The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  The soldiers advanced with bayonets fixed.

  “Comrades, let them have it!” voices cried behind the barricades.

  A hail of rocks poured down on the advancing troops, and they wavered.

  An officer rallied the troops. “Fire at will!” he cried.

  The struggle raged a full day. The barricades held fast against the bullets. By afternoon the soldiers had taken up positions on adjoining rooftops and balconies and sprayed the workers from above. The workers scattered in panic.

  “Comrades, stand fast!” their leaders implored.

  The stampede halted, but as the rain of bullets resumed from above, the mass broke once more. Bashke sprang on top of a barrel and sang:

  Sing out, sing out our anthem high,

  Our flag flutters above the thrones!

  And as she sang, she waved the red banner to and fro.

  The men grew ashamed, and with resounding voices they picked up the song.

  Two soldiers lounged on a rooftop looking down on the girl wrapped in the red flag.

  “Bet you can’t pop her,” the taller one said.

  “A cinch,” the other said.

  “What’ll you bet?”

  “A butt?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  The short soldier sighted carefully and gently squeezed the trigger.

  His companion grimaced, took a cigarette from his cap and passed it over.

  Nissan and Tevye held the girl aloft on their shoulders. Her blood deepened the red of the flag.

  Forty-Four

  OUTSIDE FLEDERBAUM HOSPITAL, a bowed, brooding Tevye paced frantically, periodically pulling his skinny neck away from the sweaty paper collar. His bloodshot, febrile eyes kept straying toward the massive hospital gates and probed the draped upstairs windows.

  They wouldn’t let him inside to see his Bashke. Two orderlies in white smocks had carried her inside, then slammed the door in his face. “Saturday is visiting day. No visits on weekdays,” they snapped.

  Like a dog banished from the house, he scratched and clawed to get back in. “Let me in!” he whined unreasonably like a child unable to make sense of things. “She’s my daughter, after all!”

  He walked all around the building, seeking some means of entry. Finding none, he came back to the gate, waiting for it to open in order to launch a fresh assault upon it. But the beet-faced, droopy-mustached guard blocked his way. “Stay out!” he growled.

  Tevye thrust a coin into his hand. “Let me in, my friend,” he pleaded in uncharacteristic fashion. “That’s my daughter in there.”

  The Pole kept the coin, but he wouldn’t relent. “It’s too hectic inside,” he explained. “I got strict orders to let no one in.”

  The hospital gate opened frequently as the ambulances kept arriving with blasts of the horn and orderlies in bloodstained smocks brought in the fresh wounded. At the same time black-clad Burial Society members kept taking out corpses in hearses drawn by equally black-clad horses. Clusters of people rushed the hearses with shrieks and laments, but the Burial Society men wouldn’t stop for the mourners, who were mostly paupers and not apt to hand out decent tips.

  Keening women with wigs askew and with swollen eyes raced after the hearses that bounced and rattled over the cobblestones. The wounded were brought to the hospital on foot, in droshkies, or assisted by armed policemen. Anxious men, women, and children milled around the hospital gates, wringing their hands and lamenting.

  Tevye didn’t leave the hospital grounds to eat or sleep. His wife, Keila, cursed at him to come home, but he wouldn’t. He tried to bribe hospital workers to check on his daughter’s condition. He buttonholed arriving and departing physicians for some news. They repulsed him brusquely, but he wouldn’t give up. The stalwart revolutionary had suddenly been transformed into a distraught Jewish father.

  Finally, a doctor took pity on him. “It looks bad,” he said. “The bullet pierced a lung.”

  Tevye felt his heart lurch. He approached every hospital employee he could find. He trailed after the guard. He followed the doctors, pleading, urging, begging until they finally relented, and flouting the rules, they let him in.

  Inside the dim ward veiled in nocturnal shadows, the beds stood tightly wedged together. Screams of pain and anguish issued from all over. The nurses and orderlies kept out of sight as the sick and wounded cried for help.

  “Quiet!” the attendants admonished them. “You’re not the only one sick here.…”

  Elderly women sighed. “Do they care about the patients then? They’re too busy playing around with the interns. Oy, it’s bitter to be a pauper!”

