Collected Stories (103 page)

Esther spoke haltingly. “You wanted to give me an advance before, but I refused to take it. If you are serious about the room, I will accept one, just to make sure that …”

“Will twenty dollars be enough?”

“Yes, enough. I ask for it only so that you won’t change your mind,” she said, and she laughed self-consciously.

In the night light, I counted out twenty dollars. We walked together to the gate. I recognized one of the policemen who had been on duty when I arrived. He looked at us and our suitcases knowingly, as if, like a wizard, he had guessed our secrets. He smiled and winked, and I heard him say, “Are you two going back to civilization?”

I
F
a Nobel Prize existed for writing little, Vanvild Kava would have gotten it. During his lifetime he published one thin brochure and a few articles. Half of the brochure consisted of writer’s names and titles of books. Just the same he was a member of the Yiddish Writers’ Club in Warsaw and even belonged to the P.E.N. club.

When I acquired a guest card to the Writers’ Club, Kava had already been there for many years. He was known as a strange character and the most severe critic possible. He declared such Yiddish classics as Sholom Aleichem and Peretz to be half-talents, and Mendele Mocher Sforim talentless. Sholem Asch he called a promising young man who didn’t keep his promise. My brother, I. J. Singer, and my friend Aaron Zeitlin he considered barely beginners. Like a schoolteacher, Kava liked to grade achievements in numbers, and he gave them both two sevenths. I could not bargain with him about my brother, but I told him that Zeitlin was the closest thing to a master that I could think of. I compared him to such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Lermontov, and Slowacki. But Kava’s opinion of even these poets was not too high. He found faults in everyone. Kava maintained that since civilization and culture are only some five thousand years old, literature is still at the beginning of its development, actually in its infancy. It may take another five thousand years for a full-fledged literary genius to appear. I argued that every artist must start from the beginning; unlike science, art does not thrive on the information and qualities of others. But Kava replied, “Art has its mutations and selections, its own biological growth.”

It seemed unbelievable that such an angry critic could exist in the Warsaw Yiddish Writers’ Club. Every Friday in the book sections of the Yiddish newspapers, reviewers revealed at least half a dozen new talents. They were as lenient as Kava was strict. After he was willing to grant me .003 as my rating (quite lavish praise for a fledgling like myself), we had many conversations about literature. Kava pointed out to me that Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
may be quite rich and accurate in description and dialogue, but is poor in construction. Dostoevsky had a greater vision than Tolstoy, but he had only a single accomplished work—
Crime and Punishment
. Shakespeare’s value was in his poetry—not as much in his sonnets as in the few poems that appear in his plays. Kava admitted that, as a primitive, Homer was readable. He called Heine a jingle writer. In his brochure he listed all the literary and scientific works that needed to be translated into Yiddish in order for it to be more than a dialect. The Yiddishists attacked him as their worst enemy, but the professional translators praised him. Some literati felt that Kava should be thrown out of the Yiddish Writers’ Club, and others defended him, saying that he was too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Fate and Kava himself did their best to make him appear as a clown. He was small, emaciated, had a crooked mouth, and lisped out of its corner. The jokers in the Writers’ Club specialized in mimicking him, his extreme understatements, his use of scientific phrases, and his pedantic style of talking. To Kava, Freud was a mere dilettante and Nietzsche a would-be philosopher. The literary wags gave Kava a nickname—Diogenes.

Kava lived on pennies. His only income came from substituting for the proofreaders of the Yiddish press when they went on their summer vacations. However, the typesetters completely ignored his corrections, since he had his own concepts about grammar and syntax. He brought entire encyclopedias, lexicons, and various dictionaries to the composing room. The editors maintained that if all of Kava’s corrections were to be followed up, the daily newspapers could appear only once in three months.

