Yet this man, who paraded about the place as a social worker and beadle of a synagogue, was a thief. Not an ordinary thief, mind you — to call him that would be less than precise, because Haskel never stole anything. For that, he had a well-organized team of young pickpockets. He was merely their guru, so to speak, their strategist, who deftly directed operations from a distance.
Like most prestigious thieves in the city of the waterless river, Haskel was in partnership with our very capable police — mainly with the higher ranks, of course. Consequently his gang worked under a fairly secure umbrella. And since their boss, who would not tolerate incompetence, assured them philosophically that from the beginning of time the smart had always capitalized on the stupid, they were not only never troubled by guilt but, on the contrary, were imbued with a sense of professional pride.
One evening, about a week after my future parents had moved into their new one-room flat, father heard a soft knock on the door, a knock as gentle as the thud of a falling snow-flake. Before he had time to say ‘Please enter’, Haskel, a ginger smile on his ruddy face, had crossed the threshold. After they exchanged the customary neighbourly niceties, mother asked the guest if he would take some tea, for which Haskel was warmly grateful. As soon as he ‘discovered’ that father was a weaver, Haskel introduced himself as a prominent social worker in town.
A day or so later, the snowflake thud repeated itself on our door and Haskel, his fingers curled around a miniature glass vase, entered the room. ‘You know,’ he said to father, placing the little offering in my mother’s hesitating hands, ‘textiles are very much in demand these days. People are starved for a good metre of cloth.’ He looked around. ‘How about setting up a small factory in your room, it’s practically empty anyway. Let’s buy a pair of textile machines,’ he went on enthusiastically. ‘We’ll make a mint. I have some spare cash, and I’m sure you must have a bit put aside, so how about it?’ And without waiting for an answer, Haskel deposited a fat bundle of notes on the table.
Father was stunned. ‘But why? You hardly know me. And how can I ever match an amount like that?’
‘My dear partner, you forget that I’m a social worker,’ Haskel replied, ‘and a social worker must have a good nose for people. If you can’t match my contribution, chip in as much as you can scrape together. The rest you can settle later, to the tune of our singing machines!’
Next morning father left early for the nearby town of Zgierz, where he hoped to purchase the textile machines. The journey was quite pleasant, though it was a drizzly day and the tram was packed with happy young people, predominantly men. As he was about to disembark, he found himself abruptly squeezed and jostled, and virtually carried to the footpath — where to his horror he quickly noticed the razor-cut in his breast pocket.
When father returned home, an impatient, radiant-faced Haskel was already awaiting him. ‘Nu, partner, nu? How did it go?’ Instead of answering, father showed him the slit in his pocket. ‘Well,’ said Haskel, looking disappointed. ‘I may or may not believe you, but I must have my money.’
Father nodded despondently. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t got it at the moment. You’ll have to give me some time.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Haskel rushed to reassure him. ‘And trust me, I do feel for you — though I’m afraid the going rate of ten percent will have to apply.’ Father did not respond. ‘You see, dear neighbour,’ the social worker went on, more sternly, ‘in order not to be ruined in the field of communal activities, one must be forever mindful of one’s priorities.’
The Dream of a Fool
Berl Sokol, our local electrician, was a known fool. Why? Because, although he was seldom unemployed, not only was he rarely paid for his labours but, in many instances, he would leave a coin or two on the table of a family in strife — while his wife Dvora sat at home, her arms folded, gazing aimlessly at the vacant ceiling. Yet come evening, without fail she would greet her husband with the same words every time: ‘And how is my beautiful fool today?’
The wise contributed little to the wellbeing of mankind, Berl would explain to his wife, adding that they often just caused trouble. ‘Look,’ he said, with some passion, spreading his strong arms. ‘There is none wiser than God, and see what He has done! Personally, I pray for the Messiah’s non-coming, because they say his arrival will bring an end to foolishness, and God knows what sort of world such a professional, self-appointed sage would create for us!’
