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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Our income limped along, so from time to time my father gave private Talmud lessons to one youngster or another to help pay the rent. One such boy was Dovidl. He had no father and his mother had remarried somewhere in greater Poland. Dovidl was raised by his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer, and he brought a measure of the secular world into our house.
Dovidl was eighteen years old, a handsome youth with black curly hair cut in the “German” fashion. He wore a rather short gaberdine with a slit in the back that reached only to his knees, a collar, a tie, a dickey, and polished chamois shoes. Except for his gaberdine, which looked like a frock coat, Dovidl wore Western-style clothes. His cloth cap was so small it lay on his hair like a tiny pot lid. He wore pince-nez glasses, which hung on a little gilt chain, and of course he had a watch and chain in his vest. He also studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory. It seemed that he wore this slit gaberdine and the small Jewish cap only when he came to study with Father, for Father would not have given Talmud lessons to anyone in modern dress.
This Dovidl was highly accomplished. He was fluent in Russian, Polish, German, and even French, but he spoke Yiddish best of all. He was a fountain of bon mots and witticisms that he had heard from merchants, traveling salesmen, and business agents. He had no great love of learning, but his grandfather had asked Father to give him Talmud lessons several times a week. Dovidl often brought his violin along and would entertain the entire family with the Saturday night “Hamavdil,” a Wallachian dance tune, or other traditional melodies. Jokes streamed from him as though he kept them up his sleeve. He could even excel at Talmud when he put his mind to it, which he seldom did.
Even stranger than Dovidl was his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer. Wondrous things were said about him: He looked like a rich man and conducted himself like a millionaire—but reportedly he had more debts than hair on his head. He declared bankruptcy every year, sometimes twice a year. Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a large man with a big paunch, a straight neck, and a leonine head. His white beard was sparse, as was fashionable among wealthy Jews. He wore a hat with a high crown, a collar without a tie, and a somewhat shortened gaberdine. His face was always ruddy. From under his bushy brows gazed a pair of dark eyes, cold as steel.
Everything Reb Layzer Gravitzer did was grandiose. When he blew his thick nose, it resounded throughout the entire apartment. When he spoke, his voice thundered. Each time Reb Layzer Gravitzer came to visit us there was a tumult in the street. He'd arrive in a droshky with rubber wheels. Instead of paying the coachman the usual forty groschen, he'd pay fifty. Poor people besieged him from all sides and he'd hand out
four- and six-groschen coins. Even before he knocked, the door was opened for him. The doorway seemed too narrow and low for such a big man. He discussed Torah with Father and wanted very badly to catch him in an error. The truth of the matter was that Father was almost always right. Reb Layzer Gravitzer had already forgotten a lot. But my father was not overly proud and he'd say, good-naturedly, “Well, we'll have a look at the text.”
How did Reb Layzer Gravitzer make a living? How could he run such a big house filled with sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and maids? What enabled him to travel a couple of times a year to his rebbe, offer generous gifts, bring expensive wine, and pay for the upkeep and lodgings of poor students? In Warsaw, it was estimated that he spent several hundred rubles a week. Where did the money come from?
He had lots of businesses, but Reb Layzer Gravitzer lived on bankruptcies and shady transactions that could have landed him in jail. It was also rumored that he either dealt in or made counterfeit brand labels. People whispered that Reb Layzer Gravitzer bought packets of tea, removed the customs tax stamps by machine, and then mixed the tea with one of inferior quality. He was also supposedly a partner in an illegal lottery. But even though all Warsaw and Lodz knew that Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a bankrupt, a swindler, a schemer the like of which Poland had never seen, he nevertheless always had partners and credit. It was said that he could persuade a stone to give milk. If not for his huge expenses and investments in all kinds of risky enterprises he would have been a millionaire.
