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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

BOOK: More Stories from My Father's Court
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Those who understand human nature and contemplate its affairs realize that one person can never really know another. People do things which seem to make no sense at all.
For example: the middle-aged man who married a woman fifteen years younger and then began to work as a salesman, traveling the length and breadth of Russia to sell the products of a big firm on commission. He got married, let's say on a Tuesday, and then on Sunday, even before the traditional seven days of celebration had ended, his wife was accompanying him to the train bound for Petersburg. He had planned to be away three months, but ended up traversing all of Russia up to the Chinese border and didn't return until seven months later.
He remained in Warsaw three weeks and then departed once more. When he came back again, the traveling salesman found a baby in a cradle—his own.
I won't recount all his trips here. At the lawsuit his wife listed each one in detail. He had been at home no more than one month during the year and sometimes not even that long. Another child
was born. The children were already seven and eight, but they did not really know their father. He came, brought presents, and once more began preparing for another journey. After each trip he would promise his wife that his roaming and roving had ended, but he never kept his word.
He looked like a traveling salesman: average height, rather chubby, with a black mustache and the smile of a peddler. He had a premature potbelly on which hung the gold chain of a pocketwatch. He dressed fashionably: a derby, a pinstriped suit, a stiff collar with rounded edges, and a black necktie. His boots were polished to a high shine. Even the way he inserted a finger into his vest pocket and lit his cigarettes with a lighter proved he was a worldly man.
He said in a pleasantly hoarse voice, “Is it my fault I have such a livelihood? This is how I make my living. This is how I support my family.”
The way he blew smoke rings through his nose and from the side of his mouth showed me, the little boy, that he was full of grown-up cleverness and that he knew what he was talking about.
But above all, I liked his cuffs with the gilt cuff links set with blue gemstones. A man with such cuffs just doesn't babble aimlessly.
But his short wife, who had a girlish face and wore a hat over her head of girlish hair, countered, “What kind of a living is this? He goes away for years on end. I'm a living widow and the children are living orphans. On Pesach I have to go to my mother's for the Seder …” The woman took out a small handkerchief and wiped away a solitary tear.
Father placed his hand on his forehead and asked, “So what do you want?”
“Rather than live such a life, it would be better for him to divorce me,” the woman said. “I can't go on like this. It's a miserable way to live.”
“What do you say?” Father asked the husband.
“Rabbi, if she wants to divorce me, I won't force her to stay. My principle is that two people have to want a marriage. If one side is dissatisfied, it's no good.”
The word “marriage” smacked of storybooks and novels serialized in the newspapers. Even the word “dissatisfied” had a Germanic ring.
Mother came in and asked, “What's the purpose of such a life?”
She said it partly to the woman and partly to the man. The traveling salesman smiled sweetly, displaying some of the gold in his teeth. His words, too, were golden: “What shall I do, Rebbetzin? Every person has his occupation. Do you think it's a pleasure to sit days on end in a train? One day I'm in Moscow, the next I'm in Petersburg; one day I'm in Nizhny Novgorod, and the next I'm in Vladivostok. And furthermore, living in hotels is no pleasure either. I long for my own bed and my wife. But no sooner do I want to return home than I get a telegram from my firm to go to the Caucasus, or the devil knows where. Then I have to pick up my suitcase and run to the terminal once again …”
“Children must have a father …”
“Of course, but my situation is such that I can see my children only once a year.”
I was only a little boy at the time, but still I sensed that this man was not as unhappy as he pretended to be. A joke always seemed to hover on his thick lips. He apparently enjoyed these trips immensely. His eyes gleamed with oily satisfaction and pride that he was needed by his firm and was obliged to undertake such lengthy journeys. It seemed he felt quite at home in all these trains, terminals, hotels. By now I had already heard readings of the Sholom Aleichem railroad story about two traveling salesmen who played cards on the backside of a Greek Orthodox priest—and it seemed to me that this traveling salesman was one of those two men. He sits in the train, drinks tea, plays cards, and tells stories. Who knows what could have taken place in all those far-flung places?
After lengthy discussions the traveling salesman promised that he would try to persuade his firm to have him travel less and do more work in Warsaw. He took his wife by the arm and departed with her. Even his manner of walking was sly and deceitful. I noticed that two round pieces of rubber had been added to his heels to make him taller. One could not hear his footfalls. I sensed (or perhaps I realize it only now) that his wife and children were no more than a joke for him—one of the countless comic and entertaining anecdotes which traveling salesmen tell on trains to one another or to perfect strangers.
