East of Time Page 3

  Then he stopped. ‘And yet,’ he said, the music still ringing in his voice, ‘to my mind, it was not the words, but rather Rouget de Lisle’s buoyant melody which became the beacon of light in men’s darkest days.’

  Many years later, in a dark ghetto basement, I noticed a green plant climbing a wet wall towards a tenuous crevice of sun. I don’t know why, but I felt myself grow strangely tall, and at that moment I thought I spotted the phantom of Juda, his head tilted slightly to the right; and as he pointed his finger towards the struggling plant, the two of us began, simultaneously, to hum Rouget’s eternal, resolute melody of hope.

  Revolt

  ‘The Dawn of Spring’, as already mentioned, was an annual event at our school, a concert of musical and dramatic performances which involved the collective enterprise of students and teachers alike. I recall the year we staged The Strike of the Hens, a play based on a Sholem Aleichem story, ‘Kapporos’, meaning sacrifices. According to an old Babylonian custom, a day before Yom Kippur one ought to sacrifice a hen or a rooster, preferably a white one. Some believed that such an act would absolve that person’s loved ones of their sins and safeguard their welfare for the coming year.

  In Sholem Aleichem’s story, just before Yom Kippur the hens, roosters and the whole poultry world proclaimed a strike. ‘Enough!’ they decided. ‘Our life is ours, and we refuse to be sacrificed any longer for some people’s fancy.’ Well, our teachers quickly detected a sociopolitical moral in the tale; after some deliberation and rewriting, our surreal stage version of the story was born:

  Officialdom (in our retelling) was beside itself at news of the strike, and a deputation was dispatched. ‘What do you mean, you refuse to be sacrificed?’ they bellowed. ‘Who are you to challenge God’s order, to take matters into your own hands?’ An obese cleric in a black silk coat and fur cap came forward. ‘Let me talk to them,’ he told the delegation. ‘I’ll show them that anarchy cannot prevail, that everything on earth has been created with a purpose. Theirs is to be sacrificed and nothing will ever change that.’

  But the rebellious poultry stood their ground. They sharpened their beaks on the wet blades of grass, ready to attack. Faced with this situation, the shrewd cleric modified his approach. ‘My dear lady hens and honourable gentlemen roosters,’ he coaxed. ‘Please state your demands, and if they are within reason we can surely come to a settlement that will satisfy all concerned.’

  A representative of the poultry fluttered to the front. ‘We simply refuse to be your atonements,’ she explained. ‘We refuse to have our legs bound, to be spun around the heads of your sons and daughters, to be thrown under the table (as your stupid custom demands), and finally to be taken to the slaughterer, then cooked, fried or roasted to reappear on your white porcelain plates — and for what?’

  ‘For what!’ screamed the sweating cleric with the fur cap. ‘Do you mean to say that the slaughterer’s blessing as he cuts your throat is nothing? That my blessing before I sink my teeth into one of you young hens’ juicy breasts is nothing?’

  At this the multitude took a step forward. ‘What sort of mockery is that?’ they chorused. ‘What sort of fools do you take us for?’ Ruffling their feathers loudly, they formed a threatening phalanx. A young rooster pushed his way to the front and, spreading his magnificent white wings like a mountain eagle, shouted: ‘Every comb a red badge of revolt — long live freedom!’ And they set upon the officials, pecking at their noses, snapping at their lips and eyes. Shocked and frightened, the delegation dispersed amid a cloud of feathers.

  Our audience, electrified, responded with thunderous applause. And as the curtain came down, we, the young actors — and doubtless many members of the whole assembly — were struck by the ingenuity of Sholem Aleichem’s tale. In spotlighting an irrational tradition, he had exposed the cruel logic that could flow like a dark undercurrent beneath the lofty human impulse to redemption.

  Bible and Bund

  Jewish Antiquity, virtually the code-name in our school for Tanach, was taught by Falk Melman, a bald, bespectacled, unassuming gentleman, an astute scholar of incredible patience and a tendency to be manipulated by his students — all of which had earned him the unkind epithet ‘Shmelke’.

