young daughter. She worried that the infatuation might lead to a match, and this didn’t sit well with her because, in addition to everything else, there was a blot on the butcher’s family escutcheon—a cousin of the girl’s had converted to Christianity and married a Gentile boy, a young butcher, and to spite her parents and drain even more of their blood had opened a Gentile butcher shop with her new husband, right next to their own. The unfortunate parents went about red-faced and ashamed to lift their heads in public. As for the bride, her belly kept swelling as she busied herself selling pork, with rare adroitness. My mother was afraid that I might fall in among such a family. Up to then I had exchanged perhaps a dozen words with the girl, but I grew excited when I learned that she would be traveling on the same boat with me to America, to join an uncle. (Her mother knew that in Lublin the family stain would haunt her forever.) We would be traveling together on the same trains and on the same ship, disembarking together at New York’s Castle Garden, the immigrant’s gateway to a new life. The girl’s mother was delighted that her child would be in the company of someone familiar, a respectable boy, who would keep an eye on her (and on her smile? I couldn’t help adding).

  But for some reason—and to my utter misfortune—her plans changed and her departure had to be moved up by two weeks. The blow was totally unexpected. We ran into each other in town and she said with a smile, “You know, I’m leaving tomorrow.” There was nothing in her tone or expression to suggest that she was feeling the blow she had delivered. I was devastated. I felt abandoned and began to dread the long journey that lay ahead of me and that I would now be making alone. She gave me her hand, with its long, slender fingers, and said, “I’ll see you in New York.” That night I felt that I had just lost my first love.

  Up to tha
t time, the longest trips I had ever taken alone were from Lublin to Warsaw, to visit my Aunt Gnendl. My grandfather had showed me the way and we made the trip several times together. Only after he died did I begin to travel to Warsaw and back by myself. Naturally, with Grandfather we traveled fourth class. The train crawled along and managed to stretch a four-to-five-hour trip into twelve. We’d start out in broad daylight and arrive long after midnight. We’d ride and ride, past fields and villages, and all day long there was an unending parade of travelers. Fourth class cost almost nothing. Even so, there was frequent haggling with the conductor. It broke my heart to see grown-up, full-bearded, dignified Jews, who could ordinarily deliver a slap that would send you reeling, scurrying to hide under benches, their backsides in the air, like supplicants in the synagogue on Yom Kippur eve, awaiting the penitential flogging. Should an inspector board the train and catch sight of one of these stowaways, the unfortunate soul would be dragged to his feet and thrown off at the next station. I couldn’t stop worrying about this poor Jew, imagining him all alone in some peasant village, wandering about the tiny railroad station, chewing on his black beard, mulling over the commerce he was hoping to transact and how hard it was to make a living, as difficult as splitting the Red Sea. Circulating among the down-and-out riders of fourth class were also the gamblers and cardsharps, looking for dupes.

  My grandfather had a fine travel routine. En route, he would untie his kerchief and take his refreshment—a hard-boiled egg, a hunk of bread, a purple plum, and a golden pear that dripped juice down his beard, all the while conducting a conversation with me: Why in the world was he dragging along a rascal like me to meet the Chofetz Chaim, the great rabbi he was planning to see, and why had he wasted a half-ruble to buy me a sacred book, when I never looked into it? But Grandfather was by no means angry. This was merely pleasant chitchat, because “a person has to let off a little steam” before dropping off to sleep. The train wobbled and Grandfather likewise, until he began to snore into his beard. As the train chugged along, I would drink in the passing fields, the forests, and rivers. When night fell, the passengers stretched out on all the benches, even under them. The silence was broken only by the conductor, with his smoking lantern, calling out, “Have your tickets ready.”

  Sprawled on one of the benches lay an impressive-looking young man with black whiskers, patent-leather boots, and a cap with a shiny visor, his nose pressed against the dark window, humming a sad, heartrending tune. Heads rose from all sides, feet wrapped in rags stirred, and people shouted, “Quiet!” But when they saw the sort of person they were dealing with, the passengers turned over, sighing and groaning, as if to say: “Oy, dear Father in Heaven! Some fine specimens You’ve filled Your earth with! But we had better keep our thoughts to ourselves.”

  The young man, who looked like a pimp, sang with his nose pressed against the window:

  O Feyge my dear, Feyge my love,

  Enjoy all the good things that come from above.

  And when I ask that you turn down your bed,

  This shouldn’t trouble your sweet little head,

  Shouldn’t trouble your sweet little head.

  A few taps on the train window were followed by Feygele’s reply, in a high, thin, plaintive voice:

  There, I’ve turned down my bed,

  But with whom shall I now lay my head?

  With a low, mean, dirty dastard, that’s plain,

  And a whore I shall always remain,

  A whore I shall always remain.

