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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

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BOOK: More Stories from My Father's Court
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When our kitchen door opened and a man dressed in a long gaberdine entered, it by no means meant that the visit would elicit any income. Such a man might have come to ask a question about ritual, or for some advice, or just to chat with Father. Quite often, respectable men would come requesting a contribution for a bride's dowry, a Visit the Sick fund, or to sell Father an advance subscription for some scholar's religious commentary. There were many reasons why a Jew would come to see the rabbi.
But the situation was entirely different when a young man dressed in modern clothes visited. Someone in Western dress did not come to ask for favors or contributions. A young man like that came in to either break an engagement, get a divorce, or for a like matter which brought in a few rubles.
The modern young man who came in one time looked particularly engaging. He wore a derby, a stiff collar, a striped tie, and held a walking stick in one hand. He wore spats over his low-laced boots. A little mustache grew above his upper lip. His jacket was unbuttoned and from his vest dangled a watch chain.
He brought into the house an aroma of chocolate and perfumed soap. He came in smiling and gave a little bow.
“Is the rabbi at home?”
“Yes, please go into the next room.”
Father stood next to a prayer stand over a sacred text, writing a commentary on a sheet of paper. He was composing a treatise in defense of Rashi, covering the entire Talmud, where he refutes Rabbenu Tam's assertions that there are contradictions in Rashi's commentary.
“Good morning.”
“And a good year! What can I do for you?”
“Can we arrange a wedding here?”
“Of course.”
Father asked the young man to be seated. In such cases Father immediately asked if the bride and groom had parents. But it turned out that both were orphans on both sides.
Father sighed. “Well, everything is fated.”
From poor people Father asked three rubles to perform a wedding, but this time he requested five. The young man immediately took out a crisp five-ruble bill and paid in advance. Then he took out a silver cigarette case and offered Father an aromatic cigarette. He did everything quickly and gently.
Father bore a grudge against the modern secular types, the dandies, the heretics, but I saw that he was favorably disposed toward this young man, who didn't talk much and who wasn't a pest. Having said what he had to say, he stood up and stretched out his hand to shake my father's. Among pious Jews it was not customary to shake hands prior to departing, but my father was aware of secular customs. At the doorway the young man once
again bowed his head to my mother. Then he did something totally unexpected: he gave me a six-kopeck copper coin. I blushed and did not know whether to take it or not. He patted my shoulder and whispered, “Buy yourself some jellybeans.”
The young man left behind an aura of affection. The wedding was to take place in a couple of days, and Mother was already curious to see what the bride of such a fine young man looked like. My parents discussed this at home.
Imagine, then, our astonishment when the young man came with his bride and several other young folk, his good friends, and we saw that she had only one leg. Everyone was astounded, except, of course, my father, who never looked at women.
The bride was not only lame, she wasn't much to look at either. She was wide-set, stooped over, not young, and stood on her one foot holding a crutch. The young man introduced his bride to my mother, who, confused and embarrassed, wished her mazel tov. Then everyone went into the other room. One young man had brought a bottle of brandy and a cake in a paper bag. These types of weddings were over quickly. Father had already prepared a printed marriage contract and had only to enter the names of the bride and groom. I ran down to the Hasidic
shtibl
and called in a couple of men to complete the minyan.
The wedding canopy with the four poles was always placed next to our oven. The white robe that the groom wore, the
kittel
, lay in a drawer. Father did everything demanded by Jewish law and tradition. According to custom, the bride has to circle the groom seven times, following the Biblical verse in Jeremiah: “A woman shall go around a man.” For the limping bride this was not an easy task. The banging of her crutch on the floor echoed
dully throughout the apartment. Even a blind man would have been able to see that the bride was lame, but my pious father neither saw nor heard. He recited the blessings; the groom declared the bride to be his wife; then Father recited the concluding blessings and congratulated the couple.
After the ceremony the gathered guests celebrated at the table with sponge cake and brandy.
After everyone had gone, Mother entered the study. “Well, what do you say?”
“What should I say?”
“Why would such a young man marry a cripple, poor thing?”
Father shrugged. “A cripple?”
Then Mother said to Father what she usually did under such circumstances: “Oh, are you naïve!”
Then she described the bride. Father did not consider it so bizarre. “So what's the big deal, marrying a cripple? Doesn't the hymn ‘A Woman of Valor' state: ‘False is charm and beauty is vanity'? What difference does it make if the bride has two feet or one? The body is only a body.”
