Collected Stories (73 page)

After Zelda Rayzel’s death, Beyle Teme became melancholy. She wept almost every night and kept repeating the same words: “Why did this happen to me?” Reb Mordecai Meir reminded her that it was forbidden to complain against God. “All God does is good.” The reason there was such a thing as death was because the body was only a garment. The soul is sent to be cleansed in Gehenna for a short time and after that it goes to Paradise and learns the secrets of the Torah. Were eating, drinking, urinating, and sweating such a bargain?

But Beyle Teme became sicker from day to day. She passed away on a Wednesday and was buried on Friday afternoon. Since it was just before the Sabbath she was spared the pressure of the grave, which those who are buried on weekdays suffer. Reb Mordecai Meir recited Kaddish for the repose of her soul, prayed before the congregation, studied Mishnah. When the thirty days of mourning had passed, a relative took over the shop for four thousand rubles. Pesha, a neighbor who was a widow, came to Reb Mordecai Meir every day to clean and cook some food. For the Sabbath she prepared stew and a pudding for him. The Hasidim tried to arrange a match but he refused to remarry.

One summer morning, while reading
The Generations of Jacob Joseph,
he dozed off and was awakened by the sound of knocking. He opened the door and saw a young man without a beard, a head of long hair over which he wore a broad-brimmed black hat, in a black blouse tied with a sash, and checkered pants. In one hand he carried a satchel and in the other a book. His face was pale and he had a short nose.

Reb Mordecai Meir asked, “What do you want?”

Blinking his widely separated eyes, he stammered, “I am Fulie … You are my grandfather.”

Reb Mordecai Meir stood dumfounded. He had never heard the name Fulie. Then he realized that this was most probably the modern variation of the old Jewish name Raphael. It was Zelda Rayzel’s eldest son. Reb Mordecai Meir felt both pain and shame. He had a grandson who tried to imitate the Gentiles. He said, “So come in.” After hesitating a moment, the boy came in and put his suitcase down. Reb Mordecai Meir asked, “What kind—is that—?” and pointed to the book.

“Economics.”

“Of what use is that to you?”

“Well …”

“What’s new in Slonim?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked. He didn’t want to mention the name of his former son-in-law, who was an anti-Hasid. Fulie made a face as if to indicate that he did not fully comprehend his grandfather’s question.

“In Slonim? Just like everywhere else. The rich get richer and the workers have nothing to eat. I had to leave because …” and Fulie stopped himself.

“What will you do here?”

“Here—I’ll look around—I’ll …”

Well, a stutterer, Reb Mordecai Meir thought. His throat scratched and his stomach started to turn. It was his daughter Zelda Rayzel’s son, but as long as he shaved his beard and dressed like a Gentile, what would he, Reb Mordecai Meir, do with him? He nodded his head and gaped. It seemed that the boy took after the other side of the family with his high cheekbones, narrow forehead, and wide mouth. His bedraggled and famished appearance reminded Reb Mordecai Meir of the recruits who starve themselves to avoid conscription.

“Wash your hands. Eat something. Don’t forget that you are a Jew.”

“Grandfather, they don’t let you forget.”

In the kitchen the boy sat down at the table and began to leaf through his book. Reb Mordecai Meir opened the kitchen closet but found no bread there; only onions, a string of dried mushrooms, a package of chicory, a few heads of garlic.

He said to Fulie, “I’ll give you money, go to the store and buy a loaf of bread or something else you might like to eat.”

“Grandfather, I’m not hungry. And besides, the less I’m outside the better,” the boy answered.

“Why? You’re not sick, God forbid, are you?”

“All of Russia has the same sickness. Everywhere it is full of denouncers and secret agents. Grandfather, I am not altogether ‘clean.’ ”

“Have you been called by the military?”

“That too.”

“Maybe you can be saved?”

“All mankind needs to be saved, not only I.”