  Bashke lay in bed gasping for breath. “Air!” she cried. “A little air!”

  Tevye took her hand. “Bashke, child.… Tell me what I can do for you!”

  “Air,” she panted. “I can’t breathe.…”

  Tevye ran to the nurses and orderlies. “Do something, dear people,” he begged.

  “Talk to the doctor,” they replied, looking bored.

  When the doctor finally showed up, he wasn’t of any more help. He felt the patient’s pulse, grimaced, and walked away as surly as before.

  “Open the window,” he said to no one in particular. “And you,” he said, turning to Tevye, “get out of here! This is a hospital. We don’t need outsiders to tell us our business.…”

  Tevye knelt at Bashke’s bed. If it were possible, he would have expelled the air from his own lungs to let her breathe.

  “Daughter,” he moaned. “Tell me—what can I do for you!”

  She stroked his hand feebly and whispered, “Daddy.…”

  But soon she began gasping again like a fish out of water. “I’m choking! Help me!”

  She clawed at her bedding, tore her gown, pulled the hair from her head. Tevye shrieked until the attendants came running. They gave Bashke an injection and threw Tevye out of the hospital.

  The whole night he milled about outside. By dawn an orderly came to fetch him. Bashke lay bathed in sweat. Tevye touched her hand. It was cold and limp. The orderly took her pulse and shook his head. She no longer screamed, merely breathed shallowly. Her teeth began to chatter; her eyes glazed and rolled upward. She took a last look at her father and lay still.

  Tevye sent up a shriek. “People, help!”

  The orderly strolled over and took his arm. “It’s all over, mister.”

  Tevye collapsed on the bed and wouldn’t let anyone come near his daughter’s body. They dragged him away by force. By the time he tore loose the bed was already empty with merely an indentation to indicate that a person had just lain there.

  Bent almost double, Tevye went to the hospital morgue, resisting all efforts of the guards to eject him. He spent the night sitting over his daughter’s corpse. In the morning friends came to comfort him, but he didn’t even hear them.

  The funeral was lavish. The committee ordered the factories to close, and thousands of workers marched in the cortege. The body was draped in a red banner, and workers carried elaborate wreaths. Stores along the funeral route were closed. Passersby bared their heads. Spectators crowded sidewalks and balconies.

  Tevye walked as if in a daze. He felt remote and hostile to everything and everyone. He sensed nothing but his personal loss. Bashke’s dying glance darkened his memory.

  Speeches were held at the cemetery, and songs were sung. Tevye couldn’t bear any of it, not the choir, not the oratory. What did all this have to do with his Bashke? … He was furious when a member of the committee who had never met Bashke rose to deliver the eulogy.

  Imposing with his snapping curls, black eyes, and trim beard, the speaker used his voice like a trained instrument, now raising it dramatically, now lowering it so that everyone was forced to lean forward. His tone ranged from bathos to biting sarcasm as he expertly manipulated his audience. At the same time he studied the faces intently to ascertain what impression his words were evoking.

  As a final theatrical gesture, he took the girl’s bl
oodstained blouse and raised it high. “On the blood of our martyred comrade, we vow our revenge!” he thundered.

  This was too much for Tevye. He pushed his way forward, seized the blouse, and tucked it beneath his jacket. “Leave me alone!” he shrieked at the people who tried to restrain him.

  The crowd was disappointed. The mood had been shattered. Tevye squatted on the freshly filled grave and gazed about him with the eyes of a madman. Standing next to him, silent and subdued, was Nissan.

  Birds twittered, hopped, sang. From afar a factory whistle blew insistently.

  Forty-Five

  LODZ REVIVED. The war in the Far East had ended, and the far-flung markets of Russia had opened again. Orders came pouring in, and the factories worked feverishly to catch up.

