The Family Moskat (35 page)

Everything here is as it always was. Mother is ill most of the time and ill-tempered. Father spends a good deal of time with Uncle Abram. They were not on speaking terms, but they are friends again. I live on the Gnoyna ( Garbage Street).

And how well this name describes my position! In the summer I go to the country near Otwotsk. Here I can at least be alone with my thoughts.

You can address a letter to me at Usefov should you decide to answer. I hope that you are happy with your wife and I send my regards to her.

Hadassah

PS.
Klonya got married.

A Letter from Asa Heshel to Hadassah
Dear Hadassah
: You will never know the joy your letter gave me. I read and reread it countless times. I awoke in the middle of the night, pulled the letter from under my pillow and read it by the light of the moon. I still cannot believe it. But the handwriting is yours.

I want you to know that although we both made a stupid decision, my love for you has not altered for a minute. My thoughts are always of you. How many times I decided to put all thoughts of you out of my mind! I told myself that it was hopeless. But I could not. Somehow I knew that you had not forgotten me and that sometime I would hear from you. When I read your letter I said to myself--now I am prepared to die. I want you to know that I wrote to you, not one letter but many.

When Adele came to Berne, she told me that you were engaged.

She didn't mention your having been ill or having been imprisoned. How horrible! I have often felt that the higher powers -222-are warring

with me. Since my childhood things have never worked out.

With you I suffered the hardest blow. If I had known that there was even a slight chance, I would have come back. During the first few weeks my senses were dulled by the catastrophe that had befallen me in this strange land. I could not enjoy the mountains and the beauty that surrounded me. I can-not describe my utter loneliness! I was sure that you hated me and did not want to answer. When I heard the news that you were going to be married I was certain that my fears were correct. I too wanted to destroy all hopes. Your letter revived these hopes in one moment. From now on I have a single goal: once again to be near you. I will not rest until it is so. I have never loved anyone except you. That is the truth. I pray God that you will answer soon. I understand all the obstacles that stand between us, both physical and moral, but it cannot be otherwise.

Write me everything, everything! I am attending courses in the philosophy faculty, but as a non-matriculated student. One has to pass an examination here too. The material studied here is so negligible compared to the ideas that keep running through one's head! My personal life is senseless from beginning to end. I blame no one. The thought that you have a husband is strange to me, but it nevertheless is a fact. Switzerland is beautiful, but everything is so strange: the people, the scenery, the customs. I am sometimes even a stranger to myself. If I were here with you, everything could be different. Warsaw seems so distant, like a bewitched city.

Asa Heshel

PS.
I am giving you another address. You understand the reason.

Letter from Adele to Her Mother
Darling Mother
: I don't know exactly why I'm writing this letter. Maybe it's because my heart is full of pain and I can no longer contain it.

You've often asked me in your letters how things are going with me, whether my husband is approaching any real goal, and how he is treating me. Before, when I wrote to you, I tried -223-to smooth

things over and to paint them brighter than they are. I didn't want to cause you any suffering. But now I really can't keep things locked up inside me any more. My darling Mother, you may as well know that your daughter has fallen into a living grave. In the two years that I've been married I can honestly say that I haven't had one happy month. The first few days I was really happy. I thought that at last I could see the end to all my years of loneliness.

But soon it was plain that my miserable fortune was still following me. I am my father's daughter. I was born to suffer, and I'll probably die before my time, too.

