Shosha

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  3

  Our family left Warsaw in the summer of 1917. My parents moved to a village occupied by the Austrians. Food was cheaper there. Mother had relatives in that part of the country. The city seemed on the verge of destruction. The war had already lasted three years. The Russians had evacuated Warsaw and in their retreat they had blown up the Praga Bridge. The Germans who ruled Poland were losing on the western front and they let the population starve. We never had enough to eat. Before we left, Moishe fell ill and was taken to the Hospital for Epidemic Diseases on Pokorna Street. Mother and I were taken to the disinfecting station on Szczesliwa Street near the Jewish cemetery. There they shaved off my earlocks and fed me soup flavored with pork. For me – the son of a rabbi – these were spiritual calamities. A Gentile nurse ordered me to strip naked and gave me a bath. When she lathered me, her fingers tickled and I felt like both laughing and crying. It must be that I had fallen into the hands of the demonic Lilith dispatched by her husband, Asmodeus, to corrupt yeshiva students and drag them down into the abyss of defilement. Later when I saw myself in a mirror and caught a glimpse of my image minus earlocks and ritual garment, and wearing some kind of bathrobe I had never seen on a Jewish lad and slippers with wooden soles, I didn’t recognize myself. I was no longer formed in the image of God.

  I told myself that what had happened to me this day was no mere consequence of the war and German decrees but rather a punishment for my sins – for doubting my faith. I had already read on the sly the works of Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz, as well as Yiddish or Hebrew translations of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Strindberg, Knut Hamsun. I had glanced into Dr Shlomo Rubin’s Hebrew translation of Spinoza’s Ethics and had gone through a popular history of philosophy. I had taught myself to read German – so similar to Yiddish – and had read in the original the Brothers Grimm, Heine, and whatever I could lay my hands on. I had kept secrets from my parents.

  Simultaneously with the German soldiers, Enlightenment had invaded Krochmalna Street. I had heard of Darwin and was no longer sure that the miracles described in The Assembly of Saints had really occurred. Ever since war had broken out on the Ninth Day of Ab, the Yiddish newspaper was brought daily into our house and I read there about Zionism, socialism, and, following the Russian evacuation of Poland when the Russian censorship ceased, a series of articles about Rasputin.

  Now revolution had taken over Russia, and the Czar had been deposed. The news was full of the fights and disputes among the Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the Anarchists – new names and concepts had emerged. I absorbed all this with an eagerness that couldn’t be sated. In the years between 1914 and 1917, I didn’t see Shosha and I never once met her in the street, not her or Bashele or the other children. I had grown up and had studied one semester in the Sochaczów yeshiva and another semester in Radzymin. Father became the rabbi of a hamlet in Galicia and I had to start to earn my own livelihood.

  But I never forgot Shosha. I dreamed of her at night. In my dreams she was both dead and alive. I played with her in a garden which was also a cemetery. Dead girls joined us there, wearing garments that were ornate shrouds. They danced in circles and sang songs. They swung, skated, occasionally hovered in the air. I strolled with Shosha in a forest of gigantic trees that reached the sky. The birds there were different from any I knew. They were as big as eagles, as colorful as parrots. They spoke Yiddish. From the thickets surrounding the garden, beasts with human faces showed themselves. Shosha was at home in this garden, and instead of my pointing out and explaining to her as I had done in the past, she revealed to me things I hadn’t known and whispered secrets in my ear. Her hair had grown long enough to reach her loins, and her flesh glowed like mother-of-pearl. I always awoke from this dream with a sweet taste in my mouth and the impression that Shosha was no longer living.

  During the years I wandered through the villages of Poland trying to support myself by teaching Hebrew, I seldom thought of Shosha when I was awake. I had fallen in love with a girl whose parents wouldn’t permit me to go near her. I began to write in Hebrew and later switched to Yiddish, and the editors rejected everything I submitted to them. I couldn’t seem to find a style that might create a literary domain for myself. Discouraged, I gave up literature and concentrated on philosophy, but what I was seeking I did not find there. I knew I must return to Warsaw, but again and again the forces that direct the fate of man hurled me back to the muddy villages. I often considered suicide. When finally I managed to get to the city to find work as a proofreader and a translator, and to be invited to the Writers’ Club, first as a guest, then as a member, I felt like one recovered from a state of coma.

