5
A little rabbit paused, one leg slightly raised. It scratched itself, listening intently for the least sound of danger. I lay flat on my back, careful not to frighten the creature. For its sake I broke off the thread of my memories. It was warm in the sunshine. Suddenly I heard footsteps, and the rabbit, startled, scampered away.
Steinman was standing there. He had caught sight of me in the grass the moment he got to the top of the hill. “How have you already discovered my hill?” he exclaimed. “I come here every morning to enjoy the view. What do you mean coming here without my permission?” He sat down on a bench, and I pretended to apologize.
“Well, the fact is I don’t resent your being on this hill as much as your having gotten up early and come here ahead of me. Usually, I am the first here. I make it up here slowly, groaning and cursing like Balaam, but the moment I’ve gotten to the top and look out on all this, I bless what I see. I look around at all the little hotels the Jews have built here, and I am overcome, I sing out loud, ‘How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob!’
“Over there, to the left, is an old monastery with an old graveyard. A great deal of blood has been shed on this hill, and not only way back in the days of Poniatowski. In the Great War the hill was an important strategic spot. It changed hands several times. The Russians fought like lions, driving back the Austrians time and again. There weren’t any Jews here until just a few years ago, and no Jew would have dared climb the hill. Now most of the Gentiles have moved away. Do you see the tents? ‘How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob!’—may they stay here for years to come.”
I glanced at him sidewise and could see that he had not had enough sleep. He half-closed his eyes when he spoke, but his voice was all the warmer. Time and again he would lose the thread of what he was saying, then pick it up again, lightly. His tone was wistful.
“I don’t think you slept well?”
“When you’re as old as I am, young man, you won’t sleep well either,” he said. It was almost a rebuke. His eyes closed but he forced them open again, and he shook his head several times to drive away his sleepiness. Then he went on, talking in the tone of someone who has been interrupted in a long speech:
“I’ve been a widower for twenty years now. My daughter is all I have left. It’s because of me she never married; she nurses her old father instead. Believe it or not, but the older I get the more I understand the importance of having male heirs. The Oriental longing for a son, an heir—how well I understand it now. I too am looking for an heir, though if you ask me what I have to bequeath, I would find it hard to reply. Very often I sit and think, and—a flash of lightning, thunder, hocus pocus—and I see my son and heir standing there. But what have I got to give him? It’s a difficult problem. My father reached the ripe old age of ninety-nine. He just fell asleep in his chair. Once I believed I’d live as long, but my heart tells me that isn’t to be. Well, if I am asked to go, I have no choice. By the time father died, I was myself a father, I already had gray hair. I turned gray at an early age. I know, your generation is a generation of skeptics. You’ll want to know what I have to pass on to you. I often think to myself that I’d like to adjure you to hold something dear, but what it is I haven’t found out yet. And time is moving on.”
He spread his coat on the grass and lay flat on his back beside me. The words that came out of him were like soap bubbles, rising and bursting in the air. He closed his eyes and hummed a little tune.
“Even as a little boy I knew I was not alone, though I want you to know that the word alone fits me perfectly. I was raised by an uncle of mine, in a Polish woods where he was forester. Have you any idea what a Polish woods was like in 1860? Just close your eyes and try to imagine.
“However, being alone never bothered me. I knew all about my ancestors. Oh, what saints and scholars! On my father’s side I descend from Maharam Tiktin, on my mother’s from Magen Abraham. I knew that I was descended from nineteen generations of rabbis. The continuity was broken in the woods. But with such prominent ancestors, how can anyone be alone, even in the woods? Note also that my uncle was a fiery scholar, and that he had written my father, asking that I should come and stay with him, so he could study with me. He had a license to be a rabbi. But he was obliged to work, and work hard, for a living.”
He again began to hum a little tune, his sleepy voice growing still sleepier. “Ah, a tune. A tune solves everything, even the toughest problems. There were among the rabbis inarticulate souls who couldn’t speak to God through the Torah, so they spoke to Him through melody.”
