The Glatstein Chronicles (58 page)

He wanted us to sing something, a Hasidic song, a cheerful song. I couldn’t believe my ears. I leaned closer. He saw my surprise and repeated, “A song, a cheerful one.”

I transmitted the message to the others, as if what I had to say was beyond comprehension, some text laboriously translated from a long-forgotten language. They looked at me with hostile eyes. Was I making fun of the sick old man? Or had I thought this up to make fun of them?

But now everyone could see for himself that Steinman’s face had changed. His brow was knitted in concentration, his lips were twisted, and he was making faces. With a chill, I realized that he was singing to himself, though not a sound was audible. My spine turned into ice.

Not only I but everyone else in the room saw Steinman sing. His face was like a sheet of music. Everyone stared at his twisting features as if they were listening to a song. We could make out only a muffled wailing, such as people lost in the woods might make to signal their presence to each other. The muffled cry grew more distinct, and the faces of all present grew grave, in keeping with the rhythm of the song, with the depth of the song. It was not only Steinman who was making faces now; it was a chorus.

Who was the first to snap his fingers in rhythm is hard to tell. Judging by Finkel’s half-swooning expression, it might have been he, or perhaps it was the rabbi’s American son-in-law. The singing was so quiet that in spite of the light in the room they all seemed to be singing in the dark. I realized that they were singing the same song Steinman had sung my first night here, when he sat at the head of the table.

His daughter’s head followed the rhythm marked out by the rabbi’s older son. Steinman’s seeing eye beckoned to me. I bent over him again and heard him singing in my ear: “A
rikudl
… dance … dance … ” I stood there for a while helplessly leaning over him. “A rikudl, a rikudl,” he kept whispering, like a stubborn child. But the moment I announced this, the effect was just the opposite of what I had expected. The crowd suddenly sobered up. The humming stopped, and each of them stood there embarrassed, as though he had done something adults must never do—and now all that was lacking was a rikudl, a noisy, lively Hasidic stomping.

They had not sung for more than a minute or two, perhaps only as long as it was possible for any one of them to suppose that only the other had broken into song or that only he had behaved in a silly manner. The men looked at each other as if trying to discover whether anyone had noticed them singing.

The older doctor sat by the bed, taking the patient’s pulse. Steinman lay still with his eyes closed, a single tear rolling down from one eye. The tear was alive, and it was clear that this man who looked asleep was wide awake, alert, and possibly weeping with joy at the way the song had soared to the very heights, beyond which no song could go.

Suddenly the doctor signaled for us all to leave. We filed out of the room and closed the door gently.

“I’m going to stay all night by this door,” Finkel said. “I’ll lie here like a dog. Even my wife won’t take me away from here.” And turning to me: “I ask you, are there many such Jews? Are there many young people who’ll grow up to be like him?”

He burst into tears, and he covered his face with his hands so that his sobs would not be heard in the corridor. The woman with the dry voice gave him a sneering look. She inspected him from top to toe as if to convince herself that this grown man was actually weeping. And then, to show that she, a woman, did not indulge in such silliness, she said with a voice so unemotional that there was not the slightest tremor in it: “He won’t last the night. The angel of death is already there, by his pillow.”

The rabbi’s youngest son, who had been pacing back and forth in the lounge, saw me come down. When I told him that Steinman was in full possession of his faculties though very ill, his face lit up.

“Some day I’m going to look into this matter,” he said. “After all, a man’s rational faculties are the most substantial part of his soul. For the soul, too, has a material part. Yes, before you get to the soul, you have to break through a number of thick skins. However, when a man is granted the privilege of preserving his reason to the last moment, he thereby is given a divine opportunity to see his own pure soul, because he can contemplate himself in the intermediate realm, where the visible passes over into the invisible. May I make a suggestion? Let us walk in the park for a while. It’s empty now, and the orchestra is no longer playing. Right now is the best time to walk there.”

“I’m afraid I should get started packing. Tomorrow morning I begin my trip back home.”