  Nearly seventy years have passed since I sat in his class, yet I haven’t forgotten how deftly Melman banished religiosity from the Bible. How skilfully he proved that the Tanach, the narrative of the Jewish people, is essentially a piece of secular literature, forced by Orthodoxy into the straitjacket of religion. How carefully he explained that, despite our school’s socialistic ideals, it was not Marx’s economics but the visions of our biblical prophets which were at the heart of humanity’s universal dream.

  The Tanach, said Melman, was a compilation of folktales, parables, myths and history. Often harmoniously contradictory, it contained the whole world of antiquity, and its position at the centre of all great literature and ethics was indisputable. On one occasion, to reinforce his argument he began to read a short tale by a poet unknown to us.

  ‘I am hostage to a dream,’ it began, ‘a dream of a galaxy of words orbiting a book on fire which the flames cannot consume. The orbit is divided into three separate spheres: the first ring, closest to the flames, beams with effulgence. The second, further away, twinkles with little sparks of light. The third, remote, lies in darkness. I notice how, at the ring of effulgence, men are walking in and out. One of them, a laughing tear in his eye, is a certain Sholem Aleichem, fiddler of Anatevka. He is speaking with a younger, aristocratic figure, who wears a black cape, walks with a cane, and is called Peretz, progenitor of Bontsha the Silent. “You know,” says the old man, pointing his finger at the burning book, “if not for its flames, men would spend their whole lives in darkness.” The other looks at him uncertainly. “But reading the flames the wrong way,” adds the fiddler, “causes blindness.”’

  Zev the Storyteller

  We met on the eve of the great vortex — I, the teenage scribbler, and he, the published storyteller in his mid-thirties. I had plucked up my courage and given him a story of mine to read; a few weeks later, to my astonishment, he asked me to his home for a cup of coffee — an accolade seldom bestowed by a famed writer on a boy like me, for it was a time when a penman was equal to a prince, especially in a land where nearly a quarter of the populace could not read or write.

  Zev was a tall, imposing man, neatly dressed, with an Adam’s apple that protruded restlessly from his thin throat. He wore a pince-nez on his sharp nose, and had the air of one forever surprised by everything that took place in the world.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he began in a sing-song voice, after taking a sonorous sip of his hot coffee. ‘Language does not give birth to a story; a story must give birth to language.’

  Deaf to what was probably a tactful opening for the criticism of my effort that would follow, I barged in excitedly. ‘Is it not a little like mathematics?’ I offered. ‘Most people are familiar with the numbers of our, so to speak, mathematical alphabet, yet very few of them are mathematicians.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ he nodded, ‘though you’re not far off the mark. In my opinion, a good storyteller must be at home with his people’s folklore, their legends, lullabies, their superstitions. And more than anything, he has to know from whence he came, and to where he is going. Without these fundamentals, he might compose very nice, even clever tales, but they will be as enduring as an epitaph written with one finger on the surface of a lake. Let me tell you a little story from chassidic literature.

  ‘A youth came to see the sage known as the Baal Shem Tov — a mystic who could discern a ray of sun in the darkness of night, who could detect the Messiah’s footfall at the beginning of time, who proclaimed that the mind which dwells in one’s heart creates a better man than that which reigns over one’s head. “Master,” pleaded the boy, “I have a great need to pray to God, yet I cannot read the prayer-book. My parents were poor, and there was no money for schooling.”

  ‘The Baal Sh
em Tov smiled warmly at the boy. “You cannot read, but perhaps you know the letters of the alphabet?”

  ‘“Yes, that much I do know, sir.”

  ‘“Good. Then listen, my young friend. Open up your soul while zealously reciting those letters of the alphabet, from beginning to end, and I promise you that the Almighty Himself will compose for you a psalm which cannot be found in any prayer-book.”’

  At this point, Zev stopped and drew another loud sip of his now cold coffee, before continuing. ‘A good writer,’ he said, ‘carries his ideas like precious birds in his heart’s cage. His tale is the sky of their freedom.’

  He paused, and stooped down until his eyes were level with mine.