Needless to say, Berl the fool was our local atheists’ delight, especially when he mocked what he called the ‘empty rabbinical ceremony of words’, and the way the rabbis had always dismissed out of hand, indeed ridiculed, the importance of the fool in the cosmic scheme.
‘Last Sabbath,’ Berl remarked to his companions on one occasion, ‘I heard the learned leader of our congregation telling his worshippers the story of Sodom — of how Lot’s wife looked back and was thereupon turned into a pillar of salt. “No, no!” I shouted at the top of my voice. “That wasn’t her sin. Her sin was that she was longing for the evil she was leaving behind, and for those who knew how to do evil!” The rabbi, incensed, screamed back at me: “I’ll have you excommunicated, you silly dreamer!” I smiled at him. “Where dreams end,” I retorted, quietly but firmly, “there wickedness begins.”’
That night, Berl had had a vision of the rabbi, cane in hand, chasing him from the town. He told his wife about the dream. ‘I took to the road in search of a new place,’ he explained. ‘I walked through winter and summer, crossed many forests, fields and rivers, until finally I reached the famous town of Chelm...’
‘And where was I ?’ his beloved cut in.
‘Ah, you’re too smart to be in a dream like that, sweetheart!... Anyway, there I was, at the iron gates of the town, it was just before dinnertime. I banged my fist against the rusty metal, and immediately heard a voice. Who are you, stranger, said the voice, and what do you want? “I am Berl the fool,” I replied, “and I’m looking for a place to rest my head, for I am weary of the world of sages.” Entry can be granted only on the following condition, said the voice. You must answer three questions. If you are a true fool, you will not have any problems. Here are the questions:
‘What is a life at birth? What is a life at maturity? What is a life at death?
‘I answered at once. “Sir,” I called back, “a life at birth is an enigma; at maturity it is an impostor; and at death, a fool!”
‘No sooner had I uttered the word fool than the gates swung apart and, accompanied by a fanfare from a row of golden trumpets, I was escorted to the king himself. “I’ve heard you’re quite a fellow, Berl,” said the king. “Thank you, sir,” I replied. He waved his hand to silence me. “. . . But you cannot stay here for ever. There is a time limit. You see, our own fools are quite xenophobic, I’m afraid, especially seeing as you came here without a permit.”
‘Well, you can imagine my surprise. I was about to protest but he raised his hand again. “When you leave us,” said his royal highness, “please take a message to the outside world.” And for the first time he smiled, almost foolishly, before continuing. “Wise men are incomplete,” he said at last. “They lack that which makes us fools — envy and hope.”’
Natasha’s Fire
Another of the many backyard stories that shaped our microcosm concerned Rachmiel, alias Romain, orphaned at the age of two when both his parents died in a fire. He was brought up by his wise but strictly religious grandfather, Aron the tailor. After Rachmiel graduated from primary school, his grandfather said, ‘Enough. A trade is better than book-learning. There is just as much wisdom in a swift needle with a whispering yarn in its ear. Remember, son,’ he urged, ‘a needle behind the lapel and a thimble in the pocket are a passport to the whole wide world.’
But Rachmiel had no head for tailoring; his head was in books, journals, papers, and yet more books. In fact, it was his infatuation with the novel Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland which prompted him to adop
t his cherished writer’s name. Yet his devoted grandfather wouldn’t give up — he knew what lay in store for a man without trade, family or money. And so, after many trials and tribulations, many verbal and at times even physical admonitions, young Romain somehow managed to make the grade, not as a fully-fledged tailor but as a mender.
Come autumn, when the rainy winds had laid Aron low with a peculiar cough, the old man called his grandson to his bedside. ‘Rachmiel,’ he said, ‘you’re my only heir. Once I go, the workroom and all its treasures — shoulder-pads, linings, canvas, rolls of cotton, needles and thimbles — all of it will be yours. I am giving you bread and a knife: take it, son, take it and use it wisely.’
