And Glasnik did me the kindness of never telling me.
I heard later that Shayna married again and had seven children. And if a violation was committed, I was prepared to believe that Reb Henoch took it upon his own soul.
Chapter 16: A Mess of Matchmakers
Ever since we returned from the war, Glasnik had been living at my house. After all we’d been through, I didn’t have the heart to ask him why. At first I was happy to demonstrate that I would still honor our pre-war pledge that my home would be his home, and his father would be my father, even though our noble arrangement had been meant to apply only if one of us had been orphaned, or killed in combat. But since we’d both returned alive and in full possession of our bodies, I didn’t understand why he didn’t return to his own home.
It took me a while to realize that there was no ‘home’ for him to go back to. Glasnik’s mother had died during the fifth week of his military service (and my friend never ceased grieving for her). On that day his father, a man already in his forties, utterly lost his grip on day-to-day existence. Not only could he not cook his own meals or sweep his floors or wash his clothes, he had even sunk so far as to discontinue his daily attendance at the House of Study.
Worse yet, Glasnik’s father’s irregular earnings as a porter had no longer been enough to pay his rent. And although his landlord did not press him, pride obliged the old man to move out of his little house, sell his wife’s clothing along with furniture and pots, and move in as a boarder with another family where, like any orphaned bachelor, he had his meals and slept in the kitchen.
What pained Glasnik was not only the way his father had come down in the world – it was that he seemed not to feel deserving of such a miracle as having his son return alive. And when Glasnik returned, not just alive but fully intact, his father seemed to look upon him like a ghost risen from a mass grave to whom he was afraid to express either relief or affection.
I invited Glasnik and his father to spend the first night of Passover with us. Glasnik trotted off to relay the invitation to his father; minutes later, he was back. His father refused to hear of it. How could a man whose clothes and shoes were barely held together by a few threads inflict his gloomy presence on a home as respectable as mine?
What I couldn’t understand was why Glasnik was grinning when he delivered this message. Seizing my arm, he reminded me that since our brief excursion to the Chinese Opera, he had spent hardly a kopek of his money. Now he had enough left to outfit his father in a suitable wardrobe, and wanted my help in selecting it.
We hiked over to Simcha Neches the Clothier who lived on the other side of the hill. His shop was a room in which he and his family also ate and slept. We ordered two suits, two shirts and assorted underclothing in what Glasnik guessed to be his father’s measurements. We also bought him a pair of warm boots and two pairs of festive white socks to wear on Shabbos.
Before taking the bewildered old man to try on his new clothes, we led him to the barbershop. Here, in less than ten minutes, Glasnik’s father was transformed into a new person.
On the way out, people ambushed us, determined to have us reveal what the war was “really like.” Was it true that my friend and I had actually tasted forbidden meats, and other foods from Vanya’s unclean pots, without dying of sheer disgust? I disappointed them all by saying that my head was not yet clear enough to talk about the war, even to my own father.
Glasnik was also not immune to nightmares from our experiences. However, so many young tailors had been killed in the war that employers pursued him like wolves, enticing him with offers of as much as three rubles, four, even four-and-a-half rubles a week. But within days of accepting the best offer, he told me, “I can’t work. My mind isn’t on it. Today, I sewed a right sleeve on the left side of a customer’s coat. My master told me no self-respecting tailor had done such a thing since the Creation of the World.”
“He threw you out?”
“He can’t afford to. But I don’t want to go back. I can’t get the war out of my head. My thoughts are simply not on which is the right sleeve and which the left.”
In the end, he decided to quit his job and stay with his married sister until either his mind settled down or he found someone to marry. “And you?” he asked.
I confessed that my head was also still full of the war. Of how the Czar and his flunkies had thrown away hundreds of thousands of young lives. And for what? But I had vowed long ago that if, by some miracle, I made it home alive, I would devote my energies to making sure the Czar could never do that, again.
Glasnik looked appalled and whispered, “You want to overthrow the Czar?”
“Why not?”
“What would your parents say?”
“I’m not asking them.”
“You think a new Czar would be any better?”
“Who says it has to be a Czar? Maybe, like the Americans, we could have a President, someone elected by the people.”
Glasnik gave me a pitying look. “I thought I was going crazy. But if you believe Russia will ever become like America, you’re crazier than I am.”
“And what do you know about America?”
Here we both sighed and fell silent. We knew about America about as much as we knew about the “Other World.” Except that, while no one I knew had ever returned from the dead, those who went to America at least wrote letters and sent packages. Sometimes they even returned for a visit, wearing hats made of straw, and speaking in loud voices like gentiles. Some even brought their American wives, women with painted-on smiles, whose laughter was like the bray of a trumpet. If you believed these visitors, New York was a cauldron of haste and violence and noise and anxiety, a world ruled by money and corruption. But it was obvious that they were lying. Otherwise, why would they have been in such a hurry to go back?