  ‘And remember — the writer may not be the one who announces to himself, I am about to write a story. He is the one to whom, during a sleepless night or in the midst of the busiest day, the story rises up and demands: Write me! ’

  Yiddish Rhapsody

  As a girl you were already a young maiden, ripening into motherhood. To your starving children you unbuttoned your generous bodice and opened your heart, that they might receive nourishment and sustenance from your spirit.

  And yes, you loved them, mother-bride. And your childpoets, their jealous wives by their sides, lay with you.

  Ah, how quickly you matured into a song of love, of peace, of ironic wit. You became the dread of the mighty, and little wonder. They knew well your music’s rallying power — you were a stubborn flag standing tall and fluttering against the unjust winds.

  Even when shadows grew long and the world became a den of thieves, forcing your children out into the night, you remained in their midst — you were a beacon of light for as long as the dark prevailed.

  When the sun rose anew and the remnants slowly returned to their homes, you still walked among them singing psalms of grace. In time they settled their meagre belongings and found comfort — and they shut their doors in your face.

  I knew of a poet who dreamt he had walked behind your hearse. Later, as the coffin, still open, was lowered into the pit, he was heard to mutter:

  ‘We will pay a terrible price for this...’

  Readers

  I belonged to a family of readers. We were all members of the well-known Bronisław Grosser Library, on 68 Zachodnia Street. I would go there two or three times a week, even if I didn’t need to borrow or return a book; I just loved the ambience, the company of books, the soothing voices of the librarians, the readers moving about reverently on tiptoe. I always found a corner, and would sit there with my face hidden behind an old newspaper, pretending to read but actually engrossed in thoughts about fantastical realities and the lucidity of the great masters who gazed down upon me questioningly from the brown shelves brimming with books.

  On one occasion I had the good fortune, due to the scarcity of space around the little tables, to sit and overhear a hushed conversation between two well-read men, perhaps scholars, one as thin as a reed with a voice as soft as a mouse’s whisper, the other on the corpulent side and rather huskily spoken.

  ‘Sense and simplicity are the most essential thing about writing,’ the thin one remarked. ‘As Chekhov said, one should write so that no reader needs any explanation from the author.’

  ‘Yes, but we cannot reject intricacy and ambiguity out of hand,’ his husky companion replied. This was more to my liking.

  ‘Of course we can’t. The way I see it, however, a book written with simple clarity exemplifies a greater virtue, and therefore makes a more valuable contribution to the restoration of the human spirit—’

  ‘Speaking of restoration,’ the other man interrupted, ‘I just purchased, from an antiquarian dealer, a book of short stories published in the late eighteenth century. Its title-page is torn out, so I don’t know who the author was. One of the stories concerns a Christian mission somewhere in the north of South America. Several of its members encounter, in the Amazon jungle, a hungry, injured savage who has never heard of God. They take him in, feed him, and, after restoring his health, teach him civility and the Bible and instruct him in the ways of their God. But one night, as the moonlight spears the savage’s face, he awakens and without a word sets about slaying all the people within reach, screaming: “A curse on you for giving me this god!”’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ the thin scholar exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that just a version of the Caliban myth?’

  ‘I doubt it. Shakespeare’s message is all about language, not God. Anyway, my friend, we need to allow for a certain ambiguity on the part of the master, wouldn’t you say?...’

  Back home at dinnertime I sat in a daze, my head spinning, for I had understood only half of what the scholars had been debating. But when mother placed an extra slice of meat on each of our plates, I came to, and quickly realized that something festive was afoot. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘We are honouring our new acquisition,’ father announced, and he produced the object in question — a hefty book with solid green covers and lettering embossed in gold. It was the Yiddish translation of Ignazio Silone’s Fascism.

  After reading out the introduction, father slid the volume into place on the improvised shelf of our modest library and, turning to me, said something I shall remember to the end of my days: ‘A slave to books,’ he said, ‘is a free man.’