But Mother rebuked him: “If you didn't see her then at least you should have heard her banging with her crutch.”
But with a wave of his hand Father made naught of the entire situation. First of all, he hadn't heard any banging. Second, how could he tell what was banging? “Oh, what nonsense!” Father said, returning to his study of the Talmud and other holy texts. Rabbenu Tam, the great scholar and grandson of Rashi, had posed a very difficult question—one as strong as a stone wall—about a Rashi commentary, and Father had to show that the holy Rashi was correct.
Mother returned to the kitchen. She walked about agitated. Mother liked to grasp things logically. Puzzles annoyed her. What did such a good-looking young man see in such an ugly woman? How could such a match have been made? A woman neighbor came in and claimed it all stemmed from love. People who fall in love are blinded, dazzled; they lose their head. Then she began to tell all kinds of stories about love affairs—how girls were passionately in love with men who were blind, mute, hunchbacked, and who-knows-what. The truth of the matter was that my mother knew of more examples than did the neighbor, but all these incidents still could not answer her question.
“Perhaps she has lots of money,” the neighbor declared.
“How much money could she have? To spend your entire life with such a cripple! … Something is wrong here.”
I too was astounded. I listened to all the neighbor's clever explanations, but I paid scant attention to them. After a while she left and Mother said to me, “How come you're spending all your days in the kitchen? Better pick up a holy book and study.”
And she chased me into Father's study. I opened up the bookcase and began rummaging among the books. I looked for one with blank inside covers, and with a pencil began drawing all kinds of little men, animals, flowers, and grotesques. I was still a small boy then, so I was permitted to look at women. I had already had my fill of seeing all kinds of mystifying things in this room, and my head was full of ideas and fantasies. It struck me that perhaps the bride and groom were not people but demons. And perhaps the bride had once been a princess who was now disguised as a lame woman. Perhaps the young man was a wizard from Madagascar who had cast a spell on her. In
the storybooks I had read I had come across many such tales. Even then I felt that the world was full of great mysteries.
I don't know how much time passed, perhaps four or five days, perhaps a week, when suddenly I heard a heavy banging on the staircase. I pricked up my ears. Mother listened attentively, too. Someone was knocking on the door. I opened and saw the lame bride. God Almighty! She had become years older. She was bent over, seemingly broken, and her face was red and swollen. I backed away and she limped in, thumping dully with her crutch.
“What happened?” Mother asked.
“Rebbetzin, he's killed me! Slaughtered me without a knife! … Woe unto me and woe unto my life! That thief, that murderer, that killer, that wretch!”
“Sit down here. What happened?”
“He cheated me out of everything, that ganef, that crook, that louse! … Rebbetzin, it would've been better if he had killed me. What should I do now? Where can I go and who can I turn to? Dear rebbetzin, that was no man but an Angel of Death!”
The door was open and neighbors came streaming in. The lame woman was sobbing bitterly, pinching her swollen face, wringing her hands. Her words tore at your heart. She was an orphan, she said, had no mother or father. All her life she had been working as a maid in other people's homes. He had sidled up to her with smooth talk and sweet words. He loved her, he said. He would carry her in his hands. She would be the crown of his head forever. How could she have known that he was just sweet-talking and bluffing? She believed him, woe unto her senses. She gave him everything she had, down to her last penny.
For a couple of days after the wedding he was as good as an angel to her. She was happy, in seventh heaven. Then suddenly he fled, that murderer, that hangman, that skunk, that apostate! He stole everything from her. Even her wedding band. Even the presents that he himself had given her, even her wedding clothes. He left her absolutely naked … Oh, Mother! He'd gone to America, crossed the sea, gone off to the far edges of the world! And now she was a deserted wife, a bleak and hapless
agunah
! Wouldn't it be better if she were a corpse lying with her feet toward the door and shards on her eyes?