“Is that so? Tomorrow you’ll be gone. Well, then we ought certainly to take a walk in the park, as a farewell.” He said nothing for a few moments, standing where he was. “Home—if you only knew how proud that word sounds! How I wish all Jews had a home like yours! Tell me, are you taking anything back with you—I mean something that has given you food for thought?”

He became pensive, and we began to walk slowly in the direction of the park. Clearly, he was not expecting an answer. Then he lifted his head, and I looked into his large eyes.

“Personally, I don’t envy you. May I ask one thing of you? Don’t suppose that a little boy is talking to you. If you ever come back here in later years, you’ll see for yourself. And even if you don’t come back, you’ll still have heard—the Jewish world will resound with my fame. My ideas aren’t ready yet, or rather, everything is still simmering in a big pot. You can make out the parsley, the vegetables, the beans, the mushrooms—it’s all bubbling and seething, but before long it will be ready, a finished dish. I can already taste it. Believe me, I’m not boasting. Jews from every corner of Poland will gather around me, and I shall minister to their spirits with the joy of discovery. Every Jew will become a seer, a thinker, a sage. I won’t just carry them on my own shoulders the way my grandfather did. I’ll make them stand on their own feet. Nor will they just love one another—everyone will have to earn that love. They will have to rise above themselves, like climbing a ladder. You know how the rabbi of Kozhin interpreted the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself. ‘Is love of oneself such a simple matter?’ he used to say. ‘You value your eyes more than your legs, and you value your head more than your you-know-what. So if your neighbor is a head, love him as you would your head, and if he is the opposite—well, you get the point. Love him as you love yourself.’ That was what the rabbi of Kozhin said.”

A man was approaching, very unsteady on his legs. When he got closer, I saw it was my driver. “I’m glad I ran into you,” I said. “I want you to take me to the station early in the morning.”

“Woe is me,” he said. As he opened his mouth the reek of vodka hit me. “And here I am walking around as if the world be damned. You want to make the six o’clock train?” He began to run. “I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep,” he yelled back. “But don’t worry, you can count on me.”

I called after him not to forget because I’d be waiting all ready and packed.

“Look not upon me, that I am swarthy,”—he quoted Scripture—“I mean, look not upon me because I’ve taken a drop or two. After two hours’ sleep I’ll be a new man. I’m like a horse, I never sleep, I just take naps!”

“Let no one tell you,” my companion went on as if he had not been interrupted, “that we Jews need not be better and nobler than our neighbors. Our neighbors do not ask themselves what they are living for, but this is a question we do ask ourselves, and we ask it angrily. Until the great reckoning takes place, we’ll be tormenting ourselves with it. We must be in a position to say clearly what is the purpose of our being in this world. In the meantime it is their world, and they let all their Christianity out on us.

“Yes, even my grudging brother,” he went on with a happy smile, “even he will have to come and bow to me. Sweet, sweet, is the dream of Joseph—all the others will cross my threshold with their heads held high, but he will have to bow and pay homage before me. No matter how much recognition you get from strangers, it means little until your own come to bow to you. Joseph wanted to break the pride of the envious.”

At the entrance to the park, the guard tried to persuade us that it was not worthwhile to go in because he would be closing the park in half an hour anyway, but we assured him that we’d be out before then.

We took a quick walk along the main avenue and sat on a bench near the entrance so as to keep an eye on the guard. He blew his whistle several times and came over to us, obviously pleased at the fact that we had kept our word. “No matter how nice one is to them, it is not enough,” he complained, fingering his mustache. “Everyone is out of the park now, except for the young couples. For them the night is always too short.”

He blew his whistle again. “My word, I’m going to shut that gate, they can stay on here all night like cats. What can I do?”

Couples began to appear as if crawling out from among the trees around us. It seemed that every tree had sheltered a couple, and every dark and grass-covered path as well. They might all have been playing hide-and-seek. None of them spoke a word. They walked with lowered heads, as though ashamed to have made the guard wait for them till the last minutes.

“Now there’s only one couple left. I remember them—I have a good memory. She’s a redhead. I’ll whistle three times, and if that doesn’t fetch them, well, they can have several pairs of twins for all I care.”

