East of Time (12 page)

Mussolini and his wife, Tzerl — who went about moaning, with white compresses pressed to her forehead — ran to the police, hired private detectives, lit candles at the cemetery. But all to no avail. Tzerl's carry-on infected our lives with some bizarre stories. According to one, Ruchcia had been murdered at Kraindle's behest; another had Kraindle climbing through Motke's window at night; a third was put about by a selfproclaimed seer who announced that it was ‘definitely a young flautist' he had seen in his dream, whipping with a dead fish the flesh of the hapless Ruchcia, harnessed to his buggy...

Years later (when Motke's parents had long been playing canasta with the angels) — after a plague of grey hornets had assailed our skies, and all the familiar stories had been torn up and tossed into the basket of oblivion; after the difficult times that had descended on our lives, times of cruelty, restriction, confiscation, confinement, and the exodus, finally, of even the mice from our microcosm — Motke was still living in the same tenement block. Without a family, without a friend, he looked an old and broken man, though he was no more than sixty. He
had been exiled from his apartment to the attic on the roof, where the beastly cold wind reigned supreme. One day he told himself, ‘Enough is enough,' and on the first available occasion added his name to a list of men due to be shipped out from our inverted kingdom.

Accordingly, one wintry frosty noon, Motke climbed into the cattle-truck that would deliver him to another land. Then a strange thing happened, something that no one could ever explain. People swore that they saw Kraindle walking beside him, holding on tight, her still-radiant head resting on his drooped shoulder. ‘Kraindle, what has brought you here?' Motke was heard to call out. ‘Jealousy,' his escort replied. ‘I'll not let Lady Death have you all to herself!'

 

 
Interrupted Song
 

Speaking of Motke, I must back-track for a moment, for Motke always brings to mind the Goldhamers. They were a family of six — father, mother and four children — who had become members of our four-storey tenement community back in 1933, and whom our landlord held in the highest regard because of their sedateness, piety, and dependability as tenants who never failed to pay their rent on time.

Isaac Goldhamer, thanks to his enormous size, was immediately nicknamed ‘
Byk
' (Ox). A very strictly religious man, Isaac presided over his fruit business dressed in traditional black garb, with a prayer always on his lips. One of his boys, Simcha, was my age; his brother Moniek, though two years younger, was nevertheless equally eligible to be accepted as a fully-fledged member of our backyard football team. As a rule, however, a beating preceded the initiation of anyone who desired to enter our fellowship, and on this occasion I volunteered
to carry out the job. After school, in the dark cobblestone entrance to the yard, I lay quietly in wait for my two victims. Or so I thought. After the thrashing the two brothers gave
me
, my own mother couldn't recognize me!

And yet almost overnight the three of us became close friends. Little Moniek even confided a secret that he kept from his own brother — that he would rather be called ‘Moishe Shambelo', and when he grew up he would be leader of an underworld gang, living in caves frequented by a fraternity of robbers. Both brothers had fine voices, especially Simcha, and they consequently became choristers in the Great Synagogue on Wolborska Street (which the Germans, to prove their Aryan superiority, would later burn to the ground).

On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Simcha asked me to join him at the morning service. This was an awesome experience, for I had never been inside a synagogue before. So many Jews, all enveloped in the white wings of prayer-shawls! Then there was the singing of the choir — and above all the voice of Simcha, chiming like a brass gong in the cupola of a holy temple.

Avinu malkenu
...

That night I confessed to father that I had spent the day in synagogue. ‘You did the right thing, son,' he said. I was taken aback: ‘But why? We're not religious.' ‘The synagogue is a fortress of
Yiddishkeit
,' he explained, ‘and we are
Yidn
.' I was still puzzled: ‘Aren't we also socialists?' ‘Of course, though primarily Yiddish socialists,' he replied. ‘How is that?' I persisted. ‘Well, did our circumcision not come before our socialism?' And father closed the inquiry with a smile.

Encouraged by this confusion, I managed to talk all my backyard friends into becoming members of Skif, the Socialist Children's Union. When our Skif choir was preparing itself for a concert in aid of the workers combating Fascism in Austria,
Simcha proved a most welcome recruit, and was duly appointed to sing solo the main theme-song of our production. This arrangement turned out to be a rather traumatic experience. The whole choir was assembled on stage, the curtain was about to go up, but no Simcha! And there was no last-minute arrival, because our star never showed up.