Saturday night, only minutes after my father doused the braided candle that plunged us from the sanctity of Shabbos back into the frantic world of the profane, an impatient knock rattled our door. It sounded like the rap of a mounted messenger delivering a dispatch from the Czar.
In fact, the knock portended something equally ominous. Planted on our doorstep was a man I remembered as the most persistent, and least successful, of our town’s matchmakers, Koppel the Dairy, so called because his daytime occupation, whenever his horse felt up to standing, was delivering milk and butter. Judging by the state of his coat and boots, he had not become a great success at either profession.
What did he want? Nothing at all. He just happened to be passing by. But now that he was here, if he could have the honor of a glimpsing the “war hero. . . ”
My father was ready, politely, to close the door but Koppel stayed him with the dire prediction that while I may, for the moment, enjoy the glamour of a man who has returned alive from a great war, I also ran the risk, quicker than they might think, of turning into a crabbed, chronic bachelor, a figure of general ridicule, obsessed with his bowels and teeth, the kind of leftover whom no self-respecting Jewish daughter would look at twice.
My mother pleaded that I had just gotten back from China. “Let him enjoy a few months of freedom.” My instincts tore me in both directions. It had been a long time since I had seen as many Jewish girls as Koppel was prepared to present to me, but I was much too young, too unschooled, to take up the awesome yoke of marriage. Not to mention that the only trade for which I had expressed a preference was that of overthrowing the Czar.
Like a good general, Koppel shifted his ground. All he came for, he reminded my parents, was to see what a “hero” looked like at close range. Besides, “What means ‘too young?’ He doesn’t want the girl, he has a mouth to say ‘No.’”
Somewhat intrigued, I persuaded my parents to let him sit down. It was true; I knew nothing of how to be a married man, or even by what steps one arrived at such an enviable and terrifying state. But I had had no trouble learning how to lead a platoon into battle, which I also had never done before. How much more difficult could it be to learn how to l
ive with a wife?
My mother served tea and some leftover cake, and tactfully drew my father into the other room. Koppel and I chatted cautiously about topics of general, if not mutual, interest. I learned that a nearby town already had gotten gaslights while Vishogrod, as usual, lagged behind. And that two neighbors were feuding over the ownership of some lumber cast up by the river.
In passing, Koppel mentioned that a certain local girl, whom I would probably remember only as a little terror, had blossomed overnight into a beauty, although she was not for me, her parents having no money at all.
Although we were not rich, either, I assured him that a dowry was the least of my concerns, at which point my father put his head into the room to remind Koppel, “I thought you only came to look.”
Koppel favored my father with a benign smile. “Any fool can match up rich with rich or poor with poor. But a beautiful girl and a treasure like your Yakov? Now that could be a match made forty days before he came into the world.”
“What girl are you talking about?” my father asked.
The matchmaker rose to leave. “No, no. I totally agree with you. It is far too soon for your son to think of marriage. I only wanted to see how he had turned out.”
“And what is your professional opinion, if I may ask?”
“Who am I to draw conclusions about such a fine young man?”
“What, he’s not good enough?”
“Heaven forbid. After what he’s been through, it’s a miracle he still knows how to pronounce a blessing.”
“You are telling me he’s not good enough for. . .whoever she is?”
Koppel twisted and turned like a cornered mouse, but he smiled and declined to be pinned down. “If I say he’s not, you’ll be angry. And if I say he is, you will think I have come to propose a match and that I lied to you.” Nose held high, he made for the door.
By this time, not only I but also my parents were furious with curiosity. More or less barring the door, my father demanded outright, “Who is the girl?”
“What girl? It happens that she comes, on her mother’s side, from one of the finest Hasidic dynasties. But if she had an inkling that I was sitting here, offering her around like a public towel, she would die of shame.” (In later years I learned that, in Columbus’ Country, this sort of thing was called ‘Psychology,’ and that people made a very nice living from it.)
To regain the upper hand, Koppel also reminded my father of the well-known speculation by our sages that, now that the Almighty no longer deemed us worthy of overt miracles, He spent His days as a matchmaker. And His achievements in that field were as miraculous and as difficult to get right as splitting the Red Sea.
Having thus put my father on the defensive, Koppel allowed my mother to pour him a second glass of tea. Sipping carefully to avoid where the rim was chipped, Koppel studied me with mournful admiration, and sighed. What a pity it was that his lips were sealed.
But then, as though some magical ingredient in my mother’s tea had loosened his tongue, Koppel dropped one clue too many. And while I was still in the dark, my mother pounced. “Is it that Henya with the pockmarked face?”
“Is it a sin for a girl not to have perfect, white skin like a gentile?” Koppel said heatedly. “Does that mean she doesn’t deserve to be married? What of my own wife, Chayah? You’ve seen the scars on her face; she doesn’t hide them. Are you telling me I should not have married her, not have had children with her? Are you saying my children should never have been born?” He rose in such indignation that his chair fell over. “What a fine-looking son you’ve got,” he said darkly. “May no evil eye ever befall him.”