After a period of not going to the cheder, I was enrolled by my parents once again. It so happened that this was the same cheder that the older son of the traveling salesman was attending. He did not study with my teacher, who taught Talmud, but with the teacher's son, who taught the beginners' class. The boy had a gentile first name: Kuba. He attended cheder for only a
few hours, because he also studied in public school. He came and went as he wished. The boy was a copy of his father: chubby, swarthy, with a pair of dark, laughing eyes, full lips, and dimpled cheeks. His pockets were always laden with nuts, chocolates, caramels, and all kinds of toys. Despite his age he was full of stories. He didn't know that his parents had come to us to initiate a lawsuit, but I
did
know and played dumb. Children often have a good sense of what can be discussed and what must be kept secret. I already knew not to tell tales out of school …
Kuba was always blathering about his papa: how he traveled, how he saw everything, and what kinds of presents he brought every time he returned home. The boy had a set of trains with tracks and other such toys. Even the trifles he brought to cheder were treasures. He had, for example, an ivory pen whose shaft had a tiny window. Looking into it one could see the city of Cracow. He also had colored pencils and even a little box of colors with which one could paint only when they were wet with spittle.
At some point, a week passed and the would-be scholar (which is what the teacher called him) did not show up in cheder. The teacher then sent me and another boy to find out what had happened. Perhaps Kuba was ill.
We made our way to their house. The family no longer lived on our street but on Gnoyna Street. The apartment steps were dirty, but underneath the dirt one could see the white of marble. I rang the bell and a maid came to open the door. At first she didn't want to admit us, but Kuba heard us and invited us in. I stood there amazed. The rooms were enormous. Kuba
was wearing something I hadn't seen before; only later did I learn it was pajamas. He was supposedly a little bit under the weather. His throat was red, but he played with his toys and ran about over the waxed floors with the energy of a young colt. His mother yelled at him and the maid scolded him angrily in Polish.
Suddenly I noticed a man roaming about the house, but it wasn't the traveling salesman. He was short, thin, with a pale face and blond curly hair. His tie looked more like a noose than a cravat. I asked Kuba who he was.
“He's teaching Mama how to play the piano.”
“What's that?”
“Come, I'll show you.”
He ran to the piano and began banging on the keys. Tones and overtones filled the apartment. His mother began yelling at Kuba in Polish, and we, the two messengers, wanted to leave, but then she offered us a snack. Each one of us was given a biscuit and a glass of cocoa, as was Kuba, but he was in no rush to drink. He was already sated with sweets.
Kuba told us about the piano teacher. He could play anything. He was a professor of music and had performed with the Philharmonic. He was also crazy. When Mama did not play well, he plugged his ears with his fingers and yelled and swooshed the sheet music to the floor. Sometimes the teacher took Kuba and his little sister, who was now at school, to the movies, where they showed all kinds of little people on a screen. The piano teacher did not speak Yiddish, only Polish.
“Is he your uncle?”
“No, he's not an uncle.”
I wasn't suspicious at the time, but I understood that none of this was kosher. All these things smacked of promiscuity: a piano, a woman without a marriage wig, a man who gave piano lessons to a woman, a little boy who studied in public school and ran around bareheaded in the apartment. I never saw him again—not him, not his mama, not the piano teacher, and not his father, who dragged himself from one Russian fair to another and supported a nice-looking wife, two refined children, and a piano teacher to boot.
This traveling salesman who told countless anecdotes about others had transformed his own life into an anecdote. But why did he do this? Why did a man get married and then go off to faraway places? Did he have such strong faith in women's fidelity? Or didn't it bother him? And why did he need a family whom he saw so rarely?
A stranger certainly cannot answer this, but I don't know if even the salesman himself could have explained it. Behind his jokes and tales a different being evidently lived in this man—one with another outlook and other calculations.
 
 
I'll admit to you, dear reader, that I don't care much for dogs. The truth is, I don't like them at all. To be perfectly honest, I hate them. As far as I'm concerned—and both my grandfathers held the same view—a dog is a mangy cur, a sycophant, a howler, a biter, a bootlicker. What is there to like in a dog?
And even if I did have positive feelings for dogs, they would have vanished after that lawsuit.
The door to Father's courtroom opened and a tall, heavy-set man entered. He wore a gray jacket, gray trousers, and a gray hat. His clothes were flour-dusted. Zanvel was his name, and he was a baker on our street. In the courtyard where the bakery was located, he was often seen walking about wearing only his long underwear, a pair of crumpled slippers, and a conical paper cap instead of a hat.
