For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories

by Nathan Englander

  Pinchas had a question for Zunser. “All your work treats fate as if it were a mosquito to be shooed away. All your characters struggle for survival and yet you play the victim. You had to have known they would come.”

  “You have a point,” Zunser said, “a fair question. And I answer it with another: Why should I always be the one to survive? I watched Europe’s Jews go up the chimneys. I buried a wife and a child. I do believe one can elude the fates. But why assume the goal is to live?” Zunser slid the mangled hand onto his stomach. “How many more tragedies do I want to survive? Let someone take witness of mine.”

  Bretzky disagreed. “We’ve lost our universe, this is true. Still, a man can’t condemn himself to death for the sin of living. We can’t cower in the shadows of the camps forever.”

  “I would give anything to escape,” said Korinsky.

  Zunser turned his gaze toward the bulb. “That is the single rule I have maintained in every story I ever wrote. The desperate are never given the choice.”

  “Then,” asked Pinchas, and to him there was no one else but his mentor in the room, “you don’t believe there is any reason I was brought here to be with you? It isn’t part of anything larger, some cosmic balance, a great joke of the heavens?”

  “I think that somewhere a clerk made a mistake.”

  “That,” Pinchas said, “I cannot bear.”

  All the talking had strained Zunser and he coughed up a bit of blood. Pinchas attempted to help Zunser but couldn’t stand up. Bretzky and Korinsky started to their feet. “Sit, sit,” Zunser said. They did, but watched him closely as he tried to clear his lungs.

  Pinchas Pelovits spent the rest of that day on the last lines of his story. When the light went out, he had already finished.

  They hadn’t been in darkness long when they were awakened by the noise and the gleam from the bulb. Korinsky immediately put his eye to the wall.

  “They are lining up everyone outside. There are machine guns. It is morning, and everyone is blinking as if they were newly born.”

  Pinchas interrupted. “I have something I would like to recite. It’s a story I wrote while we’ve been staying here.”

  “Go ahead,” said Zunser.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Bretzky.

  Korinsky pulled the hair from his head. “What difference can it make now?”

  “For whom?” asked Pinchas, and then proceeded to recite his little tale:

  The morning that Mendel Muskatev awoke to find his desk was gone, his room was gone, and the sun was gone, he assumed he had died. This worried him, so he said the prayer for the dead, keeping himself in mind. Then he wondered if one was allowed to do such a thing, and worried instead that the first thing he had done upon being dead was sin.

  Mendel figured he’d best consult the local rabbi, who might be able to direct him in such matters. It was Mendel’s first time visiting the rabbi in his study—not having previously concerned himself with the nuances of worship. Mendel was much surprised to find that the rabbi’s study was of the exact dimensions of his missing room. In fact, it appeared that the tractate the man was poring over rested on the missing desk.

  “Rabbi, have you noticed we are without a sun today?” Mendel asked by way of an introduction.

  “My shutters are closed against the noise.”

  “Did no one else mention it at morning prayers?”

  “No one else arrived,” said the rabbi, continuing to study.

  “Well, don’t you think that strange?”

  “I had. I had until you told me about this sun. Now I understand—no sensible man would get up to greet a dawn that never came.”

  “This is all very startling, Rabbi. But I think we—at some point in the night—have died.”

  The rabbi stood up, grinning. “And here I am with an eternity’s worth of Talmud to study.”

  Mendel took in the volumes lining the walls.

  “I’ve a desk and a chair, and a shtender in the corner should I want to stand,” said the rabbi. “Yes, it would seem I’m in heaven.” He patted Mendel on the shoulder. “I must thank you for rushing over to tell me.” The rabbi shook Mendel’s hand and nodded good-naturedly, already searching for his place in the text. “Did you come for some other reason?”

  “I did,” said Mendel, trying to find a space between the books where once there was a door. “I wanted to know”—and here his voice began to quiver—“which one of us is to say the prayer?”

  Bretzky stood. “Bravo,” he said, clapping his hands. “It’s like a shooting star. A tale to be extinguished along with the teller.” He stepped forward to meet the agent in charge at the door. “No, the meaning, it was not lost on me.”