Unexpectedly he sat up, pressed his hands hard against his eyes, and wiped the lids, as though to squeeze all his weariness out of them. When he reopened his eyes he actually did look refreshed.
“A little nap like this, talking in my sleep, rests me more than a night in bed. In bed my tired old bones have a hundred complaints. Well, let’s go back, you surely must have worked up an appetite by now. Buchlerner’s herring is one of the marvels of the world. You have to be a connoisseur to appreciate it. It is reddish, it does smell a bit, and it looks a bit rotten, but for gourmets that’s the thing. It has a tonic effect.”
We walked leisurely down the hill, and he led me to the hotel by another route. “Think over what I’ve told you,” he said to me on the way. “A man cannot calmly close his eyes for eternity if there’s no heir waiting for him, ready to take over his father’s riches. My father in his old age used positively to long for death, the way a pious Jew longs to do some new good deed. Needless to say, his shroud had been ready for him for many years. He often took it out and looked at it. To him a Jewish funeral was one of the good things every Jew is entitled to. But I walk alone, as the Bible says, and who shall be my heir?”
In front of the hotel several dozen guests were waiting impatiently. As we came up the walk, the hotel owner came out and began impassively to summon his guests by ringing a not very loud hand bell. He shook it in all directions like a lulav, but on seeing us he began to ring it more cheerfully. He raised the bell higher and walked toward us, as though to make a special welcome for Steinman.
Steinman understood the gesture. He walked a little faster, pleased by the special attention, and held himself more erect to give himself dignity. Not until he had gone into the hotel did the rest of the guests surge forward.
Chapter 2
1
After the meal, when Steinman was on his way out of the dining room, his daughter brought him a pill and a glass of water. He popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of water, not even turning around to look at his daughter. The pill interrupted him while he was speaking, at the very moment that he was carefully analyzing an idea.
He had been talking to a man in a light-colored cap with checks. The man was shorter than Steinman, and his considerable paunch made him look even shorter than he was. Tufts of curly hair stuck out here and there from under the cap. Even with his head covered, you could tell this was all the hair he had left. Indeed, the tufts might almost have been part of the cap.
Steinman introduced me to the man, who asked me a number of questions, then suddenly cut off my attempts to reply. “That’s fine, I know who you are now, no need to go to the trouble of telling me. And now I want to tell you something. You missed being my son only by a hair.
“Ah, I see you’re surprised. Well, I was strongly urged to marry your mother, and the match was well under way, but your mother just as strongly objected to my background. I liked her very much. I wish she had felt the same. On top of it all, I was a poor boy and couldn’t make her forget my humble origins by a show of wealth. Anyhow, we had almost reached the point of celebrating our wedding when suddenly the whole thing was called off. You see, Mr. Steinman, he is almost my son.”
I was about to tell him that the girl he once wanted to marry had recently died, but he did not give me the chance. He was too carried away at discovering that I was a sort of relative of his.
On the floor of the porch, a
woman lay sprawled, smoking a cigarette. Several plush-covered cushions shielded her bulky figure from the wooden hardness. She had a big head topped by a towering coiffure which called to mind the treasure cities the Jews built for Pharaoh. Looking at her, with her back against the wall, you could not miss her broad bosom, and her legs were stretched out in front of her so that no one could get by. People who got as far as those legs turned back: no one wanted to take the responsibility of disturbing her. She looked like a big but precariously balanced building: were she made to move, the elaborate coiffure would tumble down, the bosom would fall to the floor with a thud—it would be a disaster. But for all that she looked so comfortable, she was managing to make her long earrings jangle noisily as she disposed of the ash from her cigarette with masculine neatness. At closer quarters she looked like a gray-haired gypsy.
“Roza,” my new acquaintance said to her, “I want you to meet this gentleman—he might have been our son. I’m sorry, I meant to say my son.” He still could not get over it. He looked at me tenderly, as though I really were related to him, and he told the whole story all over again. She went right on smoking, an expression of studied boredom on her face.
