The Glatstein Chronicles (11 page)

“
Pozhalusta,
welcome,” boomed the towhead, the most Russian of the group, in the rich baritone that only a Russian youth can allow himself. His unhurried gestures, his open manner and thundering resonance brought to mind Turgenev’s Bazarov, Artzybashev’s Sanin, and a score of similar literary heroes who reflected not so much the Russian reality as the creativity of their authors in supplying models for a whole generation of the Russian intelligentsia. And yet, this blond young man with the voice of a Russian cathedral bell was a new species of Russian intellectual, the product, nay, the exemplar, of a new way of life. He had a keen grasp of political-economic issues. His comrades clearly respected his mastery of dialectics and his ability to apply Soviet dogma to various contemporary situations. Whenever his colleagues made a doctrinal misstep, stumbling over the Party line, he would correct them good-naturedly—“That’s not exactly how we would handle it, comrades”—and lead them step by step through the ideological maze to the necessary outcome.

He and two others of the group had spent only six weeks in the United States, where, as electrical technicians, they had been sent to inspect plants and factories. They had seen and learned much in the course of their whirlwind tour. The fourth member of the group, the one who seemed a dullard, had won a factory lottery for a trip around the world and a year’s vacation. He had been everywhere and was now going back to his job. Oddly enough, even this laborer, who worked in a steel mill, with the callused hands to prove it, took a personal interest in economic questions and was knowledgeable about the driest, most complex issues of world economic affairs. Apparently this had become some sort of sport, a version of crossword puzzles for Soviet youth, which afforded them deep satisfaction. They seemed to know their way around, understanding where to be gentle and where to get tough. Each saw himself as a representative of his country, ready to take up the cudgels for the motherland and do battle with any unbeliever.

The four young Soviet stalwarts, who had spent only a short time in the United States, were far less reticent than Khazhev to openly criticize America, always prefacing their remarks with, “We don’t want to give you”—that is me, the American—“any advice on how to run your country.” There followed a litany of complaints about dirty streets, filthy theaters, and public places littered with cigar and cigarette butts. By contrast, Soviet theaters were spotlessly clean and the workers approached them as reverently as worshipers once did a temple.

“When you were in the States, did you come across activists, or attend any Communist meetings?” I asked.

They recoiled at the very idea. Taking their cue from the blond pacesetter, they replied, almost in unison, “No! What does that have to do with us? We are Soviet citizens and we were guests of America. We know nothing about the American Communist movement except what we hear.” Their relief was palpable: they had acquitted themselves well as Soviet emissaries in a foreign, but diplomatically friendly land. Then, relaxing a bit, they suggested that perhaps Sonya Yakovlyevna might be the better person to tell about the American Communist movement. She had spent twelve years in America. Her husband had returned to the Soviet Union two years ago, to take up an important post. Now she, too, was returning and was delighted by the prospect, because all the time she was in America, she had clung to her Russianness—her name, her patronymic, and her rough but succulent Odessan Russian, with its rolling Yiddish
r
’s.

I invited them all into my cabin for a drink, explaining that I had more bottles of liquor on hand than I could possibly finish off by myself. They fell silent and looked to their blond leader for instruction, unsure as to whether Soviet citizens should let themselves be talked into drinking by a stranger. He laughed uncomfortably and blinked several times, narrowing his eyes at the thought of the drink. After wrestling with the dilemma, he arrived at a compromise between the urgings of the evil impulse and Soviet dialectic, and handed down his ruling: “
Nyemnozhetchko
!”—indicating just how tiny a drop by the minuscule shape between thumb and forefinger. We all trooped into my cabin, even the ailing Sonya. After the blond young man had downed several hefty nyemnozhetchkos, the cabin began to ring out with the exuberance of Soviet song.