  Years had gone by, and I didn’t know where. Writers my age had achieved fame and immortality, but here I was, still a beginner. My father had died. His manuscripts, like mine, had been scattered and lost, though he had managed to publish one small book.

  In Warsaw, I began an affair with Dora Stolnitz, a girl whose goal was to settle in Soviet Russia, the land of socialism. I learned later that she was a functionary of the Communist Party. She had been arrested several times and had spent months in Pawiak and other prisons. I was anti-Communist – anti all ‘isms’ – but I lived in constant fear of being arrested and imprisoned because of my connection with this girl, whom I later began to dislike for her hollow slogans and bombastic clichés about the ‘happy future,’ the ‘bright tomorrow.’

  The Jewish streets in which I now wandered were close to Krochmalna, but I never went near it. I told myself that I simply had no occasion to go into that section of the city, but there had to be other reasons. I had heard that half the residents of the street had died in the typhus epidemics, of influenza, of starvation. Boys with whom I attended cheder had served in the Polish Army and been killed in the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War. Later, Krochmalna Street had become a hotbed of Communism. There were always Communist demonstrations in the neighborhood. Young Communists draped red flags over telephone and streetcar wires – even on the windows of the police station. On the Place, an area between No. 9 and No. 13, and in the den where the thieves, pimps, and whores hung out, they now planned the dictatorship of Comrade Stalin. The police were forever conducting raids. This was no longer my street. No one would remember me or my family. When I thought of it, I had the strange feeling that my experience there constituted something removed from the world. I was in my twenties, but it seemed as if I were already an old man. Krochmalna Street was like a deep stratum of an archaeological dig which I would never uncover. At the same time, I recalled every house, courtyard, cheder, Hasidic studyhouse, store; every girl, street loafer, housewife – their voices, gestures, manners of speaking, their peculiarities.

  I believed that the aim of literature was to prevent time from vanishing, but my own time I had thrown away. The twenties had passed and the thirties had come. Hitler was fast becoming the ruler of Germany. In Russia, the purges had commenced. In Poland, Pilsudski had created a military dictatorship. Years earlier, America had established an immigration quota. The consulates of nearly all nations refused to issue visas to Jews. I was stranded in a country squeezed between two mighty foes, stuck with a language and culture no one recognized outside of a small circle of Yiddishists and radicals. Thank God, I found friends among members of the Writers’ Club and its periphery. The greatest of them all was Dr Morris Feitelzohn, who was considered by many to be a genius.

  Two

  1

  Dr Morris Feitelzohn wasn’t widely known. His philosophical works, some written in German and some in Hebrew and Yiddish, were not translated into English or French. To this day I haven’t found his name in any philosophical lexicon. His book Spiritual Hormones got bad reviews in Germany and in Switzerland. Dr Feitelzohn was my friend, even though he was some twenty-five years older than I. He could have become famous if he hadn’t squandered his energies. His erudition was monumental. For a time he was a lecturer at the University of Berne. He literally invented
the Hebrew terminology for modern philosophy. If Feitelzohn was the dilettante one reviewer labeled him, his dilettantism was of the highest order. As a person, he was a brilliant conversationalist and he enjoyed fantastic success with women.

  But this same Dr Morris Feitelzohn often borrowed five zlotys from me at the Writers’ Club, Nor did he have any luck with the Yiddish press in Warsaw, where articles that had been accepted were delayed for weeks while the editors changed and corrupted his style. They kept on finding defects in his work. There was much gossip about him. He was the son of a rabbi, but he had fled the house and became an agnostic. He divorced three wives and constantly changed lovers. Someone told me that Feitelzohn sold a sweetheart to a rich American tourist for five hundred dollars. The bearer of this tale called him a charlatan. But the one who slandered Feitelzohn most was Feitelzohn himself. He boasted of his adventures. I once observed that if one combined Arthur Schopenhauer, Oscar Wilde, and Solomon Maimon, one might end up with Morris Feitelzohn. I should have included the Kotzk rabbi, because in his own fashion Feitelzohn was a mystic and a Hasid.

