The Glatstein Chronicles

by Jacob Glatstein

  Goldblat was not my first secular teacher, but he was the first to take me strolling, as it were, on the walkway of Jewishness, and he proceeded calmly, with dignity, his hands behind his back. He never tried to diminish what I was learning at the cheder, he merely added to it. He was like Peter the Great was to Russia—opening a window onto the wide world, showing me what could be done with biblical words when they were transposed into a modern context. It had never occurred to me before that you could take the words of Jacob and Esau and Joseph and apply them to the contemporary world. I remember an occasion when father asked him how his wife was; he just shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I have despaired of my life,” sighing prosaically, seemingly unaware that the phrase had behind it a history of Bible readings that went back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, back to the very Creation.

  I liked the uselessness of everything I studied with him. At home everyone always talked about what I was going to do when I grew up. Grandfather thought I should be a rabbi, and my mother gave him some timid support. Other relatives felt I would become a bookkeeper, or perhaps a scribe, and Father talked about sending me on to the Russian gymnasium. Goldblat’s lessons had no relation whatever to plans for a career. They had no purpose at all. There was about them the air of luxurious relaxation that a wealthy household exudes on a Sabbath afternoon.

  They reminded me of Freitag, a rich man to whose house I had been admitted several times when Father called on him to request a favor. The maid would lead us through quiet rooms furnished with comfortable upholstered armchairs, and in one of the rooms there would be Mr. Freitag wearing a long dressing gown, napping in a chair. He had a friendly, sleepy face and he always turned down Father’s requests with dreamy friendliness. By the time we were shown out through another door, I always had the impression that I had just made a trip through some enchanted orchard where the trees were all asleep and the fruit could not be eaten.

  Goldblat’s teaching had no beginning and no end. He would ask questions in a very quiet tone of voice and I would answer in the same tone. As the lesson progressed I would often find my eyes closing. I would sit opposite him, and the gold-framed glasses and the little silk cap would grow misty and faint. The Bible lying between us was like a half-finished glass of wine, the liquid barely stirring in the red glass, when my mother walked softly through the room, as though careful not to disturb our slumber.

  2

  All the teachers I knew before Goldblat had been bent on teaching me useful knowledge. Uncle Feivel, who was more often called Feivel the Scribe—a tall man with a gray beard which stubbornly refused to grow long—taught me to write with flourishes so that I would seem a practiced writer. In our family he had the reputation of being a real doctor, and he was said to be composing a medical book based on Maimonides. When a child fell ill, Uncle Feivel was the first to be called. If he sighed, a doctor would be summoned, but if he pinched the child’s cheek, everyone knew it was nothing serious. He warned me never to drink water after eating the Sabbath cholent: this might give me diarrhea, for fat and water he said do not mix well.

  But there came a moment when Uncle Feivel’s learning ran out. When he brought me to the point where I knew the difference between the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter genders, he sighed deeply, which meant that the case required a doctor.

  This time the doctor was his own son, a teacher in the municipal school. Joseph was the exact opposite of his father: he was short and stocky, and he had a luxuriant black beard which I thought of as a Zionist beard, perhaps because it reminded me of Theodor Herzl’s. Joseph wore the uniform of a Russian functionary, and his pupils were Gentile boys. They tormented him a good deal, scribbling the various nicknames they had for him on the walls of the school building, but the nickname that stuck was “Phew Marai.” Just what it meant was never clear—perhaps it alluded to his dislike of inkblots on compositions (marat is Russian for “daub”). Joseph was a pious Jew, and I remember that I often found him wearing a prayer shawl and phylacteries over his Gentile uniform when he was at home. At the time I regarded this as a sign of attachment to the faith every bit as heroic as that of the Spanish Marranos. Every time he kissed the phylacteries, I could imagine the uniform warring against the prayer shawl and Joseph repulsing the infidel, keeping the cloak of Judaism fast over it.

