The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  Gertrud read and burst into laughter. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  The mother gaped. “You’re laughing?”

  “What shall I do—cry? You should have done it years ago. But better late than never.”

  “Get out!” the mother shrieked. “Out!”

  She reread the letter, and its every sentence made the blood rush to her head anew. That this snot of a Simha Meir, this crass yeshiva boy whose every touch repelled her, should dare jilt her—the only daughter of Haim Alter!

  At first, the sense of outrage was so intense that her only wish was to run to the rabbi and grant Max the divorce. She wouldn’t carry the filthy little Hasid’s name another minute. All she wanted from him was the dowry her father had laid out, and she would never look at his filthy face again. She would leave the house and everything in it. It was not a home, but a grave where she had buried her youth. She would go back to her parents.

  But soon the feeling of hurt pride disappeared to be replaced by a sense of deep humiliation.

  Damn his soul, the boor! … But in a way he was right. If she could live with him so many years and not leave him while she was still young, then it served her right that he was discarding her now that she was past her prime. He would remarry, build himself a handsome new house, and travel with his new bride, while she, Dinele, wasted away in her parents’ home. He had used her up, drained her, exploited her beauty, and now he was tossing her aside like some old shoe in exchange for a young bride. He had suddenly decided that it would be better if they parted.…

  Better, perhaps, but for whom? Certainly not for her. She had always been a slave. First to her parents, then to her children. It was because of them that she had failed to consider her own needs, her happiness. But what did she have to gain from a divorce now?

  No, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction! Even though she despised him, she wouldn’t let him go. Why make things easy for him?

  This mood in turn was followed by a feeling of helplessness, of remorse and conscience. It was all her own fault. She had been too haughty, too disdainful. She had driven her husband from her side, scorned him, treated him with shabby contempt. She never gave him a kind word, a smile. True, she didn’t love him. She had been forced into the marriage against her will, but she should have made the best of it. Most of the women she knew had done this. Her concept of life came only from books. She hadn’t bothered to make friends. And now she was getting just what she deserved.

  It had been her, a mother’s, responsibility to make a home for the family, to assure her daughter a good match. But she had failed in this as well, and Gertrud sought her happiness outside, mostly with her uncle Yakub at the Flederbaum palace, where things were always bright and gay.

  Dinele felt a stab in her breast, thinking about it. She knew that it wasn’t so much the merriment that drew Gertrud to the Flederbaum palace as her attraction to her uncle. And this wasn’t an attraction between an uncle and a niece, but one between a man and a woman. A woman, especially a mother, wasn’t deceived in such things. That which she, Dinele, had lost in her life was now falling into her daughter’s lap.

  How unfair life could be. She, who was Yakub’s age, was old and withered, while he had remained youthful, vigorous, filled with a lust for life. And Gertrud simply swooned over him. Who knew to what it might lead? …

  And it was all her, Dinele’s, fault. She had substituted a fantasy life for the real one. But real life was not a romantic novel.

  She sent the maid for her mother. Priveh came—an elderly, imposing matron exuding the authority and dignity of age. She still wore the same wavy blond wig that she had worn all her life. Behind her trailed her husband—white-haired, aged, but with eyes still glistening youthfully. Priveh bristled when Dinele told her the news, grimaced with malice toward the whole male gender.

  “He’s lucky I didn’t catch him here, that prodigy!” she screamed. “Else I would have poked his eyes out with my umbrella.… He dares to do this to my daughter? I’m off this minute to the factory! I’ll slap him in front of everybody!”

  They barely managed to restrain her.

  “Priveshe, Priveh love!” Haim soothed her. “Don’t get yourself so worked up! Leave this to me. It’s a man’s job, after all.”

  “A man?” Priveh sneered. “You’re a dishrag, not a man!”

  She knew that he had neglected to include a community property agreement in the articles of engagement, as other fathers did. Had such a clause existed, Simha Meir would be in a fine pickle now. But when it came to such things, Haim was a complete fool, and Priveh fixed him with cold blue eyes. “Pipsqueak! Dishrag! Milksop! First he lets himself be jobbed by that Simha Meir; then his own daughter.”