Now I will write you everything, without concealing a single thing. Asa Heshel has his good sides; he can make himself agreeable to strangers who never did anything for him and to whom he owes nothing. In his own way he's an idealist. Day and night he's dreaming of ways to cure the world and day and night he carries around some book on philosophy. But this doesn't stop him from being cold-hearted and cruel, and on top of that really a crazy person. If I should sit down to write you all his madnesses it would fill an entire book. To tell it to you briefly, it is like this: I was ready and willing to do everything possible so that he could complete the university course and really make something of himself. I was ready to spend on him all the money I had. All I wanted was for him to study honestly and to behave like a normal human being. But the whole two years have been nothing but bitter disappointment for me. I wanted to rent a house and furnish it, so that it could be a real home, but he absolutely refused, and after all this time we still live in lodgings. I thought that as time passed he would want to have a child, like all normal people, but he warned me that if I became pregnant he would run away and I would never hear from him again. And I could believe it, too, because he's got absolutely no sense of responsibility. It happened that twice I got caught--it was his fault both times--and he made me get rid of it and put my whole life in danger. The second time I had a hemorrhage and a very high fever. It's impossible to get a doctor here to do it, and I had to go to an old gentile woman, a midwife. Thank God that at least I wasn't fated to die.

Darling Mother, I know I shouldn't write you such things. I know what suffering it will cause you, but to whom else can I pour out my heart? Right after the wedding he began to be ashamed of me, as though I were a leper. He forbade me -224-to come into

the restaurant where he meets his Russian friends, a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who belong in a zoo or some such place. Can you imagine, I'm not good-looking enough or educated enough to show myself before these creatures! He's even denied that he's married, and has really caused me terrible embarrassment. And he's never invited anyone to come to visit us. Instead of studying he wastes half the day tutoring children. He simply allows himself to become a measly Hebrew teacher or an assistant tutor--so long as he doesn't have to take a copper from me. He tells me quite frankly that he's carrying on this way because he wants to separate from me and he doesn't want to be under any obligations.

When he gets angry he shouts and says things that you'd expect from an escaped lunatic. He's filled himself up with ideas from a book by some philosopher who hates women, some crazy man--a Jew who got converted and committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. And he says--Asa Heshel, I mean--that he doesn't want to have a child out of fear that it might not be a boy. That's just one example of his madness. It's the custom here for everyone to go to bed early; by nine o'clock the whole town is asleep. But he lies awake until three in the morning reading or writing all sorts of useless stuff which he throws away later. In the morning he stays in bed until noon like a dead man. On account of the way he carries on we already have been asked to move a few times from our lodgings, because in this part of Europe people are civilized and they don't understand these wild Russian goings-on. So far as cooking and eating at regular times is concerned, that's absolutely out of the question. All day he practically fasts, and in the middle of the night he suddenly gets hungry. God knows I would have picked up and left him long ago, but when it serves his purpose he turns so delicate and attentive, and says things that are like a warm poul-tice to an aching cheek, and insists that he loves me.

Darling Mother, you are certainly wondering how your daughter is able to stand all this shame and disgrace. I have stayed with him only because I didn't want to break up our life and because I know my own nature. I'm not one of those women who love one man today and another tomorrow. I'm like those insects that can love only once. I didn't want to come back to you after three months, a complete failure. So I just gritted my teeth and I stood it. I always kept on hoping that things would get better. I felt that as he got older he would see where his -225-best interests

were. Some time ago he began to talk about wanting to go back to Warsaw. I always suspected that he had never forgotten that Hadassah, although he assured me with the most sa-cred oaths that he had put her out of his mind. But he's told me so many lies.

Now I know definitely that they're carrying on a correspondence.

He gets letters from her addressed to a different place. Now he says he's going to Warsaw whether I go with him or not. He's not much over twenty, and I know that they'll conscript him, because there's nothing the matter with him physically. But he doesn't pay any attention to the danger of such a thing happening. That Hadassah creature is simply false to her husband. I have absolutely no illusions about that. He's going to her, that's the whole truth of it. In the last couple of weeks he seems to be out of his mind entirely, and wanders around as though he's on some strange planet. He's ready to put everything in jeopardy --himself, me, and other people. Now I've discovered that his father died of melancholy in some dreary village in Galicia. There must be a streak of quiet insanity in him, too.

Darling Mother, forgive me for not writing to you to wish you
Mazeltov
on your marriage. I appreciate your position and God knows I've got no resentment against what you decided to do. Those Moskats are just a bunch of ruffians. What else was there for you? I hope that at last you will find real peace and contentment.

