The Auerbach Will (11 page)

“I just wish they'd let me lecture about some of the things that really interest me,” he says.

“What sort of things?”

“European history. And art.”

“I was born in Europe, but I don't remember it.”

“I guessed as much.”

“Why won't they let you talk about that?”

He makes a face. “We must teach the new people
useful
things.”

“I think art is useful.”

He shakes his head.

“I'm studying botany this year,” she says. “What use is that?”

“Very useful,” he says. “We must interest Jews in farming—agriculture.”

“Are you Jewish?”

He nods.

“Where do you go to
shul?
”

“
Shul?
” He laughs again. “I guess we don't go in much for that sort of thing, my family,” he says.

Puzzled, Essie spoons up the last of her egg cream. “I'd better get home now, or Mama will worry,” she says.

Outside, they push on, through more crowds, across Allen Street, then Orchard Street. The winter sky has grown darker, colder, and there is a scattering of snowflakes in the air. “Only two more blocks,” Essie says.

At Norfolk Street, they turn the corner and head north, toward Grand Street, and leave the crowds behind them. “This is where I live,” Essie says, and realizes that a note of pride has crept into her voice—pride that her street, at least, is not as crowded and noisy as some others. But when they stop in front of number 54, and Essie says, “This is my house,” and when she sees him plant his feet on the sidewalk and gaze upward at the facade of the building—and when she lets her eyes follow his—it is as though she is seeing her building now as he is seeing it, and she feels suddenly helpless and apologetic for the narrow, ugly, soot-blackened building where she lives, its face crawling with zigzagged fire escapes, a building identical in its grimy sameness with every other on the street, with nothing special about it in the whole wide world.

“We live on the fifth floor,” she says.

“Shall I walk you up?”

“Oh, no,” she says with alarm, thinking of all the possibilities which her mother has warned about arrayed before her. “No, this is fine.”

He hands her her books. Thus, with both her hands briefly encumbered, he kisses her lightly on the forehead.

It is a first—the first time Essie has ever been kissed by a man other than her father and her baby brother.

He smiles, steps back, gives her a little salute, says, “See you next Friday,” and starts off.

“I don't even know your name!” she calls after him.

“Jake Auerbach.”

Five

The atmosphere in the Litskys' flat that night had been heavy with recrimination and reproach. Little Abe had been sent into the other room, with the door firmly closed behind him, since the matter under discussion, Essie's impure act, was considered too awful and momentous for a boy of his tender years, even though Abe, at thirteen, had become street-wise in ways that would have surprised his parents. He had already, though Essie would not know about it until much later, managed to filch a dollar from Minna's cash drawer and had been inducted into manhood by one of the Delancey Street girls.

“But Mama,
you didn't see what happened!
” Essie kept repeating.

“No! But I'm the only one on the street who didn't,” her mother said. “Mrs. Potamkin from downstairs saw it, and Mrs. Brachfeld from across the street—all those nosy
yentes
who have nothing to do all the day long but sit in their windows and watch what goes on in the neighborhood. Mrs. Potamkin was the first one into the store to tell me. ‘Guess what, Mrs. Litsky. Your daughter Esther was just now out in front on the street, carrying on with some strange man.'”

“Mama, I wasn't carrying on! He just gave me a little kiss, just a peck, like this”—she demonstrated—“I wasn't even expecting it. That's all there was. I didn't kiss him back. He just gave me the little peck, and said good night.”

Sam Litsky's head was in his hands, and he rolled it back and forth as though he were experiencing a convulsion. “Who is he?” he demanded. “Who is this man, this piece of filth, who would defile my daughter and bring shame and disgrace upon my family? Who is he, that's all I want to know.”

“His name is Jake Auerbach, Papa.”

“Auerbach? I know no Auerbachs. How did he pick you up?”

“He
didn't
pick me up, Papa. He teaches at my school. We just happened to be going out the door together, and he offered to walk me home.”

“What sort of course does this filth teach? What sort of ideas is he putting into the heads of our young people?”

