More Stories from My Father's Court (3 page)

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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Father brought the holy book he was studying closer to him, as if to hide his face from the world and from its lusts and temptations.
A year passed. The
shochet
went off to America. His wife moved out of our courtyard. Then one day she sent regards through a neighbor of ours who told us that the
shochet'
s ex-wife had married a crude and common young butcher. She no longer wore her old-fashioned cap but had donned a curled marriage wig. She stood by the butcher block in a white apron like a born butcher's wife. My mother listened to our neighbor in silence. A sadness radiated from her pale eyes.
“Nu,
that's how human beings are,” she observed.
 
 
One afternoon a gigantic, broad-shouldered man with a ruddy face, blond beard, and wild eyes entered the
shtibl,
the small Hasidic prayer room, for the Mincha service. His garb was neither long nor short. He wore a fur cape and a hooded caftan that looked as though it had been made in the Middle Ages. His boots had broad uppers into which he had tucked his baggy trousers. He removed a tiny siddur from his pocket and began reciting the Order of Sacrifices.
He prayed with great devotion, but the words he uttered were hard and heavy as stones. People watched him and shrugged. “Who is that?” they asked.
After prayers the worshippers greeted him with
“Sholom aleichem”
and asked where he was from.
“Oh, from far away.”
“From where?”
“Russia.”
“Which town?”
He named one the Warsaw Hasidim had never heard of.
“And what's your name?”
“Avraham.”
The way he pronounced “Avraham” made them realize he wasn't a Jew like other Jews. After several exchanges they discovered that Avraham was a convert. He was a peasant from a remote Russian province who had come to live on this Jewish street in Warsaw, where he was now a tinsmith.
When asked why he had become a Jew, he cried out, “Because the Jews have the truth!”
The Jews were amazed. They were even more amazed that he had come to pray in a Hasidic
shtibl
rather than a regular
shul,
but everyone was welcoming and friendly to him. When he was called to the Torah for an
aliyah
—summoned as “Reb Avraham ben Avraham”—the convert touched the Torah with the
tzitzis
of his tallis, kissed it, and recited the blessing in a deep bass voice that seemed to come from a barrel or a tomb. The younger boys giggled and pinched one another. The Torah reader just managed to contain his laughter by swaying and frowning. Yes, here before us was a Jew, a pious Jew—in the shape and form of a goy.
Before long the convert began causing trouble. Hasidim habitually talk during prayers, but when the convert heard someone chatting, he turned red and then pale with anger and yelled:
“Nu—
shh!
”
And put a finger to his lips.
During the Silent Devotion he stood immersed in prayer for a long time. The prayer leader hadn't the patience to wait for him to conclude and began the repetition of the Silent Devotion. This caused the convert to miss the Kedusha, which angered him.
“You're rushing through the prayers,” he complained. “You're forgetting that you're speaking to God.”
The convert had apparently studied the holy texts and knew the laws, for he asked, “Do you count money so quickly, too? One has to pray like one counts money.”
The Hasidim conceded that the convert was right, but Hasidim are still not Misnagdim.
2
They would apologize to the convert and admit that he was right, but the next day the scene repeated itself. The convert yelled, pounded the table with his heavy fist, and shouted that the Messiah wasn't coming because the Jews were sinning.
But the boys had even more problems with him. They all talked during prayers, ran around, pinched one another, and snickered. The convert raised the roof. What annoyed him most was that the youngsters did not say “Blessed be He and blessed be His name” and “Amen” at the proper places. His own resonant “Blessed be He and blessed be His name” and “Amen” shook the walls. His goyish piety awakened in the boys and even in the grownups an irresistible desire to laugh. Even the chazan himself had to laugh into his fist in the middle of his prayers.
On Yom Kippur the convert did something wild: instead of wearing socks, he stood barefoot. His feet were gigantic and his unusually wide big toes were topped by misshapen toenails. A mere glance at those feet and one couldn't help laughing. On Yom Kippur night, during the cantor's Kol Nidrei, the entire congregation was in a paroxysm of laughter. They beat their
chests during the “For our sins” prayer and chuckled into their High Holiday prayer books.