  Haim stood there shamefaced and distressed. “Well, now, enough, Priveshe,” he bleated. “There is yet such a thing as justice in the world. I won’t keep silent. I’ll go to rabbis! I’ll talk to people!”

  “Run, old lady!” she mocked him, and went to the telephone. She called the Flederbaum mill, and in her best Polish that she still retained from her days at boarding school, she asked to be connected with the director.

  “Yakub dearest,” she cooed, “darling son of mine. Come over to Dinele’s right away. Simha Meir isn’t here, so you can come at once, my golden sun, my treasure. Hurry, won’t you?”

  Yakub came right over. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Priveh stuck his brother’s letter into his hand. “Here, read!” she said.

  Yakub scanned the letter rapidly. “Scum! Lowlife! Skunk!” he grunted at every sentence. When he finished, he flung the letter on the floor and dropped into an easy chair.

  “Dinele,” he said, “I’ll stick by you if it takes my entire fortune. I’ll turn it right over to my lawyer. Leave it all to me.”

  Priveh jumped to her feet and kissed Yakub on each cheek. “I knew it!” she exulted.

  She shook her head several times and observed sharply, “I could slap myself for not having listened to you, daughter. Remember when you told me you wanted Yakub instead?”

  Dinele blushed deeply, and Haim Alter bristled. “It was a fated thing, after all. A marriage is decided in heaven.…”

  The feud between the brothers Ashkenazi erupted anew, like a smoldering fire fanned high.

  On one side stood Max with his obstinacy, single-mindedness, and energy; on the other, Yakub—daring, reckless, ready to take any risk and spend his last groschen for a friend.

  Between them stood Dinele, her children and parents. They promptly moved in with her. They couldn’t bear to leave her alone in such a trying time.

  Max burned when the manager of his apartment house, little Shlomele Knaster, brought him the news. “Idiot, why didn’t you stop them?” he demanded.

  “What could I do?” Shlomele whined, his head nearly disappearing into his neck like a hen cornered by a feisty rooster.

  Max turned near apoplectic when his manager relayed the news about his brother’s frequent visits to his apartment. “Filthy seducer!” he hissed.

  He did everything to coerce his wife into a divorce. He stopped sending her money for the household expenses and for the children’s upkeep, but she never even felt the pinch.

  “Nothing but the best in the household,” Shlomele Knaster reported with some satisfaction. “I’ve looked, and I’ve seen.”

  Max’s usual tactic of starving out an opponent, which had served him so well in the past, was useless here. His brother saw to that. Nor could his lawyers accomplish anything since Yakub’s lawyers countered their every move.

  Max decided to call his wife to a rabbinical trial. This was where he shone. He was an expert in the casuistic polemics so beloved by the rabbis. But Yakub wouldn’t let Dinele answer the summons.

  “I don’t ever want to see your face here again,” he warned the beadle who had come from the rabbi.

  Max tried other tacks. He instituted eviction proceedings. Dinele grew alarmed when the bailiff s
erved her with a summons to appear in court, but Yakub had his lawyer quash the proceedings.

  When Max realized that he couldn’t get satisfaction from either the Jewish or the gentile courts, he ordered his manager to commence a campaign of harassment. They began by shutting off the water and the gas.

  Yakub sent for Shlomele Knaster and shook him by his lapels. “If you pull any more tricks, I’ll beat you with a crop!” he threatened.

  Shlomele’s tiny head retreated within his collar. “Is it my fault?” he squeaked. “I only do what I’m told.… I’ve got a wife and children to think of.…”

  He reported every detail to his employer when he brought him the rent. Max thoughtfully scratched the top of his head.

  “Tell me, Shlomele,” he asked, “what shape are the floors in on the second floor above my apartment?”

  “In very good shape,” Shlomele replied.

  “No, you idiot, they’re in terrible shape. Barely holding up.”

  “In terrible shape. Barely holding up,” Shlomele repeated obediently.