“It's a course called Living With Our City.”

“
What?
Living with sin?”

“No, Papa—Living With Our
City
. It's about how water starts out in a reservoir upstate and comes down in big pipes to people's houses, and things like that. He's really very nice. He bought me an egg cream at Mr. Levy's.”

“
What?
You let him buy you things? Don't you know that that's how the seducer always begins? Haven't your mother and I told you often enough never to take food or candy from a stranger? How many times we've told you? A thousand, maybe? Two thousand? Three?”

“But Papa, I told you, he's not a stranger—”

Now Minna was becoming cross with her husband. “Now, Sam, enough already,” she said sharply. “Let Esther tell her story. Esther—” she hesitated. “Did he try—did he try to touch you in any way, in any special place, in a woman's special places?”

“No!”

“Well, thank God for that!”

Now her father was shouting at her mother. “Do I believe what I am hearing?” he said. “Do I believe my own two ears? Do I hear you
thanking God
for a man, a man who is a teacher, a man who is hired to instruct the lives of little ones in moral ways, for a man in that position in the school, for that man to grab one of his girl students and kiss her—you thank God for that? I think you have just gone crazy! In Russia, if a man teacher did that to a girl student he would be marched into the square and shot!”

“He didn't grab me,” Essie said.

“He didn't grab her,” Minna echoed. “And it isn't Russia. Thank God for that, too.”

“Still, you cannot say that this is the proper way for a teacher to behave in any country—and thank God for
that
. No, it is wrong. And I am going to write a letter, in English, to the proper school authorities tomorrow, first thing in the morning, explaining what has happened and what this man has done to my Esther from his school. No, I take it back. I'm not going to write a letter. I'm going to the school myself tomorrow and personally tell the authorities what this man has done. He'll have no more paycheck after tomorrow.”

“Oh, Papa, please don't. A few people on the street saw him give me a little kiss. If that was so bad, do you want the whole school—the whole neighborhood to know? They will, if you do that.”

“She's right, Sam,” Minna said. “There are enough busy-bodies right on this block without bringing in the whole East Side.”

“A man like that should not be working for the New York City public school system.”

“He doesn't really work for the school system, Papa. He's a volunteer. He comes down from Uptown to give his lectures, once a week, on Fridays.”

“So much for his paycheck, Sam,” Minna said.

Essie's father looked suspicious. “Is he Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” he said, “I know exactly the type. He's one of the Uptown
shtadlonim
. I know all about those types, Esther. They've turned their backs on their faith, they don't keep the Sabbath, their synagogue is even in what used to be a church. They've taken out Hebrew from the service, their women sit right beside them in the
shul
. The men don't cover their heads in God's house, and instead the women wear fancy hats. They sing Christian hymns, they're more Christian than the Christians. They're not real Jews. They don't keep the dietary laws, and they want to force good Jews like us to be like them. Did you know that one of those
shtadlonim
—right on Grand Street—took a Russian Jew into a restaurant, trying to convert him, and made him eat an oyster? Don't look so shocked! It happened. I read it in the
Tageblatt
. The poor Jew died, of course.”

“Papa, you're always saying that most of the stories in the
Tageblatt
are lies.”

“This one was true. On Grand Street.”

Shtadlonim
—it was a Yiddish term her father used somewhat indiscriminately. Technically, it meant any wealthy, influential Jew who was able to intercede on the Jews' behalf with the government. As such, it was a term of gratitude and respect. But her father also used the term sneeringly, and applied it to anyone who groveled before the feet of the Establishment, or who tried to curry favors from higher-ups. Among people like these, he included what were also known as the
Amerikanishe Deitche Yahudim
, the haughty, purse-proud, arrogant American German Jews, who lived in great brick and brownstone mansions Uptown. Though the
Deitche
were the self-appointed leaders of New York's Jewish community, and though they headed all the important Jewish hospitals and charities, they were suspected of secretly harboring no small amount of
riches
, or anti-Semitism. They claimed that they wanted the Russians to “assimilate,” which meant be submissive and inconspicuous, and being inconspicuous meant shaving off sidecurls, discarding yarmulkes and phylacteries, abandoning traditions that were thousands of years old. The
Tageblatt
frequently complained about the missionary nature of the Uptown Germans' incursions on the Lower East Side.