Reb Layzer Gravitzer loved two things: prestige and danger. Some people had actually witnessed him lighting his cigar with
a five-ruble note. If there was a chance Reb Layzer Gravitzer might get his skull cracked open over a deal and be imprisoned to boot, he'd throw himself headlong into it. He had countless enemies. The rich men of Warsaw and Lodz had often tried to drive him from the marketplace, to get him out of the way, and indeed throw him in jail. Could there have been a greater punishment for Reb Layzer Gravitzer than being forced to wear a prison uniform, wooden clogs, and a round cap, and live among thieves and murderers? Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew that imprisonment was lurking over him. Troops of enemies encircled him. Investigating judges and prosecutors had sworn that they would ruin him. But Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew the law; in fact, he knew the entire legal code. He slipped out of every net and trial. He instructed his lawyers how to argue and what to do. Had Reb Layzer Gravitzer studied jurisprudence at a university, he surely would have been a legal genius. But he used his knowledge only for his own purposes.
Aside from saving his skin through legal trickery, Reb Layzer Gravitzer had also mastered the art of fleeing. Often, when the police came to arrest him, he would escape through a back door, or even out a window and down a ladder. When things got extremely dangerous, Reb Layzer Gravitzer would hide somewhere and lie low for a while. He had hiding places no one knew of, not even his own family. Folks said that illegal merchandise and all kinds of contraband were bricked into every wall of his house. It is superfluous to say that he gave bribes and weekly payoffs to people on the street from the local cop all the way up to the district police commander and even higher. On holidays he sent them wine, cognac, brandy, and money. The word was that there were only two high authorities in Warsaw that Reb Layzer
Gravitzer could not buy off: the minister of police and the governor general. He had tried, but with no success.
It was hard to find two people who were more diametrically opposite than Reb Layzer Gravitzer and my father. But Layzer Gravitzer had chosen my father to teach his grandson. Of course, he ended owing my father money. To whom did he not owe money?
Once Reb Layzer Gravitzer mentioned to my father that he had a sacred text that Father could not find anywhere in Warsaw. Father asked to borrow the book and Reb Layzer Gravitzer agreed to lend it to him. And that is how it happened that I was sent to Reb Layzer Gravitzer's house. Before I went, Mother put a clean shirt on me and combed out my sidecurls. She told me to behave properly and not talk nonsense. Reb Layzer Gravitzer could have sent the book with his grandson, but apparently he wanted someone from our family to see how lavishly he lived.
I no longer recall where he resided, but I do remember walking through an imposing main entrance and climbing up a marble staircase. On each of the enormous doors, decorated with carvings and cornices, was affixed a brass plate with an engraved name. Doctors and dentists lived here. From behind one door I heard someone playing a piano. I rang the bell, but a long time passed before the door was opened a crack and someone peeked at me over a chain. After casting a sharp and searching glance at me, a man asked who I was and what I wanted. Then he told me to wait.
That wait was the longest I had ever experienced. First, I waited for the door to be opened, and then I waited in the corridor.
The corridor was full of doors, each one with frosted glass. Telephones rang. Behind those doors women spoke, laughed, sang, and whispered. Then came a leonine roar and I recognized Reb Layzer Gravitzer's voice. Someone led me from one room to another to show me, I suspect, how spacious the apartment was. Finally, I was brought into a huge room lined with bookcases.
“Who are you?” Reb Layzer Gravitzer thundered, cocking his long, hairy ear.
Then he took the book, a Talmud, from the shelf and gave it to me. I said good day, but he did not respond. I wanted to leave through one door, but another door opened and in came a fat woman wearing a huge marriage wig overlaid with braids and curls and studded with little combs. A golden chain hung from her thick neck. Many rings bedecked her short fingers, and long earrings dangled from her earlobes. This was the mistress of the house, Reb Layzer Gravitzer's wife.
Just as Reb Layzer Gravitzer had to play the role of the Biblical Og, the King of Bashan, so his wife had to be the saintly woman, the kindly soul. She approached and amiably asked me who I was, pinched my cheek, and wanted to know if I was hungry. I swore I was full, but she led me into the grand salon, where perhaps twenty women, young, old, dark, blond, each one beautifully dressed and bejeweled, were sitting. The place was full of sweet fragrances and the aroma of wealth. Some women picked up a certain type of eyeglass—a lorgnette—and looked at me. Some were amazed; others smiled. The very young ones laughed.