  Korinsky pulled his knees into his chest, hugged them. “No,” he admitted, “it was not lost.”

  Pinchas did not blush or bow his head. He stared at Zunser, wondered what the noble Zunser was thinking, as they were driven from the cell.

  Outside all the others were being assembled. There were Horiansky and Lubovitch, Lev and Soltzky. All those great voices with the greatest stories of their lives to tell, and forced to take them to the grave. Pinchas, having increased his readership threefold, had a smile on his face.

  Pinchas Pelovits was the twenty-seventh, or the fourteenth from either end, if you wanted to count his place in line. Bretzky supported Pinchas by holding up his right side, for his equilibrium had not returned. Zunser supported him on the left, but was in bad shape himself.

  “Did you like it?” Pinchas asked.

  “Very much,” Zunser said. “You’re a talented boy.”

  Pinchas smiled again, then fell, his head landing on the stockingless calves of Zunser. One of his borrowed shoes flew forward, though his feet slid backward in the dirt. Bretzky fell atop the other two. He was shot five or six times, but being such a big man and such a strong man, he lived long enough to recognize the crack of the guns and know that he was dead.

  The Tumblers

  Who would have thought that a war of such proportions would bother to turn its fury against the fools of Chelm? Never before, not by smallpox or tax collectors, was the city intruded upon by the troubles of the outside world.

  The Wise Men had seen to this when the town council was first founded. They drew up a law on a length of parchment, signed it, stamped on their seal, and nailed it, with much fanfare, to a tree: Not a wind, not a whistle, not the shadow from a cloud floating outside city limits, was welcome in the place called Chelm.

  These were simple people with simple beliefs, who simply wanted to be left to themselves. And they were for generations, no one going in and only stories coming out, as good stories somehow always do. Tales of the Wise Men’s logic, most notably of Mendel’s grandfather, Gronam the Ox, spread, as the war later would, to the far corners of the earth.

  In the Fulton Street Fish Market the dockworkers laughed with Yiddish good humor upon hearing how Gronam had tried to drown a carp. At a dairy restaurant in Buenos Aires, a customer was overcome with hiccups as his waiter recounted the events of the great sour cream shortage, explaining how Gronam had declared that water was sour cream and sour cream water, single-handedly saving the Feast of Weeks from complete and total ruin.

  How the stories escaped is no great mystery, for though outsiders were unwelcome, every few years someone would pass through. There had been, among the trespassers, one vagrant and one vamp, one troubadour lost in a blizzard and one horse trader on a mule. A gypsy tinker with a friendly face stayed a week. He put new hinges on all the doors while his wife told fortunes to the superstitious in the shade of the square. Of course, the most famous visit of all was made by the circus troupe that planted a tent and put on for three days show after show. Aside from these few that came through the center of town, there was also, always, no matter what some say, a black market thriving on the outskirts of Chelm. For where else did the stores come up with their delicacies? Even the biggest deniers of its existence could be seen eating a banana now and
then.

  Gronam’s logic was still employed when the invaders built the walls around a corner of the city, creating the Ghetto of Chelm. There were so many good things lacking and so many bad in abundance that the people of the ghetto renamed almost all that they had: they called their aches “mother’s milk,” and darkness became “freedom”; filth they referred to as “hope”—and felt for a while, looking at each other’s hands and faces and soot-blackened clothes, fortunate. It was only death that they could not rename, for they had nothing to put in its place. This is when they became sad and felt their hunger and when some began to lose their faith in God. This is when the Mahmir Rebbe, the most pious of them all, sent Mendel outside the walls.

  It was no great shock to Mendel, for the streets outside the cramped ghetto were the streets of their town, the homes their homes, even if others now lived in them. The black market was the same except that it had been made that much more clandestine and greedy by the war. Mendel was happy to find that his grandfather’s wisdom had been adopted among the peasants with whom he dealt. Potatoes were treated as gold, and a sack of gold might as well have been potatoes. Mendel traded away riches’ worth of the latter (now the former) for as much as he could conceal on his person of the former (now the latter). He took the whole business to be a positive sign, thinking that people were beginning to regain their good sense.