The singing grew louder. The blond young Russian danced around my narrow cabin with the stout Sonya Yakovlyevna. Someone brought in a portable gramophone and a pile of records of Russian popular songs, each ending on a high shriek, like the bark of a sergeant-major shouting out orders, indicating that the song was over, that life itself had come to a halt, and one might as well stretch out, close one’s eyes, and go to one’s eternal rest. Staid, curious American passengers poked in their heads to stare at our merrymaking, as if at an orgy of friendly cannibals. The drunken whoops, the gramophone’s shrieks, Sonya Yakovlyevna’s tipsy laughter amid all these men, the raucous shouts of masculine camaraderie that had an almost homoerotic charge—all this cacophony spilled out into the corridor, seeking more room for itself. I, meanwhile, none too sober myself, was saying in my mind, not questioningly, not assertively, but with a drunken insouciance: “This is it”—this is the new, happy breed of romantic materialists, the products of victory, of waving flags, captured barricades, endless struggle, of revolutions and communes. This is the glorious song of fulfillment.

That I happened to find myself here among the victors was no mere happenstance. I had arrived at this revolutionary point, having experienced all the revolutions on the books, with the names of the revolutionary martyrs, the working-class slogans, all engraved on my child’s brain, as my native city, suffering under the harsh rule of Tsar Nicholas, had contributed to the overthrow of the tyrant.

I used to taunt my grandfather with this revolutionary Russian jingle which class-conscious dressmakers, seamstresses, embroiderers, carpenters, lathe turners, tanners, and apprentice butchers would sing under their breath. This was my childish rebellion against his fear of incurring the wrath of the authorities. “Go rub your nose in a fart!” Grandfather would exclaim, breaking out the obscenity he reserved for times when he was truly angry. “We’ll all be sent to Siberia because of this rascal!” I paid him no heed and recruited my little brother, who was two years younger and barely able to pronounce the words “Russian oppressor,” to the class struggle.

I was five or six at the time. My friends were snot-nosed kids with hanging shirttails and narrow-brimmed Jewish caps. The ground, as I recall, shook underfoot, as we tottered about, playing “Knock down the King.” We must have looked like a yardful of penguins.

I don’t mean to brag about my revolutionary credentials, but even then I knew that the huge fortress-prison that loomed over the city was not reserved for thieves alone. The ferocious-looking soldiers, rifles at the ready, patrolled it day and night. It was visible from all points below, from every Jewish street, stretching as far as the main synagogue. Jews going to pray had to make their way under fearful government scrutiny, in full sight of the weapons flashing on the hill above.

At the foot of the prison stood the Krasutski factory, where coughing cigarette and cigar makers, stooped and exhausted, toiled. Between factory and prison, particularly the section that housed the political prisoners, there was a living bridge—the Krasutskis’ gentle daughter, who was lame. She wore glasses, and her earnest face could have been taken for either Jewish or Gentile. At dawn she would step out on her balcony and fearlessly chat with the prisoners who appeared, from the neck up, at the little barred windows of the prison.

My concept of revolution was garnered from the heroic tales Grandfather would tell me about a certain Berek Joselewicz, who defied the Russians, about the Jewish tavernkeepers who hid Polish aristocrats from the Russian authorities, and even the joke about those same aristocrats, who would crawl out from behind the oven after the Russians had departed, twirl their mustaches, and shout at their protectors, “Jews, off with your hats!” Grandfather, who was nothing but a realist, would also tell me that when the Cossacks would catch a revolutionary, they would cut off his most important member and hand it to him with a bow: “
Kuritye pozhalusta
—here, have a smoke.” He also had a pack of tales about stubborn guerrilla battles in thick Polish woods, about gallows, lances, daggers, and Cossack whips.

Then came the first steps of actual revolution. Late at night, long after midnight, not in the well-to-do suburb outside the city but right on the crooked, timorous Jewish streets, there was a sudden eruption of singing. The flimsy houses, held together by spit, trembled awake but stayed silent, not taking sides. We understood what was going on, but were afraid even to look out the windows and kept our heads buried under our featherbeds. The revolutionaries were trying to gain control of the city by force, one street at a time, hoping to get the job done before the arrival of the troops. Meanwhile, members of the Polish Socialist Party were pouring into the streets, from the Hess foundry which manufactured heavy scales, from the brickyards and the sugar refineries, carrying torches, waving flags, and singing:

At first they marched slowly, then the pace quickened. The torches flashed by the windows, followed by an ominous silence that seemed like a cry for help. Suddenly, there was the sound of angry hoofbeats, as the fiery Cossack horses came galloping in. Enraged at having missed their chance, the Cossacks relieved their fury by firing into the air a shot that pierced the Jewish night like a red-hot nail.