  “First thing tomorrow, they’ve got to be ripped out.”

  “First thing tomorrow,” Shlomele agreed.

  “Once they’re ripped out, you’ll find other work for the men.”

  “I’ll find other work,” Shlomele echoed.

  “And you won’t say a word in the meantime. You won’t repeat what I’m telling you even to your wife.”

  “Not a word,” Shlomele promised, and hurried home to tell his wife everything his boss had just told him.

  The very next morning the workers began ripping out the floors above Dinele’s apartment. The noise was beyond endurance.

  Priveh cornered the tiny manager and slapped him soundly. The little man rubbed his cheek and whined, “Is it my fault? I do what I’m told. I got a wife and children to think of.…”

  A few days later workmen showed up at the apartment door to remove the ovens and replaster the walls. Priveh wouldn’t let them in, but they wouldn’t be dissuaded. They pounded on the door, demanding to be allowed inside.

  Next, Shlomele rented the apartment next door to a turner, where the sounds of the lathes went on from dawn to midnight.

  Priveh threatened to go to the factory and claw out Simha Meir’s eyes. Despite all the provocations, Yakub wouldn’t let Dinele move out.

  “I’ll squash you like a bedbug!” he threatened Shlomele Knaster.

  The campaign went on. Dinele lay awake nights, weeping into her pillow. She dozed off only with the first factory whistles at dawn.

  Forty-Three

  AMONG THE STORE SHINGLES depicting yellow lions looking more like tomcats, rigid dandies with orange faces, slim canes in hand and corpulent brides with bouquets in their swollen red paws, hung huge posters proclaiming martial law in the city of Lodz.

  The orders, signed by Brigadier General Konitzin, forbade citizens to congregate in the street, to hold meetings, to violate curfew, to disseminate malicious rumors. Anyone disobeying the law was subject to harsh punishment, including execution.

  Next to these notices—often obliterating them—hung proclamations calling on the inhabitants to demonstrate in the streets, to strike and protest. Armed soldiers, directed by the police commissaries and their assistants, roamed the streets, driving, beating, arresting people at random. Cossacks stood in police station courtyards, flogging those forced to run the gauntlet.

  The most vicious of the lot was one Yurgoff, a rangy assistant commissary with a cap pulled down low over his eyes and a retinue of bullies and bodyguards. From beneath his lowered visor he sniffed out revolutionaries like a bloodhound.

  Those arrested were no longer taken to the Dluga Street jail, which was filled to overflowing, but housed in the military chapel that had been transformed into a temporary prison. But before the prisoners made it there, Assistant Commissary Yurgoff beat them until they were half dead. When Yurgoff and his Cossacks patrolled the streets, people rushed to get inside.

  The unionist Samson, a house painter whom people had nicknamed Prince Samson for his opulent wardrobe and curled black mustache, decided that Yurgoff had to go and asked his representative to talk to the committee for permission to proceed. The representative met with the committee, but when they dawdled, Prince Samson grew impatient and decided to go ahead on his own.

  He had a friend who was a chemistry student make him a bomb. He dressed in his most elaborate outfit, waxed his mustache, packed the bomb in a box which might have contained bonbons, and tied it with a red ribbon. Carrying the box in one hand and a bouquet in the other, he strolled along the street apparently on his way to visit a lady. Women gazed at him enviously; soldiers and policemen smiled indulgently.

  When he reached the corner where Assistant Commissary Yurgoff lounged with his gang, Prince Samson carefully calculated the distance, then flung the package at the assistant commissary’s feet.

  Yurgoff was blown to bits. One of his legs still encased in its patent-leather boot was later found on the roof of a nearby building.

  In response, units of soldiers sprayed the streets with bullets. When they finished, they raised their rifles and systematically shot up all the windows.

  The hospitals were filled with the wounded, who had to be bedded down on floors and in corridors. The dead were laid out in rows at the morgue. The police didn’t allow anyone inside to identify close ones and remove them for burial.