  Morris Feitelzohn was of medium height, broad-shouldered, with a square face, thick eyebrows that met over the bridge of his wide nose, and full lips from between which a cigar always jutted. In the Writers’ Club they joked that he slept with the cigar in his mouth. His eyes were almost black, but occasionally I saw green glints in them. His dark hair had already begun to recede. Poor as he was, he wore English suits and expensive ties. In his conversation, he had praise for no one and derided world-famous figures. Yet severe critic that he was, he had detected talent in me, and when he told me this, it evoked in me a sense of friendship that bordered on idolization. It didn’t prevent me from seeing his faults. At times, I dared to chide him, but he only said, ‘It won’t do you any good. I’ll die an adventurer.’

  Like all skirt-chasers, he had to report his successes. One time when I came to his furnished room, he pointed to the sofa and said, ‘If you only knew who lay here just yesterday, you’d faint.’

  ‘I soon will know,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You will tell me.’

  ‘Ah, you’re even more cynical than I am.’ And he told me.

  Strangely, Morris Feitelzohn could speak with ardor about the wisdom found in The Duty of the Hearts, The Path of the Righteous, and in some of the Hasidic books. He had written a work about the cabala. In his own fashion, he loved the pious Jew and admired his faith and power to resist temptation. He once said to me, ‘I love the Jews even though I cannot stand them. No evolution could have created them. For me they are the only proof of God’s existence.’

  One of Feitelzohn’s admirers was Celia Chentshiner. Celia’s husband, Haiml, was descended from the famous Reb Shmuel Zbitkower, the millionaire who during the Kosciusko uprising gave away a fortune to save the Jews of Praga from the Czar’s Cossacks. Haiml’s father, Reb Gabriel, owned houses in Warsaw and Lodz. Haiml was his only son. In his youth, Haiml had spent half of each day with a Talmud teacher at the Sochaczów studyhouse, and the other half trying to learn languages – Russian until 1915, German after the Germans occupied Warsaw, and Polish after 1919, when Poland was liberated. But he knew only one language – Yiddish. He liked to discuss Darwin, Marx, and Einstein with Feitelzohn. Haiml read about them all in Yiddish.

  Haiml had never had to concern himself with a livelihood. He was a runt of a man and frail. I sometimes thought there wasn’t a trade or business for which he would have been suited. Even drinking tea didn’t come easy to him. He lacked the dexterity to cut a slice of lemon and Celia had to do this for him. Haiml was capable only of a childlike love for his father and for his wife. His mother was no longer living. Reb Gabriel had a second wife, whose name I didn’t dare mention before Haiml. I asked him only once about his stepmother. He turned pale, put his little hand over my mouth, and exclaimed, ‘Don’t talk! Don’t talk! Don’t talk! My mother is alive!’

  Celia was short too, but taller than Haiml. She was related to him on his mother’s side. An orphan, she had been raised in Reb Gabriel’s house. Haiml fell in love with her while he was still in cheder. When Haiml didn’t want to eat, Celia fed him. When he was studying Russian, German, and Polish, Celia studied with him, and while he learned none of these languages, she did. Their marriage took place when Haiml’s mother lay on her deathbed.