The convert stood with a tallis wrapped over his white linen robe. When he pounded his chest, it echoed throughout the sanctuary, as did his pitiful weeping. His form stood out from all the other tallises and linen robes. He wore a gilded yarmulke that made him look not like a Jew but like one of the saints the gentiles paint on church walls. The Hasidim concluded that they would have to rid themselves of this Ivan—but how? Can Jews drive away a goy who has taken upon himself the yoke of Yiddishkeit? Wasn't he a tzaddik, a saintly man?
After the Evening Service the convert did not go home. Instead, he spent the night in the
shtibl.
All night long he recited psalms. The next morning, before the Torah was taken out of the Ark, the convert made a scene. The trustee began auctioning off the
aliyahs
to the Torah. Hasidim outbid one another. The trustee chanted, “Six gulden going once, six gulden going twice, six gulden … going … going … six gulden and ten …” As soon as the trustee had called out the last words, the convert screamed at the top of his lungs, “What's going on here? Money, money, money!”
He stamped his bare feet, waved his fists, and shouted, “Gulden, gulden, gulden … It's Yom Kippur! You boors! … You're sinning! It's a desecration of God's name!”
“Peasant!” someone screeched.
“A goy remains a goy,” a youngster called out.
“You're a goy yourself,” the convert replied. “Yom Kippur is a holy day. The holiest day of the year. God forgives our sins and you're doing business, business … just like they did in the Holy
Temple long ago … That's why it was destroyed … That's why the Messiah isn't coming!”
And the convert broke into tears—a hoarse, manly weeping that sent a shudder through everyone. The congregants fell silent.
Then the trustee called out, “We must support our
shtibl
… We need coal for the winter. We have to pay rent.”
“On Yom Kippur one is forbidden to do business in the presence of the Torah,” the convert replied.
“You don't have to teach us how to be Jews.”
“It's forbidden,” he said.
After a while the Hasidic
shtibl
got rid of the convert and he went to pray in a study house. But he still caused problems on the street. He preached morality to the prostitutes who stood by the gates. He went to the square where the thieves hung out and delivered a sermon half in Yiddish, half in Russian, showing them where in the Bible the phrase “Do not steal” appeared in the Ten Commandments. Even at that time there were homes on the street where women cooked on the Sabbath, and the convert went there to rebuke them, predicting catastrophes, epidemics, even pogroms. It wasn't long before the children were tagging after him and teasing him with “Ivan, Ivan, there you go. Ivan, Ivan, stub your toe!”
But his greatest outrage was reserved for the young girls who wore short-sleeved, low-cut dresses. The convert ran after them, called them wantons and whores; they were sinning, he shouted, and causing others to sin.
On the street there was a teahouse where boys and girls would gather on the Sabbath to crack pumpkin seeds, flirt, and dance. The proprietor went about with her hair uncovered and
would occasionally pour cold water into the urn or surreptitiously push the iron poker into the fire. The convert, seeing what was going on, appointed himself guardian of Sabbath observance. The thieves and hooligans who frequented the place cursed the convert and told him he'd wake up one day with a knife in his back. The girls laughed at him and escorted him out of the teahouse with catcalls.
The convert complained to Father, rebuking him for not tending to the street. Father justified himself before the convert as if he were one of his own, telling him how little attention today's generation paid to ethical pronouncements. Father hinted to the convert that he should rather pray, learn to be a Jew, and not try to improve others, for it was wasted effort. But the convert pointed out to Father the verse in the Pentateuch where one is commanded to rebuke one's fellow man.
Father agreed, but showed him a law stating that if one knew for certain that one's moralizing would not be efficacious, and that the next fellow was sinning wantonly and willfully, then one should no longer preach to him. “Everything has its limit,” Father declared.
“Because of them the Messiah won't come and we'll remain in exile forever.”
“Forever? God forbid!”
“They're inviting a new destruction.”
The convert refused to be consoled. The sinning on the street caused him endless anguish. His pale eyes shone with a non-Jewish bitterness.
