by I. J. Singer
At his side walked Nissan the depraved. Just like Tevye, he found time after a day’s labor and an evening of study to preach rebellion.
He was popular with the weavers, who felt proud that a rabbi’s son had become one of them. They greeted him warmly when he dropped by their synagogue on a Sabbath. The women respected him, too, but they couldn’t understand why a youth who might have married a wealthy girl would choose the life of a worker. Still, they looked up to him, as if his presence among them elevated the status of their own husbands.
Besides, he was very handy to have around. He read to illiterate mothers the postcards sent by daughters put out to service; he wrote letters for wives to husbands conscripted into the Russian Army; he taught brides to sign articles of engagement and translated Russian documents issued by the courts or the police.
Inured to the burdens and degradations of poverty from childhood, endowed with the ability to reason and speak logically, his head filled with religious and secular knowledge, trained in interpreting and verbalizing concepts, he made a deep impression on the weavers and, even more so, on their wives.
“Some tongue on that one,” people said admiringly. “He could talk the birds out of the trees.…”
Mothers of marriageable daughters drooled at the sight of him. Even Tevye’s virago wife restrained herself when Nissan was present.
Simha Meir’s decree had promptly caught Nissan’s attention. He remembered Simha Meir well from their days at his father’s table. Even then he had hated him for his arrogance, slyness, and ruthlessness. Now he was a manufacturer proposing to starve the families of Jewish workers. And although he didn’t work for him, Nissan took the matter as a personal affront and challenge. Every injustice affecting Balut was also his injustice, and he placed himself squarely on Tevye’s side and called a meeting of not only those directly involved, the workers in Haim Alter’s factory, but of all the workers of Balut.
They came by the droves to the little synagogue: the full-time workers and the seasonal, the apprentices, and even the exploited subcontractors. The tiny synagogue seethed with jostling, gesticulating men all eager to have their say.
Tevye stood at the pulpit in his faded Sabbath gabardine and paper collar. His yellow eyes flashed through his wire-rimmed glasses so that they seemed to be shooting fire.
“Solidarity, men!” he cried. “Only with solidarity will we overcome!”
Nissan unrolled a sheet of paper on which he had written in an elaborate script, and read to the audience.
“ ‘Articles of the association of the weavers of Balut,’ ” he began in a fiery voice, enunciating each word separately. “ ‘A. We the weavers who worship in the synagogue Love of Friends, in conjunction with the other weavers of Balut, do not consent to any reduction of our already miserable wages. This is equivalent to highway robbery, and we adopt a self-imposed ban against further work. No man among us shall encroach upon another man’s province and take his job during this period since such transgression is as if man were to rise up in a field and slay his brother.
“ ‘B. On Thursday nights, work shall not be performed around the clock but until midnight only. The same shall apply to Saturday nights: work shall be conducted only from the time the Sabbath is ushered out until midnight.
“ ‘C. No more than fourteen hours of work shall be performed on any weekday, from six A.M. until eight P.M. The time taken off for afternoon and evening prayers shall not be deducted from this total. In winter, when it is too dark for morning prayers to be said prior to going to work, time off shall be granted at work for such prayers, and this time too shall be considered part of the overall workday.
“ ‘D. On Fridays, work shall be stopped two hours before candle-lighting time, and on the eve of holidays, two hours before sunset, to allow the men time to clean up and prepare for the holy days.
“ ‘E. The salary for any workweek shall not be deferred to the following week but shall be paid promptly on Thursday nights so that the workers can make proper preparations for the Sabbath. The salary must also be paid promptly before holidays, for he who neglects to pay his employee on time is likened to a robber.
“ ‘F. Candles for work shall be provided by the employer at his own expense.
“ ‘G. The employers may not insult their employees since it is forbidden to degrade a fellow human being or raise a hand to him, for he who raises a hand to his fellow man may be likened to an evildoer. Nor may the full-time and seasonal workers abuse each other or, God forbid, strike each other or the apprentices, since everyone must remember his own years of degradation. Whoever is guilty of this act shall be removed from the society.
