The Glatstein Chronicles (57 page)

The driver talked on, but I heard him only as in a dream. It seemed as if the front part of the carriage, where he sat and the horse trotted, had gone on ahead, and I was left alone. I remembered a Spanish book I had once read. The author, Ramón del Valle-Inclán, divided the book into four “movements” corresponding to the four seasons. In the first part, the hero, a knight, is full with spring; in summer he is consumed with success like a Casanova; in fall his decline sets in; and in winter we find him lying with one hand shot off, waiting for the end. The four movements pictured a single human life posed against a barometer of time: time of sun, time of rain, time of snow, time of twilight, time of night.

I had the impression that my half of the carriage, at least, was moving into its autumnal phase. A shiver went through my body when the trees on the hilltop grew as still as the earth over which the carriage was rolling and when the red patch in the sky gradually grew paler and dissolved.

I began to understand why Neifeld had suddenly said goodbye to me. Only now did I realize that I would never see him again, that the carriage had left him behind forever, along with the day in Kazimierz. It was another part of the autumn which was invading my heart, like a premonition or perhaps an aftereffect. It was a great impertinence on my part, but I felt that I was living an allegory, and that the carriage was traveling downward rather than over flat ground. It seemed to me now, in the twilight, that I had reached the autumn of my life. The whole day, the encounter with Neifeld, and even my mother’s death seemed to coincide oddly with the downward movement of my own life, and all this was in step with Jewish life as a whole, maybe even with the twilight now settling down over the whole world.

After all, I had come back to Poland to learn something. All this might be a dark omen, just like the dark ground ahead that the carriage would soon catch up with and that would be darker and more soaked with silence when we reached it.

All of us—myself and everything I remembered, and everything I forgot—would very soon arrive at winter with a hand shot off. That would be the hand which, I had vowed, I would let wither if I forgot you, and you, and everything that had ever imprinted itself on my eyes and mind.

The carriage became whole again with its horse and driver, who was now singing a Hasidic song. This was in honor of the nightingale that had performed for us in the morning, at this same spot in the woods. The driver had heard the song from his father, who literally bought it for hard cash from the Rabbi of Radzin.

“Yes, it’s just as I said, he bought it. He went to the fair and came back penniless because he had stayed with the rabbi and brought back a song. Mother asked him whether the song could supply milk in her breasts. She had just given birth to my younger brother. And what do you think my father replied to her? If such is God’s will, he said, a song will do just that! Yes, that was the kind of man my father was. Of course, he wasn’t a driver. He knew his way around the Scriptures and the Mishna as well as I know my way about the woods. But the song is a real treasure. You relish its real savor on Simhat Torah, when Jews put their hands on one another’s shoulders and dance to glorify the Lord.”

The melancholy twilight spread over my whole body and was losing some of its sharpness, although I still felt a heaviness in all my limbs.

“You aren’t going to believe me, but we are back home.”

The horse fairly flew as though set upon winning a race. I began to recognize the hotels. We were on the sand-covered drive that led up to Buchlerner’s boarding house.

In front of the hotel stood a group of people. This was not the usual after-supper crowd slowly digesting its meal. When I alighted I saw several unfamiliar faces. The first person that walked up to me was the younger son of the rabbi whose retinue I had seen in the park. A little farther away I noticed his brother. The American son-in-law too was among the crowd. He was asking anxiously, “When? When did it happen?”

“Just a few minutes ago. After supper he said that he wasn’t feeling well.”

“Woe is me!” moaned Finkel, wringing his hands. “At table tonight he was inspired, he was telling stories, making jokes, he sang, he was full of fire. Woe is me, I can’t bear it, such a splendor, such a marvelous man. What does the doctor say?”

“What do you expect him to say?” a woman said with the dry, indifferent voice of someone used to such things. “He’s in a bad way, very bad, he needs his forefathers to intercede for him in heaven.”

“What is it—his liver?”

“Well, the angel of death will always find a pretext,” an old woman interjected. “According to some, it’s the kidneys, then he’s also a bit diabetic, or maybe it’s the heart. Probably a bit of everything, as happens in old age. What is man, after all?”