When I got home I discovered that Simcha's father had got wind of the whole affair and had locked up his son for the day in a dark closet. Spotting me in the yard, Isaac Goldhamer burst from his door like an unstoppable bullock. ‘If you ever involve my children in your gang of
Apikorsim
,' he shouted, ‘I'll skin you alive!'

For years I lost track of Simcha. I caught up with him in November 1944, in the slave-labour camp of Wolfsberg. He was singing to entertain the
kapos
for a slice of bread. Haggard, worn to the bone, he had no life left in him. At roll-call next morning he was selected to be transported to the Auschwitz gas chambers. The deputy commandant, who was known as Henk, asked Simcha if he had heard of the singer Joseph Schmidt. Simcha said that he had. ‘And do you know his famous song?' ‘Yes, Herr Unterscharführer.' ‘So let me hear you.' ‘I've forgotten the words, sir.' ‘Then let me teach them to you.
This is the final day, of my existence; this is my final day, I can be sure...
' But Simcha, already in the open truck, remained mute. ‘Damn Jew,' screamed the officer. ‘Damn Jew,
sing
!' My friend's lips stayed firmly sealed. Then, as the truck began to move, Simcha looked straight into Henk's eyes and, with his last ounce of strength, let his voice fly. It resounded once again like the chime of a brass gong:

Avinu malkenu...

Though this time beneath the unblemished blue of an indifferent cosmic cupola.

 

 
The Melamed
 

I cannot quite remember how it came about, but one evening, as mother was dishing out our dinner, I heard her say: ‘Gershon, I'm about to engage a melamed for our son.' A melamed was a religious teacher. ‘I don't think the extra study will interfere with his school program, and it will enhance his knowledge of Jewish history.' Father's non-response was a sign of acquiescence.

But my older sister Pola, a confirmed Marxist who had already done time for the glory of Stalin in a couple of prestigious Polish prisons, would not hear of it. ‘Why, mother?' she pleaded. ‘Why should you introduce your son, at such a vulnerable age, to that opium?'

Father, a sworn atheist who quarrelled with God all his life, chuckled. He was a socialist but, like many others of his comrades, of the Fabian persuasion. Once, in a discussion, I heard him remark that if Marx had been born into money, he would never have written
Das Kapital
. In fact, father argued, Marx hated the very class he yearned to belong to.

Next day after sundown, as I was finishing my homework, Eliahu the melamed arrived. He was a smallish man with a very sympathetic face, but without one solitary hair on his chin. What's this, I thought, a rabbi without a beard? After he left I asked father — who, at the other end of the table, had pretended to read the paper while listening attentively to my first lesson — how it was that the rabbi's face was as smooth as a baby's bottom. ‘Well, son,' he replied, ‘better a rabbi without a beard than a beard without a rabbi.'

Father had clearly taken a liking to the man, and so had I. Eliahu began each lesson with a story from the
Chumash
(the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses), to which I would listen with a certain juvenile scepticism. Yet these stories opened up
a new world. It was not that I hadn't heard them already from my teachers at school; but Reb Eliahu knew how to add fire to these wondrous tales, and they set my boyish head spinning.

One evening, as mother interrupted the simmer of the kettle on the stove and poured hot tea into white enamel cups, the melamed asked my father: ‘Reb Gershon, why do you not send your son to a proper religious school where they teach about the Almighty and His
real
glory?'

My father smiled. ‘You mean about our personal Creator, the one who governs our lives? Well, Reb Eliahu, the Creator's track record is not a very good one, especially in relation to His chosen.' He said this without a hint of sarcasm.

‘Are we to take only the good, without the bad?' the other man retorted.

‘Ah, Reb Eliahu, you are talking with Job's tongue. Yet is it not the very book you're quoting which casts the longest shadow on divine justice?'

Eliahu fell silent, his face reddened. He was a refined man, perhaps he felt he had gone too far. Burying his eyes in the steaming cup, he regained his composure. ‘You know,' he said, ‘there is a school of thought which upholds a theory that the sages consciously placed the Tav, the first letter in the word
Torah
, at the very end of the alphabet — meaning by this to remind us that a man may have a world of knowledge at his fingertips, but without immersing himself in the depths of the Torah he still remains unlearned.'

Father smiled; obviously he loved this fable. For a good while the two men searched one another's eyes. Then my melamed stood up. As father stretched out his hand to him, Reb Eliahu said, ‘Thank you, sir,' and with the footfall of a shy child he stepped toward the door and gently closed it behind him.

 

 
The Legend