Journeymen bakers earned good money, but Zanvel worked in his father's bakery and was paid better than the others. He had pale skin, blue eyes, and the thick neck and shoulders of a
boxer. He kneaded huge chunks of dough, the sort of work that can easily break someone who isn't strong enough.
He approached Father's desk, pounded it with his fist, and said, “Rabbi, I want to start a lawsuit.”
“Against whom?”
“My wife.”
“Sit down. What is it?”
“Rabbi, it's either me or the dog,” Zanvel shouted. “There's no room in the house for both of us.”
“Who is this dog?”
“It's not a person but a real dog,” Zanvel yelled. “She wanted to have a dog in the house—a fire in her kishkes! Ever since she got that dog, she's forgotten she has a husband. My line of work is hard and backbreaking. I'm a baker, Rabbi. I bake bread so people can eat. All night long I work nonstop in the bakery, but when I come home in the morning, instead of being greeted by my wife, a dog comes bounding toward me. He barks and jumps on me. They say it's out of love, but I don't need his love. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a little puppy. But this dog is like a bear. A wild beast. I don't want a wild beast in my house. He opens his mouth like a lion. He can crunch a hard bone. When he barks, I have to cover my ears. He makes such a fuss, I'm lucky that he doesn't bite my nose off. What do I need that for? My father didn't have a dog.
“People say that a dog is useful if you live in a village, out in the country—but why do I need a dog in Warsaw? No one's going to rob me here—I have an excellent lock on my door. Poor people used to come to my house and I would give them what I
could: one or two groschen, a piece of bread, a piece of sugar. But this dog drove all the poor people away. I have a charity box hanging on a wall and a Hasid used to come to collect the money, but he stopped coming, too. If we don't chase the dog away, he'll end up tearing the hem of someone's coat. These Hasidim are scared of dogs.”
“Why does she need a dog?” Father said.
“Rabbi, you know like I know. No one in my family owns a dog. She began complaining that she's lonely. You see, we don't have children and she wants to have a living creature in the house. So I tell her, get a cat or a parrot. At least a bird sings. A parrot speaks. But what does a dog do? Rabbi, I'm ashamed to say it, but she kisses him. She's always kissing him. I'm not, like they say, jealous. But when I see her kissing him, it wounds me to the core. Rabbi, I work long, hard hours for her—and it's the dog she kisses. She never stops kissing him, petting him, worrying over his health. He doesn't eat enough; he doesn't sleep enough.
“Rabbi, I told her I'm going to take a piece of iron and split his skull open. So she screams she'll leave the house. Rabbi, I want to have a rabbinic judgment! I want you to decide which of us is more important—a man or a dog.”
“What kind of comparison is that, God forbid. Comparing a dog to a man!”
His wife was summoned. A sturdy woman came in; she had a high bosom, strong arms, thick calves. Her shoes were tattered. She didn't walk but dragged the soles of her shoes along the floor. She was sucking on a hard candy and one red cheek was pulsating. Boredom radiated from her face.
“Why do you need a dog?” Father asked her. “The Talmud teaches that a Jew is forbidden to keep a savage dog in his house.”
“He's not savage, Rabbi. He's better than this one,” she said, pointing a short, stubby finger at her husband.
The argument lasted a long while, and from their wrangling I, a little boy, clearly understood that the woman loved her dog and hated her husband.
Father finally succeeded in reconciling husband and wife. He apparently convinced the woman to either sell the dog or give him away. But hardly a month had passed and the man returned.
“Rabbi, I want a divorce.”
“Who are you?”
“I'm the baker who was here once. My wife still has the dog. The rabbi decided then that—”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Rabbi, it's the same as before. Even worse. She sleeps in bed with him. If I'm lying, may I drop dead right here.”
Father sent for the woman once more and—wonder of wonders—she came with the dog. It was a huge pug, fat and thick-legged. From his wideset eyes and flaring nostrils gleamed a rage, a hatred, a contempt for every living creature. The dog barked at my mother. The woman wanted to take the dog into the courtroom, but Mother declared, “There's a Torah in there.”
As soon as I entered the kitchen and saw the dog, a mixture of dread and joy overcame me, somewhat akin to the feeling I had when a policeman came to our apartment. I took a piece of bread and threw it to the dog. As he sniffed, it, the brown eyes
in his wrinkled forehead seemed to say, I don't consider dry bread a treat!