“The Talmud folio is bigger than he is,” one of them cried out.
They gave me a slice of sponge cake, a goblet of wine, and some brandy, which made my nose tingle and my eyes tear.
Someone asked me, “What would you like to be when you grow up, a rabbi or a teacher?”
I was already too old for such questions, so I replied, “I don't know yet.”
This prompted an outburst of laughter, and they gave me some more liquor to drink. Then a woman packed some cookies and strudel in a paper bag for me to take home, as if I were a beggar.
Reb Layzer Gravitzer's wish prevailed: he was never sent to jail. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy and died immediately. He had a big funeral where, it was reported, some people cursed him vehemently. Nevertheless, he was buried in the choicest of graves, in the very first row, and a rabbi delivered the eulogy.
After his death his creditors descended on his apartment like locusts. But everything had already been inventoried. The landlord finally evicted the family from the apartment and their furniture was auctioned off. Of all his possessions only the bedding remained.
I don't know what became of Reb Layzer Gravitzer's family, but I would occasionally see Dovidl on the street carrying his violin. He wore his hair long under a broad hat. People had predicted that Dovidl would become a great violinist, but as far as I know, no one in the musical world has heard of him. Along with Reb Layzer Gravitzer everything fell apart.
My father would say to me, “What a shame! Had he put his sharp mind into studying, he would have become a brilliant Jewish scholar.”
 
 
On Gnoyna Street lived a jeweler named Reb Yekl Safir who was both a scholar and a rich man. Reb Yekl Safir was sickly and had a consumptive pallor. He had a pitch-black beard, a beaked nose, and a pair of deep black eyes which seemed to express the sadness of the world. Reb Yekl's tragedy was that he had no children. His wife, Zeldele, would always say that God had shut her womb and that there would be no one to say Kaddish for her. The couple had a housemaid named Shifra whom they treated like a daughter, but that did not suffice.
Reb Yekl Safir supported young men who studied Torah. Most of his energies were devoted to the students in the “collective” on Shliske Street. He called them his children and complained about them as if they were his own. My brother Israel Joshua had once studied in that collective and Reb Yekl Safir liked him. He loved bemoaning the fact that he had been wronged by those whom he was helping. Occasionally, he would come to visit us and I heard him complaining to my brother.
“When this fellow came to Warsaw he wore tattered rags. I clothed him as if he were my own son. I bought him everything: shirts, underwear, socks. He spent days and nights in my house. Now that he's made an excellent match, he didn't even invite me to the engagement party … So look, I ask you: does it pay to do favors? Zeldele was crying all night long. She swore she wouldn't let another student cross her threshold. Is there any justice?”
“There is no justice.”
“What? Really? … After all, there has to be some order in this world … Hanukkah is coming and I want to have a feast—but how can I talk to Zeldele about feasts if her heart is bitter?”
Reb Yekl Safir was always hosting little feasts. As sad as he was, he longed only for joy. My brother would occasionally take me along to his apartment. I remember best a feast for the students on Shushan Purim, the day after Purim. The students drank wine, beer, and mead in a living room that had three windows; they cracked nuts and ate babkas baked by Zeldele and Shifra the maid. My brother, in disguise, pretended to be a woman who comes to ask a rabbi a question and then a couple asking for a divorce. He had the ability to change his voice, to lower it to a bass, and then switch to a screeching soprano. He improvised the lines, which were very witty, and his sketches made everyone laugh. Reb Yekl Safir laughed so much tears ran down into his black beard. Zeldele and Shifra laughed so hard they fell into each other's arms. Then the boys danced in a circle and made Reb Yekl Safir join in. I, a little boy, hopped in the middle.
Later Zeldele and Shifra brought more refreshments and Yekl Safir declared, “Children, what do I want? Just to forget my melancholy for a little while. If I hadn't been a dry tree, I would
have had grandchildren by now. But I am all alone. If not for you, a holiday would have no meaning whatsoever.”