“Now, Mister Finkel, Mister Finkel,” she said in a mocking tone and gave him a look as though he ought to know better than tell her such things. Not only he but I too was taken aback by her attitude. He looked at me helplessly.
“My second wife,” he said in a scarcely audible whisper, with a wink, as though this explained everything. “My second wife.” I must understand his position, and see for myself there was no arguing with her. He made a slight show of character, nonetheless, affectionately linking his arm with mine, as if to show that nothing had come between our kinship, no matter what his wife might think. He resumed his favorite topic.
“No,” he said, “your father may be a fine man, but speaking from a practical point of view, your mother didn’t make the right choice. I am known in Lublin as a wealthy man. I own several big apartment houses, one right next to the Saxon Garden. Do you know what property is worth in that neighborhood? And people think that I am worth”—here I expected him to drop a big figure like a bomb, but he softened the shock, “People think that I am worth about five times as much as I am.”
Steinman was getting restless, just a bit irritated that no one was paying any attention to him. He turned away, but my Lublin acquaintance caught him by the sleeve. “God bless you, Mr. Steinman, you can’t just stop in the middle of your story and walk out on me.”
Steinman was not appeased. He walked over to a chair and sat down with the air of a man who wants to be alone. But when we drew up rocking chairs next to his, he became friendly again.
“You didn’t interrupt me at all,” he said modestly. “After that enormous meal, I was remembering how we used to eat fifty or sixty years ago. Food is an important matter. We speak of national eating habits. And it is true that food has a character all its own. When I think back to when I was a child, I always remember a slice of bread rubbed with garlic. I can see the bread and smell the garlic, and see my mother’s hand holding it out to me. It is part of my childhood. But I’ve come a long way since then—I must have been about four. Now I eat pills.”
“May you live long, Mr. Steinman, I wouldn’t want to miss anything you say,” Finkel said warmly. “You explain everything so clearly that it’s a pleasure to hear you talk. As a young boy I once happened to go to Galicia, and whenever I remember the food there, everything comes back—the sights, the smells—and all my senses are reawakened.” Finkel was very pleased with his eloquence. “Take a word like beans, which we call bonen. In Lublin some call them boyne, others say bob or fasolyes. But when I use the Galician term, I can at once see the water carrier leaving the Saturday services. His clothes are shabby and ragged, but on his head is a worn fur cap, which makes him look like a poor rabbi. That was Galicia.”
A tall army officer came up the front walk through the trellised gate. He came right up the steps and walked straight up to a man sitting by himself. The officer beckoned to him with one finger, and the other rose and followed him as though hypnotized. It looked like some unusually important occasion, but without a word they sat down at a table nearby, set up some chess pieces, and in a moment were deeply engrossed in a game.
“I remember the barrels with pickles,” Finkel went on—and Steinman gave him a friendly smile. He enjoyed this kind of light conversation after breakfast. “I remember the sauerkraut, and an apple that was dug up from the cold barrel, an apple that could have brought the dead back to life. Chopped onions with eggs was a royal dish. We also used to eat something which I can call only the semblance of a soup. Once in a while there was a bit of meat in it, and you had to fish for it with your spoon—yes, really, we had to fish for it in the soup. Just imagine—this Galician family of six trying to divide half a pound of meat, a rare treat for them. Ah, the poverty was terrible!”
Warming up to his subject, he took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his ruddy hairless head. His skin had large yellow spots. The strands of dead hair stood out wildly around the bald pate.
