Isaac's Torah

by Angel Wagenstein

  “Farewell, Semyonich. May you be happier there!”

  This was the whole of the funeral speech of Doctor Robert Boyadjian, pronounced with a strong foreign accent.

  The little soldier bent to my ear: “Wasn’t the deceased Mark Lebedev, the movie director?”

  “Yes, it was him.”

  “I’ve seen his movies. Nice, joyful movies.”

  “Yes, nice and joyful.”

  The boy took down his military cap with the red star and crossed himself. For this they would expel people from the Komsomol, and in the army punish them severely.

  As we came back to the camp, the flames of the pitch-pine torches were throwing light here and there on the stone-piled graves—some with crudely nailed crosses, some with the hammer and sickle, drawn with red paint, the same that marked the cut trunks. There arose and then disappeared, swallowed by the thick darkness, some Stars of David and even one Islamic crescent. “We will renew the world with the International….”

  Before going into the lit-up entrance of the camp, we extinguished our torches in the deep snow. The air, saturated with icy crystals, was forming around the electric bulbs a dense rainbow-colored glow, and in front of the German brick buildings there shone a Christmas tree with some candles—made by the locals out of whale blubber.

  It was Christmas, 1946.

  ELEVEN

  Finally, I saw the aurora borealis! Dazed, I stared with eyes wide open at this miracle of nature: the spreading out through the sky, the interwoven and splitting ribbons that opened up to us like colorful peacock feathers, and then contracted and slithered low above the horizon like a multicolored snake, and I don’t know if the quiet harmonic sounds of a tender harp were reality or the tremblings of the soul itself.

  I was sitting on some smooth black rock, the glistening surfaces opaquely reflecting the glow, while beneath us the frozen ocean had become silent.

  Did I say tremblings of the soul? Too poetic, thanks all the same. This was more of a cry, because loneliness was grabbing my throat, suffocating me with icy fingers: everyone was disappearing from my life, one after the other, and why was I, the fool, holding on tooth and nail to this shitty, senseless, unspiritual life, stuck in it like a parasite? Where was my good rabbi Shmuel now? He could probably decipher the meaning, the secret messages, the hidden high goal of Nature that created life, but forgot to explain to us how it’s supposed to be used.

  I was sitting on the rock and, without knowing it, started to cry. My tears were rolling down my cheeks for only a few millimeters and freezing in layers, one on top of the other. And then a miracle happened: in the glow, she herself all radiant, appeared Sarah, her wide open grayish green eyes, which reflected the entangled lights, fixed on me! She came up barefoot on the frozen ocean, bent over, kissed me on the forehead and whispered:

  “My poor, my dear Itzik! Are you cold?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Very.”

  She undid her braid and covered me with her hair, and at that moment a blissful warmth poured over me. Sarah sat down by me, took my head in her lap, started rocking me and caressing me like a child to the rhythm of the celestial music, and a growing bliss, sweet and warm, began to flow through my veins. I was falling asleep happy in Sarah’s warm embrace, but she suddenly shook me up roughly and spoke in a male voice:

  “Come on, come on, wake up!”

  Painfully I opened my eyes. Three people were leaning over me, fixing the round eye of a flashlight on my face, and Doctor Robert Boyadjian was rubbing my ears with snow.

  Then I was lying on the old sagging couch in the doctor’s cabinet and he said, “Were you ever lucky, comrade! You almost lost your ears and your nose. Do you know what the temperature is outside? Minus 52 degrees, a hell of a time for a walk!”

  “And I was dreaming of warmth…,” I whispered guiltily.

  “Of course, it saved you. The soldiers had come out to take a piss and one of them, while pissing on you, had the feeling that there was someone lying below. Sorry if that bothers you.”

  And the Armenian laughed; he didn’t know that at this moment he was pissing on my loveliest dream.

  And now, while I’m drinking my tea from the aluminum mug the doctor gave me, let me tell you a few words also about this quiet and almost unnoticeable man, with the constantly sad face of a clown—even when he smiles.