To compensate for my mother’s bluntness, I walked the matchmaker part way home. In return, he advised me that, until I grew a respectable beard and put in some time at a serious yeshiva, I may find it difficult, if not impossible, to be matched up with a first-class girl. But, if I wanted him to put in a word with Henya’s parents . . .
I soon found out that Koppel’s warning was not all idle talk. The first sign of this came all too soon as matchmakers, even Koppel, himself, stopped calling at our house. Some of them, when they saw me strutting in the street, ramrod-straight and peacock-proud, not only no longer rushed at me with outstretched arms but turned away to look into shop windows, even where there were no shops.
Chapter 17: An Amateur’s Guide to the Revolution
You might have thought that the war furnished me with enough thrills to last a hundred lifetimes, but I felt restless, ready to burst with unspent energy. The time had come for me to either to move on or settle down. Either to head for Warsaw and join my brother, Mordechai, in whatever he was doing to overthrow the Czar or, like most of those who had returned from the war, resign myself to a trade and a wife and, except for the fleeting joys of being a husband and father, bury the rest of my days in honest, soul-destroying drudgery. Even my parents agreed that, married or single, Vishogrod held no future for me. So, for the third time in my young life, I got ready to leave home and taste what the great world had to offer.
In those days, going forth to take part in such a world-shaking enterprise as a revolution was a leisurely business. To begin with, there was a round of farewell visits to be made locally. Then I had to stop off and see my married sister, Malkah, in Stritchev, and my brother, Chayim, in Łódź.
Aaron, Malkah’s husband, was said to be the richest man in Stritchev. I took this to mean that he lived in a house with a wooden floor, and his family ate chicken more than once a week. In fact, my brother-in-law owned a small flour-mill, which brought in enough money for his family to live in a brick house and also have gaslight and varnished floors.
Malkah had insisted that I buy no civilian clothes but arrive in full dress uniform, medals and all. And though I had rather looked forward to burying my uniform without me in it, I agreed to oblige her.
When my train pulled into the station, half the town seemed to be waiting for me. And this half consisted almost entirely of dark-eyed young beauties, whose uncovered hair made clear to the entire world that they were available for marriage.
But instead of being allowed to embrace my sister, the moment I set foot on the platform with my small bundle of belongings, I was set upon by a mob of shouting and elbowing coachmen, each of them determined to carry off this prize passenger. They filled my ears with claims about the strength of their horse, the roundness of their wheels, the dishonesty and drunkenness of the other drivers, and the amount of grease they packed into their axles that very morning, purely in honor of conveying such an important visitor as me.
I resisted a dozen hands snatching at my luggage, until my sister’s husband, Aaron, finally broke through and pacified the lot of them by giving each a small coin. Then he introduced himself, shook my hand, and apologized for not yet possessing a coach of his own. We ended up riding with the one coachman who had not tried to force himself on me, possibly because his horse looked as though it might fall over at any moment and crumble into little pieces. We took the risk because we had only two blocks to travel.
Marriage had given Malkah a whole new, matronly appearance. It had also, I was sorry to discover, turned her into a political conservative. Both she and her husband were convinced that my plan to go to Warsaw and dabble in revolution was a pack of foolishness certain to end badly. For such folly, there was only one time-tested cure. Which was to send for the matchmakers and treat me to my choice of absolutely any young woman in Stritchev.
I will admit that it was no small temptation. Even the few Stritchev girls I had observed at the train station seemed incomparably more beautiful and worldly than those of Vishogrod, most of whom I had played with as a child and who were, thus, somewhat lacking in mystery.
But in the end I said ‘no.’ The Czar’s little war had wrenched two thoroughly unpleasant years out of my life, and if I didn’t at least try to carry out what I had sworn to do at the edge of countless graves, what good were all my noble ideals?
The most I allowed Malkah and Aaron to do for me was call in a tailor to measure me for a suit of such daunting respectability that, were I to wear it in Warsaw, any serious revolutionary would turn tail and vanish down the nearest alley. In the process, I was obliged to keep my mouth shut while the tailor insulted me with his comments about my sturdy parade-ground posture that made me look like a gentile.
My suit and I took a train to visit my brother, Chayim, in Łódź, the heart of Poland’s textile industry, where, thanks to his father-in-law’s generosity, he owned a “department store.”
I followed Malkah’s directions from the station, and after walking for some time, found my way to a drowsy lane of small, flyblown shops whose windows neither hinted at the merchandise inside nor allowed more than a few stale smudges of light to leak through.
Stopping to peer into one of the listless windows or doors, a passerby might have glimpsed an occasional storekeeper or his faded wife in a frayed apron standing guard over shelves as bare as if they had been looted by an invading mob. Arms folded, they repelled my rude gawking. I suspected that Chayim’s place of business would be no better.
The Accidental Anarchist Page 15