Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (44 page)

True, he was a vulgar man and a teacher who didn’t spare the lash, but he did possess one great virtue. For this we forgave him his hatred of the Hasidim, and even his accursed, curved strap. For there was no one who could teach Torah better than Reb Dovid. He had his own special chant, neither that of a
Misnaged
nor of a whip-cracking teacher. He dissected each word as though he were shelling a nut, and placed the kernels in our mouths so that we could taste their true flavor.

In Reb Dovid’s telling, the righteous Joseph became a tall, swarthy youth, so handsome that no one could look him in the face. He wasn’t just the son of Father Jacob, but a prince, a duke, who fed all of Egypt while remaining the most modest of men. And Moses didn’t have a white beard, like in the portrait that hung on Aunt Miriam’s wall. He was a young man with a full head of curls, like a sheep, and he was tall and strong, like a cedar. The proof? Pharaoh’s own daughter, the Egyptian princess, desired him for a husband.

Reb Dovid’s rendition of the chapter dealing with the Exodus from Egypt was a delight to hear. As he warmed to the account, he became a different person, no longer the man with the vulgar face, in a rayon smock. As he read on, he abandoned his usually niggardly, cracked voice, which now rang out hopefully, emerging not from his mouth but from his entire body. He recited and sang out the verses, not to us but to the wider world beyond.

Now, we ourselves were going forth from Egypt with Moses. We heard the pounding of the footsteps and the clatter of Pharaoh’s chariots. The sea split before our very eyes. We looked on as the Egyptians and their chariots and their horses drowned in the waters. We heard Moses singing in exultation with the Children of Israel, and Miriam the prophetess beating on her drum.

Had we studied only the Exodus chapter all year round, it would never have grown stale, especially since Reb Dovid, when he taught this portion, forgot about his curved, leather strap and the cholera curses he heaped on our heads. But Reb Dovid taught only Pentateuch with the Rashi commentary. There were other things we had to know, and for that there was another teacher, no vulgarian in a rayon smock, but—Reb Yankele.

On wintry evenings, in the bright light of the two lamps, that particular teacher taught us Prophets and Hebrew grammar. He couldn’t have taught these subjects in the light of day, for his voice, indeed his whole demeanor, was dark and shadowy, like the winter evenings.

A tall man with stooped shoulders and a pale face bordered by a small, pointy black beard, Reb Yankele came to our
shkole
from a distance, from the Skarszew barrier gate. He didn’t wear desiccated slipons like Reb Dovid, but a pair of polished boots with an aristocratic squeak, fit for the Sabbath and left over from his days as a timber merchant. His black ebony cane, with its ivory handle, was also a memento from that time. His slow, measured steps, his white, separate collar with the black tie—all these dated back as well to the days when his timber-laden rafts floated down the Vistula to Danzig.

Those days were long gone. In that far-off time, Reb Yankele spoke in a loud voice and rapped his ivory-handled cane on the floor whenever a poor man came to him for a contribution. His face wasn’t pale then, nor his eyes sunken and watery, as they were today.

Of those one-time forests and rafts, nothing remained except his noble name, Reb Yankele, and the even nobler prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel. People said that Reb Yankele became a teacher in his old age not to earn a living, nor on account of the sorrows and disappointments he had suffered at the hands of his children, but because of his great love for Scripture.

As soon as he began to teach us the first verse of Isaiah, one could tell that this former rich and powerful man had cast off the world completely. It wasn’t the prophet Isaiah who was castigating the sinful people of Israel, but our own teacher, Reb Yankele. As he read, his voice darkened, like his very being itself.

“I reared children and brought them up,” he intoned, throwing back his head. “And they have rebelled against me,” he continued, groaning quietly, as though complaining to someone about his bitter fate.

When we studied Lamentations, his body shrank and became bent, like the prophet Jeremiah’s. He didn’t scream out the Destruction of the Temple, but murmured the sorrowful phrases to himself, like the cooing of pigeons early morning behind closed windows.

Reb Yankele lived in a separate, little side room in the home of his youngest daughter, Dvoyre, who married after her father had become impoverished and she had been obliged to take a husband with no distinguished lineage. Every day Dvoyre would polish her father’s squeaking boots and wipe the dust off his black ebony cane, and, even though she already had two sons studying for their final exams at the gymnasium, she would still address her father in the most filial of tones.

