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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

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From time to time a certain rabbi would come to visit my father. He looked nothing like Father: tall, broad, and stout, with a pitch-black beard and black, burning eyes, he was also better dressed. He wore a fur coat with tails during the winter—and a wide silken topcoat in summer. He always had a new hat and was never without a parasol. He also smoked cigars. He brought into our house the prestige of a successful rabbi for whom everything was going well.
But things were not going as well as they appeared. He had once been a rabbi in a rather large city, but for some reason he had been relieved of his rabbinic duties. Now he lived in Warsaw and was for all intents and purposes no more than a small-time rabbi like my father. But the rich man's bearing stayed with him nevertheless. He wore chamois half-boots with rubber soles. He smoked his cigars through an amber cigar holder. His parasol had a silver handle. And his hands were thickly grown with hair, which by itself was a sign of wealth.
How different he was from my father! He came in softly, slowly removed his galoshes (which had brass monograms), put his umbrella in a corner, and the kitchen was soon filled with the smell of his cigar. He cast a sidelong glance at my mother. In the study he sat down warily, as if the chair were not sturdy enough. Father welcomed him warmly, as he did everyone, and asked Mother to bring in tea and biscuits. The rabbi took off his hat, under which sat a high yarmulke.
“How are you doing?” Father asked.
Those were about the only words that Father managed to utter during the entire visit. The rabbi began talking and continued for several hours. He spoke only of himself and his greatness. He neither praised himself openly nor spoke ill of others, but all his remarks had only one meaning: that he, the rabbi, was the greatest scholar of their generation and that all the other rabbis were either total or half ignoramuses who didn't understand what they were studying and merely skimmed the surface of issues. The rabbi spoke only about his books, his new interpretations, his accomplishments. His sharp eyes emitted the contempt and mockery of someone who knows everything better than everyone else but feels that the world begrudges him his success and refuses to acknowledge it out of envy.
I stood behind Father's chair and listened. Sometimes Father tried to say something, but the rabbi wouldn't let him speak. He made a hand motion that seemed to say: What do you know? What could you possibly have to say about such matters? It's enough of an honor for you that I come here and speak to you.
The rabbi did other things that surely must have irked Father. When referring to a certain passage in the Talmud, he would
translate every single word, as though my father were just a little cheder lad. My father had by then written several scholarly commentaries and had already been a rabbi in a city. There was surely no need to translate anything for him. Often, this conceited rabbi translated passages from the Talmud for my father which even I, a little boy, understood. I blushed with embarrassment. I thought that Father would stand up and tell him to go to the devil, but I saw no sign on my father's face that he took offense. He listened to that man's exegesis with curiosity, as though he, my father, were a simple man for whom everything had to be spelled out. It actually seemed that Father took particular delight from the way the other man was translating everything into Yiddish.
Once, after the rabbi cited a Talmudic passage and immediately began to explain it, Father interrupted: “I'm afraid you've made a mistake.”
The rabbi turned red, then paled. “I made a mistake?”
Father quickly began justifying himself. “Well, we ought to look at the text. Sometimes one can make a mistake.” And Father quoted the Biblical verse: “Who can understand errors? … Everyone can make a mistake.”
I thought that the rabbi would go to the bookcase, take out a Talmud folio, and look up the passage—but he did not do this and changed the topic instead. Evidently it wasn't appropriate for him to admit that my father could have caught him erring. He continued to sit there, speaking about himself while smoking his cigar. Every once in a while Mother brought in more tea and lemon.
It was very awkward when women entered the study to ask a question about
kashrus
during his visit. The housewife had
come in to see Father, of course, but it was the other rabbi, the guest, who immediately took up the question. He turned to the woman, asking how big the soup pot was and how much milk had fallen into it. In another instance, when there was some doubt about a chicken, he waited for Father to cut open the navel where the woman had found a nail, or to inspect the guts, which were pockmarked. When Father had completed this “unsavory task,” the rabbi took over and rendered his decision. I saw this as an act of great impudence, and it annoyed me, the little boy, terribly. I hoped that Father would say, I am the rabbi on this street, not you. But once again Father revealed not the slightest sign that he was annoyed. On the contrary, he amicably nodded his head to everything the rabbi said. When the woman left and bade them goodbye, only Father answered. Evidently it was beneath the rabbi's dignity to respond to an ordinary housewife.