I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do. He wants us to travel together, and he still promises all sorts of a wonderful future. He wants to make a stop in Tereshpol Minor and have me meet his mother and sister and his grandfather, the rabbi. The truth is he is really still a child and he has a child's thoughts and ideas. I was thinking his mother might have some influence on him. She wrote me some very warm and heartfelt letters. But I know at the same time that Hadassah is waiting for him to come back to Poland and that sooner or later matters between us will come to a divorce. I am so confused that I'm sure that this letter will just be a jumble of nonsense to you. But honestly it's a real reflection of what's going on in my mind. Please pray to God for me, darling Mother, because He's the only one who can help me. Your unfortunate daughter,
Adele Bannet

-226-

IN TERESHPOL MINOR the puddles and floods of melting ice began to dry up in the strong sunshine of the days after Passover.

The trees and bushes that ringed the village put out little green apples and pears, gooseberries, cherries, and raspberries. Wheat, as in every year before harvest time, went up in price a few groszy the bushel. At the same time fowl and eggs were plen-tiful. The peasants prophesied an abundant year, because the days were getting warmer and there was plenty of rain; nevertheless, during the month of May they repaired to the roadside shrines to offer special prayers for the crops, the men dressed in linen cloaks and old-style four-cornered hats hung with tassels, the women in flowered dresses, and with wooden hoops under their headgear, the girls in gay frocks and wearing strings of colored beads. They marched piously along, carrying crucifixes, holy pictures, and wax candles, and chanting as though they were following a coffin.

Among the Jews in the town, life flowed along its accustomed ways. The tradesmen in the market place carried on with their affairs. In the bystreets and alleys artisans worked at their benches.

In the houses in the poorer streets men and women busied themselves making the horsehair sieves that were sold throughout the province. The street leading to the bridge was full of these sieve-makers. Girls combed out bundles of horsehair, all the while singing doleful songs of unhappy orphans and kidnapped brides. Men wove the hair on wooden looms, singing snatches of synagogue melodies.

In the summer months there was little business in the market place, and it was mostly the womenfolk who sat in the shops, so that their husbands could take time to devote themselves to Jewishness. From the study houses could be heard voices lifted in -227-Talmud chants.

In the cheders the teachers struggled with the children from early morning until evening. The Evil One was busy, too. Jekuthiel the watchmaker had brought a collection of "forbidden" modern books from Zamosc and had started a library. A few of the younger men had even become Zionists. It was rumored that some of the sieve-makers and the tannery workers were getting together to plan a strike, just as in 1905. Others had gone off to America.

There was a report in the Lublin newspaper that in Sarajevo a Serbian student had shot the Austrian Crown Prince and his wife, and that the Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, had sent a note to the Serbs. The doctor, the pharmacist, and the surgeon-barber of Tereshpol Minor discussed the matter in the evenings, while their wives poured tea from the samovar and played cards. But the ordinary Jews of the town paid no attention to the news. The things that went on in the big world outside!

Reb Dan Katzenellenbogen, the rabbi, no longer had the power he had wielded of old. First of all, he was close to eighty now.

Second, was not his own grandson a deserter from Israel? Third, there was little comfort he could take in his two sons, Zaddok and Levi, or in his daughter, Finkel. Zaddok was to have been his father's successor; he already held the post of government rabbi.

But he did not conduct himself as a man in his position should.

The prominent householders in the village were already saying that when the rabbi should leave them--might it not happen for a hundred years!--they would have to bring in someone from outside. Levi had begun to look for a rabbinical post directly after his marriage, but nothing had come of it; and now for more than twenty years he had been idling away his time at his father's home, and at his father's expense. Finkel's husband, Jonathan, had divorced her a couple of years after the two were married and had left her with two children, Asa Heshel and Dinah. For almost nineteen years she had been alone, and then she had married a town elder, Reb Paltiel, who had died a few months later. Reb Dan was convinced that for some reason Heaven was persecuting him. The Chassidim said that too much poring over the philosophy of Maimonides had driven the rabbi into a melancholy.