Reb Mordecai Meir had decided not to get angry, no matter what his grandson did or said. Anger won’t win anyone over to piety. There were moments when Reb Mordecai Meir wanted to spit on the impudent fellow and drive him out of his house. But he restrained himself with all his might. Even though Fulie spoke in Yiddish, Reb Mordecai Meir did not fully comprehend what he was saying. All of his talk boiled down to one complaint: the rich live in luxury, the poor suffer deprivation. He continuously mentioned the workers in the factories, the peasants who tilled the fields. He spoke against the czar. “He resides in a palace and lets others rot in cellars. Millions die of hunger, consumption. The people must wake up. There must be a revolution …”

Reb Mordecai Meir clutched his beard and asked, “How do you know that a new czar would be better?”

“If we have our way, there will be no new czar.”

“Who will rule?”

“The people.”

“All the people can’t sit in the ruling chair,” Reb Mordecai Meir answered.

“Representatives will be chosen from the workers and peasants.”

“When they get power, they may also become villains,” Reb Mordecai Meir argued.

“Then they’ll be made one head shorter.”

“It is written: ‘For the poor shall never cease out of the land,’ ” Reb Mordecai Meir spoke. “To whom would one give charity if there were no paupers? Besides, everything is ordained in Heaven. On Rosh Hashanah it is decreed in Heaven who shall be rich and who shall be poor.”

“The Heavens are nothing but air,” Fulie said. “No one decrees anything.”

“What? The world created itself?”

“It evolved.”

“What does that mean?”

The boy began to say something, then got stuck. He mentioned names which Reb Mordecai Meir had never heard. He mixed Polish, Russian, and German words. The sum total of his talk was that everything was accident, chance. He babbled about a mist, gravitation, the earth tearing away from the sun and cooling off. He denied the exodus from Egypt, that the Red Sea was split, that the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. It was all a legend. Each of Fulie’s words pained Reb Mordecai Meir’s insides, as if he had swallowed the molten lead which, in ancient times, was given to those who were condemned to be burned. A cry tore from his throat. He wanted to shout, “Blackguard, Jeroboam, son of Nebat, get out of my house, go to the devil!” But he remembered that the boy was an orphan, a stranger in the city, without means. He could, God forbid, become a convert, or commit suicide.

“May God forgive you. You are deluded,” he said.

“You asked, Grandfather, so I answered.”

From then on, grandfather and grandson stopped debating. They actually didn’t speak. Reb Mordecai Meir sat in the living room, Fulie stayed in the kitchen and slept there on the cot. When Pesha cooked something, she also gave him a plate of food. She bought him bread, butter, cheese. She washed his shirt. Fulie was given a key to the outer door. Though he was not registered, the janitor let him in at night. Each time Fulie gave him ten groschen. Some nights he didn’t come home at all.

Reb Mordecai Meir slept little. Right after evening prayers fatigue overcame him and he went to bed, but after an hour or two he awoke. In the morning Fulie was gone before Reb Mordecai Meir began to recite the Shema. “One must not estrange them,” Reb Mordecai Meir said to himself. “The birth throes of the Messiah have begun.”

In the kitchen, in a box of books, Reb Mordecai Meir found a Yiddish pamphlet with frayed pages. He tried to read it but could understand little of what was written there. The writer seemed to argue with another writer of his kind. He mentioned such strange names as Zhelyabov, Kilbatchitch, Perovskaya. One, it said, was a martyr. A bitter taste came to Reb Mordecai Meir’s mouth. In his old age he had to room with a heretic who was his grandchild. In the Alexandrow study house he asked what was going on in the world and was told things which utterly amazed him. Those who, years, before, had murdered the czar had begun to arouse the populace anew. Among them were many Jews. Somewhere in Russia a bomb had been thrown, a train derailed, sacks of gold robbed. In some faraway city a governor had been shot. The jails were full. Many rebels were sent to Siberia. The Hasid who recounted these events said, “They kill and are killed. It is each man’s sword in his neighbor!”

“What do they want?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked.

“That all should be equal.”

“How is this possible?”

“Sons of the rich have joined their group.”

The Hasid reported that the daughter of a wine dealer, a Hasid of the Rabbi of Gur, got mixed up with these instigators and was imprisoned in the Citadel. There she fasted for eighteen days and had to be fed by force.