  By the time I met this couple, they were in their late thirties. Haiml looked like a cheder boy who had been dressed in a man’s suit, stiff collar, and tie. He spoke in a piping voice, made childish gestures, laughed with a shriek, and when things didn’t go his way he burst out crying. He had dark eyes, a small nose, and a wide mouth full of brackish teeth. The black ruff around his bald head hung down in tufts. He was afraid of barbers and Celia cut his hair. She also trimmed his nails. Celia considered herself an atheist, but traces of her Hasidic upbringing lingered. She chose dresses with long sleeves and high collars. She wore her long dark hair in an unfashionable bun. She was pale, with brown eyes, a straight nose, thin lips, and she moved with the lightness of a girl. Haiml used to call her ‘my empress.’ Celia had borne Haiml a daughter, who died at the age of two, and Feitelzohn once told her that the child’s death contained a measure of divine logic, since Celia already had a child – Haiml. To Celia and Haiml, Feitelzohn represented the big world and European culture. Feitelzohn did not need to suffer want. They were always proposing that he move in with them in their big apartment on Zlota Street, but Feitelzohn refused.

  He told me, ‘All my foibles and aberrations stem from my urge to be absolutely free. This alleged freedom has transformed me into a slave.’

  2

  Because Feitelzohn praised me, the Chentshiners often invited me to dinner, lunch, or for a glass of tea. When Feitelzohn was present, no one else could speak. We were all content to listen. He had traveled throughout the world. He knew practically every important Jewish personality, as well as many non-Jewish scholars, writers, and humanists. Haiml used to say that he was a living encyclopedia. From time to time, Feitelzohn gave lectures in the Writers’ Club in Warsaw and in the provinces, and also on short trips he made abroad. On those occasions, Haiml, Celia, and I had a chance to talk among ourselves. Haiml liked opera and was interested in art. He attended exhibitions and bought paintings. Cubism and expressionism had been in fashion many years, but Haiml liked pastoral landscapes of woods, meadows, streams, and huts half hidden behind trees, where, as he put it, one could hide from Hitler, who was threatening to invade Poland. I myself had fantasies about a house in the woods or on an island where I would be safe from Nazis.

  Celia’s passion was literature. She bought and read nearly every new book that came out in Polish and Yiddish, as well as translations from other languages, and she possessed a sharp critical taste. I often wondered how this woman who had had no formal education could so accurately appraise not only belles lettres but also scientific works. I paid attention to her opinions regarding my writing; invariably they were correct, tactful, and clever.

  One time Celia invited me to the apartment on an evening when Haiml was away at a conference of the Poale Zion. We talked so long she revealed a secret to me: she was having an affair with Morris Feitelzohn. That evening I realized that Celia had the same need to confess as everyone else. She was quite frank about the fact that when it came to love, Haiml was as inexpert as a child. He needed a mother, not a wife, while she was hot-blooded. She said, ‘I like gentleness, but not in bed.’

  This remark coming from a woman who dressed and behaved so conservatively and who watched her every word astounded me more than the fact that she was unfaithful to Haiml. Our conversation became nakedly intimate. The essence of what she said was that literature, theater, music, even accounts in the newspapers roused her erotically, yet at the same time her nature was such that she could give herself only to someone to whom she looked up. For a man to utter some foolishness or demonstrate weakness was enough to repel her.

&n
bsp; She said, ‘I could be happy with Feitelzohn, but he’s the worst liar I’ve ever met. He has hoodwinked me so many times that I’ve lost all respect for myself for still believing him once in a while. He possesses hypnotic powers. He could be the Mesmer or Svengali of our time. If you’re convinced that you know him, you’re only deluding yourself. Each time I tell myself that the man can no longer surprise me, I get a new shock. Do you know that Morris is superstitious to the point of absurdity? He is terrified of black cats. When he is on his way to a lecture and meets someone holding an empty vessel, he runs back. He carries around all kinds of amulets. When he sneezes he pulls his ear. There are certain words you can’t use in his presence. Did you ever try to discuss death with him? He has more idiosyncrasies than a pomegranate has seeds. He considers all women witches. He goes to fortune-tellers who for a zloty tell him he will take a long trip and meet a dark woman. And his contradictions! He breaks every law of the Shulchan Aruch, yet at the same time he preaches Jewishness. He has a wife whom he’s never divorced and a daughter he hasn’t seen in years. When his mother died he didn’t go to her funeral.’