One Sabbath people witnessed another bizarre scene: the convert was being led away, flanked by two police officers. Because
it was forbidden in Russia to convert to Judaism, the convert had committed a crime against the regime. Apparently someone had informed on him to the authorities. Or perhaps he had committed another offense. The police closed his workshop, hung a lock on the door, and sealed it.
Some Jews suggested that they should make inquiries and find a lawyer for the convert, but no one had any money or time for such endeavors. After a while the lock on his door was removed and a soda-water shop opened up. The convert seemed to have vanished. Only now did the people on the street begin to understand what had happened. A goy had sacrificed his life for Yiddishkeit and Jews had mocked him. He was locked up somewhere and no one was making any effort to free him. Some said that the convert had been sent to Siberia. The cheder lads concluded that he had been either hanged or burned at the stake and that his soul had expired with the words “Hear O Israel.” People on the street felt guilty.
They thought that they would never see the convert again. But not long after the Germans occupied Warsaw during World War I, a youth named Chaim told the following story:
Walking along Dluga Street one day he felt hungry. He saw a shop with Hebrew lettering. A young man stood in the doorway and asked Chaim, “You're hungry, eh? Then come in.”
Chaim entered. He was served a bowl of grits and a heel of a bread. Other young men sat at a long table. After the meal a bareheaded Jew with the beard of a teacher and the gold-rimmed glasses of a rich man entered and began preaching: The true Messiah had already come and his name was Jesus of Nazareth. This Jew then talked about the little lamb, the paschal
sacrifice, and Isaiah's prophecy that a virgin would become pregnant and give birth to a son. He explained the difficult verse in Psalms 2:12 by saying that it meant: kiss God's son.
Chaim then realized that he had fallen into a den of missionaries but he was afraid to abandon his meal and flee. Suddenly the convert appeared. It seemed that he lived there among them.
Yes, Jews had driven him away and he had gone over to the missionaries. “I'm a Jew. A Jew!” the convert asserted. “But the Messiah is already here. You're waiting in vain. Jesus is the Messiah … Jesus of Nazareth!”
When this story was repeated back in the
shtibl,
the Jews there declared, “That's the problem with goyim. They don't have the patience to wait.”
 
 
The door opened and an old woman with a cane entered. She was not white but black: she had a black, disheveled marriage wig; a dark, wrinkled face; black eyes; a little black beard on the tip of a prominent double chin—and she wore a black shawl and a black dress so long it seemed to sweep the floor after her. Old age is usually associated with repose and quietude, but the old age of this woman was as dark as a witch's. She was full of beardlike tufts of hair and warts.
But, in fact, she spoke about Jewish matters. She was old, she said. She had saved a little money, which she would not use up during her lifetime. Since she was childless, she wanted to hire a fine man who in a hundred years would say Kaddish in her memory. She proposed that my father should do this and she was prepared to advance him one hundred rubles. The rest would be paid after her funeral.
We needed the money, but my father declined. He said that nobody knows whose tomorrow it will be. How could he take money from her? No one has a contract with the Master of the
Universe. I sensed that Father had other reservations. He did not want to derive income from somebody else's death, even if it was an old woman's. The whole matter was distasteful to him.
But the old woman did not relent. Who could help her if not the rabbi, she exclaimed, banging her cane on the floor. Father considered who should assume this responsibility and quickly found the right person. In the Hasidic
shtibl
there was a small man with a little gray beard, a florid face, and young eyes. Although he was no longer young, he still had a lively gait. He often drank, spun stories, and joked around. It was clear that he was healthy, thank God, and had many years left to live. He had been a small-time merchant, but now his son-in-law, a wealthy fruit wholesaler, supported him. Father sent for this man. When Father informed him of the old woman's request, the man immediately agreed. Rubbing his reddish hands, he said, “Why not? Kaddish is Kaddish.”
The old woman glared at him darkly. Her black eyes seemed to drill into him, probing his innermost secrets. After a moment she called out, “I also want him to lead the prayer service in my memory.”
“Why not? I'll lead the service.”
“An entire year!” the old woman blurted out angrily.
“Certainly, all year long.”