Needless to say, Kava was an old bachelor. What woman would have married one such as Vanvild Kava? Summer and winter he wore a faded derby, a coat down to his ankles, a stiff collar which used to be called “father murderer.” I was told that in his vest pocket he kept a chronometer instead of a watch. If someone asked him what time it was, he would say, “A minute and twenty-one seconds to five.” When he read proofs, he used a watchmaker’s eyepiece. Kava lived in a tiny fifth-floor walk-up attic room, all the walls of which were lined with books. On his visits to the Writers’ Club he ordered nothing from the buffet, not even a glass of tea. He had discovered a bazaar where he could buy stale black bread, cheese, and fruit for next to nothing. It was said that he washed his own linen and pressed it by laying it under the heavy volumes of his library. Still, there was never a stain on his clothing. He had a system of sharpening razor blades on a glass. Vanvild Kava was an ascetic—not in the name of religion, but in the name of his version of worldliness.

Suddenly one day the Writers’ Club was shaken by a sensation. Kava married. And whom? A young and beautiful girl. One had to know the Yiddish Writers’ Club and its passion for gossip to realize the uproar this piece of news created. At first, everyone considered it a joke. But it soon became clear that it was no joke. The proofreaders and typesetters had already published their congratulations in their newspapers. One day Kava brought his new wife to the Writers’ Club at exactly the time he came every day—seventeen minutes after eleven. She seemed in her late twenties, was dressed fashionably; had dark, short hair and polished nails. She spoke both Polish and Yiddish well. All that those who were present that day in the club could do was gape. Kava ordered two glasses of coffee for himself and his beloved and some cake. When the pair left, exactly seventeen minutes after twelve, the club began to buzz with excitement. A number of explanations and theories were created on the spot. I remember only one of them—that Kava was a kind of Yiddish Rasputin, a sexual miracle worker. But this theory was immediately dismissed as sheer nonsense. Every man in the Writers’ Club considered all the other male members as impotent. Kava could not be the exception.

For days and weeks the Yiddish Writers’ Club was busy solving this riddle, but as quickly as a solution was found, it collapsed. Some of the writers knew that I was friendly with Kava; I had also gone up in his ratings a few fractions of a point, and they insisted that I provide them with some insight. But I was just as bewildered as the others. No one would have dared to approach Kava and ask him any personal questions. There was a pride in this little man that did not allow for intimacy.

Then something happened. A girl whose home I visited had a friend from the town of Pulava. Pulava had a large printing shop where some Yiddish books were printed. The townspeople also boasted about having a few writers and translators. This girl from Pulava was a friend of Kava’s wife, and one evening they both visited my girlfriend while I was there. It was an unexpected stroke of luck. I ate supper with a person who was part of a mystery. She seemed clever and tactful, and there was nothing enigmatic about her behavior. We discussed politics, literature, the literary group in Pulava. After supper, Mrs. Kava lit a cigarette and chatted with me while the other two girls washed the dishes. I said to her, “I would like to ask you something, but don’t be offended if it is too personal. You really don’t have to answer me if …”

“I know what you want to ask me,” she interrupted. “Why I married Kava. Everybody is asking me the same thing. I will tell you why. I wasn’t born yesterday, I know men, but all the men I had the misfortune of meeting bored me stiff. Not one of them had an opinion of his own. They all said the usual things that young men say to girls. They repeated the editorials in the newspapers almost verbatim and read all the books the reviewers recommended. Some of them offered to marry me, but how could I go and live with a man who made me yawn even at our first meeting? Conversation with a man is of high importance to me. Of course he must be a man, but this is not everything. Then I met Vanvild Kava and I found all the qualities in him I was looking for since I grew up—a person with knowledge and with opinions of his own. I began playing chess when I was twelve and I guess you know that Kava is a splendid chess player. He could have become a grand master if he had devoted his time to it. Of course he’s older than I am, and poor, but I never looked for riches. I make a living as a teacher and don’t need to be supported. I don’t know what you think of his writing, but I consider him a mighty good writer. I hope that near me he will work on a regular basis and produce good works. That’s all I can tell you.”