  Comrade Tsap

  Director of the well-known Scheibler & Groman textile factory and a prominent Communist in our town, Heinrich Tsap was a generous and likeable man. Tall, broad-shouldered, cleanshaven always, and dressed in a grey suit, white shirt and darkgrey tie, there was something summery about him, a lightness even in winter. His wife Friedl, a slender brunette, wore a white silk blouse, with a string of pearls around her swanlike neck. Their intelligent sixteen-year-old daughter Gretchen, with whom I often played, was like a thin green twig a head taller than I, and to my great disappointment had no breasts.

  Tsap wrote a column for one of the leading papers, in which he depicted Hitler as a silly huckster of evil. He was twenty years younger than my parents yet did everything possible to keep the friendship alive, not just out of fondness for my father, with whom he liked to sharpen his wits, but because he was in love with his own secretary Sarah, daughter of a neighbour of ours known as White Haskel. Sarah was a young woman who, in my opinion, would have been any man’s nuptial Eden. This girl adored my mother and entrusted her with many intimate secrets. Once, I ‘accidentally’ overheard Sarah confide that Tsap had asked her to elope with him to the east, his Land of Hope.

  Those were stormy times, and, as it turned out, a preamble to the great catastrophe. Father was quite weary of his restless young friend, who was guilty of ideological promiscuity. Tsap had been an ardent Socialist, an Anarchist, a Syndicalist, and was now a Communist. Perhaps this turbulent searcher was privately jealous of father’s unshakeable evolutionist beliefs.

  In his discussions with my sedate dad, the exuberant Heinrich engaged the whole corpus of highbrow proletarian sloganeering. Father, in his turn, maintained that one should tirelessly seek the simple word, so that one’s message could come across dressed in sobriety and common sense. His composure incensed the young debater.

  ‘Oh, you and your common sense!’ Tsap fired back on one occasion. ‘What has your buddy Léon Blum achieved with his non-interventionist common sense?’ (This was soon after the defeat of the Spanish Republic.) ‘The problem with evolutionary socialism,’ he went on, ‘is that it is perpetually seeking an alliance with the ruling powers, thereby delivering the starving masses directly into the hands of their tormentors!’

  ‘Your argument,’ responded my ever-secure father, ‘is a mythical red balloon, without a shred of historical evidence.’

  At this moment the voluptuous redhead Sarah walked in. Naked, I reflected, she could easily have replaced Renoir’s blonde bather! Not surprisingly, her entrance immediately changed Heinrich’s mood. Impaling her with his gaze, he continued as if speaking only to her. ‘The Jewish intellectual bourg
eoisie,’ he said, quite softly now, ‘laughed when the huckster equated them with vermin.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect?’ father replied. ‘The nincompoop calls Sigmund Freud a louse.’

  ‘Oh no, my friend, that’s not a matter to be treated lightly.’ This time Tsap addressed father directly, his voice betraying emotion. ‘One should never forget Raskolnikov, who, in order to justify murder, managed in his mind to turn a fellow human into an insect.’

  In August 1939, as the Land of Hope went into partnership with the huckster, Heinrich Tsap paid us his last visit. I remember how fervently he tried to explain to my father the wisdom of Bolshevik dialectic.

  Ten days later, the huckster’s agents awoke Tsap at midnight, invited his Friedl and Gretchen to take a spin in their black limousine, and directed Heinrich to join them for a little chat in Radogosz, on the outskirts of our city — where, in the silence of a new dawn, the partners of the land of his dreams relieved Comrade Tsap’s body of his gentle, tormented head.

  The Social Worker

  On the subject of the abovementioned White Haskel, father once told us something of this man’s history, and of the circumstances surrounding his first dealings with him.

  When, about eight years before I was born, my parents moved into the four-storey apartment block where they would live for thirty-odd years, White Haskel — so called because he had the look of a man soaked in detergent — had already established himself not only as a ‘social worker’, but as a respected beadle of the local synagogue.

  Haskel always wore lacquered shoes with rubber soles, black trousers with white pinstripes, and a grey coat of English tweed trimmed with velvet; to look the part, he carried a satchel of soft black leather under his arm. He was married to a small, constantly smiling woman — so constantly that her smile might have been affixed as to a billboard. She bore him four decent sons and three beautiful daughters. Needless to say, he was very much admired in our community.