“And on the anniversary of my death I want a memorial candle lit and I want you to study Mishnah.”
“I study Mishnah anyway …”
“I want a contract and a handshake.”
Here Father finally intervened: “We can have a signed agreement, but a handshake is not necessary. When a Jew makes a promise he keeps his word, God willing.”
“You, Rabbi, would keep your promise, but I don't trust him!” the woman said with a vigor that belied her age.
“If you don't trust him, then it's no good,” Father said. “In such a matter one must trust the other person to keep his word.”
“Rabbi, you I'll trust.”
The gray man stood all the while with an expression that said, Whichever way it goes, I can manage without her … He wore a cotton-lined gray gaberdine, a little plush hat, a red scarf around his neck, and a pair of leather boots that looked indestructible. His red cheeks, lined with little veins, bore witness that he enjoyed his drink and was full of life's juices. He took out a little snuffbox, poured a bit of snuff onto the palm of his hand, and then drew it deeply into his hairy nostrils. He did not even sneeze. We cheder boys used to say that not sneezing is a sure sign the snuff has gone straight to your brain …
Eventually they drew up a contract and the man signed it. When he suggested that they seal the deal with a glass of brandy, the old woman sent me down to buy a bottle and some egg biscuits. The man poured himself a large drink and the woman took a glass herself. Father did not drink. The man, the Kaddish sayer, raised another large glass and called out, “Now that you have somebody to say Kaddish after you, may you live to be one hundred and twenty!”
The old woman shook her head. “What's the good of my life?”
She had been prepared to give my father one hundred rubles in advance, but gave only twenty-five to the old man, promising
the balance after her death. The old man acquiesced to everything and then left.
The woman stayed; she went into the kitchen and insinuated to my mother that she wasn't satisfied with this deal. She had no trust in this person. My mother heard her out and said, “The best thing is to say Kaddish for oneself.”
“How, my dear, can one say Kaddish for oneself?”
“One does deeds of charity. One prays. One observes Yiddishkeit. One does not speak ill of other people. All of this is better than the best Kaddish.”
The old woman pondered this, then left.
A couple of months passed. Suddenly the door opened and the old woman limped in, black as a crow. Even her nose resembled a crow's beak.
“Rebbetzin, I've been hoodwinked.”
“What happened?”
“The shmendrick's getting married, of all things!”
Apparently the old man, her Kaddish sayer, was preparing to marry a hunk of tripe who sold rotten apples in the marketplace.
At first Mother was surprised; then she asked, “What's the harm in that? Since he promised to say Kaddish, he'll say it.”
“His wife won't let him.”
“Why wouldn't she let him?”
“Because she's a bitch.”
The woman stubbornly insisted that we send for her Kaddish sayer. I didn't have to run too far, for all of this took place in our courtyard. The man was sitting in the
shtibl
telling stories. He came right away. As soon as he saw the old woman, his eyes twinkled.
“What does she want now?”
The old woman maintained that since he was getting married she regretted the entire deal.
“Regret is not businesslike,” the old man responded.
The old woman wanted her twenty-five rubles back, but the man said he had already spent them. He impatiently shuffled his thick-soled leather boots, then yelled, “What a shlimazel!”
It was not an easy lawsuit. The man denied nothing. He had already eaten up the money. He had made no agreement with this old woman that he was not allowed to marry. There was no room for compromise here because the man was unwilling to return even a broken kopeck. Father said that the man's marriage was no obstacle to his saying Kaddish. How is one thing connected to the other? But the old woman was angry. Her muttering and mumbling portended no good. She glowered darkly at the man. It seemed to me she wanted to give him the evil eye and was casting a spell over him to destroy him.
“I'll have to hire another man,” she called out.
“Why another? I'll say Kaddish for you.”
“I don't want your Kaddish.”
“Then no is no.”
“That money of mine will make him miserable,” the old woman predicted gloomily.
The old man got married. A couple of weeks after the wedding he came to the
shtibl.
His red cheeks had yellowed. He was hunched over. His boots now seemed much too big for him.
The men in the
shtibl
joked with him: “Well, how's our young man doing?”