  Clickety-clack, clickety-clack … The wheels of the train vibrated on the rails in the rhythm of the refrain, “A whore I shall always remain.” The young man continued with his song, tapping his fingers against the window each time he paused between the man’s importuning and the woman’s replies. He sang his ditty all through its many verses, to the very end, to Feygele’s final plaint: “A whore I shall always remain.” (A Feygele of this description was soon to appear among us in Lublin, circling the town clock, with her shawl drawn over her head, jingling her keys.)

  As the train approached the city, the lights on the bridge over the Vistula River seemed not to be moored on metal supports, but rippling in the water. More green and red lights … and then we were in the Warsaw station. Now Grandfather and I began to drag ourselves through the dark streets until we came to a gate, where we rang a rusty bell and waited to hear the clatter of the porter’s wooden shoes over the cobblestones, and his cursing that continued until Grandfather proffered a coin. Grandfather then led me by the hand across a long courtyard and up a set of stairs, and knocked on a door. My aunt appeared, kissed me with a sour-smelling mouth, as if she had just risen from sleep, and rolled me into bed, covering me with a heavy quilt. I could scarcely fall asleep, filled as I was with the excitement of the train ride and of finding myself in a strange city, far from home.

  In the morning, I began to orient myself to the wonders of the big city. The first marvel was the water closet in the hallway, a space with peeling walls and a drain that gurgled but did little else. Then there was the large courtyard, with its four or five separate entrances. It reeked of tar, lime, urine, a malodorous white disinfectant, and sewage. My aunt’s kitchen boasted a gas stove that emitted a smell so nauseating that it felt as if one were being choked by poisonous green fumes, or vapors from the kerosene rubbed into braids as a remedy for nits. There must have been a leak in the gas pipe, but no one thought to fix it.

  My uncle, a dealer in oxen, knew that he had to bring home some tripe from the slaughterhouse because about fifty years ago in a local dispute a rabbi had declared tripe not to be kosher—a prohibition that remained in effect in Lublin while elsewhere it was permissible to eat tripe to one’s heart’s content. And even though I had no taste for those tough chunks of meat that were as hard to chew as fried goose skin and that curled up like pages in an old prayer book, nevertheless I devoured them with relish, intrigued by the notion that simply by getting on a train and traveling a few miles, I was able to indulge in a food that was taboo in one place and permissible in another. In my honor as guest, my uncle also brought home pieces of udder, a delicacy calling for special preparation in an earthen pot that was destroyed immediately after the cooking, because udder is a sort of mixture of both milk and meat, rendering the utensil unfit for further use. My mother under no circumstance would let herself be lured into the adventure of cooking udder, but my uncle wanted to show me Warsaw and all its wonders. I ate the udder, too, with particular interest, because I wanted to experience a forbidden drop of milk in meat.

  My aunt actually lived not in Warsaw but in the suburb of Praga. The lantern outside bore the house number 12, stenciled in tin. The huge building, containing perhaps a hundred families, was managed by a Jewish lawyer who lived in the building, a man with waxed, pointed mustaches in the Polish style, who also had a side business writing petitions. He wore a greenish-black frock coat, was tall and thin, and sought to give the impression of being an aristocrat who had fallen on hard times. In the manager’s house everybody spoke Russian and Polish. The eldest son gave English lessons. He had spent several years in America and returned home threatening either to commit suicide or to convert. The second son, because of restrictions on the number of Jewish students allowed to attend Polish schools, to his misfortune ended up in the Krinski Business School. He roamed about in his school uniform, complaining that he had to attend a Jewish-run school, where, in addition to everything else, he was made to study Bible and Hebrew. The mother of the family waddled around like an infirm member of the nobility. The manager liked his drop of whiskey and when he was drunk, took to taunting his wife with the information that while she, the old battle-ax, darkened his days at home, the famous cabaret singer Kevetska was helping him pull on his socks in her dressing room. This frequently led to pitched battles, the sons siding with their mother and physically attacking their father, who was agile and could give as good as he got.

  Outside the house, the young commercial studen
t was the very picture of refinement, walking with measured steps, doffing his hat and bowing, as if he were descended from generations of Polish nobility. The hands that had just pummeled the father now made graceful, studied gestures. Their owner lectured me on manners, warning me never to speak with my hands. The primary function of manners was to mesmerize one’s public, because the born aristocrat aims to be a leader, and a person without manners cannot aspire to authority. He confided that it had taken him a full year of practicing before a mirror to perfect the smile he offered in greeting, which must never be too intimate or effusive, not even when encountering one’s closest friends. To show that one was well disposed, a smile should reveal only a glimpse of the teeth—of which this young man had a fine set, with tiny gold fillings, the ultimate in dental artistry of the day. He taught me the tricks of hat-doffing for all occasions: greeting an acquaintance (hat turned toward or away from oneself, depending on whether one wanted to stop and chat or effect a quick dismissal), greeting a girl, an old woman, a friend, an elderly gentleman, a person of indeterminate station, as well as how to avoid a greeting, because deliberate disregard was also part of good manners.