“ ‘H. On fast days, the workday shall not continue past the afternoon prayers.
“ ‘I. Likewise, on the intervening days of Passover and Succoth, the workday shall not continue past the afternoon prayers.
“ ‘J. The full-time workers, seasonal workers, and apprentices who board at their employers’ must receive food that is fattened; likewise, their coffee must contain milk and sugar, for he who does not feed his workers and demands of them work may be likened to the Egyptians who did not supply straw, yet demanded bricks.
“ ‘These ten terms have been issued on the Sabbath when the weekly portions referring to the purity of mothers and to lepers are read in the synagogue Love of Friends in Balut.’ ”
A roar went up.
“It’ll never work!”
“It will work if we stick together!”
Tevye slammed the pulpit and waited for the noise to die down, at which time he launched a sermon spiced with quotes from holy volumes, with aphorisms and homilies. He very neatly compared Balut’s workers with the Jews in Egypt who had built Pithom and Ramses. He compared the employers to the Egyptians and their flunkies to the Jewish taskmasters whom the Egyptians used to torment and beat their own brothers. With verbal dexterity he concluded that just as the Egyptians entombed the children of Israel inside the walls of Pithom and Ramses, so did the bosses of Lodz force the workers to stifle their own children inside the bundles of goods by failing to provide their offspring the milk and medicines they needed to survive.
“Words of wisdom!” voices cried. “It’s as true as the fact that it’s the Sabbath today.…”
Having won the crowd over, Tevye demanded that those present submit the ten demands to their individual bosses at the end of Sabbath and refuse to report for work until the terms were met.
Again, an uproar ensued.
“We’ll be left without bread!”
“They’ll never give in!”
“We have to approach them with goodness, not make them mad!”
“No one will do it! The first to be fired will be the instigators!”
“We’ve got wives and children to think of!”
Tevye smote the pulpit so forcefully that the crooked chandelier trembled overhead.
“That’s how the slaves in Egypt spoke, too!” he cried. “ ‘We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt,’ they said. You are worse than they because you don’t even get fish … not even bread do you get! But Moses ignored the fact that the slaves grumbled and he delivered them out of Pharaoh’s clutches.…”
The men grew ashamed and fell silent. Tevye gazed triumphantly down at them and raised his hand.
“I will go to our pharaohs and speak in the names of you all. But no one must go to the bosses behind our backs. No one must report for work. Let us not lose heart. Let us stick together. Let us maintain solidarity, and we shall overcome!”
“No one will sell you out!” voices cried.
“I demand an oath!” Tevye cried. “An oath right here in the synagogue that no one will go to work until mutually agreed, or steal another man’s job.”
An elderly weaver with a beard like a wad of dirty cotton, bloodshot eyes, and a back stooped from years of travail leaped up to the pulpit and began pounding the lectern with trembling hands. “Men! Jews may not take oaths on the Sabbath regardless of t
he reason.… It’s a mortal sin!”
Nissan the rabbi’s son sprang forward. “When life is endangered, you can even desecrate the Sabbath!” he pronounced. “Lack of bread for women and children constitutes a danger to life, and for such a thing, you can swear an oath even on the Day of Atonement!”
Tevye quickly approached the ark, took out the congregation’s scroll of Law wrapped in its mean velvet mantle, and laid it fervently on the pulpit.
“Swear on the holy scroll in this place of worship that not one of you will without the knowledge of the others report for work. This is equivalent to an oath. Give me your word!”
“We swear!” they exclaimed together.
Nineteen
SIMHA MEIR MET THE CHALLENGE flung down by the workers in his father-in-law’s factory with characteristic vigor and obstinacy.
As usual, at this time of year, Haim Alter was away visiting spas. Right after Shevuot he packed his high silk top hat and donned it the moment his train crossed the Austrian border so as not to embarrass his wife before the lordly Germans.