  He was born, this Robert, in Paris, that’s right, not in Kolodetz, but in Paris, can you imagine? His parents were well-to-do people, refugees from the massacres in Turkey. They had their own jewelry store or some other kind of store. But they couldn’t get used to France and yearned to go back and die in their own Armenia, in Erevan. And while young Robert, in spite of the German occupation, was taking his medical degree at the Sorbonne, very far from the river Sena, on the Volga, the fearful battle of Stalingrad was raging. On a wave of general exhilaration with the heroism of the Soviet people, old Boyadjian sold everything and by secret means, with the help of his partners from the diamond business, managed to get through Sweden to Erevan with his family, in the foothills of Ararat—holy for the Armenians—which was standing white beyond, in Turkey. There, in Erevan, the yearned-for city of pink tufa, the old man donated all his money for the purchase of a tank that was going to be named “Ararat,” and his son went to work for the Erevan city hospital. The tank Ararat, after heavy fighting, reached Alexanderplatz in Berlin, and the son Robert the Kolyma camp, opposite the Bear Islands, because of his immoderate talk about freedom and democracy.

  So that’s that, since for simple cases one doesn’t need complicated explanations.

  TWELVE

  Mark Lebedev, our departed Semyonich, taught me not to look for meaning in the meaningless, or logic in the spontaneous movement of particles, so that’s why I’ll spare you my pitiful attempts to explain what remained an enigma for me too, namely, why, given the availability of so many camps dispersed all over our great country, were a thousand Germans and a not inconsiderable number of us, the others, picked up from Kolyma and sent south? “South” will hardly ring a bell for you, until I show you the dizzying route that lasted for almost a whole month and started with the rusty freighter, “North Star,” filled to the brim with prisoners and guards. So, this star, I say, took us inland, by Cape Dixon, to the mouth of the Yenisey River, and from there by tugboat, dragging barges, also crammed with people, for twelve days against the stream until we reached Krasnoyarsk, where we were transferred to a train—from Barnaoul to Akmolinsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. If there’s anything unclear, call me.

  Far from being despondent, the Germans were singing, because among them a rumor had spread that they’d be taken back to their motherland, while we were not singing, because we’d already learned that in the region of Karaganda, there were mighty bauxite mines. For your information, bauxite equals aluminum, which equals not only airplanes but also other, even starrier industries. And in order for you to finally understand where we happened to be, I’ll give you the hint that a good deal later you would hear the geographic names Semipalatinsk and Baikonur—the first becoming after my time a nuclear base, and the second sometime even later laying the foundation for the Space Age.

  And exactly here, in this Tower of Babel-like camp, amid the cries and the chaos, I literally bumped into—you’ve already guessed it—my good rabbi, my dear Shmuel Ben-David! And again we cried, and we embraced, and we couldn’t believe, that we—two particles wandering in space—had met for the second time, that for a second time our camp paths had crossed, one time somewhere in Oberpfalz, in distant Germany, and now at some random point in endless Asia, the mother of geography!

  We sat on the burnt steppe and couldn’t get enough of looking at each other.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Because of my relationship with Esther Katz.”

  “They thought of it only now?”

  He smiled
sadly. “God’s mills grind slowly. Let it go for now. Are you going to tell me about the North?”

  “There’s no point. In the North it’s like the South. Like the West. Maybe like the East, I don’t know—I haven’t been in a Chinese camp yet.”

  The rabbi was silent for awhile, then lit up a Soviet Belomorkanal papirosa, with the cardboard tube resembling a cigarette holder, and a tobacco tip. “Did you learn to smoke?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What did you learn?”

  “Not to look for meaning in the meaningless.”

  “Then you’ve learned nothing, because everything has meaning. Everything leads somewhere, but it’s not always given us to know.”

  “I don’t even want to know. I put period to everything.”

  “From such a period the Big Bang started, the beginning of our planet. Humankind has always put a period after a road traveled, but it’s never been the end.”