Seven days after Aron went the way of all flesh, the young man reverently took down his grandfather’s sign, EXPERT TAILOR, and replaced it with his own more modest MENDER. To his surprise he did quite well: within a short time he had become known as the Mender of Bałuty. And as it happened, the daughter of his neighbour Yosl the cobbler was walking God’s earth with a soul that was in dire need of mending.
Nacha had a white face as pure as virgin snow, but the glitter in her big black eyes could set any man on fire. Like many young girls of her time, she longed for education, knowledge, and love. And there, right across the yard, was Romain. Although his grandfather’s religious teachings never really left him, Romain already belonged to a revolutionary party of free-thinkers. This made him a more than desirable mentor to Nacha — who, free spirit that she was, overnight became Natasha. Each day after work, Romain taught her the history of the October Revolution, and also the art of dialectic and debate which he had acquired among his political comrades. The best way to defeat an opponent, he would tell Natasha, was to make him think. The girl was swept off her feet, and after a few short lessons became a permanent pupil in Romain’s academy. At day’s end, as the fiery sun set the horizon aflame, Romain would draw the curtains, cradle her to him, and croon into her eager ear a song popular with our street singers:
Natasha, oh my dark Natasha
Kiss my hair, my burning lips. . .
Then they would breathlessly shed their clothes and entwine themselves in each other’s passion. The neighbourhood looked askance on this unholy union, but could do nothing about it. ‘I don’t need a rabbi’s blessing,’ Natasha would declare, ‘to sleep with my beloved.’
The winter of 1928 was a bitterly cold one. Mountains of insurmountable snow lay everywhere — in the mornings, people inhabiting ground-floor dwellings had to jump out through their windows, since the snow was up to their door-handles. As daylight began to dim and evening shadows climbed our walls, a white frost with a thousand weird and fearful images would invade the windowpanes. It grew murderously cold; to make matters worse, the coalminers went on strike.
One Friday morning Natasha awoke earlier than usual. She decided to light the stove before Romain began his day’s work. All at once — no one will ever know how — the whole room was engulfed in flames.
Ousted from their paradise, the two lovers — barefooted and clad only in their underwear — stood shivering in the snow-white yard, surrounded by their bewildered neighbours. Everyone was convinced that the fire was punishment for their ungodly behaviour. Later, over a plate of hot porridge, Yosl the cobbler, who had divorced his wife for promiscuity soon after their daughter Nacha’s birth, pleaded with the couple to mend their ways, as heaven was clearly against them. Romain remained silent. How could he convince Yosl that he had divorced heaven for the same reason the cobbler had divorced his wife?
‘Well, Reb Yosl,’ the young man said at last, ‘you know the old saying: meshane mokom, meshane mazal — a change of place, a change of luck ...’
A dismayed Yosl accompanied them to where the gutter separated the cobblestone yard from the pavement. He watched with a pang in his heart as the couple walked slowly away. He was still standing there long after Nacha had disappeared beyond his homely horizon forever.
Nemesis
Reb Nachman the kosher slaughterer, his wife Chana and their buxom eighteen-year-old daughter Reizl occupied the ground-floor apartment of our tenement. Reizl’s face was an open letter of adoration — indeed, her beauty had no equal in the neighbourhood. She worked at home as an embroiderer, and since this work demanded good light, Reb Nachman placed her machine at the window, so that the sill became an extension of her working space.
How was Reb Nachman to know that this would put his daughter face to face with a young joiner, the intense union leader Motl, known as Hercules, who shortly afterwards established his own workplace in a neighbouring flat, in a window directly opposite Reizl’s? How could Nachman know that it was his daughter who, not unwittingly, ignited the flame of desire in Motl’s heart? Or that one fateful evening, Motl dropped a red rose on Reizl’s windowsill?
But Nachman’s wife Chana knew. She knew how Reizl secretly took the rose to her bed; how she softly invoked Motl’s name in the night, whispering that he was the reason for her existence, murmuring words of eternal bliss while her fingers sought out her private parts.