The woman yelled, wailed, cursed, and the neighbors cursed along with her. They heaped upon that charlatan all the maledictions, plagues, ulcers, blisters, and afflictions that Warsaw Yiddish possessed. Mother stood there white as a sheet with an expression of utter sorrow in her blue eyes. One puzzle had been solved, but an entire pack of new ones had overtaken her: How could this young woman have believed him? And above all, how could a young man who seemed to be so fine and sensitive have such a murderous heart? Didn't he know that she was an orphan? Didn't he see she was, alas, a broken cripple? How lowdown and mean could a person be? What thoughts ran through that wicked man's head as he sailed across the ocean at night? How could he sleep after having committed such a grievous wrong? How can one sully one's soul in such a manner? Ah, woe, how great is the evil impulse!
Later, Mother came into the courtroom and told Father the entire story. He turned pale and for a long while could not say a word. Finally, he remarked, “Well, what can one expect? That's what happens when one does not believe in the Creator!”
He turned and looked at the Holy Ark, which was always covered with a curtain. There were two open-mouthed little lions with small tongues at the ledges and between them the two tablets of the law with the Ten Commandments. All day long these tablets proclaimed: I am the Lord your God … Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not covet …
Whosoever does not hearken to this voice lives in a lawless world, a world of absolute chaos.
 
 
The door opened and a bareheaded woman came in. It was rare for a woman to enter our apartment with her head uncovered; even those women who went about bareheaded would don a kerchief before coming in. But this woman was apparently too upset, too agitated to think about anything else besides her shame and utter disgrace. She was of average height, rather chubby, with a florid face and blondish hair combed back in a bun and held together with hairpins. This woman had surely once been a beauty, but now she looked disheveled, bitter, and angry. She had already begun yelling in the kitchen.
“He's a murderer! A bandit! I can't take it any longer! I want a divorce! A divorce!”
Evidently, Mother knew her. She lived across the street from us at 15 Krochmalna Street. Amid shouts and curses, she described what her husband, that outcast, that scoundrel, was doing. He wasn't supporting the family, he paid no attention to the children, he spent days on end in the tavern at 17 Krochmalna drinking with hooligans and loose women. But the trick he had
pulled the other day went beyond all bounds. This she wouldn't keep quiet. This she wouldn't forget even when she lay with her feet toward the door and shards on her eyes.
“What did he do?”
“Rebbetzin, he gambled away our stove!”
“The stove? How can one gamble away one's stove?”
This man apparently didn't have a built-in tile stove in his apartment like we did; he had a removable iron stove. And it was this stove that he had lost at cards. Men had come into the apartment and removed it.
The woman was shrieking away in an unearthly voice. Mother usually attempted to make peace among couples, but this incident touched her to the quick. Embarrassed at how low a man could sink, she stood there silent. The woman began enumerating an entire list of flaws, one worse than the other. Mother was so preoccupied with the woman she didn't even notice me there. Under different circumstances she would surely have chased me away. I had already known that people commit all kinds of wrongs, but I had never heard of such abominations. Who could have imagined that such evildoers were living so close to us?
Father sent me to summon her husband, and I went with great curiosity. I climbed up to a high story and found a half-opened door. Several children were playing, yelling, screeching. On a broken sofa lay a man, fat, unshaven, with a thick yellow mustache, wearing a shirt with a studded collar and boots with matching high bootlegs, the sort that were worn by hooligans and common riffraff. He was bareheaded and his sandy-colored hair was closely cropped. He looked sleepy, drunk, and angry.
“What do you want?”
“Your wife is summoning you to the rabbi.”
“To the rabbi, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Does she want a divorce?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. I won't keep her!”
The man stood up. He told the older girl to keep an eye on the little children. A couple of minutes later he was in Father's courtroom. His wife greeted him with curses, shouts, and balled fists.
But he let out a roar and drowned her out: “Be quiet! If you want a divorce, there'll be a divorce! Just stop shrieking!”
Father called Mother aside for a private chat. Mother maintained that the quarreling couple should not be divorced because they had children. Father agreed. When he returned to the room where the couple was waiting, he told them what he usually did in such cases: A divorce is no small matter; such things should not be done rashly. One should give it serious thought; one must consider the children.
The woman started fuming. “In that case, I'm going to go to another rabbi.”
“No other rabbi will give you a divorce on the spur of the moment.”
Father smiled slightly as he said this. He had lied in order to keep the peace. There were indeed rabbis in Warsaw who didn't stand on ceremony and performed quick divorces for whoever wished one. One rabbi in our street, whom I will not name, especially excelled in these instant divorces. Who knows, perhaps he was driven by need. That rabbi actually had a divorce factory—
on occasion there were several scribes sitting in his apartment simultaneously writing bills of divorce. Warsaw rabbis had often spoken of proclaiming his divorces invalid.