“Father dear,” she would say, “maybe you’d like something to take with you. A cookie? An apple?”

My sister Beyle, who was a neighbor of Reb Yankele’s, told us that he would sit up whole nights writing by the light of a candle. People said that he was composing a commentary. All the neighbors knew about it, and everyone told a different story, though he himself said nothing.

Reb Yankele walked about the
shkole
quietly, leaning on his ebony cane, his sagging shoulders thrust forward, listening to us read the scriptural verses, absorbed in his own thoughts. Although it seemed as if he wasn’t aware of what was going on around him, he nevertheless knew very well who was paying attention and who was playing with buttons.

If it were the latter, he would then approach the culprit quietly, not with a leather strap like Reb Dovid, nor a “Cholera!” spewing from a twisted mouth, but merely lean one hand on his cane and the other on the culprit’s desk.

“Whose boy are you?” he would ask.

“Itshe the tailor’s.”

“What’s your mother’s name?

“Freydl.”

“Tell your mother, and let your father hear this as well, that all the trouble they went to, to send you here, was for naught. Your father, no doubt, toils to earn his piece of bread. Your mother, I am certain, saves what she can, groshen by groshen, to pay your tuition. Then you come along, bringing ruin and destruction on their hard labors. Do you think that the prophets were merely talking into the air? They were poor people, just like your father. Their words didn’t earn them a living. All they wanted was for people to listen to them. And then you go and play with buttons? Tell me, can’t you see for yourself that you are sinning by not paying attention?”

Reb Yankele was absolutely right. How could anyone play with buttons while he was teaching us Scripture? And wasn’t it far better to attend to his special chant than to win a few more silly buttons from a fellow pupil? But Itshe the tailor’s son, and boys like him, remained fools until the day they died. They simply failed to grasp that it was also possible to learn something, unaccompanied by blows and curses. For them, Reb Dovid was good enough, as was another teacher, Mattias.

It may very well have been because of such boys that the school hired Mattias as a teacher. It was hard to understand how both Reb Yankele and a person like Mattias could be found teaching under the same roof.

Neither a Jew nor a Gentile, but a Muscovite, Mattias was an uncouth Russian, pure and simple. He taught Russian, penmanship, and arithmetic, all in a hoarse, drunken voice, with drunken hands, and a drunken head.

Mattias smoked constantly while he taught, cigarette after cigarette, coughing and spitting into corners. He had the habit of sticking out his jaw, making his wrinkled, sleepy face look like an unmade bed. He didn’t hold his cigarettes between his lips but between his yellow, stained teeth, which were big and pointy, like a wolf’s. He did indeed prowl around the classroom like a wolf, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce on his prey. It was hard to conceive how a shriveled-up body like his could contain such murderous rage.

Rumor had it that Teacher Mattias hadn’t been sleeping with his wife for many, many years. In fact, he didn’t sleep at all. He played cards all night. His wife wasn’t from around here.
She wore a long yellow fur coat dating back to the days of Poniatowski, and went about with her hair uncovered. Everyone in town knew that she bought her meat in the Gentile butcher shops and never salted it to make it kosher, that on Christmas Eve she set up a crèche inside her house and crossed herself. Teacher Mattias, so people said, when he returned home at dawn, after a night of gambling at cards, beat up his wife, spat on her long yellow fur coat, and smashed everything in sight.

All this was common knowledge in town. Everybody held a grudge against him and stayed clear of Teacher Mattias’s house.

Nevertheless, all the mothers wanted their children to attend the New School in particular, where Teacher Mattias was one of the instructors. Mother’s reasoning was, first, that when you were graduated from the New School, you know how to read a holy book. Second, she especially wanted me to learn grammar and penmanship. She herself had once studied penmanship, which was why she was now able to write letters for girls engaged to young men serving in the Russian army, and for women whose children were in America.

Mother said that a whipping would do me no harm. King Solomon himself had advised giving a child an occasional smack. Sometimes, she added, if you are hit on the backside, it travels up to your head.

Well, first of all, I was no longer a child who needed to be smacked. Secondly, Teacher Mattias didn’t hit you on your backside, but precisely on your head. And thirdly, no amount of beating would have done me any good, since my own handwriting would never be as accomplished as Mother’s.