But before he had whistled the third time, the last couple emerged. Even in the dark I could see the girl’s flaming hair and her embarrassment. The tall man who held her arm guided her as though they were passing through a gauntlet of soldiers ready to bring down their whips on sinners who dallied in the park.

When the couple had passed through the gates, the guard looked at us triumphantly. “You see, I did remember them. I keep a mental count of all of them. They can’t hide from me.”

He gave one last whistle, to be on the safe side. The park now looked the way a synagogue does at night. He wished us a courteous good night, treating us as two decent men whom it had not been necessary to flush out of the bushes to get rid of.

“Don’t think that I have nothing to say to you about all those couples, about the evil thoughts they inspire. When I watch them parading out of the park like that, I sometimes have strange dreams afterwards. You must think that I am only half a man. How do I hold my desires in check? How do I tame them? I do just what the Jews did with Solomon’s Song of Songs when they transformed it into a song of praise for the community of Israel. So I take my desire to task and transform it into an allegory. It tries to get the upper hand, but I give it an allegorical meaning, to shame it. And what will I do if this fails to work? I’ll find myself a wife, and get the better of the temptation that way!”

“Will you be stopping in Paris on your way home?” the rabbi’s son asked me when we were close to Buchlerner’s hotel. “Tell me, are you taking some important insight back with you, some ideas at least? An ignoramus travels like a horse, but a man, a rational being, must learn something when he makes a long trip. Some people go abroad and then come back home, and in a few weeks it’s as though they had never been away. But when travel gives one some new insights, that’s different. Then it’s profitable.”

“If you want to know,” I said to myself more than to him, “what I am taking back with me is a riper sadness that comes only after years of looking and listening. There is a sadness that you can hold by the hand like a good companion, not afraid to look it in the face. It is not a terrorizing fear, but a sorrow you can understand. When you look into your eyes in the mirror, you see the talk that has stayed with you, that has left its mark—a groan, a sigh, a smile. You feel that you have finally become your own sorrow that matures, and grows a little wiser from year to year.”

“Well, in that case, farewell, and have a good trip.” He extended his hand. “Remember me occasionally. Think of your brothers here. Let us look forward to good news from both sides of the ocean.”

One window only was still bright among all the dark windows of Buchlerner’s hotel. Buchlerner was standing in front of the hotel as if he had been waiting for me all this time.

“Blessed be the true Judge,” he said, accenting all the words equally.

“Blessed be the true Judge,” the rabbi’s son repeated piously and walked away.

“When?” I asked Buchlerner.

“Just now, perhaps a quarter of an hour ago.” I walked slowly up the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. Finkel came out to meet me. “Have you heard the terrible news? He passed away like a great saint. Blessed be the true Judge.”

“So you’re really going tomorrow?” Buchlerner asked me the moment I opened the door to my room. I had not even heard him following me. He sat down on the rocking chair and began to rock violently.

“Yes. You may give me my bill.”

“Ah, God be with you, who has a head for that? Maybe you’d like a snack? A glass of vodka? I’m starved myself. Let’s have a drink—you know it helps the soul of the deceased to ascend to Heaven. And let’s eat something too. Believe me, the dead won’t have anything against it.”

When he saw he couldn’t persuade me, he said that he’d be getting up long before me, and that there would be plenty of time for settling my bill.

A tall man with a pointed beard opened the door and stuck in his head. “Is the owner here?” he asked.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Buchlerner,” the other said with piteous expression. “I am here to recite Psalms. I am supposed to stay with the dead the whole night, and I’m simply starved. It will be worse later on. Could I have a piece of herring? And a glass of vodka to pick me up?” He remained standing in the doorway.

“How about a piece of fish, some bread, and a vodka?” Buchlerner asked.

“Ah, ah!” The man smacked his tongue.

“And where shall I serve you?”

“Downstairs, in the dead man’s room.”

“Downstairs? In his room?” Buchlerner made a face.

“Why not? What is there to fear? The dead man won’t take it away from me.”