For a long while husband and wife sat in our apartment insulting and cursing each other. The racket could be heard in the street. The woman recounted all her husband's nasty deeds and all the trouble and humiliation she had suffered at his hand from the day her horrible luck had driven her to marry him. At one point she cried, at another she yelled at the top of her voice; now she spoke softly, as though pleading, and then once again she became wild. Her hands were always groping for something. Had she found an object in our apartment with which to hit her husband or throw at his head, she certainly would have done something wild in her murderous rage. But there was nothing for her to grab except books. The man hardly said a word. When he did open his mouth, he spoke like a boor who was both afraid of and prepared for battle.
After lengthy arguments and complaints the couple departed. Warsaw was a huge metropolis and even Krochmalna Street was a big city. Several days passed, perhaps even a few weeks, and we heard no news about the couple. A quarreling couple was no big deal! It happened every day, even ten times a day. Indeed, there were couples on Krochmalna Street who would go out to the street when they wanted to fight and wait for a crowd to gather. What sense was there fighting in one's own apartment in front of the four walls?
Suddenly one day the door opened and the man who had gambled away the stove at cards entered. He seemed thinner, rumpled, neglected. His cheeks were hollow, his formerly ruddy
face now pale. His mustache wasn't twirled upward like a spring but drooped miserably like that of a down-and-out janitor. Even his boots had lost their former shine.
“Is the rabbi here?”
“Yes, in the next room.”
For a while the man was silent. Mother was silent, too, but I sensed that both of them wanted to talk. Finally, Mother asked what had happened.
“Oh, Rebbetzin, things are bad.”
“What? Tell me.”
“They divorced us.”
“Where?”
The man mentioned the street.
Mother clapped her hands in dismay. “Shame on them! For a couple of rubles they're ready to destroy people!”
Silence fell once again. Then Mother asked, “What are you? A Kohen? A Levite? An Israelite?”
“Me? Um, I don't know.”
“Did your father ever give the priestly blessing in the synagogue?”
“My father? Give the priestly blessing? No. Why do you ask?”
“Go in to see my husband.”
Mother, a rabbi's daughter, knew very well what she was asking. A Levite or an Israelite is permitted to remarry the woman he has divorced. But a Kohen is forbidden to marry a divorcee, even if it is his own ex-wife.
The man was filled with regrets and he poured his bitter heart out to my father. He had been angry, his wife had been in a foul temper, too, and a rabbi had coveted those couple of
rubles. And so he divorced them, one two three. But their anger passed. The children were crying and longing for their father. His wife was beside herself. He, too, longed for his wife and kids something awful. Yes, he knew that he had behaved badly, but he wanted to become a decent person once more. He had vowed never to touch cards again. He would stop drinking. He loved his wife and he was a devoted father. He was ready to give up his life for his children. And he wanted to remarry his loyal wife.
“You are not a Kohen?” Father asked quickly.
The man said no, but Father sent me to get the man's ex-wife and tell her to bring either the divorce document or her marriage certificate. Father confirmed that the man was not a Kohen. He was happy. Mother's mood improved as well. Now that the harm could be rectified, Father began preaching to the man: Aren't you ashamed of yourself? How can one be so deeply involved in sensuality? Man's soul stems from the Throne of Glory. It is sent down into this world to be improved, not spoiled. One does not live forever. There comes a time when a person must give an accounting …
The man nodded in agreement to everything that Father said. The woman stood there wringing her hands—not in the courtroom, but in the kitchen doorway. In the interim she had also become pale and melancholic. She showed Mother that she had lost so much weight her dress was falling off her shoulders. She could not sleep at night. There was a knot in her throat and she couldn't even cry …
Suddenly she began wailing in a voice so fearsome it was hard to imagine it could be human. I understood then that husband and wife loved each other with an enormous love and were
bound to each other with a force that no divorce could rend asunder.
Yes, that rabbi, the manager of that divorce mill, had taken those couple of rubles. But the wedding took place in our apartment. Bride and groom laughed and wept under the wedding canopy. The next Sabbath, husband and wife were strolling arm in arm on Krochmalna Street, accompanied by their little children. A terror comes over me when I think what would have happened, God forbid, had that man been a Kohen …
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