“Is he really in a bad way?” another woman asked.

“Bad way, good way,” said the woman with the dry voice. “Everything is in Those hands, and mine are not clean enough to say Whose hands I mean.”

I was sure they were talking about Steinman, but I addressed a questioning glance to the rabbi’s youngest son.

“Of course, who else? No one is allowed to see him. He is in his room, and specialists have been called in for a consultation.”

Buchlerner caught sight of me in the darkness. “Well, what do you say to our misfortune? Ha, could you have anticipated anything like this? It was he who told me you had gone to Kazimierz. What a misfortune! You should have seen him at the table only an hour or two ago. He looked like an emperor, so help me. I never tired of looking at that glowing face.”

He stepped closer and whispered: “Are you hungry by any chance? You know, the one thing has nothing to do with the other. The sinful flesh must have its due.”

I assured him that I had no desire to eat.

“No wonder!” he said, in a louder voice. “Such news! How could anyone sit down to a meal? Believe me, I didn’t eat all day, expecting to make up for it tonight. But now I couldn’t eat if you paid me. A man would have to be heartless to sit down to a meal at a time like this.”

“Is no one allowed to see him?” I asked.

“What do you mean? The doctors have been in there for almost an hour.”

The crowd began to gather around Buchlerner.

“What can I tell you? How can you learn anything standing outside the door? His daughter is with him. Ah, who can envy her now? It breaks your heart!”

“So you’re saying that it’s really that bad?” Finkel asked, sobbing rather than speaking.

“It couldn’t be worse, I assure you. Look, there is nothing to lose by it, we might as well put all embarrassment aside and recite some Psalms. What harm can it do?” He addressed this question to himself, with the air of someone trying the ultimate remedy.

“What do you mean, can’t do harm?” the rabbi’s older son said sullenly. “To the contrary, it can help a lot. What could help him more than that?” His upturned hands punctuated the question.

“Do we need a minyan?” Finkel asked.

“A minyan is certainly a good thing, but even if we didn’t get ten men together … ” The rabbi’s son scanned the crowd. The women moved away to make it easier to count the men. “We have more than enough men,” he said. “I’ll tell you what Psalms are to be recited. But it’s a waste of time if we don’t recite with true ardor, with concentration on the meaning, in the true Hasidic manner.”

The rabbi’s younger son was the only one of the crowd to remain behind when the rest went into the hotel to recite Psalms. “I see you’re not a reciter of Psalms either,” he said to me with a smile.

I told him that I wouldn’t have separated from the others but that I was still stunned by the news. I always react like that when I see what a fragile vessel man is. The here-today, gone-tomorrow leaves me with a wound that takes long to heal.

“As for me, I just don’t believe in disturbing the Lord for nothing. If it were a child, I’d pierce heaven with my complaints, but when it’s a man who has lived his allotted span, what good can it do to obtain from God a few more years for him? It’s not right to bargain with the Almighty. And believe me, if I made up my mind to do something, I wouldn’t just recite Psalms. Don’t you think the Lord has heard Psalms before? And now my brother wants to impress the Lord, blessed be His name, with a chaplet of Psalms, as though it were something brand new. Well, he is very foolish. Who said that the inner source of prayers has been sealed up once and for all? Am I obliged to wear secondhand clothes? The man who wrote the old prayers was going through agonies of grief, but my grief is different, and I must find my own path to the Lord. After all, if I were sick, I wouldn’t use the remedy prescribed for someone else’s sickness. King David certainly didn’t suffer the same way I do, and so I must find my own words when I want to knock at the gates of Mercy. The traditional prayers are made for busy people, people with no minds of their own, people who are inarticulate, that’s why they use borrowed words. It’s just as if I were to put on a pair of someone else’s glasses. Anyhow, as you know, we Hasidim do not attach much importance to formal praying. But I go further. If people took my advice, I’d assemble a minyan of silent men. They would sit still and meditate.”

