by I. J. Singer
The train stopped in mid-field. “Everybody out!” the German conductors cried. “It’s only a few kilometers to Lapy. This is as far as we go.”
Everyone got out. In front of a small sentry box stood a soldier with a Polish eagle fixed to his cap. A linen streamer strung between two trees bid the travelers welcome to free Polish soil. The gentile passengers broke into cheers. Women dropped to their knees and kissed the ground. One ran up to the sentry and slobbered over his red, chapped hands. “Jesus!” she cried, hugging the youth. “A Polish soldier at last!”
Just then an elderly Jew started screaming for help. From all sides youthful fists pounded his aged skull amid coarse laughter.
“We’re home all right,” Yakub observed dryly.
The brothers Ashkenazi walked the few kilometers across a sandy plain, their baggage carried by a peasant in a blue, drooping cap. At the station over which the red and white flag fluttered, armed gendarmes rattled the long swords they had only recently acquired and preened with pride.
“The Poles can go. Jews and Bolsheviks to one side!” a flaxen-mustached gendarme cried.
The station, with its huge Polish eagle, portraits of generals, small flags adorned with pine needle garlands, and the inevitable Jesus languishing on his cross, was jammed with passengers and soldiers. At a bare wooden table sat a distraught man in an unbuttoned shirt, pounding his fists against his hairy chest.
“Here, cut open my heart and look inside!” he cried. “I swear on our Lord Jesus and His sacred wounds that I’m no Bolshevik! I’m running away from them! I’ve escaped from Siberia but I lost my papers along the way.…”
“We know all about you, brother,” a bowlegged gendarme with a rabid dog’s face sneered. “We got information that you were a commissar under the Bolsheviks. We’ll beat all that nonsense out of you.…” He raised his pistol and waved it over the other’s head.
Max felt his heart sink. He glanced at Yakub, who sat pale but immobile, awaiting their turn. Presently a soldier escorted them to the table.
“Now we’re going to have some fun,” he confided to the other passengers along the way. “It’s the Jews’ turn now!”
The bowlegged gendarme turned to the brothers. “And where are you two Moshes coming from?” he asked, baring yellow fangs.
Yakub took out their papers and laid them out on the table. The gendarme didn’t even glance at them. “Strip!” he barked.
The brothers looked at each other dumbfounded. They were in the middle of a crowd. Besides, there was a woman in uniform sitting at the table. The gendarme shrieked at a soldier, “Strip them down to their skin! Shake them down for anything at all!”
The soldier began to tear off the brothers’ clothes as the people looked on expectantly. A pimpled stripling of a lieutenant, with skinny legs, a pointed nose, a pencil mustache, and a hussar jacket draped over one shoulder, sidled over to the table. Yakub pushed the soldier aside and turned to the officer. “Lieutenant, my brother and I are manufacturers and residents of Lodz. I beseech your protection!”
The lieutenant silently took off his hussar jacket and cap, revealing a bristly crew cut. He gazed up at the tall Jew through narrowed gray eyes. “So? Manufacturers and residents of Lodz?” he repeated. “Not Bolsheviks then?”
“God forbid, Lieutenant!” Max interjected. “I’ve just been saved from the hands of the Cheka. Here is proof.…”
“Well, we’ll see,” the lieutenant said. “Since you’re no Bolshevik, you wouldn’t mind shouting, ‘Death to Leibush Trotsky.’ ”
“Death to him indeed,” Max said with a smile.
“I said, ‘Shout it!’ ” the lieutenant cried, pounding the table.
“Death to Trotsky!” Max croaked.
“Louder!” the officer insisted.
Max raised his voice, but the lieutenant still wasn’t satisfied. “Louder, you damn Jew!” he seethed, turning purple. “Louder, or I’ll give you something to shout about.…”
Max screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Now shout, ‘Death to all the Leibushes!’ ” the lieutenant dictated.
Drenched in sweat, Max only panted heavily. The lieutenant struck him across the face with a riding crop. “Shout, before I skin you alive!”