Simha Meir was delighted by his father-in-law’s absence. The less time Haim Alter spent in the factory, the better. And particularly so now, during the strike. But he wasn’t pleased that Dinele had accompanied her parents abroad.
His brilliant business coups, his inspired dodges and innovations that left the other merchants and brokers aghast, made no impression upon his pretty young wife. He even took time at dinner to explain to her how shrewd he had been. Chewing noisily, dribbling food, displaying all the crude table manners of the Hasid, he desperately sought her approval, but she barely understood what he was saying. The Lodz business ruses were as alien to her as he himself. All she saw was a slovenly, uncouth little man who squirmed in his chair, gulped his coffee, dunked his roll in the butter, poured on too much salt, and generally behaved like a boor. Throughout the meal he scribbled on scraps of paper, talked nonstop, then hurried back to the factory with his fly unbuttoned.
“Do you get it—do you get it, Dinele?” he persisted. “Your husband is a shrewd man, isn’t he?”
“Wipe the crumbs from your face,” was her only comment. “And don’t scribble on the tablecloth. You’ve ruined every tablecloth in the house.”
Simha Meir felt whipped, humiliated. Despite his inborn contempt for women, he wanted his wife to look up to him. His crazy, darting eyes relished her lush beauty. He wanted her badly, more so each day. But she remained distant, superior, aloof.
Not that he could find any fault with her, for she performed all her wifely duties. She saw to it that his meals were served on time, that he had clean shirts and underwear, that he brushed himself off before leaving the house. She kept after him to stop dropping cigarette ashes on his lapel. She even accompanied him to his family’s house on the holidays, but beyond that, she withheld all warmth, all tenderness. She wouldn’t even grant him a smile.
For all his apparent yeshiva-student abstraction and lack of perception, he knew precisely how she felt toward him, and this puzzled him, for he knew that all Lodz held him in esteem.
When he came upon her as she sat reading one of her novels, she jumped. “God, but you startled me!”
“What are you reading?” he asked, knowing full well what it was.
“A book,” she replied without even looking up.
The more she kept him at a distance, the more drawn he was to her. He looked hungrily at her soft white arms so dazzling against the black silk sleeves, her lovely neck, the delicious symmetry of her limbs, the womanliness that seemed to bloom from day to day. He trembled with excitement every time he came near her.
True, he never relinquished that which was his, but all he had was her body, never her love.
Spurned, he directed all his energy to business, taking but a few minutes for lunch and dinner at home and rushing right back to the factory, where he counted for something. But even the nights when he took her at will were frustrating. Although he had never been with another woman, he sensed that he was missing something.
One day Dinele came running to her mother and confessed with tears that changes were occurring in her body. Her mother laughed, hugged her, and wiped the tears from her daughter’s eyes.
“Silly,” she whispered, “is this any reason to cry? Run tell Simha Meir the good news.”
“I won’t, Mama!” Dinele cried, and clung to her mother, unable to stop the torrent of tears.
Simha Meir felt a surge of manly pride when his mother-in-law—blushing like a maiden—informed him that his wife was expecting. “Maybe now she’ll put away those silly books,” he said.
He was convinced that motherhood would rid Dinele of her silly notions and transform her into a loving, obedient wife. He would be master of the house in every sense of the word.
But Dinele remained as withdrawn as ever and centered her attention on the coming child. For hours she reclined on the divan as if eager for some manifestation of its presence.
“Mama, I feel it,” she cried. “Listen!”
“Silly, you’re only imagining it.” Her mother laughed. “It’s much too early yet.…”
“I feel it!” Dinele insisted with a blissful smile.
She didn’t develop the usual flecks and blotches of pregnant women. On the contrary, she seemed to grow even more radiant. Her blue eyes were warmer, more lustrous. A smile seemed to hover perpetually over her lips.
Her mother kept muttering incantations to drive away the evil eye. Simha Meir couldn’t keep his eyes off Dinele in her new glow. “How are you, how are you?” he blurted, seeking some pretext to lead her to the bedroom.