  The successful transaction gave Mendel a touch of real confidence. Instead of sneaking back the way he came, he ventured past the front of the icehouse and ignored the first signs of a rising sun. He ran through the alley behind Cross-eyed Bilha’s store and skirted around the town square, keeping on until he arrived at his house. It was insanity—or suicide—for him to be out there. All anyone would need was a glimpse of him to know, less than that even, their senses had become so sharp. And what of the fate of the potatoes? They surely wouldn’t make it to the ghetto if Mendel were caught and strung up from the declaration tree with a sign that said SMUGGLER hung around his neck. Those precious potatoes that filled his pockets and lined his long underwear from ankles to elbows would all go to waste, softening up and sprouting eyes. But Mendel needed to see his front gate and strip of lawn and the shingles he had painted himself only two summers before. It was then that the shutters flew open on his very own bedroom window. Mendel turned and ran with all his might, having seen no more of the new resident than a fog of breath. On the next street he found a sewer grate and, with considerable force, yanked it free. A rooster crowed and Mendel heard it at first as a call for help and a siren and the screeching of a bullet. Lowering himself underground and replacing the grate, he heard the rooster’s call again and understood what it was—nature functioning as it should. He took it to be another positive sign.

  Raising himself from the sewer, Mendel was unsure onto which side of the wall he had emerged. The Ghetto of Chelm was alive with hustle and bustle. Were it not for the ragged appearance of each individual Jew, the crowd could have belonged to any cosmopolitan street.

  “What is this? Has the circus returned to Chelm? Have they restocked all the sweetshops with licorice?” Mendel addressed the orphan Yocheved, grabbing hold of her arm and cradling in his palm a tiny potato, which she snatched away. She looked up at him, her eyes wet from the wind.

  “We are all going to live on a farm and must hurry not to miss the train.”

  “A farm you say.” He pulled at his beard and bent until his face was even with the child’s. “With milking cows?”

  “And ducks,” said Yocheved before running away.

  “Roasted? Or glazed in the style of the Chinese?” he called after her, though she had already disappeared into the crowd, vanishing with the finesse that all the remaining ghetto children had acquired. He had never tasted glazed duck, only knew that there was somewhere in existence such a thing. As he wove through the scrambling ghettoites Mendel fantasized about such a meal, wondered if it was like biting into a caramel-coated apple or as tender and dark as the crust of yolk-basted bread. His stomach churned at the thought of it as he rushed off to find the Rebbe.

  The decree was elementary: only essential items were to be taken on the trains. Most packed their meager stores of food, some clothing, and a photograph or two. Here and there a diamond ring found its way into a hunk of bread, or a string of pearls rolled itself into a pair of wool socks.

  For the Hasidim of Chelm, interpreting such a request was far from simple. As in any other town where Hasidim live, two distinct groups had formed. In Chelm they were called the Students of the Mekyl and the Mahmir Hasidim. The Students of the Mekyl were a relaxed bunch, taking their worship lightly while keeping within the letter of the law. Due to the ease of observance and the Epicurean way in which they relished in the Lord, they were a very popular group, numbering into the thousands.

  The Mahmir Hasidim, on the other hand, were extremely strict. If a fast was to last one day, they would cease eating the day before and starve themselves a day later, guarding against the possibility that in setting their lunar calendars they had been fooled by the phases of the moon. As with the fasts went every requirement in Jewish law. Doubling was not enough, so they tripled, often passing out before pouring the twelfth glass of wine required of the Passover seders. Such zealousness takes much dedication. And considering the adjusted length of the holidays—upward of three weeks at a shot—not any small time commitment either. The Mahmir Hasidim, including children, numbered fewer than twenty on the day the ghetto was dissolved.

  Initially circulating as rumor, the edict sparked mass confusion. The inhabitants of the ghetto tried to make logical decisions based on whispers and the skeptical clucking of tongues. Heads of households rubbed their temples and squeezed shut their eyes, struggling to apply their common sense to a situation anything but common.

  To ease the terror spreading among his followers, the leader of the Mekyls was forced to make a decree of his own. Hoisted atop a boxcar, balancing on the sawed-off and lovingly sanded broomstick that had replaced his mahogany cane, he defined “essential items” as everything one would need to stock a summer home. In response to a query called out from the crowd of his followers, he announced that the summer home was to be considered unfurnished. He bellowed the last word and slammed down the broomstick for emphasis, sending an echo through the empty belly of the car below.