Mrs. Kava’s every word expressed decisiveness. It was the first time someone had spoken about Kava without laughing at him and mocking his mannerisms. I told her I knew Kava and admired his erudition and strong opinions, although they were overly extreme at times. She said to me, “He’s original. Never banal. His trouble is that he writes in Yiddish. In another medium he would be highly appreciated, whether they agreed with him or not.”

When I came to the Writers’ Club the next day and told my cronies that I had met Kava’s wife and repeated what she told me, they all looked disappointed. One of them asked, “How can you love someone like Kava?” And I gave him the usual answer: “No one has yet determined who can be loved and who cannot be.”

After a while I stopped going to the house where I had met Kava’s wife and Kava’s visits to the Writers’ Club became less frequent than in his bachelor years. The only news I heard about him was that he gave up his job as a substitute proofreader. I began to believe that he might mellow with this woman and perhaps write something of value. I had no doubt that the man possessed high literary potential. A person who demands so much from others might also demand much of himself under the right circumstances.

But then something so peculiar occurred that I’m still puzzled by it forty years later. A year or two had passed, and my friend Aaron Zeitlin, who had become the editor of a trimonthly magazine, offered me a position as an associate editor. We were looking for an important essay about Yiddish literature or literature in general for the first issue, and I proposed to Zeitlin that Kava write it. At first Zeitlin demurred. “Kava, of all people?” he said. “First of all, it would take him a year or two. Secondly, he will make mincemeat out of everybody. It will give us a bad name from the very beginning.” But I answered, “Don’t be so sure. My impression is that he has changed since he married. But even if he does tear everyone to pieces, we can always say in a footnote that we disagree with him. It might even help the magazine to come out with something totally negative.”

After long haggling, I managed to persuade Zeitlin to give it a try, but he stipulated that Kava must agree to an eventual footnote of disagreement, and he must also give a definite date of delivery. I was happy that Zeitlin let himself be persuaded. Somehow I felt that Kava might surprise us.

It so happened that Kava came the next day to the Writers’ Club, and when I made this proposition to him he seemed shaken. He said, “You ask me to write the leading article? I have been excommunicated from Yiddish literature for years. The name Kava was not kosher. Suddenly you choose me.”

I assured Kava that both Zeitlin and I had a high opinion of him. I pleaded with him not to demand the impossible from writers and I also assured him that we would change nothing in his essay. If worst came to worst, we would add a footnote that we disagreed. That would be all.

After much hesitation Kava consented to write the essay and gave me a date of delivery. He promised that in no case would the essay be longer than fifty pages. I told Kava my premonition that this essay would be a turning point in his literary career. Kava shrugged, and said in his laconic way, “Time will tell.”

The time to deliver the manuscript was close but we had not heard a word from Kava. He stopped coming to the Writers’ Club altogether, and this was a sign for me that he was busy working on the essay. One day I got a telephone call from him. He asked for an extension of two weeks on the delivery of the manuscript. I asked him how the work was going and he said, “I’m afraid it may be somewhat longer than fifty pages.”

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Nine and a half pages.”

I knew that Zeitlin would be angry with me. Even fifty pages was too long. But I also knew that if a work is good the reader and the critics will accept any length. There was a moment when I wanted to ask Kava to let me have a fragment of his work but I decided not to show impatience. When I told Zeitlin what had happened he said, “I’m afraid Kava will bring us not fifty-nine and a half pages but fifty-nine and a half lines.”

The day came and I met Kava in the Writers’ Club. He brought the manuscript. It was fifty-nine and a half pages. I could see that it had many erasures as well as quotations in German, French, and even in English, which could be a problem for a printer of a Yiddish magazine. Also his lines were written so close together that the fifty-nine and a half pages in Kava’s longhand might make eighty pages in print. He said, “I’m giving this to you under the condition that you don’t read it here, but go home and read it by yourself. Only then can you give it to Zeitlin.”