Chana was not sure how to bring all this to her husband, but she was certain that such a sickness required immediate attention. The moment Nachman finished his morning prayers, she plucked up her courage and, with tears in her eyes, reminded him of all the potential perils that lay in wait for their unmarried daughter. That very afternoon the local matchmaker, Reb Fajvl, paid the family a surprise visit.
‘My dear friend,’ the matchmaker began, addressing Nachman, ‘the rich widower Shlomo Levi, who is just forty, is in dire need of a wife and a mother for his two gorgeous little girls. If you agree to have him as a son-in-law, you could wish each other Mazel Tov tomorrow.’
Like a flame, Reizl shot up from her workbench. ‘Who sent for you, Reb Fajvl? Who asked you to find a match for me? Please take your proposition elsewhere. I already have a groom — I’ll marry him, or no one.’
‘Reizl, Reizl,’ her mother cried. ‘How can you shame your old father like this? Amongst our people, it’s the parents’ choice as to who marries whom.’ The girl made no answer; she bit her lip, sat down at her machine and resumed working.
Before I knew it, I had become the lovers’ trusted messenger. I read every word they wrote to each other. I can still recall their last communication exactly. ‘Dearest Motl,’ she implored, ‘please hurry and rescue me from this disaster, or I’ll die. Yours forever, Reizl.’ ‘Sweetheart,’ he responded, ‘I have just received notice to make myself available at once for military service. We can’t run away as we planned, but on my very first leave we can become husband and wife.’
Meanwhile the wedding preparations were in full swing. Chana and Nachman were overjoyed, and understood their daughter’s paleness and moody demeanour as the natural signs of a maiden’s pre-nuptial anxiety. It is a task beyond the best of pens, therefore, to describe their pain and desolation when, at daybreak on the appointed morning, they found Reizl’s bed empty. Their howls mobilized the whole neighbourhood. To do a thing like this to one’s parents, people said, a daughter had to have a heart of stone. What they all overlooked, of course, was that the gentler the heart, the heavier the stone.
Three days went by — though to Chana and Nachman they felt like three long years — and there was no trace of Reizl. In desperation, her mother visited a seer. ‘Go ten kilometres in a straight line from where you live,’ the seer advised, ‘then turn right and walk five more. Sit by the lake and wait until the moon comes out. You will hear the song your daughter heard, and you will know.’
Chana went. She found the lake, and sat beside it until the moon emerged. At first she heard nothing. Then, out of the gloom, there arose (she was certain) a distant, beautiful voice:
I am Rusalka, the lake-fairy,
Abandoned alone,
Come to me, Reizl, my sweetheart,
Make my bed your home.
Reizl was buried by the cemetery fence. Although it was raining. there were hundreds of
mourners at her funeral. After they had dispersed, I saw a soldier approach the grave. He bent down and planted a red rose in the moist soil. For a long time he just stood there, like a stone statue, ignoring the downpour. When the sky was about to swallow the last morsel of light, he turned and slowly walked away.
A Deadly Dance
The landscape of my youth, before the curtain fell, had a certain charm, an aura of the impoverished yet playful; but more than anything else there was an aroma of eccentricity. Ours was primarily a land of schism — of Socialists against Communists, of Anarchists against Legislators, of benevolent societies against crooks and exploiters; a land of great loves and betrayals.
Our good-looking Abrasha was a bit of a vagabond, as well as a trained singer, who made his living in winter by playing cards and in summer by singing in the street. He was also a kind of political chameleon, for he seemed to belong to all parties: on election day for our municipal council you could find him on a different corner every hour, preaching a different ideology. Yet this happy-go-lucky individual was much loved, especially by women, mainly mature ones. Young girls, he would say, were nothing but trouble.
Since he was a singer, he equated everything in life with a song. For example, one of our neighbours, Malkale (who happened to be endowed with a rather impressive bosom), he would describe as a filled-out soprano in dire need of a strong baritone. Every morning, after Malkale’s husband Mendl had left for work, Abrasha, who was Mendl’s brother, would position himself securely outside her window, crooning:
O Dolores, please don’t make a fuss;
Let me love you, no one is watching us.
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