The Family Moskat (37 page)

Asa Heshel's aunts and uncles and cousins had already gone home, and the neighbors had departed. His mother had a headache and had gone to lie down on her bed. Dinah was preparing the evening meal. Asa Heshel's grandmother was standing at the east wall reading the evening prayer. Adele had gone to the rear room that the couple were occupying. Asa Heshel went out into the yard at the back of the house, separated from the synagogue yard by a fence. The ground was covered with wild growths and vegetation. There was an apple tree that yielded its fruit late in the summer; now its leaves shone like little spears of flame. The weeds grew tall, almost to the height of a man. Among the grasses were clusters of buttercups, puff blossoms, and other blooms whose names Asa Heshel did not know. The air was full of the rustlings and chirpings of field mice, moles, and crickets. Asa Heshel looked about him. In the few hours he had been back with his family he had already listened to all sorts of strange stories.

His Uncle Zaddock had hinted that his own brother, Levi, was digging the supports from beneath him and seeking to take away from him his government rabbinical post. His Aunt Mindel accused his Aunt Zissle of having cast an evil spell on her; from what Asa Heshel could make out, Zissle had put into Min-del's trunk an elflock and some reeds of a broom. The girls, his cousins, were carrying on all sorts of feuds; the boys made derog-atory remarks about each other. The family, small as it was, was compact with hatred, intrigue, and jealousy. His mother had whispered to him that her two sisters-in-law were her blood enemies.

"They eat me up when they look at me," she told him. "May the evil things they wish me fall and be consumed in a wilderness."

-235-Asa Heshel

glanced back at the window of the room that had been given to him and Adele. There was a light inside. He could see Adele bending over and emptying the trunk, as though she were planning on a lengthy stay. In the glow of the lamp her face looked intent.

There were dark rings under her eyes. She lifted up some white garment, looked at it, hesitated, and then put it back. How queer it was to think that of all women this was his wife, who had joined her fate with his!

As he stood in the courtyard he saw his grandfather. The old man appeared suddenly and without warning, like some other-world apparition. His long velvet coat flared wide. The fringes of the ritual garment fluttered against his white breeches. His beard hung awry from his chin, as though it were being blown by a gust of wind. He took a step to the left, then back to the right, coming to a halt a little distance from Asa Heshel. Asa Heshel made an involuntary movement backwards.

"So it's you, Asa Heshel."

"Yes, Grandfather."

"I see, I see. You've grown. I think you've grown."

"It may be, Grandfather."

"I know all about everything. You're married. A letter came.

Well,
mazeltov
. I didn't send you a wedding gift."

"It doesn't matter, Grandfather."

"Did you at least marry her according to the laws of Moses and Israel?"

"Yes, Grandfather. She comes from a pious household."

"And you count that as a virtue?"

"Of course, Grandfather."

"How is that possible? Apparently the last spark of faith hasn't been extinguished."

"I do not deny the existence of God."

"Then what is it you deny?"

"The pretensions of man."

"You mean the Torah of Moses?"

Asa Heshel was silent.

"I know, I know. All the arguments of the heretics: there is a Creator, but He has revealed Himself to no one; Moses lied. And others maintain that Nature is God. I know, I know. The sum and substance of it all is that any sin is permitted. That's the root of the matter."

"No, Grandfather."

-236-"I'm going to

the evening prayers. If you want, come with me. What is there that you can lose?"

"Yes, Grandfather. Of course."

"At least let them see that you have a little Jew left in you."

The old man put his hand on Asa Heshel's elbow, and the two walked slowly along. They came to the antechamber, stopping to wash their hands at the copper urn, and went into the prayerhouse. A candle flickered in the Menorah. The pillars that enclosed the reader's stand threw elongated shadows. The shelves around the walls were packed with books. Some of the students were still bent over the tables, reading in the dim fight. Worshippers paced back and forth, softly chanting. A youth swayed fervently in a corner. Near the Ark was a framed inscription in red: "God is always before me." On the cornice of the Ark two carved gilded lions held up the Tablets of the Law. There was a heavy odor that seemed to Asa Heshel to be compounded of candle wax, dust, fast days, and eternity. He stood silent. Here in the dimness everything he had experienced in alien places seemed to be without meaning. Time had flown like an illusion.