Yakub strained toward the table, but several gendarmes restrained him.
“Shout!” the lieutenant bellowed.
Max looked around at the faces glaring hate all around him. “Death to all the Leibushes!” he cried, repeating it until he couldn’t go on.
“Good,” the officer said. “And now give us a dance, manufacturer and resident of Lodz. A nice little dance for our lads. Step lively now!”
Yakub strained to tear free. “No, Max!” he cried.
Max ignored him. He gazed at his tormentors as one might face a pack of mad dogs and began to whirl awkwardly in a circle.
“Faster! Livelier!” the gentiles cried, clapping their hands in accompaniment.
Max spun until his legs gave out and he collapsed.
“Leave him there, and bring the other one,” the lieutenant ordered.
The gendarmes led Yakub to the table. He stood there pale but unflinching.
“Now it’s your turn. Dance!” the officer ordered.
Yakub didn’t move.
The lieutenant flushed. He was aware of his men watching the contest of wills. After a while he rose from place and seized Yakub by the beard. “Dance!” he shrieked. “Dance, you damn Jew!”
At that moment Yakub tore loose and slapped the gawky youth so hard that he fell back and struck his head against the wall.
For a moment no one moved. Then the uniformed woman ran up and helped the dazed officer to his feet. Max crawled toward his brother, standing alone in the center of the room. “Yakub!” he cried. “Yakub!”
The lieutenant wiped his flaming cheek and with a trembling hand began to grope at his holster. He had to tug the snap several times until he got the pistol free. “Stand aside!” he cried, then emptied the pistol into Yakub’s body.
“My coat and cap!” the lieutenant screamed, trying to keep his voice from cracking.
Max clutched his brother’s head with both hands. “Why did you do it?” he screamed, struggling to raise him from the ground. A trickle of warm blood ran down Yakub’s face and into his dyed beard.
From his perch above, Jesus gazed down with a knowing, long-suffering expression.
Sixty-Seven
FOR THE ENTIRE SEVEN DAYS OF MOURNING that Max Ashkenazi observed for his brother, his brain never ceased churning. He had been taken directly from the funeral to Gertrud’s house, where father and daughter now sat in the living room with mirrors draped and chandeliers covered with crepe and mourned their loss together.
On the first day of mourning Max Ashkenazi took no food or drink. Dinele brought him milk to keep up his strength, but he wouldn’t accept it. He only drew on his cigars and dropped the ashes on his unshod feet. He spoke to no one and read from the Book of Job:
Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night wherein it was said:
“A man-child is brought forth”
… Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready to rouse up their mourning.
Gertrud leaned over the book and gazed at the Hebrew letters that she couldn’t make out but that managed to reflect her sorrow. Max didn’t comfort her. He had nothing to say to the daughter to whom he had brought only misery. The only time he had crossed her threshold was after a tragedy. He had brought only death to those who had forgiven him and sought to save him.
He buried his eyes in the book to avoid facing those he had wronged all his life. His present wife sat beside him and with her heavy, half-paralyzed hand tried to comfort him, but he ignored her as well.
“Is there not a time of service to man upon earth?” he read. “And are not his days like the days of a hireling? …”
On the second day of mourning people came to commiserate
with Max Ashkenazi. They forgot whatever wrongs he had done them in the past and came to him, the former King of Lodz, now demoted to a tiny bench instead of a throne. They brought him news of the city, but he had no urge to listen. What did he care about such things? His life was forfeit. He was old, spent, broken. He had planned a new life in the bosom of his family, but God had deemed it otherwise. At the threshold of this new life He had driven him off like a leprous dog trying to enter a house.…
Apparently he was fated to bring only grief to those he loved. As one sowed, so did one reap. No, there was no place for him in the world. His fate was sealed. Somehow he would live out the few years left him. How much longer could he last, after all? Why even think of starting anew? He had never had any great needs. He certainly needed nothing now. A crust of bread, clothes on his back, a place to lay his head. The sages were right. There was no difference between man and beast. Each bore his own burden. Man struggled and strained until he fell in his tracks, whereupon the others trod over him, later to fall themselves.