But she wouldn’t even allow him near her in the nights. “I’m tired,” she mumbled, and turned to the wall.
And when Shevuot came and her parents made ready to go away, she packed her things and joined them without even asking her husband. “Good-bye,” she said, neglecting to say his name and keeping her eyes averted.
He felt deeply offended and alone. He stared at her empty bed, which mocked him with its neat, unruffled covers. He was plagued by all kinds of evil notions and fantasies. A married woman alone in a strange country among so many fops and gigolos.…
During the week the work kept him busy, but the long summer Sabbaths were interminable. You couldn’t chivy the help or flimflam the brokers and sharpsters on the holy day. The holy books bored him. There was nothing to do but sit, stare, and think.
It was on one of such Sabbaths, as he sat impatiently awaiting the appearance of the first three stars signifying the end of the holy day, that Tevye the World Isn’t Lawless and Nissan the depraved came to him with their list of demands inscribed on a sheet of ruled paper torn from a notebook.
For a moment Simha Meir looked at them blankly. Balut workers weren’t welcome in the homes of their employers. To their credit, the two men didn’t enter with swagger or bravado. “A good week,” they said quietly.
Drawing deeply on his first after-Sabbath cigarette, Simha Meir didn’t respond to the greeting. “I’ll see you in the factory,” he grunted.
“We can’t go to the factory. Be good enough to read this first,” Tevye said extending the list of demands.
Simha Meir snatched the paper from his hands, glanced at it swiftly, and looked up again. “You wouldn’t be Nuske the rabbi’s boy?” he asked, studying Nissan from head to toe.
He turned to Tevye. “What’s his connection to this?”
“I’m a weaver,” Nissan said.
“So,” Simha Meir grunted, plucking at his beard. “You’ve become a worker? And what does your father say to this?”
Nissan didn’t answer. Simha Meir thrust his hands into the pockets of his silk Sabbath gabardine and said angrily, “Why are you here? You don’t work for me.”
“I come in the name of the weavers,” Nissan said. “They’ve delegated me to speak to you in their behalf.”
“But I don’t want to speak to you,” Simha Meir replied curtly. “I don’t acce
pt you as anybody’s spokesman.”
Nissan grew momentarily rattled. To begin with, he didn’t know whether to address Simha Meir in the familiar “thou” or the formal “you.” Nor had he counted on such a rebuff. He also felt overawed by the elegant house, which reminded him of the times he had gone to his rich uncles as a boy to beg a loan. Besides, Simha Meir had let the sheet of demands fall to the floor, and Nissan could only stand there and do nothing.
Tevye picked up the list, smoothed it out, and said to Simha Meir, “We weavers stand together. Read!”
Simha Meir glanced at the paper. “So,” he asked in singsong, “it’s more money and less work you want?”
“That’s it. More money and less work,” Tevye agreed.
“Well, and what if I don’t go along? What will you do then?”
“We won’t work,” Tevye said.
“And who’ll feed you?”
“We’re starving anyway. So why work besides?”
“These are your swinish tricks, Tevyele,” Simha Meir said, wagging a finger. “Yours and this boy’s. You turn the people’s heads and steal the bread from their mouths.”
He couldn’t imagine people not wanting to work. Ever since he could remember, men had stood by their looms and worked. This was as basic as getting up in the morning and expecting to see daylight. The whole thing boggled the mind.
“Wait until Thursday when there’s no money for the Sabbath. You’ll come crawling to me to take you back.”
For a whole week the factory stood idle, yet no one came to grovel at Simha Meir’s feet. Just as before the women of Balut had reviled their husbands for their inadequate earnings, so they were the first now to bemoan the good old days when the men had brought money home. “Murderers!” they shrieked at their mates, “Have pity on the little ones at least.…”
But the men held firm.
Simha Meir went around in a daze. He couldn’t sleep without the rattle of the looms. Life lost all flavor without the daily routine of work. Thursday passed, and the men still didn’t report for work, and as if out of spite, orders for goods started pouring in from all over.