We could hear the voices of the men reciting the Psalms. We could distinguish the voice of Buchlerner and that of Finkel, whose wail almost drowned out everyone else. Dominating all the voices, however, was that of the rabbi’s older son, who savored every word. Even out where we were standing his voice was like a great warming light.

“It must be granted that my brother has a fine talent for chanting. He imagines he’ll persuade the Lord with that voice of his. Well, I don’t interfere—if he is heard in heaven, so much to the good!”

I mechanically walked up the stairs and without knowing why opened the door to the room where the patient was lying. One of the two doctors, a young Gentile, grabbed me angrily by one arm and was about to lead me out of the room, but at that moment Steinman opened his eyes and waved weakly with his left hand. This wave of the hand had an immediate effect: It was as if the patient had given an order, though he had not uttered a word. This wave of the hand was a Jewish gesture, as if to say, nothing mattered any more. In addition, the merest hint of a smile played around Steinman’s mouth, a smile which even suggested mockery. It was the antidote to the tenseness that prevailed in the room. Perhaps it was this ironic smile that made the wave with the hand so eloquent. The doctor who was about to throw me out was embarrassed, as if the hint of mockery had been for him. As for myself, I was astonished at my own boldness, bursting into a sickroom like that.

Steinman could scarcely keep his eyes open. He beckoned to me to come closer to the bed. Next to it sat the second doctor, and a little farther away, on a rocking chair, Steinman’s daughter, who now was also smiling. Her smile expressed the frank admiration of a mother for her child. I don’t know whether she realized that her father was dying, but it was clear that had she known it, she would have been proud of him—perhaps because he looked beautiful even at this moment, because he conducted himself as he did, because everything he had accumulated in life now served him well. It was with him now in the bed, and it was a pleasure to see him so tactful, so wise, so serene. Even now he was in full possession of his faculties, and his calm seemed visibly to pervade every corner of the room. Had it not been for the presence of the doctors, there would have been no indication that he was sick. He seemed much thinner than this morning when I had last seen him, but he also looked younger. His daughter began to cry, tears running down her face without a sound, but the smile remained like a rainbow appearing before the storm has abated.

The patient moved his hand again, beckoning to me. He moved his lips, and I bent over him and listened as he struggled to form words, although only disjointed syllables were audible. Throughout he kept his patience, his expression seeming to say, “Ever seen anything like it? A strange business, isn’t it?” He made no complaint, and when he failed in his attempt to communicate, he merely gave a helpless smile. All I managed to catch was that his right eye was paralyzed, and that I should stand at his left.

“It’s dark in here,” he said. I went to the left side of the bed. He could not turn his head, but his left eye followed me. He was content.

Suddenly the doorway was filled with faces—some curious, some timid, some weeping. The young doctor jumped up again, but he looked to his older colleague, as if waiting for an order.

Steinman stirred feebly. The room was thronged with people, but they halted a few steps from the bed, as if separated from it by an expanse of water that could not be crossed. All of them together looked as if they had come to do something for Steinman, to carry him, to raise him in the air, to accomplish something that required a common effort, like lifting some large, heavy mass.

Seeing that the doctors did not forbid them, they grew bolder and moved a bit closer to the bed. Several women appeared in the doorway. Steinman’s daughter remained motionless where she sat, her eyes never leaving her father.

The men felt less constrained. They felt they had a right to be here, that they had just recited Psalms on his behalf, and that they were entitled to see whether their prayers had any effect. They all came over to the side of the bed where I was standing.

The older doctor said quietly, as though to himself, but imperiously: “He has no air. It’s too crowded.”

The men began to move back, but Steinman had already seen them.

Buchlerner and Finkel were the first to realize that Steinman had noticed them. They blushed like children calling on a rich uncle. They were overjoyed that he recognized them, that they were seeing him for themselves; it was as if he had just come back from a long journey and they were greeting him. But they were embarrassed at the thought that Steinman had seen them visiting him when he was in so sorry a state. They sensed that there was something improper in crowding around him in his bed like this.

Steinman began to move his lips again, and I bent over him. He spoke more distinctly than before but almost voicelessly, as though the words were shadows on the tip of his tongue.