  All strikes and protests had ended as well. Soldiers who had been so thoroughly trounced by the slant-eyed heathens turned their attention to easier adversaries, the true enemies of the tsar—Jews, students, and revolutionaries. Authority was stripped from the police and turned over to military commanders who had done such an outstanding job at the front. In the cities the police assembled the cream of the underworld in teahouses, where, beneath idealized portraits of Nikolai and Aleksandra, commissaries and priests exhorted thugs, drunks, and rapists to rob, maim, and kill for Christ. Bearded monks with crosses and nuns with candles, tough barkeepers and hardened prostitutes, drunks and lunatics and assorted riffraff paraded through streets, bellowing hymns and assaulting the residents of Jewish quarters.

  In Lithuania and in White Russia, armed troops assisted the rioters in their pogroms. With overwhelming force, they routed the members of the Jewish self-defense corps. Loyal Russians were transported to Poland to build railroads and to incite local residents (who needed little encouragement) against the enemies of the church and of the Little Father, Nikolai II. The prisons spilled over with rebels and malcontents. The courts-martial worked day and night to keep up. Gallows were erected overnight in prison courtyards. Each passenger train included its share of barred convict cars filled to capacity with exiles to Siberia.

  In cities and towns, Jews fasted, recited special prayers, collected funds for the newly widowed and orphaned. Rabbis and preachers regained the pulpits from the unionists. They exhorted Jews to walk in the path of righteousness, to perform good deeds and submit to lawful authority.

  Parents, too, regained authority over their offspring. Diehard unionists still put up occasional proclamations, but these no longer created a stir. Young people from affluent homes cast aside childish fantasies of a better world and focused their energies on obtaining an education and building careers. Others married and set up businesses. Girls found husbands or set up house with ex-revolutionaries. Many emigrated to America and Argentina. The revolutionary leaders went into exile in Switzerland, where they waged heated debates in coffeehouses. Others languished in prisons and in Siberia.

  Lodz was back in full swing. The demand for goods in Russia was insatiable. Lodz industrialists held balls for military commanders during which they managed to lose money to them at cards. They collected enormous tributes for the city commandant, General Konitzin, and made him a present of a magnificent carriage and team so that he could maintain law and order in the city and keep the factories running. The workers no longer dared utter a word in protest. Nightclubs and cabarets did sensational business as the city’s elite gambled, caroused, and enjoyed life to the hilt.

  Among those who emerged from the crisis unscathed was Max Ashkenazi. Despite everything Yakub did to help Dinele, Max triumphed in the end. As usual, he had been the more persistent and persevering, while Yakub, just as typically, lost interest after the initial skirmishes.

  As Max had anticipated right along, Dinele was too jejune to hold out for long, and she agreed to the divorce. But part of her condition was that Max pay her the sum of 100,000 rubles. He did so with a heavy heart and, in return, obtained her written promise to make no additional financial demands upon him.

  With heads bowed, the husband and wife waited for the rabbi to conclude the ceremony.

  “Will this never end already, dear God?” Dinele whispered to her mother as the repeated questions and answers constituting the ritual continued.

  “A divorce is no trifle,” the rabbi admonished her. “The holy Torah itself says so.”

  In the cab she sobbed in her mother’s arms. “What did I do to deserve such a life? For what sins do I suffer so?”

  Priveh consoled her. “You’ll marry again, daughter, and you’ll live a happy life. With the fortune you’ve got, you can do very well, the evil eye spare you. You’re still pretty as a picture … a blooming rose.…”

  The whole time at the rabbi’s Dinele never glanced at Max once, but he kept looking at her. Without meaning to, he compared her delicate pale skin, sad blue eyes, and shapely figure with Widow Margulit’s ungainly bulk and pebbly complexion, and he felt a terrible sense of loss. But as usual, he found compensations. He pictured the millions that would come his way and allow him to buy control of the Huntze firm, and this helped assuage some of his sorrow.

  Lodz had been right in its prediction that the affair between Crazy Yanka and Yakub Ashkenazi would last from Monday to Thursday. It ended as quickly as it had begun. Nevertheless, Yakub stayed on in the palace and retained his position at the mill. In fact, he and Yanka remained good friends, even though the relationship was no longer erotic. Her new flame was a tenor who had appeared briefly with the Warsaw Opera and whose career Yanka had decided to sponsor. It was the swarthy Italian with whom she necked openly in public now.