  It was Father’s idea that I should take lessons with the monopolnichka, the woman who ran the licensed government liquor shop. He wanted me to acquire a decent Russian accent. The monopolnichka was a tall spinster of about forty years of age, who wore thick eyeglasses over large, warm black eyes. She was not a bony old maid, but on the contrary, quite running to flesh, with long fat arms and long legs. She liked me to sit in her lap for my lessons, so we could both use the same book. I don’t recall any unpleasant feeling associated with this. Her black hair tickled me, and her breath was warm on my neck. I usually had to wait for her before our lessons could start. I entered through the shop itself, where the green-labeled bottles of vodka were neatly arranged on shelves. The shop was as clean as a pharmacy, and I could hardly believe that in a place like this was sold the terrible stuff responsible for our janitor being found so often lying dead drunk on a heap of refuse.

  When the monopolnichka emerged from behind her bottles, I would take off my cap, kiss her hand, and bow, saying zdravstvuite. Then I would pass on to a room in the back of the store, where there were always three or four clocks ticking away. Here I had to wait sometimes quite a long while. From an adjoining room would come a rattling of dishes and the scraping of forks and spoons. The cooked food gave off a smell that nauseated me—I was sure that only the most treif of all unkosher foods—only pork—could smell like that.

  While I sat there all alone, my heart became another clock ticking away in that room where the heavy curtains were always drawn. A kerosene lamp burned on a large table. From time to time a big dog would come in and sniff at me. While I did not much care for this, it was an old dog, and he was not too interested in me.

  When the monopolnichka finally came in, wearing a long black dress, she always looked so clean that I could scarcely believe she had just been eating that vile-smelling food. Even before she came up to the table, I was filled with eagerness to get close to her black hair and to feel her warm Russian words breathing down my neck. Often she would sit down at the piano first, play some romantic reverie, and then weep. Even through the tears she would keep on playing, humming softly to herself. A few tears would remain and fall down my collar once I had clambered into her lap and we were bending over the textbook together. She was quite nearsighted.

  Later on, I had a number of “practical” teachers. I attended a private school run by the Zankos, a Ukrainian family which consisted of an old man with a short, well-groomed beard and a big wart on his nose, an old woman with a yellow face and distinguished manners, and a tall son with a prominent Adam’s apple. The son smelled perpetually of vodka, the old man of tobacco, and the old woman of freshly laundered linen.

  In their school I was the only Jew among fifteen or so Russian, Polish, and German students. There was a large, sunny courtyard where we played between classes. Old Zanko had a friendly, smiling manner when he taught us. The son was nervous and gloomy, and the old woman took us in with gray, serious eyes. Quite often Madame Zanko would disappear into the kitchen and come back bringing small plates with the same smelly food as the monopolnichka used to cook. The other students licked the plates clean, and considered they had had a great treat. Madame Zanko did not even offer any of this to me. Her husband on such occasions would give me a friendly smile and whisper to me, “Ah, well, you can’t help it, it’s treif!” He would pat me on the head to make me feel at ease, and would usually fetch me a red apple from the kitchen. The only remark ever passed was by the German student who sat next to me and was two heads taller than I. He told me that I was a fool not to go ahead and eat like the others. During these feasts, for all old Zanko’s friendliness, I felt I did not be
long and was more than ever aware of the icons that hung in every corner.

  Zanko’s brother was on the administrative staff at the Lublin gymnasium, and I thought that it would be easy to pass from Zanko’s school to there. But as it turned out, to have been a pupil of Zanko’s was of no help.

  Nor did it help me to have studied for a time with no less a person than the daughter of Kurbas, the gymnasium inspector. Every time I arrived for my lesson with her, Kurbas would be dining alone at a richly set table, with a spotless white napkin tucked under his chin and broad black beard. He was a fat, barrel-shaped man, with short legs. As I went by him, he always gave me a hearty good morning, in a booming voice like several bells of the cathedral striking at once and echoing off the walls of the spacious dining room. After his greeting he would laugh heartily and childishly and go back to his meal. Kurbas taught Latin at the gymnasium, and Latin proverbs hung everywhere in his dining room.