Reb Mordecai Meir was stunned. The Redemption must be near! He asked, “If they don’t believe in the world to come, why do they torment themselves so?”

“They want justice.”

That evening, when Reb Mordecai Meir returned home after evening prayers, he saw Fulie seated at the kitchen table, his black blouse unbuttoned, his hair unkempt, chewing on a piece of bread and reading a book.

“Why do you eat dry bread? The woman cooks for you too.”

“Pesha? She was taken to the hospital.”

“Really? We must pray for her.”

“She had an attack of gallstones. If you like I can make something.”

“You?”

“I’ll make sure it’s kosher.”

“You believe in it?”

“For your sake.”

“Well, no.”

From that day on grandfather and grandson ate only dry food. Fulie brought rolls, sugar, cheese from the store. He brewed tea. Reb Mordecai Meir was not sure he should trust such a one even with the making of tea. It was one thing to be a Gentile cook, who, the Talmud presumed, would not damage his livelihood and so could be trusted, and something entirely different to be a renegade Jew. However, bread and sugar could not be made unclean. Fulie bought the cheese from David in the dairy store across the street. If Fulie looked for a Gentile shop on another street, it meant he was an apostate out of spite, of whom it is said, “He knows his master and wants to defy Him.” But so low he had not fallen.

The Sabbath meal was prepared by another neighbor. Reb Mordecai Meir lit the Sabbath candles himself. He sat at the table alone, in his threadbare satin coat, worn-out fur hat, chanting Sabbath chants, dipping a piece of hallah into the glass of ritual wine. The boy (which was what Reb Mordecai Meir called Fulie) didn’t show himself on the Sabbath. The neighbor’s daughter brought in rice soup, meat, carrot pudding. Reb Mordecai Meir half sang, half moaned.

If the old rabbi were still alive, Reb Mordecai Meir would have gone to live with him. But Reb Henokh was dead. The new rabbi was still a young man who cared more for the young Hasidim than the old. It was whispered that he was learned in worldly affairs. Many of the older Hasidim had died out and no new ones joined.

One Sabbath day, when Reb Mordecai Meir was sitting at the table murmuring, “I shall sing with praise,” he heard the crack of a gun and a hideous scream. In the courtyard there was a din. Windows were thrown open. The sound of a police whistle pierced the air. A neighbor came in to tell Reb Mordecai Meir that the “comrades,” the strikers, had shot one of their own, a bootmaker who was said to have denounced them to the police. Reb Mordecai Meir trembled.

“Who did it—Jews?”

“Yes, Jews.”

“It is the end of the world.” And Reb Mordecai Meir immediately regretted his words. It was not permitted to be sad or utter words of despair on the Sabbath.

Because Reb Mordecai Meir awoke for midnight prayers, he went to sleep early. At nine o’clock he was already in bed, often not undressed. He took off only his boots. That night he heard the kitchen door open and he recognized Fulie’s steps. He fell asleep again, but at exactly twelve he awoke, got up, performed the ceremony of ritual hand washing, put on a housecoat and slippers, and began to lament on the destruction of the Temple. On his head he smeared a bit of ash, which he kept in a small jar. He intoned a plaintive melody. When Reb Mordecai Meir came to the verse “Rachel laments for her children,” the door opened and Fulie entered barefoot, wearing a pair of dirty underpants, without a head covering. Reb Mordecai Meir raised his eyebrows and motioned to Fulie to leave and let him finish his supplications, but the boy said, “Grandfather, are you praying?”

Reb Mordecai Meir was not certain whether he was permitted to interrupt his prayers. After some hesitation he said, “I am reciting midnight prayers.”

“What kind are they?”

“A Jew must never forget the destruction of the Temple.”

“And what are you trying to accomplish by this?” Fulie asked.

Even though Reb Mordecai Meir understood every individual word, he did not grasp their meaning. He wanted to ask Fulie where his fringed undergarment was, but he realized that the question was pointless. He thought a moment and said, “One must pray. With God’s help, the Messiah will come and there will be an end to the exile.”

“If he hasn’t yet come,” Fulie asked, “why should he come now?”