This was his true home, this was where he belonged. Here was where he would come for refuge when everything else failed.

4

After the evening prayers Asa Heshel returned home with his grandfather and sat with him for a long time in his study. The rabbi asked him many questions about the world outside of Tereshpol Minor. What was it like, this Switzerland? What sort of people lived there? Were there Jews there, and if there were, did they have synagogues, and study houses, and ritual baths, and rabbis? Asa Heshel told him that he himself had attended synagogue services in Lausanne on the holiday of the Rejoicing of the Law; the elder, who called up members of the congregation to the reader's stand to read from the scroll, had spoken French. In Berne and in Zurich, on the other hand, the synagogue officials and the congregation spoke German. The rabbis in Switzerland wrote books on worldly philosophy; their wives did not wear the matron's wig of the pious east European Jewess. Reb Dan listened and puffed at his pipe. He passed his hand over -237-his forehead and pulled down his eyebrows. Yes, it was not a new story to him that the Jews in the Western countries were aping the Christians.

In their temples organs played, just as--it was a desecration to mention them in the same breath!--in the churches of the gentile.

Nor were there partitions that sectioned off the women from the men in the synagogues; what then was there to keep unclean thoughts and desires from the worshippers? And he had heard, too, that many of the Jews in those Western countries went to the synagogue only on the high holy days, the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur. Why, he had often wondered, did Jews like that remain Jews at all? And what, the rabbi wanted to know, were the thoughts of those Jews who had become complete heretics? If God had lost all meaning for them, and the world was without design, how could they justify calling themselves Jews?

Asa Heshel made an answer to the effect that Jews were a people like every other people, and that they were demanding that the nations of the world return the Holy Land to them. But the rabbi was far from satisfied. If, he insisted, they had no further belief in the Bible, then why should they have any longing for the Biblical land of the Jews? Why not some other country? Any country?

And besides all that, who could be foolish enough to think that Turkey would give Palestine up to them? The rewards of this world were for the strong, not the weak.

The rabbi passed on to questions concerning Asa Heshel's personal affairs. What had he learned there in the universities of the gentiles? And would what he had learned at least enable him to earn a livelihood? What would he do if he were called to serve in the army? Did he want to put on the Czar's uniform? It struck Asa Heshel that even for simple questions like these he could not find answers that would really satisfy the old man. He had not finished his studies, he told him; nor would the study of philosophy be much of a help when it came to making a liv-ing. As for serving the Czar, of course he was not eager to become a recruit, but he did not intend to inflict some sort of physical disability on himself. The old man wanted to say to him: "Then why did you come back to Poland? What have you accomplished with your frenzied chase after the fleshpots of the world?"

But he decided to refrain. Had he not discovered time after time that people of this sort remained stubborn to the end? The rabbi got up from his chair.

-238-"
Nu
," he said, "go and have something to eat. There'll be plenty of time to talk."

He paced back and forth. He furrowed his brow, plucked at his beard, and sighed. Asa Heshel sat where he was for a while, but his grandfather paid no further attention to him. He got up and left the study.

In the kitchen the evening meal was already waiting for him. His grandmother had prepared some soup with kasha, some beef and peas, and plum stew for dessert. They all fussed about him, his mother, his sister Dinah, and a servant girl whom he had not noticed earlier. He was barely through eating when the relatives and neighbors began streaming into the kitchen again. Asa Heshel saw grown women in matron's wigs with whom he remembered playing children's games when they were all young together. They stole curious glances at him, smiled and nodded their heads.

Adele had already established a comfortable intimacy with everybody. She had wrapped a scarf tightly over her hair, and somehow the provincial touch gave her face a more familiar appearance. She showed Asa Heshel's cousins an apron that she had embroidered herself and a silk underbodice that she had bought in Vienna. She took out of her purse the foreign coins she had with her, and the others gaped at them in wonder. His mother drew Asa Heshel into a corner and whispered to him that the daughter-in-law he had brought to her was a treasure, intelligent and good. She wanted him to promise her that he would honor Adele loyally and guard her against all harm. His sister Dinah winked knowingly at him, a clear sign that her sister-in-law was to her liking. His aunts and cousins hung on her every word and gazed at her with adoration.