  His daughter could not have been more than seventeen, but she was very tall and thin. She had extraordinarily thin legs, an oval-shaped face, and she wore her hair in two long plaits. Hers was a timid expression, and she had little freckles. To my eyes she was endowed with all the charms of the heroines of every Russian novel I had so far read. I was fourteen at this time, and we were embarrassed when we were alone with each other. When I took a book from her cold, bony hand, I blushed.

  My French teacher had a pockmarked complexion further ruined by red, green, and black cosmetic preparation. She lived alone in a five-room apartment overflowing with all kinds of feminine gear—tiny shoes with high heels, silk dresses, underwear, miniature handkerchiefs of every color, corsets, bottles with scented waters. When I would finally get to the innermost room where we had our lesson, there she would be sitting, a shriveled old woman covered with wrinkles, the veins standing out dark on her yellow hands. She seemed pieced together of all the things scattered around the apartment—the silk dresses, the lace handkerchiefs, the corsets, the improbably tiny shoes, and the scented waters, the combined effect of them all giving off a sharp, sweaty, sweetish smell. Her face could almost have been tattooed, the areas of makeup were so distinct on it. No matter how often I saw her, I was always amazed all over again. Moving through the apartment with its colorful feminine clutter, I always hoped that in the innermost room I would find Kurbas’s daughter waiting for me, with her lovely freckles, long legs, and little feet. But as I got closer, even before I entered it, I could already smell the sweetish emanation of scents and lotions which failed to cover up the smell of age.

  3

  Another worldly teacher who helped to expand my perspectives of Judaism was less a teacher than an examiner, and less an examiner than a brilliant talker. His tactic was to trap me into agreeing or disagreeing with some short maxim, and then, as we discussed the few terms involved, this scanty intellectual fare built up to a banquet of several hours. He might begin with a verse from the Bible and adorn it with so many commentaries, questions, answers, comparisons that the verse in the end took on so many multiple senses and set off so many trains of thought that it seemed to provide wisdom for a whole generation. You could imagine being born, growing up, getting married, and attending the weddings of your children, all the while feeding on the wisdom of that single profound verse. This teacher infused it with such music and such magic that the words composing it became so many sirens luring one on and on into ever more impenetrable deeps of knowledge and wisdom.

  That was what could happen to a few words after Reb Levi had gotten through with them. One verse would remind him of fifteen related verses, each of them with a number of various interpretations, and these in turn led to commentaries, to Greek proverbs, to the discoveries of Ibn Ezra, and to the secular sciences—astronomy, anatomy, botany, and philosophy.

  Reb Levi suffered from an incurable disease. He was bedridden and received me sitting up, his head resting against pillows piled up high. He always wore a velvet skullcap. His face was yellow, but it glowed like a wax candle. His yellow beard was short and thick and untidy from neglect—but even in the untidiness there was a certain restraint, a proportion appropriate to his features. It was a modest, honest beard, which gave nobility to the face. His nightshirt was always as spotlessly clean as a high priest’s robe. Very often he closed his eyes while speaking, and then he looked to me like a high priest on his deathbed, laid out in his sacred garments and ready to meet his Maker. His arms rested on the down quilt like the motionless branches of a still tree.

  In the city everyone knew that Reb Levi was dying, and people spoke of him with lowered voices, reverently, as one speaks about a great saint.

  Everyone knew that the wealthy Simon Berger had been struck a terrible blow. He was about to lose the jewel in his crown. Simon had had many children, but none of them turned out successfully by the standards which then obtained in Lublin. This pious rich man, it was thought, whose piety and learning were a byword, deserved better children. One of his sons was a wastrel who chased Gentile girls and worked as a traveling salesman for a candy factory. A second son had gone off to Switzerland to study chemistry and had come back a complete goy, with a green student’s cap that looked as if it were made of glass. His only daughter was a cripple—the poor girl was paralyzed in one hand. His pride and joy was Reb Levi, the one son who devoted his days and nights to serious study.