Mother had learned her craft with another teacher, who must have been a very calm person, one whose hands didn’t shake like a drunkard’s. Otherwise, how could he have taught penmanship, where each letter requires the utmost concentration, where one line is thick, another thin, sometimes round and sometimes pointed?

How could I have done all that when fear of Teacher Mattias’s footsteps hung over my head like a sword, making me tremble, body and soul? He would throw one cigarette away and light another. We all sat there, our heads bowed to one side, and, with beating hearts, traced the letters along the blue lines of the page.

Teacher Mattias’s shoes shuffled fearfully across the floor of the quietly breathing classroom. Even his shoes seemed drunk. I broke out in a cold sweat, though there was nothing he could fault me for. I looped and curved all the letters, as I should, and they couldn’t have been more beautiful unless Mother herself had traced them.

In the midst of all this, I began to detect the acrid smell of a cigarette. There was a rasping sound above me, issuing from a stopped-up throat. Before I could even manage to look up, I felt a ringing in my head and the unexpected smack of a fist on my chin.

“Hooligan!” Teacher Mattias screamed at me, and broke into a coughing fit. “What’s wrong with you? Is that how you write a
shtcha
? Go to the blackboard and write the letter again, you dog!”

He pulled me up by an ear. My whole face was in pain, my temples were throbbing, and I saw sparks before my eyes. The heads of all my classmates shrank into their shoulders, becoming round circles of black, as uniform as rows of cabbages sliced in half.

The blackboard, standing on an easel supported by three wooden legs, was no longer a blackboard but an ablution board for the cleansing of dead bodies before burial.

All of us pupils feared the blackboard more than we did Teacher Mattias. It was like a brother to him, and stood on its wobbly legs, looking drunk, too. There was nowhere to hide. Teacher Mattias stood there, taut, legs apart, like a wolf about to pounce on a lamb. It was useless. Even if I were to trace the
shtcha
to perfection, I still couldn’t avoid the smack on the jaw that would make my teeth rattle.

Not long ago, a classmate, little Yosele, had had one of his teeth knocked loose, and he pushed it out with his tongue, all bloodied. In my case, after I had filled half the blackboard with
shtchas
, adorned with all manner of curly pigs’ tails, I still felt a sharp pain in my ear, as well as a trickle of warm blood running down my neck. Teacher Mattias’s lips were white. The trickle of blood didn’t bother him in the least. To add to my injury, he kicked me in the backside, accompanied by another scratch across my ear, and snarled, “Idiot! Get out of here!”

That’s how it went, day after day. Sometimes I was the victim, other times someone else. Only Moyshele, the tavern owner’s son, didn’t get a taste of Teacher Mattias’s drunken hands.

Moyshele, even though he had a girlish face and was always smacking his lips, was Teacher Mattias’s favorite pupil. He was a glutton, that Moyshele, with a big belly brought on by his overeating, and white, pudgy hands. This, however, didn’t keep him from excelling in penmanship, from knowing how much nine times nine was, and from getting all the Russian spellings correct. Everybody in the
shkole
hated Moyshele. First, because he knew everything, second, because he wouldn’t let anybody copy from him, and third, because he was an informer.

Moyshele had but one friend in the
shkole
, a poor, thin boy called Yukele. This Yukele had no father. His mother, a young, redheaded woman, went from house to house, begging alms for her fatherless child. Yukele paid no tuition. The school took him in out of pity.

This was the Yukele whom Moyshele, son of the tavern owner, befriended. Moyshele treated him as a personal servant. He liked to pinch Yukele’s cheeks and tickle him. From all that pinching, Yukele’s greenish face swelled up in white puffs. In return, however, he received rewards from Moyshele, a cold gizzard, a turkey liver, a hard-boiled egg. Occasionally, Moyshele took him along to his father’s tavern and let him taste the froth of the beer that young wagon-drivers had left in their glasses.

Because of Moyshele, we also hated Yukele, even if he was so skinny and had no father. No one talked with them. They were always together, and if anyone ever felt like picking an argument with them, they never took up the challenge, always running away. But the next day, in Teacher Mattias’s class, Moyshele stood up and squealed on us.