The man spit on the ground. “No good.”
“What's up?”
“A witch, everything rotten you can imagine.”
“What does she want?”
“Who knows? She torments me. She doesn't let me sleep at night with her yapping. She wakes up the neighbors. People come knocking on the door.”
“So what does she want?”
“I'll be darned if I know. She talks like a madwoman, may it not happen to us!”
“So what will you do? Go back to your daughter?”
“My daughter won't let me in.”
“What's the matter?”
“She's angry that I married.”
“So what will happen?”
“It's not a good situation.”
The man had quarreled with his daughter and son-in-law, and married a half-crazy market woman. His little gray beard had turned entirely white.
He stopped telling stories. He sat in the
shtibl
and mournfully chanted psalms, as if for a dangerously ill person. On several occasions he did not return home to sleep. The shamesh would find him in the morning stretched out on a bench with a no-longer-usable tallis under his head.
After a while people heard that he had divorced the market woman but that his daughter still refused to let him enter her house. He had exchanged her mother for a vulgar market harridan—and for this his daughter could not forgive him. The old man began making efforts to be admitted to the old-age home but there was told he was too young. Moreover, one also had to
bring a dowry like—forgive the comparison—a nun who wants to enter a cloister.
Then the old woman with the little black beard reappeared. She began to cook grits for him, darn his socks, and launder his shirts and his long johns. She became his protector. This woman, for whom he was supposed to say Kaddish, had started to act like his wife.
It didn't take long for the inevitable to occur. The old woman came to us and announced that she was prepared to marry this man who should have said Kaddish for her and was surely twenty years her junior.
As she spoke she pounded the floor with her cane. Her little beard shook. The warts on her face bobbed quickly. It isn't hard for a woman to be alone, she maintained. Why does she need a man? She cooks some food in a little pot, does a bit of laundry, sweeps her apartment, and everything is the way it ought to be. When she gets an occasional bellyache at night, she heats up a pot lid and places it on her stomach. But a man is like an abandoned child. He can't cook, he can't do laundry, he can't clean up. If one doesn't tend to him, he neglects himself completely. Since he would say Kaddish for her anyway, he might as well become her husband. She had an apartment and a bit of money. Surely he wouldn't starve. “The couple of years I have left to me, let's live them out decently,” she added.
Mother listened to her and was silent. The old man came also. He wasn't overly anxious for this match, but he said, “Do I have a choice? My daughter doesn't want me, so somebody has to take pity on me … and I no longer have the strength to sleep on a hard bench.”
He married—but apparently did not strike gold. Once again he sat in the
shtibl
and mournfully chanted psalms.
The youngsters began questioning him. They wanted to know if he had dallied with the witch, but the old man snapped, “I'm not obliged to give you any reports!”
“How old is she?”
“I didn't count her years.”
“Does she have a bundle?”
“Rascals! Back to your books!” the old man shouted.
One winter evening, between the Afternoon and Evening Services, the old man complained that he had a bad cold. He went home but did not return for prayers the next morning. The following morning he didn't come to the
shtibl
either. The Jews there began saying that they ought to pay him a sick call. But it was already too late—the Kaddish sayer had died.
At the funeral a quarrel broke out between the widow and the old man's daughter. After the shiva period, the old woman came to Father requesting that a new Kaddish sayer be found for her. Another thing: since her husband had left no son and since his son-in-law was a roughneck, a boor, a scoundrel, she was prepared to pay a few extra rubles for someone to say Kaddish for him.
The old woman stood in the kitchen, black as coal, with a distorted face, a drooping mouth—a chunk of darkness. She exuded a demonic power. My mother usually welcomed people amicably, but she displayed a repugnance toward this old murderer. Father said that he knew of no other Kaddish sayers and hinted that she leave him alone. But she did not leave right away. Her gaze radiated a fierce stubbornness, the eerie
self-confidence of those who have lived too long and no longer have any fear of the Angel of Death. I was still a little boy at the time, but I clearly sensed that the old woman had in some secretive manner done in her Kaddish sayer. Like a spider she had enmeshed him in her web and destroyed him.

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