On the third day of mourning Max Ashkenazi ceased brooding on the folly of life and considered such things as duty, obligation. He dared not renounce his responsibilities. Even if he himself required nothing, there were others to consider—Gertrud, Little Privehle, Dinele, Ignatz, his elderly wife.… He couldn’t leave them to fate. He had to be their protector, their provider. He had to take himself in hand and use his remaining powers to maintain them in comfort and security. In olden days when a man died, it fell upon his brother to care for his family. This was a good custom. It honored the life of the deceased.
No, the House of Ashkenazi couldn’t be permitted to topple. He, Max, would see to that. He would restore it and correct all his past wrongs … pay back his loved ones for all the misfortunes he had heaped upon them.
He listened now to the visitors who came to pay condolence calls and paid attention to their comments regarding the state of business in the city. He still took no part in their discussions, but he listened. Not that he had any more interest in a country which had treated him so abominably and so viciously murdered his flesh and blood. No money on earth could tempt him to remain in a place where a Jew was considered something less than dirt, something to be squashed underfoot like vermin. He would go to the Land of Israel, as his Zionist friends advised. He no longer considered them wild-eyed visionaries for wanting to transform Jewish merchants into peasants. He realized that it was he who had been wrong. Why build factories and mansions so that others could snatch them away at will? He would liquidate everything at whatever cost and take the entire family to the Jewish homeland. He would sit in his vineyard among his own kind and fear no one. His life would be secure, serene. He would eat the bread of his own fields, drink the milk of his own cows. The moment he concluded the period of mourning, he would flee from those who thirsted for Jewish blood.
His visitors praised his decision. “Words of wisdom,” they said. “If you lead the way, Mr. Ashkenazi, half of Lodz will follow.…”
On the fourth day of mourning Max Ashkenazi abandoned his plan to plant vineyards and work the land. This was a task for young people who knew no other skills, but it hardly befitted a man his age to become a peasant. What good could come of it? The earnings were minimal. You needed the cooperation of heaven. You based your livelihood on the sun, the wind, the rain, every whim of nature. You also needed physical strength. Didn’t God say, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread”? He, Ashkenazi, no longer had the strength for this.…
Besides, it behooved every man to do what he knew best. No, tilling the soil in the Land of Israel wouldn’t benefit him or the Jews. He could contribute more by creating something big there. He would transport his factories there. He had done it before; he could do it again.… A nation couldn’t exist on only what it grew. The wealth of a nation lay in its industry, and he, Ashkenazi, would establish an industry there, just as he had in Lodz and later in Russia. He would put up factories in the Holy Land. He would provide jobs for thousands of Jews and sell the goods they produced throughout the world, thus bringing valuable capital into the country. Instead of being King of Lodz, he would be King of Israel.…
Such an effort was certainly worthwhile. He would show the gentiles what Jews were capable of. What had Lodz itself been but an empty village not too long ago? People with energy had transformed it into a world-renowned center of industry and trade. Now it was time to do something for Jews, as Jacob said to Laban: “And now when shall I provide for mine own house also?”
On the fifth day of mourning Max Ashkenazi’s fervor to expedite his new plan cooled somewhat, to be replaced by calm, studied reflection. A man was a fool to fly off half-cocked, to act on the spur of the moment. A man of reason considered carefully before taking such an important step. Better to test the water ten times than plunge in recklessly once. To establish an industry in the Land of the Ancestors was surely a noble gesture, a boon for Jewishness, but to build castles in the air was plainly stupid. It wasn’t that difficult to put up one factory or many. The main thing was to have an outlet for the goods these factories produced. Such markets had to be created. True, Lodz, too, had once been a sandy waste, but it had been part of a country that desperately needed goods. The Russian Empire had a population in the hundreds of millions. And what was Israel? A land of penniless Arabs who dressed in rags and didn’t need textiles. Nor would it be easy to compete with the English. One Englishman could outsell ten Jews. As for the Jews who lived in the Land of Israel, they were few in number and scholars for the main part. With Jews, generally, it was good to enjoy a Sabbath meal, but not to do business.