I wanted to pet the dog, but his growl frightened me. This was no dog but a four-legged anti-Semite. Each limb breathed fierce aggression. When Father heard the barking in the courtroom, he too became frightened. He closed the holy book he was studying and began fanning himself with his yarmulke.
“What's that?” he said.
“That's her husband,” replied Zanvel the baker.
Usually Father attempted to make peace between litigants, but this time he did so merely for appearance's sake. As bizarre as it sounds, the woman agreed to a divorce. She sacrificed her husband for a dog.
I don't remember if the divorce was performed in our house, but the marriage was dissolved. The woman remained in the apartment with the furniture. The street seethed with the news: a dog had driven a man away from his home. The women said awful things about the wife, whispering secrets into one another's ears.
One woman who heard the news turned red, exclaiming, “No!”
“Yes!” the other woman replied, and whispered another secret into her ear.
“Foo! How's that possible?”
“Everything is possible, my dear woman. May she burn in hell!”
“And I once heard a woman tell a story about a noblewoman who lived with a stallion, a male horse, and they had a baby that was half human and half colt.”
“What did they do with it?”
“It died right away.”
“All of this stems from excessive luxury. Having it too good drives them crazy—a fire in their kishkes!”
After his divorce, Zanvel went downhill. He started drinking. At night, while kneading huge chunks of dough, he'd sing plaintive tunes, and his voice could be heard throughout the courtyard. The neighbors complained that he woke them up. People wanted to arrange a match for him. All kinds of women flattered him, but he didn't want any of them.
“If a dog can drive me out of my house, then I'm really afraid.”
And he was seen frequenting the tavern on our street.
The woman with the dog found another man, a fruit dealer, and it was rumored that he would soon marry her. He happened to like dogs. When he visited the divorcee, he brought her chocolates and jellybeans, and a piece of meat or a bone for the dog. If the woman was busy, the fruit merchant would take the dog out for a walk, leading him on a leash. Sometimes he would unleash him and the dog would follow him warily, dragging the leash on the sidewalk.
An awful thing happened on one of these walks. Zanvel the baker was approaching the dog. He was barefoot, wearing only a pair of white long johns and balancing a cheesecake on his head. Zanvel had ceased kneading the huge chunks of dough at his father's bakery because he had developed a hernia. Now he was working for a pastry baker, who had sent him to deliver the cheesecake to a café.
When the dog saw his onetime master and rival, he attacked him with savage fury. The cheesecake fell off Zanvel's head.
The dog bit Zanvel's foot and Zanvel grabbed hold of the dog's neck and strangled him. The fruit merchant pulled out a knife and stabbed Zanvel …
All of this took place within a few minutes. The policeman blew his whistle. Someone telephoned the first-aid squad. On the ground lay the dead dog with bloodshot eyes, a smashed cheesecake, and a bloody human being. The dog's tongue was black and hung out of his mouth like a rag.
Soon Zanvel the baker was placed on a stretcher in the first-aid wagon. A medic bandaged his foot and the shoulder the fruit merchant had stabbed. The policeman handcuffed the fruit merchant and brought him to the police station. A janitor took the dead dog away. Barefoot boys and girls and even a few older fellows picked up pieces of the cheesecake and nibbled at them. When the woman, the owner of the dog, heard what had happened, she ran out into the street to bemoan her dog, and perhaps her lover, too. But the women on the street immediately pounced on her, beat her, and pulled fistfuls of hair from her head. There was a wild free-for-all on the street with tempers flaring everywhere.
You probably want to know, dear reader, how the story ended, and I'll oblige. The end was that the fruit merchant, after spending a couple of weeks in jail, disappeared. Zanvel the baker lay in the hospital two days and then returned home. He went to console his former wife—and once again a match ensued. Before the wedding the wife swore that she would never again keep a dog in the house.
Instead of a dog she bought a cage with two yellow canaries and a green parrot to boot. Zanvel the baker resumed working
for his father. He no longer kneaded the huge chunks of dough but slid the loaves of bread into and out of the oven. Zanvel's canaries chirped and sang all day long. The parrot spoke Yiddish. Everything was fine and dandy once again. In my view, heaven and earth had sworn that a dog must not be victorious. And as proof we have the story of
“Chad Gadya,”
the last song sung at the Passover Seder, where the dog is on the side of justice but the Master of the Universe is on the side of the stick that beats the dog. Because whether just or unjust, a dog should not interfere with our affairs.
That's the interpretation attributed to the rebbe, Reb Heschel, who supposedly first told it. And even if he did not, he
could
have told it.

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