  Inside the barracks, the soldiers cleaned their rifles and polished their boots for the funeral of Assistant Commissary Yurgoff. Members of the military band shined their instruments and practiced the funeral dirge. When the sun set, the people were confined to their homes.

  But Lodz didn’t sleep. In Balut the women and children dragged their pallets out into the courtyards to escape the vermin and stretched out on any available space—on stoops, wagons, drays, barrows.

  The revolutionaries quickly prepared proclamations summoning the people to the morgue to claim the bodies of their comrades so that they might be buried with honor and dignity.

  The agitators were everywhere, calling for strikes and solidarity. When the factory whistles sounded the following morning, no one heeded their call. By the tens of thousands, men, women and children streamed through the streets, shouting, milling, marching. All the stores were shuttered; all the workshops were idle; all traffic was halted.

  Row by row, stride by stride, they marched. Like a spring torrent overflowing its banks and inundating everything around it, they poured through the narrow city streets with slow, deliberate stride, red banners fluttering, on their lips a song:

  The butchers shed the workers’ blood,

  The people suffers endless pain.

  But judgment day is not far off,

  And we will be the judges then—

  From every gate and door, hordes of people raced to join the ever-widening stream that now reached Piotrkow Street, the symbol of Lodz’s wealth and authority.

  “Close the stores! Off with the hats!” the marchers cried.

  At the next corner the mob encountered a mounted officer with a drawn sword. Behind him stood a solid wall of soldiers, bayonets gleaming in the sun and playfully reflecting brilliant particles of light.

  “Back!” the officer roared.

  No one moved.

  “Back, or we fire!”

  Still, no one stirred.

  “Fire!” the officer cried.

  A volley of gunfire shattered the air.

  The mass swayed momentarily like a field of grain under swinging scythes, but soon a hail of rocks and bullets began to rain upon the soldiers. The officer pointed his sword, but at that moment a rock struck him in the head and unhorsed him. The soldiers fell back, and the human wave pushed forward.

  “Barricades! Set up barricades!” voices cried.

  The workers toppled lampposts, loosened cobblestones, pulled signs and doors from shops. They stopped wagons and carriages, unhitched the horses, overturned the vehicles, and used
them to fortify the barricades. The teamsters protested loudly, but no one listened.

  Men and boys raced inside courtyards and commandeered boards, iron bars, tables, benches. A wagon carrying flour came by. The people seized the sacks of flour and used them to plug up holes in the barricades.

  Like ants around a hill, they scampered about building, molding, reinforcing. Even streetcars were overturned, and rails were torn loose. The sound of heavy metal crashing muffled the groans of the wounded and the wails of those mourning the dead.

  Lodz was paralyzed. All doors and gates were locked. The affluent people got out of town or took cover, and the city was left to the poor and the deprived.

  They took up positions behind the barricades. Girls brought food from home to their fathers and brothers; boys collected rocks and boards. It was deathly still in the city but for an occasional shot. Night fell, but no fires were lit.

  Along with thousands of others, Tevye, Nissan, and Bashke waited. The lovely June night hovered so bright and clear that no smoke or fire could dim its splendor. A pale moon cast a milky light. Stars winked, twinkled, played tag and hide-and-seek. A gentle breeze carried the scents of grass, acacia blossoms, and pine sap. It ruffled the people’s hair and clothing.

  Bashke looked up at the sky, which she seldom saw through the polluted mist that covered Lodz, and she inhaled the heavenly scents. “Ah, to die like this,” she breathed, and closed her eyes.

  “No, Bashke, we must live,” Nissan said, and took her hand.

  She returned his grip and felt currents stream from his hand into hers and all through her body. “Comrade Nissan, why must we deny ourselves happiness? Are we not entitled to it, too?” she asked.

  “Yes, Bashke, but only after our struggle is won. Only then can we enjoy personal happiness.”

  “Will we live to see it?”

  “We must have faith,” he said solemnly.

  Simultaneously with the morning star the Cossacks came. Orders echoed through the predawn air.

  “Fix bayonets—Charge!”