  Off went the Mekyls to gather bedsteads and bureaus, hammocks and lawn chairs—all that a family might need in relocation. The rabbi of the Mahmir Hasidim, in his infinite strictness (and in response to the shameful indulgence of the Mekyls), understood “essential” to exclude anything other than one’s long underwear, for all else was excess adornment.

  “Even our ritual fringes?” asked Feitel, astonished.

  “Even the hair of one’s beard,” said the Rebbe, considering the grave nature of their predicament. This sent a shudder through his followers, all except Mendel, who was busy distributing potatoes amid the humble gathering. No one ate. They were waiting for the Rebbe to make the blessing. But the Rebbe refused his share. “Better to give it to a Mekyl who is not so used to doing without.”

  They all, as if by reflex, stuck out their hands so Mendel should take back theirs too. “Eat, eat!” said the Rebbe. “You eat yours and give me the pleasure of watching.” He smiled at his followers. “Such loyal students even Rebbe Akiva, blessed be his memory, would’ve been honored to have.”

  The Mahmirim rushed back to their cramped flats, the men shedding their gaberdines and ritual fringes, the women folding their frocks and slipping them into drawers. Feitel, his hand shaking, the tears streaming down his face, began to cut at his beard, bit by bit, inch by inch. “Why not in one shot?” his wife, Zahava, asked. “Get it over with.” But he couldn’t. So he trimmed at his beard like a barber, as if putting on finishing touches that never seemed right. Zahava paced the floor, stepping through the clumps of hair and the long, dusty rectangles of sunshine that, relentless, could not be kept from the ghetto. For the first tim
e in her married life Zahava left her kerchief at home, needlessly locking the door behind her.

  They returned to the makeshift station to find the students of the Mekyl lugging mattresses and dishes and suitcases so full they leaked sleeves and collars from every seam. One little girl brought along her pet dog, its mangy condition made no less shocking by the fact that it looked healthier than its mistress. The Mahmirim turned their faces away from this laxity of definition. An earthly edict, even one coming from their abusers, should be translated strictly lest the invaders think that Jews were not pious in their observance.

  The Mahmir Rebbe ordered his followers away from that mass of heathens in case—God forbid—one of the Mahmirim, shivering in long underwear and with naked scalp, should be mistaken for a member of that court. They trudged off in their scanty dress, the women feeling no shame, since the call for such immodesty had come from their teacher’s mouth.

  Not even the last car of the train was far enough away for the Rebbe. “Come,” he said, pushing through the crowd toward the tunnel that was and was not Chelm.

  Though there was a track and a tunnel, and a makeshift station newly constructed by the enemy, none of it was actually part of town. Gronam had seen to this himself when the railroad first laid track along the edge of the woods. He had sworn that the train would not pass through any part of Chelm (swore, he thought, safely—sure it wasn’t an issue). Checking over maps and deeds and squabbling over whether to pace the distances off heel-toe or toe-heel, the Wise Men discovered that the hill through which the workers were tunneling was very much part of Chelm. They panicked, argued, screamed themselves hoarse in a marathon meeting. It was almost midnight when Gronam came up with a plan.

  Tapping on doors, whispering into sleep-clogged ears, the Wise Men roused every able body from bed, and together they sneaked down to the site armed with chisels and kitchen knives, screwdrivers and hoes. It was the only time any of them had been, though only by a few feet, outside of Chelm. Taking up bricks destined for tunnel walls, they waited for Gronam’s signal. He hoo-hooed like an owl and they set to work—etching a longitudinal line around each one. Before dawn, before the workers returned to find the bricks stacked as they were at quitting time the day before and a fine snow of dust around the site, Gronam made a declaration. The top half of every brick was to be considered theirs, and the bottom half, everything below the line, belonged to the railroad. In this way, when the train would enter the tunnel it would not actually pass through Chelm. They reveled in Gronam’s wisdom, having kept the railroad out of town and also made its residents richer in the bargain—for they were now the proud owners of so many top halves of bricks which they hadn’t had before.