  “Shnat shmita?”

  “Yes, everything from the beginning. But I’ll let myself argue with my favorite Ecclesiastes: this time what will be has never been. And what has been, will not be. Everything new, otherwise what’s the point?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m asking, Rabbi: Is there any meaning at all?”

  “Of course. The meaning is in the road to the period. The next sentence others will write—the ones who’ll come after us. I hope they follow our faith, but they have no right to repeat our delusions.”

  I looked at him, and didn’t respond. I remembered Semyonich: Rabbis are by presumption believers!

  At dawn we kissed each other, when his straggling gray column headed up the dusty steppe road, accompanied by guards on horses. He seemed to me bent over and sad. I was crying.

  The columns went away in the dust, but my rabbi didn’t turn around even once—maybe he was crying too, and didn’t want me to know. Something was telling me that we wouldn’t see each other ever again. This was just a premonition, at that time I couldn’t know that from here began his long road to the construction of the White Sea–Baltic canal, bearing the name of the immortal leader of nations Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

  The same immortal leader died, as you know, on March 5, 1953, but this was not the rabbi’s dreamed-of period, not at all—just a comma. Because when the general grief after the irreparable loss faded away and people took a deep breath, at some meeting in Berdichev a fervent supporter of the new beginning declared:

  “Already we can say with conviction, comrades, that in the years to come we will live better!”

  “And us?” asked Mendel, the fool.

  FINAL APOCALYPSE OF REVELATION

  All of this, my brother, happened so long ago, it’s as if it had never been. And it may indeed have never been, does anyone know what in our life is a dream and what reality, when life itself is a momentary vision, a mirage in the desert and chasing the wind?

  I’m living in Vienna again, my eternal beautiful dream, I’m already more or less an old man and let me add relatively wealthy, if this matters at all. Because does the soul satisfy itself with what it’s won, if it’s hungry for what it’s lost?

  Yesterday at dusk I passed through the City Park, sat for a while by the little pond by the gilded Johann Strauss—that merry man with the violin—and threw pieces of croissant to the ducks. Then I dragged my feet along Wollzeile to my old friend St. Stephen, with its magnificent Steffel. Just opposite, at the corner of Graben and Kärtner, a girl with an indecently short skirt approached me:

  “Hey, Uncle, shall we have some fun?”

  “No.” I was shy. “Excuse me, thanks.”

  She waved her hand and approached another uncle.

  Loneliness.

  What did that comrade from Berdichev mean by a “better life”? Really, what did he mean—it’s been written that one cannot live by bread alone, hasn’t it?

  I made my way on foot to Margareten, passing through the luxurious underpass, which was crammed with drug addicts. What a calamity, my God, these poor boys and girls! At home, on the TV they were showing the next stupidity, meant for the other—the TV—addicts. It may not be such stupidity, but I don’t understand it—I’m like the old Boyadjian who felt lonely in Paris and eventually bought a tank.

  Sister Angela from the cotton fields by Mississippi will have to excuse me, but it’s worth thinking about that Exodus from Egyptian slavery chosen by Stefan Zweig. I also have it in my bedside cupboard, this Exodus, three flasks of Dormidon, twenty pills each, for a good sleep. “You will sleep like a bathed child”—this is what the doctor said. Three by twenty makes sixty. Sixty bathed children.

  Maybe before that I should’ve gone with the girl to have some fun?

  No thanks.

  I lie on my bed. What’s so difficult? One glass of Evian water, thirty pills. One more—another thirty, this makes a whole kindergarten of bathed children.