The Germans feared the Russians, but they didn't call it fear. They called it philanthropy.

“Then I think,” her father said, “that if we can't get that man out of school, where he is bothering our little children, that it is time to take Esther out of that school.”

“Sam, we agreed that she could finish this year,” her mother said.

“And I'm really not a little child, Papa,” Essie said. “Mama was married when she was my age. You know that.”

“It's true, Sam,” her mother said. “Our Esther is growing into a woman. So—what's an innocent little kiss? That's all there was to it.”

“I'll show you a picture of him, Papa, if you like,” Essie said, and reached for her notebook that lay on the kitchen table. “I made some drawings of him in the class.”

Her father took the notebook, and flipped slowly through the pages.

“Drawing pictures!” her mother said. “When you should have been writing down everything that your teacher said.”

Looking at Essie's sketches, her father muttered “
Shtadlonim
” once more. But then his face brightened somewhat. “Esther, I didn't know you could draw like this,” he said. “When did you learn to do this? Who taught you this? Minnalein, do you know that I think our Esther has talent as an artist? Think of it! Do you think an art school, maybe?”

The sketches seemed to have brought the family quarrel to an end. Minna Litsky rubbed her hands firmly across her apron front, and said, “Well, is anyone else starving to death for supper? I know I am.”

Little Abe, grinning broadly—surely he had been able to hear absolutely everything that had gone on, every single word through the thin partition—was released from the back room, and everyone gathered at the kitchen table. It was the beginning of the Sabbath, and the candles were lighted. Sam said the blessings, sliced the loaf. Then Minna served her family's dinner.

Throughout the meal, the talk was small and inconsequential. But after dinner, Essie heard her mother say in a low voice to her father, “Sam, I think the time has come to look for a husband for our Hadassah.” Her father gave her mother a stern and disapproving look. It was improper to discuss such matters on the Sabbath.

But Essie knew that things were serious whenever her mother used her Hebrew name.

Essie had begun to take an interest in Jake Auerbach's weekly lectures, now that she knew that the topics interested him not at all. It was a wonder that he could get up on the platform, week after week, and take such pains to illuminate a subject he cared nothing about, simply because he thought it might do some poor soul some good. Now she was listening with rapt attention as he applied himself to today's theme, which was Our Friend Electricity.

“Now you will hear many false rumors and superstitions about electricity,” he was saying. “When many people think of electricity, they think of electric storms and bolts of lightning which come out of the sky and split tree trunks in half and even occasionally kill people. Domestic electricity, which is spreading rapidly into homes throughout America, is of an altogether different kind. It is not dangerous. Perhaps you have heard that if an electric light bulb is not screwed tightly into its socket, the electricity will leak out into the room, or that if an electric plug is not plugged into every outlet in your house the same thing will happen. None of this is true. The electricity goes into the light bulb only when the bulb is screwed into its socket, and the switch is turned to ‘on.' On the other hand, it
is
dangerous to place your fingers in an empty socket or to place pins or other objects into an electrical outlet. You can give yourself a very nasty shock that way, which will hurt you and burn you because your body then becomes what is called the ‘conductor' of the electricity … like any friend, we must respect Our Friend Electricity … electrical engineers foresee the day when not only our homes in America will all be lighted by electricity, when all our cooking will be done by electricity, when our homes will be heated by electricity, but when electricity will also be used to power locomotives, automobiles, huge ocean liners. The uses of electricity are many … Here is a typical incandescent lamp bulb, which was invented by Thomas Alva Edison … The first to recognize the potential—does the class know that word? Potential? It means power. He was a man named Benjamin Franklin. One day, while flying a kite …”