His grandmother brought him a small skullcap to wear instead of the modern hat he had kept on his head. They all sighed when he put it on. Adele brought him a hand mirror so that he might look at himself: he hardly recognized his own face; the sprouting beard on his chin and cheeks and the traditional skullcap on his head had taken away the last bit of his resemblance to the Westerner.

All during the meal Adele kept throwing triumphant glances toward him, as though she were saying: "Your family, and they're all on my side! To them
I'm
your wife, not Hadassah." She seized every opportunity to address Finkel as "mother-in-law" and went into a long account of the distinguished family she came -239-from, reciting the names of famous rabbis. Asa Heshel's grandmother was hard of hearing, and from time to time Adele would have to repeat what she had said, putting her lips close to the old lady's ear. The aging woman shook her head solemnly; they had been afraid, here in Tereshpol Minor, that Asa Heshel would marry someone of a common family; thank God, he had taken a woman befitting his station.

After the meal Adele went with the other women to sit on the benches outside. Asa Heshel walked off alone through the village.

For a while he stopped at the study house. Near the door, at a long bare table, a few old men bent over open volumes dimly illuminated with flickering candles. From the Shulgass Asa Heshel turned into the Lublin Road. He halted for a moment at a water pump with a broken handle. There was a legend current in Tereshpol Minor that although the well underneath had long since dried up, once during a fire water had begun to pour from the spout, and the synagogue and the houses around it had been saved from destruction.

He turned to the road that led to the woods. It was lined with great trees, chestnut and oak. Some of them had huge gashes torn in their sides by bolts of lightning. The holes looked dark and mysterious, like the caves of robbers. Some of the older trees inclined their tops down toward the ground, as though they were ready to tumble over, tearing up with them the tangled thickness of their centuries-old roots.

5

Near the woods, not far from where the barracks had once stood, Asa Heshel came upon a small, one-story building, its front window brightly lighted. He went closer. Through the glass he could see a room lined with bookshelves to the ceiling. A kerosene lamp hung from a chain. What, he wondered, was a study house doing here, so far away from the Shulgass? Then he noticed on the far wall a portrait of Theodor Herzl. So this was the library they had told him about. He climbed the three steps to the door, knocked, and, getting no answer, pushed against the knob and went in. The group of men and women in the room turned toward him. Jekuthiel the watchmaker came hurrying up on his short legs. The others crowded forward. Asa Heshel recognized most of them, but he had forgotten their names. The majority -240-of the men were in the familiar caftans; other wore Western-ized clothing, with stiff collars and ties. The girls were wearing calico dresses or skirts and colored blouses, and shoes with high uppers. On one of the walls of the room, he noticed, there was a blackboard, and on it a carefully written sentence in Hebrew: "The inkwell is on the table"; the translation in Yiddish was written below.

"It's you at last," Jekuthiel said to him with satisfaction. "We were this moment talking about getting you to visit us."

"I'm David Katz." A short, youthful man came up to Asa Heshel and held out his hand. "You must meet our comrades here." He turned to the others. "This is Asa Heshel Bannet, who has just come back from Switzerland."

They pressed forward to introduce themselves, the men first, filing past and extending moist palms, at the same time calling out their last names: Rosenzweig, Meisner, Beckerman, Silber-mintz, Cohen, Frampolsky, Rappaport. It was puzzling to Asa Heshel to realize that these were the playmates of his childhood; Meisner was Chaim, the youngest child of the owner of the junk yard; Frampolsky was the son of Leibush the coachman; and Rappaport was the one they had called "Scabbyhead--they had gone to cheder together. Their faces were a puzzling medley of the intimate and the strange. There was something bewildering in these brows, eyes, noses, mouths, these shapes hidden somewhere in Asa Heshel's memory, hovering on the brink of being blasted from all recollection. The girls were huddled in a separate cluster.