  At this time there were many scholars in Lublin. It was not thought too unusual that Levi should obtain his rabbinical license at an early age. This was admirable, but not extraordinary. At one point he had gone off to live in a small town, where he had married a girl much taller and sturdier than he was. He had tall, gawky children by her who, when they stood up, looked as if they were bending in a heavy wind. Then Levi fell ill, and people began to say that the rheumatism from which he always suffered had reached his heart. He was brought back from the small town to his father’s house and put to bed, in one of the most comfortable, lightest rooms of Reb Simon’s house.

  Reb Simon occupied the whole building. Downstairs he had his textile business, with living quarters above it. Downstairs was the physical, the prosaic side of his life, where doglike he chased after every penny, now more than ever needed, as his son required the attentions of the best doctors and specialists. Simon never gave up hope that somehow they would save his son—the soul of his being—but upstairs, Levi’s strength and health were slowly ebbing away, like a lingering Sabbath afternoon.

  It was not until Simon’s son was bedridden that the people of our city began to grasp what an unusual man he was. His own father and mother had not realized what a treasure had been entrusted to them for a little while. Levi was no more than thirty-eight years old at this time.

  People began to show up at Simon’s house who had never been there before, who had never been to Lublin before. There came great rabbis, scholars, men whose very names filled Jews with luminous hopes. Among the visitors were saintly mystics, Gentile scholars, university professors, famous writers. Simon and his wife would exchange silent glances, weeping with belated joy. “You see whom we are losing!”

  Only now did it become known that Levi, while he lived in the small town, had conducted correspondence with these rabbis and scholars, and that these great men addressed him as Master. The Gentile scholars were saying that he was one of the greatest philosophers of our generation. The people of Lublin now said that Reb Levi was one of the greatest saints, perhaps one of the thirty-six just men who by their unpublicized merits keep the turbulent and insecure world in existence. It was also said that he had written works that truly enlighten, works that reveal the most arduous mysteries.

  I had the privilege of sitting on a little stool next to his bed. There were usually two rabbis in the room who put their questions to Reb Levi in a businesslike manner, as if he were not a gravely ill man. He would answer them briefly and matter-of-factly, but now and then his gray eyes would light up, his yellow face would glow, and his voice would become a song. Then the rabbis would
fall silent and sit very still, fearing to make the slightest move. They had deliberately stimulated Reb Levi to rise above his suffering, they had led him on to where he could get the full light of the sun on his face. His face now glowed so brightly that some of the light was reflected in the faces of the rabbis. Meanwhile I, a little boy who had been told that Reb Levi was dying, gazed at him, trying to discover the secret of a dying man’s last words as well as the secret of fear.

  When the rabbis left him, they would tell his weeping mother outside, after they had kissed the mezuzah on the doorpost, that the ears which had heard her son’s words were blessed, that she mustn’t cry, that God would help him, and that his own parents should be filled with great joy and pride.

  Only once, I recall, did one rabbi lose control of himself. Reb Levi had ventured into the deepest caverns of thought and had emerged safe and sound, and then ventured again, and again reemerged to daylight with a shining face, when suddenly the rabbi burst out in sobs: “Rabbi, Rabbi, Reb Levi, who will ever take your place when you have left us!”

  At this moment Levi’s father and mother came in and began to mourn him as though he were already dead. His mother wept passionately, as though she had long been waiting for permission to weep, a permission she had never dared to ask for.

  Having wept themselves dry (if I am not mistaken, I too wept—a childish accompaniment), they were ashamed. They were ashamed because Reb Levi’s glowing face was smiling. And when they had all subsided, Levi spoke about the years he had spent in the small town, where he could not properly fulfill his duty to honor his parents. He spoke about the rare virtue, which is a joyous duty—the sole duty that raises the human species above the beasts, because only in the human species is there a permanent bond linking father and son, mother and child, until the child himself becomes a father.