  I close my eyes and I’m young again, and I’m in my hometown Kolodetz by Drogobych. I’m playing the violin and my world comes to life again, swirling in a merry Hasidic dance. Here they are—my mother Rebekha and my father Aaron, he’s in the red uniform of a hussar from His Majesty’s Lifeguards, here’s Uncle Chaimle and the old postman Avramchik, here are all the old soldiers from David Leibovitch’s café, who are rolling and unrolling the ball of yarn of poor Rothchild’s unsolvable problems. Here’s Pan Voitek, the mayor, who’s presenting a bouquet of yellow flowers to the Radish, yellow flowers like yellow stars. Do you see—Esther Katz is dancing with Liova Weissmann, our Catholic priest is clapping, happy as can be, in time to the Jewish rhythm, and there he is, my Zukerl, thumping with heavy boots in front of smiling sister Angela, my black angel! Doc Joe is secretly smoking in his palm, this is forbidden, and the little Italian with the wire-rimmed glasses is pointing his finger at him and shouting: “It’s him!” The Polish pan ophthalmologist is hugging with two hands Frau Zigrid Kubichek and crazily whirling her around, my three children—Ilyusha, Schura, and Susannah—with Kalashnikovs on their shoulders and their arms crossed, are squatting in time, the dear movie fool Semyonich is filming all this, probably for television, and Doctor Robert Boyadjian is drawing hammers and sickles on the whitewashed walls. The little soldier is looking at him sadly, takes off his cap, and crosses himself—for this they expel you from the Komsomol, and in the Internal Forces they punish you. And up there, on the stage with its peeled gilding, where my colleague Mozart once played, proudly standing and conducting all this is the chairman of the Atheists’ Club himself, Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David!

  And where is Sarah, you’ll ask, where is my Sarah? Here’s my Sarah with the grayish-green eyes—like reflections of the water in the lake of Genezareth. This is she, I tell you, although she is so young! Of course, it’s she! I quietly put the violin down on the wooden floor and hug the girl with the grayish green eyes, I hug her and the two of us suddenly become light and fly up. And here we are, flying above our homeland and it’s painted now, this region, in the colors of this fellow Markusle Segal, or if you like, Chagall. Here, look, he’s painted us, Sarah and me, flying in love above our miastechko, here below is the Orthodox church, here are the Ukrainian women with their white feet, here’s the pregnant mare with a foal in her womb, and here are Sarah and I, flying away to the future, may it be good for everyone, amen.

  I open my eyes. In the bedside cupboard the three flasks of Dormidon are sitting, still packed, I haven’t even touched them. Excuse me, Stefan Zweig, you sly old fox, who were teaching the others how to live, but yourself ran away! If life was given us to live it, we will live it, there’s no other way.

  Laila tov, or in your words, good night!

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  The author sincerely thanks all known and unknown creators, collectors, collators, and publishers of Jewish jokes and anecdotes, through which my people have turned laughter into a defensive shield, and a
source of courage and self-esteem through the most tragic moments of their existence!

  Translators’ Acknowledgments

  We wish to thank Angel (“Jacky”) and Zora Wagenstein for their warmth and hospitality during the preparation of this translation. To William Weaver we are grateful for sharing with us his great store of wisdom on the art of translation. In the process of transforming Isaac’s vigorous and colorful Bulgarian into American-flavored “Yinglish,” we received suggestions and advice, for which we happily give thanks, from the distinguished Bulgarian translator Jeni Bozhilova, Professor Andrew Wachtel, who is the Bertha and Max Dressler Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University, Tzveta Petrova, Gina Cherkelova Brezini, Valentin Belinski, and Lydia Belinska. For responding so readily and fully to our endless queries, we would like to give special thanks to Elizabeth Frank’s Bard colleagues: Professors Susan Bernofsky, Hezi Brosh, Yuval Elimelech, Franz Kempf, Marina Kostalevsky, Cecile Kuznitz, Natan Margalit, Jacob Neusner, Joel Perlmann, and Gennady Shkliarevsky. To Al Zuckerman we offer a million thanks for escorting our friend Isaac to American shores.

  Lastly, we wish to dedicate our translation to the memory of Dimiter Simeonov and Boncho Belinski, who valiantly took part in the Bulgarian antifascist resistance during World War II.

  Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova

  Sofia, December 2007