Then Zeldele broke in: “But they'll scatter like swallows. As soon as they get engaged they'll forget all about us. They'll run off without even inviting us to their weddings.”
“Let them run. I'm not stopping them. But now it's a holiday. If they want to be cruel ingrates, let them be cruel ingrates … I, Yekl Safir, have broad shoulders … God has punished us … Well, are natural children any better? They get married and forget their parents … And what about our Shifra? As soon as she gets married, she'll thumb her nose at us, too.”
“The old man shouldn't talk that way. I'm going to be better than a daughter.”
“We'll see, we'll see. People are false. I've been fooled more times than I have hairs on my head. But when I see a young scholar suffering, I must help him. I'll gladly give him the shirt off my back.”
“You're a fool, my husband, a fool.”
“And you're smart, Zeldele? When the fellows don't come, you badger me.”
While husband and wife bandied words, the students ate, sang, cracked jokes, and planned new feasts which Yekl Safir would underwrite. My brother was one of the few students with whom Yekl Safir felt entirely comfortable, and he loved him like a son.
On the day my parents and sister left for the wedding in Berlin, my brother planned a feast for his fellow students in our house. This was the first time Reb Yekl Safir was an invited guest instead of a host. He came with his wife and their maid, Shifra. Women neighbors cooked the supper for the students. Girls from neighboring apartments offered to help in this unusual celebration.
Reb Yekl Safir ordered wine and beer. I don't remember what we did with our younger brother, Moishe. No doubt he slept at a neighbor's house. The students drank, laughed, joked, and danced. We danced so long that the janitor came up, yelling that the whitewashed ceiling was crumbling on the floor below. A policeman came to inquire whether we had a permit for the gathering. He threatened to press charges until Reb Yekl Safir called him into another room and slipped something into his hand. Afterward, Reb Yekl Safir, who was half drunk, began preaching.
“Fellas, you're all my children … You have all become embedded in my heart … Thousands of students have come through my house and I remember every single one … Some already have children and they are my grandchildren.”
Reb Yekl Safir began to cry—and soon Zeldele, too, was wiping the tears from her eyes and kissing Shifra the maid.
The whole two weeks my parents were away in Berlin anarchy reigned in our apartment. Girls came in to cook and clean for us. Someone prepared the Sabbath cholent. My brother painted pictures in Father's courtroom and brought home loads of books.
I tried to read but understood very little. I was still a cheder lad, but I rarely attended. My parents needed me to help out at home. The truth was, I hated the cheder, and my family quickly got used to the fact that I attended when I wanted to and didn't when I didn't. Moreover, my father didn't have enough money to pay the teacher and I went to cheder for next to nothing. But I was a quick learner of the Five Books of Moses and of the Gemara, too.
I met a boy on Krochmalna Street who was in a similar situation. A few years older than I, he was as black as a Gypsy and his sidecurls stuck out like two hairpins. Even though he had
parents, he looked ragged and tattered and straggled about like an orphan. He told me weird things: behind Warsaw there were deserts and fields which no one owned and where wild cows grazed. From time to time wild men could be seen there, too.
“If the cows are wild, can you take them home?” I asked him.
“No one knows the way.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“From the Kabbalah.”
Yes, this boy named Boruch Dovid persuaded me that he was a Kabbalist and that he knew the Zohar. He said he could draw wine from the wall and make pigeons appear by pronouncing the holy names of God. I asked him to teach me Kabbalah, but he said that I was still too young.
“And you're old?”
“I am a reincarnation of a saint.”
We walked along the Warsaw streets, and he told me about the seven heavens, angels, seraphim, the holy beasts. But Boruch Dovid knew Warsaw even better than he knew the heavens. He brought me to an inn where provincial Jews who came to Warsaw to buy provisions parked their wagons. He showed me Warsaw's famous prison, the Paviak, and the arsenal at Dluga Street. He even knew the way to the Warsaw suburb of Praga. We walked along Senator Street and crossed the Praga bridge. He pulled a cork out of his pocket and threw it into the Vistula River.