“You couldn’t complain about the bread. The dough was mixed on Thursday, and Friday at daybreak bread was baked for the whole week. We also had pancakes with milk, or kasha with milk. Beans and meat were served with a spoon, but on Saturdays we had cholent and one meal with fish which, even when it was stuffed, tasted like inferior herring. Also peas, and noodle pudding with fat. On weekdays we had fish once in a while too but this was a different kind of fish, with lots of bones. You had only to taste it to know it was just an ordinary day of the week. And then the little rolls, and the potatoes baked like chestnuts, which had a special taste when eaten with sour cream. A slice of bread with chicken fat and salt was a great treat. And all this poverty and misery was washed down with a chicory brew black as ink, with a muddy foam. Ah, it was grand to be alive!” Finkel was almost out of breath just thinking about it, and he put his cap back on. “I was then a boy of fourteen. Galicia!”
“Excellent! I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Steinman encouraged him. “It was excellent.”
“Thank you for letting me pour out my heart. When I try to tell my wife about my childhood, or about food, she makes a sour face and she purses her lips like a little bird. It bores her. She is my second wife, you see,” he added by way of excuse. But he looked in her direction to make sure that she couldn’t hear him.
He pointed at a guest who was just going by, and asked me whether I knew who it was. “See if you can’t remember,” he kept saying, holding up one finger as though he were putting me to some test.
The man did look familiar, as a matter of fact, but I couldn’t remember who he was.
“I’ll give you a hint. He is a feldsher from Lublin.”
“Berl the Medic!” I exclaimed.
Finkel laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair.
“Berl, indeed! Berl the Medic has been in his grave for about twenty years. He was in his eighties even in your time. This one is Szpak—he too is about eighty. But look how straight he walks, like a sergeant. He is deaf as a post. He can’t hear a thing.” He beckoned the old man over and performed introductions. Szpak stood rigid, without saying a word, and left us a moment later.
“He walked away,” Finkel explained, “not because he thinks he is important but because he has entirely lost his sense of hearing. He doesn’t even bother trying; he knows he has been deaf for the last twenty years, so why should he make a fool of himself? And since he can’t hear others, he is too proud to let them hear what he has to say.” Finkel laughed again. “That’s a good one—Berl the Medic! This one gives you quinine for fever, and charges you all of forty pennies, while Berl never asked more than a gulden and used to say with a frankness that could really be touching—are you listening?—he would say, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what’s the matter with the child.’ Then a woman would come in who could say the formula against the evil eye, she woul
d have the patient urinate on some freshly stewed prunes, and he’d get well in no time at all.”
He looked back in the direction of his wife to make sure she could not hear him reminiscing. She had just lit another cigarette and leaned more heavily against the wall.
“Well, hurry up, it’s your turn!” the officer urged his partner. “Come on, make a mo-o-ove!” he chanted.
His partner said that if he wasn’t allowed to think he’d quit at once. He hated to be hurried, he said, he had to figure things out. After all, chess wasn’t marbles!
“All right, all right,” the officer said, patting him on the shoulder. He was humming a little tune, and it was obvious that he was pleased at having driven the Jew into a corner. But when his Jewish partner calmed down, the officer began to chant again, aping the singsong of Talmud students. “What’s the matter? Make a move, Mister! You can rest on the Sabbath.”
By now his partner was deeply absorbed in figuring out his next move. He was holding a chess piece and took up the singsong tone himself. “Rest up on the Sabbath, rest up on the Sabbath! Make a move, make a mo—o-ove. All right, a move I’ll make,” he intoned. The officer too became absorbed, and soon both were chanting like a duet of sleepwalkers, adding little squeaks to punctuate the silly chant.
“Make a move, make a move!” Then the Jew suddenly switched to a deep bass voice: “Some Sabbath that is, some Sabbath!”
“These chess players are both slightly deranged,” Steinman said. “The Jew is crazier than the army officer, but the officer has an insane hatred for Jews. It’s his misfortune that he is a passionate chess player, and can’t do without Jews. No Jew dares refuse him a game. This man here out of fear sometimes plays ten games on end, and is so exhausted when he is through that he can hardly walk. The officer is a better player, but you should see him when something goes wrong and he loses a game. He turns into a maniac, a murderer, a pogromist, and calls the whole Jewish nation a bunch of cheats and swindlers.”
The Glatstein Chronicles Page 28