Another time, on the fast day of Tisha B’Av, when everyone was at the synagogue mourning the destruction of the Holy Temples in ancient Jerusalem, the comrades decided to show off their revolutionary fervor by marching upon the synagogue courtyard, waving their flags. Soon the Cossacks rode up, lashing away with their whips. The synagogue doors were hastily locked. For several hours thereafter, we could hear the Cossacks sniffing around like angry dogs. They didn’t dare enter the synagogue, while we were afraid to leave. Long after we had finished reciting the various laments, we remained huddled in the synagogue through the night.

What a Tisha B’Av that was! We actually relived the ancient destruction. The lights in the synagogue flickered. The cantor remained sitting on the steps leading up to the ark. I half-dozed on a hard, overturned lectern, rummaging in the straw on the floor with my stocking feet, delighting in the fleas that tickled the soles of my feet in their frenzied attempts to reach a child’s warm flesh.

In the center of the synagogue, the fearful shadow of a hanging lamp swayed back and forth, like a body dangling from a rope. In my mind I kept hearing stray echoes of the plaintive lament for Zion and her devastated cities that the cantor had just led the congregation in chanting. I was desperately hungry, and thought about the starvation we had heard described in the Book of Lamentations, that drove the parents of besieged Jerusalem to eat their own children. Like our ancient forebears, we too were under siege. Titus and his legions were on the prowl, about to pounce and devour me. I looked in terror at my father, who was nodding off, stroking me with a sleepy hand.

I can’t remember exactly which pogrom it was—Kishinev, Bialystok, or some other bloodbath. Father had come home with a newspaper and was weeping so uncontrollably that everyone in the house joined in, my mother, my brother, and even the maid, who was mute—everyone, that is, except me, whose heart gets hard as flint when it comes to shedding a tear. I looked at the black-bordered photos with their caption, “Martyrs,” and thought of the Ten Martyred Sages, the rabbis of old who were tortured to death by the Romans and whose sorrowful fate we recall on Yom Kippur, recounting how the Romans tore the flesh from their bodies with iron combs. The newspaper pictures showed a dead synagogue sexton holding a Torah scroll, dead, glassy-eyed children, and shredded sacred books. My swirling thoughts had already formed an idea of what a Jewish revolution should be—on the one side, Tsar Nicholas and his pogroms, and on the other, the young people in their blue, black, or red peasant shirts, with their sashes and tassels. These Shirts would some day topple the Tsar from his throne.

I conjured up an image of Tsar Nicholas sitting atop a high throne, like Pharaoh in Egypt, every word out of his mouth a decree against the Jews. Like Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, he holds a gold scepter in one hand and a wand in the other, and instead of going to wash in the baths, bathes in Jewish blood. As he is about to issue his next evil decree, in rush the two whirlwinds, Yankl, the redheaded carpenter, and Yosl, the pockmarked locksmith. First, they pay their respects to the monarch and rattle off all his imperial titles, then, without ceremony, they say: “Get the hell out of here, my lord king, you’ve ruled long enough.” They toss him off the throne, fire a few bullets into him, spit three times, and shout: “Take that, for the Jewish blood you’ve spilled!” They grab a pole, press a spring, and out pops the red flag. At once, they’re off to Russia, where they march up and down, singing:

And yet, when the Shirts once took over the synagogue and stood there “slandering God,” as my Hebrew-school teacher later explained, my heart was heavy. To oppose Tsar Nicholas was one thing, but to oppose the Jewish God? What sins had He committed? Those were His scrolls of the Torah being stomped on and ripped to shreds, His Jews being massacred. What claim could you have against the God who went into exile with His people and never enjoyed a worry-free moment, except, perhaps, on the festival of Simhat Torah that celebrated His Law?

This Jewish God of mine looked exactly like Rabbi Avremele Eiger, the Hasidic master of Lublin, a gaunt, soft-spoken man with a long, white beard, dressed in white stockings and slippers, who didn’t know what money looked like, who accepted no fees, who fasted every Monday and Thursday, and got by on next to nothing all year long, whose cracked voice was always lamenting Jewish disasters. This was the Jewish God of my tormented, childish imagination. What could one have against such a God, who was ready at any moment to hasten the Redemption, but whose hands were too short and weak to bring on the Messiah?