“It's going to float all the way out to the sea,” he said.
“And from there?”
“From there to the ocean.”
“And from there?”
“From there it will reach the end of the world.”
“And what's there?”
“That's where the darkness begins.”
“And what's on the other side of the darkness?”
“One is forbidden to think about that. He who thinks about it will go mad.”
We walked up to the Tereshpolye terminal to watch the trains come and go. A locomotive belched smoke and hissed; a bell rang out. A gigantic gendarme, his chest covered with medals, kept order. My sister had gone off somewhere to a strange young man. My parents were in Berlin. My brother Israel Joshua was reading heretical books, and I was standing somewhere in a distant terminal watching people depart for places hundreds of miles away. Boruch Dovid told me that this train went to Siberia, to China, even to the place where black men live.
A young man, probably a recruit, was leaving on a trip. He wore high boots and held a wooden suitcase. A girl in a short dress and a flowered scarf had come to see him off. They kissed each other again and again. He put his hands on her hips. Their mouths pressed hungrily one against the other. They did not want to let go.
Boruch Dovid wagged a finger. “They have sex.”
“What does that mean?”
And then Boruch Dovid revealed the secret of intercourse. Everybody does it: people, animals, even flies.
“Rabbis, too?”
“Rabbis, too.”
“And rabbinic judges?”
“Rabbinic judges, too.”
“You're a liar! You're making it up!”
“I'm not a liar. I'll swear by my ritual fringes.”
I wanted to spit in his face, but I needed him because I didn't know the way back home. A deep sadness came over me: I fell into a reverie. Many mysteries suddenly became clear to me. Adults only pretended to be saintly. They may speak about God, but secretly, so that the children won't find out, they do all kinds of abominable acts. Even my own parents. Even my own sister.
Boruch Dovid and I were angry at each other, but nevertheless we returned home together, walking somewhat apart. Perhaps the heretics are right, I thought. Perhaps there is no God. And perhaps nothing exists. Perhaps all of this is just a dream. Perhaps all people are demons and Boruch Dovid is a demon, too.
It was dark when I got home. I hadn't eaten all day. The door opened and Manya the neighbor's daughter came in.
“Why were you running around all day? Mama expected you for lunch.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“They're calling, come eat with us.”
“I don't want to eat.”
“Want me to bring it in here?”
I didn't reply. Manya brought me potatoes and borscht and a cutlet. She sat down opposite me and watched me eat.
“Do you miss your mommy?”
“No.”
“Do you miss your daddy?”
“I don't miss anyone.”
“What are you gonna be when you grow up?”
“A heretic.”
“What's that mean?”
“That there's no God.”
“Oh, one is forbidden to talk like that!”
“But you can.”
“They'll burn you and roast you in hell!”
“I'll pour water on and douse the flames.”
Manya laughed. I saw the dimples in her cheeks. She looked just like her mother, Pesele. Her two braids were tied with a red ribbon.
“Why don't you wash your face?”
“Because I'm a chimney sweep.”
“Boy, are you strange!”
“I'm a robber. I have horns!”
And I put two fingers to my forehead. Manya smiled, but she was also a bit scared.
After she left, I went to bed and immediately sank into a heavy sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night. My older brother had not come home. I was all alone in the apartment. I recalled Boruch Dovid's remarks about the cork that floated all the way to the darkness at the end of the world. But how could the world have an end? There had to be something on the other side of the darkness. And what was there before the world was created? Who had created the darkness and the void? Oh, I hope I don't go mad!
I had a crazy impulse: to go out on the balcony. I opened the door and a cold wind swept over me. Krochmalna Street was empty. All the stores were shuttered. Not a soul on the square. The only sounds were the hissing of the mist-wrapped gas lanterns. A sky thickly sown with stars arched over the roofs. I suddenly felt afraid and began to cry. I was all alone in the world, surrounded by hidden monstrosities and mysteries that no one could resolve.

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