  Yakub, too, found a new playmate to while away his time—his brother’s daughter, Gertrud. She no longer felt obliged to hide her love for her uncle. Following her parents’ divorce, she declared her total independence and snuggled up to Yakub in his carriage, shrieking with a laughter that rang somewhat hysterically.

  Her grandparents were busy trying to marry her off, just as they were their daughter. They had already found a very respectable man for Dinele, a widower with a successful business, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was determined to live out her life alone. For all her reluctance, her parents felt that with time she would change her mind. They were riddled with guilt and anxious to rectify the wrong they had done her. The only drawback was Gertrud. It wouldn’t do for a mother to marry first, and Haim Alter kept talking to matchmakers about finding a fine young business prospect for his granddaughter.

  As usual, Priveh scoffed at him. “With the kind of taste you have, you must think we’re back in the Middle Ages. Leave this to me. I’ll find her a modern type of fellow she could respond to. With ten thousand rubles’ dowry, I might even get her a doctor.”

  But Gertrud wouldn’t hear of her grandfather’s businessmen or her grandmother’s doctors. “How archaic!” she shrieked with laughter.

  “Do you already have someone?” Priveh asked slyly. “Are you in love, you little shiksa?”

  “I’ll say!” the girl cried, whirling her grandmother around the house.

  No less willful than her father, she would let nothing stand in her way, and she put all her energy into breaking down her uncle’s defenses. His feelings for his niece were ambivalent.

  When she first stopped playing the role of the affectionate niece and declared herself openly, he grew somewhat afraid of her. She bore a striking resemblance to the young Dinele, except for her lips, which were redder, thicker, and somewhat petulant. Her teeth showed in a perpetual half smirk which captured her father’s greed and need to dominate. Men found these lips a huge attraction. But Yakub was taken aback by her aggressiveness.

  “Stop it, Gertrud!” he said, pushing her away. “Little girls mustn’t act so silly.…”

  “I’m not a little girl!” she protested. “And I know that you love me, too!”

  Yakub tried to make a joke of the whole thing, but this served only to arouse her all the more.

  “I won’t be patronized! Treat me like a woman!�
� she exclaimed, stamping her foot in anger.

  A half-mad passion reflected from her blazing eyes, and Yakub grew alarmed. He knew raw lust when he saw it. This was no infatuated child, but a yearning, ripe woman demanding her due, and he wavered. He was drawn to her—no doubt about it—but he didn’t dare consider the consequences. How would he ever face Dinele again? And he began avoiding Gertrud, who pursued him with a persistence that was frightening.

  “I love you, Kubush.” She sighed, employing her favorite pet name for him. “Marry me!”

  Yakub pushed her away. “Don’t talk nonsense, child. Someone might hear.”

  “Who cares?”

  “I could be your father.”

  “You can be my husband!”

  “You’re crazy! You must marry someone your own age!”

  “I’m a woman, and I know what I want!” she insisted.

  When Yakub saw that he was getting nowhere, he tried appealing to her filial sensibilities. “We couldn’t do this to your mother. It would be a terrible blow to her. Especially now.”

  “Whose fault is it that she messed up her own life?”

  “That’s no way to talk about your mother,” he reprimanded her. “You’re your father all over. Simha Meir to a T.…”

  Gertrud burst out crying. “Why do you torture me so? Is it my fault I love you and want your love? Don’t I have the right to this?”

  She fell to her knees before him and kissed his hands. “Hold me!” she pleaded ardently. “Kiss me! Love me!”

  She sank her teeth into his neck, and her sharp nails dug into his skin. “Do with me what you will!” she moaned. “Forget who I am, what I am.… See me only as a woman who loves you and whom you love … my lover, my master, my king!”

  She appealed directly to her mother. “Mommy, I know that I haven’t been good to you, but give me your consent. Do it for me, for your little Gertrud. I can’t live without him!”

  Dinele was shocked, horrified. Not that it was totally unexpected. She had watched it coming for a long time with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. Now that it was out in the open, she sat as if petrified while her daughter kissed her, hugged her, urged her.