And what about the water there? Was it the right kind for scouring the goods? There were all kinds of other obstacles, too. It was easy enough to launch an enterprise; it was quite a problem to sustain it. All in all, the effort presented enormous difficulties. Israel was a land that subsisted on charity, on donations from abroad. If things turned out badly there, the Jews themselves would turn on him.
On the sixth day of mourning Max Ashkenazi listened intently to the merchants and manufacturers who came to him. They all were eager to know if he would be reopening his factory, when he would be doing this and what kinds of goods he planned to produce. The world had begun to recover from the effects of the war. Along with the first swallows of spring the traveling salesmen, buyers, and commission agents had made their appearance in Lodz. New markets had opened up in the neighboring agrarian nations, and all eyes were on Max Ashkenazi, the former King of Lodz. Like children playing follow-the-leader, the merchants and manufacturers looked to him to show the way. “If you take the first step, we’ll go along,” they told him.
On the seventh and last day of mourning Max Ashkenazi rose from his bench and began to pace through his daughter’s living room.
He’d be damned if he’d give in! Just because they, the Poles, wanted to push him out, he would spite them and stay. A plague take them! He had slaved to build his fortune while they caroused with their cards and their women. He had sacrificed his personal happiness, and now they thought they could simply walk in and gather the fruits of his labor? … He’d be damned if he’d hand it all over to them on a silver platter! There was no such thing as getting something for nothing in this world.…
If only Jacob Bunem had understood.… They could now be working hand in hand to become the masters of Lodz. But Jacob Bunem had chosen the gentile way. For “honor” he had sacrificed his life. What nonsense! If a pack of mad dogs attacked a man, was there any reason for the victim to feel degraded? Dogs were stronger than man, but they remained dogs, and man remained a man. The Jews of old had had the right idea. They held the gentile in such deep contempt that his insults and derision meant less to them than the bite of a mosquito.
No, it didn’t pay to give up one’s life for such foolishness. The strength of Israel lay not in physical force, but in intellectual superiority, in reason. Since time immemorial, gentiles had persecuted, mock
ed, and oppressed the Jew, and he had been forced to keep silent because he was in exile, because he was a helpless minority, a lamb among wolves. Could the lamb then oppose the wolf? …
Had Jews adopted the gentile’s ways, they would have already long since vanished from the face of the earth. But the Jews had perceived that theirs had to be a different course, and it was this perception that had lent them the moral strength to endure and to accumulate the only kind of force the gentiles respected—intellectual and economic power.
This was the strength of the Jew and his revenge against the gentile. Not with the sword, not with the gun, but with reason would the Jew overcome. It was written: “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” The Jew lived by his reason; the gentile, by his fists. For hundreds of years Jews had danced to the gentiles’ tune because they were too few to resist. In times of danger the Jew was obliged not to sacrifice his life, but to appease the wild beast in order to survive and persevere.
If only Jacob Bunem had realized this! The humiliation that the bully imposed upon his weaker victim dishonored not the victim, but the tormentor. How did the saying in the Ethics of the Fathers go? “Those that drown others shalt themselves be drowned.”
He had begged Jacob Bunem not to resist since it was sheer folly to fight against hopeless odds. The wild beast had to be turned away with reason and cunning. But his brother had always been headstrong. He had let his blood, rather than his reason, guide him. And blood was the way of the gentile.
Ashkenazi’s eyes misted over. It hadn’t been fated that he and his brother work together, but he would defend what was his with fang and claw. He would again be King of Lodz. Much as they loathed him, they would be forced to doff their caps to him and await his pleasure. He would show them who was master of Lodz.…