Later, I looked up the mistake my father had caught. I showed Father that it was he who was right, not the rabbi. Father said, “Even the greatest people can make mistakes.”
“Father, is he really such a genius?” I asked.
“He's a great scholar.”
“Aren't there greater scholars?”
“Can Torah scholarship be measured? Everyone understands the Torah according to his ability. Sometimes one encounters a problem which a great scholar cannot answer while a simple Jew can. Everyone has a share in the Torah.”
One time the rabbi came and seemed to be terribly angry. He had written a letter of approbation for a scholarly treatise and the author had not given him, the rabbi, the title that he thought he deserved. The author had called him “the
gaon,”
that is, the genius, but had omitted the word “famous.” On another letter of approbation the term “famous” had indeed been included. The rabbi maintained that all this concerned him as much as last year's snow. That little nothing of a scholar couldn't make him famous or not famous, the rabbi told Father. But it was the impudence, he said, that infuriated him. The rabbi made muck and mire of that scholar. He called him a boor, a thickhead, an ass, a donkey, a fool, a moron, an ox, and other similar names. He continued complaining: “He is as fit to be an author as I am to be a woodchopper. He should be an aleph-beys teacher, not a scholar. He's a simpleton, a common lout, a zero. Of people like him it is said: That which is wisdom isn't his writing and that which is his writing isn't wisdom. In short, he has taken everything from others. There isn't a thing in his book that's his own original work. The trouble is that he can't even properly steal from others. For that, one has to have a head on one's shoulders, but he has a clump of cabbage, not a head. And even that head of cabbage is all stem …”
Father was silent. His face was red. I later looked up that letter of approbation which this same rabbi had given to that scholar. He had written: “In his work the author uproots mountains. He is a library full of books. He has descended into the very depths of the Talmud and has come up with a pearl.” This flowery language did not at all jibe with his abusive language. He was enraged that the author had not called him “famous.”
That day the rabbi spoke longer than usual. Even I could see that this rabbi was capable of murder for that shortened honorific he had been given. Everything in him stormed and seethed. He smoked one cigar after another and the apartment
filled with noxious wisps of smoke. He vented his rage at Father. Now not only did he explain each Talmud passage he mentioned but he even began explaining Biblical verses. Father sat there shrunken. It was absolutely impossible to respond, because the rabbi spewed such a thick barrage of words one couldn't even insert a “but.” After the rabbi left, Father at once went to the Hasidic
shtibl.
It seemed to me he wanted to clear his head in the street a bit.
Another time the rabbi came to visit us after Father had published his own book, one with a letter of approbation from that same rabbi. When Father showed him the book, the rabbi glanced quickly at the honorific title that Father had given him, then at once began speaking about his own affairs. He did not congratulate Father, nor did he even attempt to cut open the pages and look into the book, which was customary on such occasions. His eyes brimmed with scorn and contempt. It seemed that the rabbi took the fact of Father's publishing a book as an insult. And another thing: in the period between the rabbi's visits, Father had spent some time in Bilgoray with his father-in-law, my grandfather. The rabbi knew quite well that Father had undertaken a journey, but he didn't even ask about it. For him, Father was merely a pair of ears. It sufficed him that Father should hear what he, the world-famous genius, had to say …
Mother declared that she wouldn't let the rabbi cross our threshold anymore, but Father implored her not to do such a thing, God forbid.
“He has his flaws, but he's a great scholar,” Father said.
Then my mother uttered something I had never heard her say before: “Yes, he's great. He grates on one's nerves.”
In time, the rabbi stopped visiting us. I grew up somewhat. Once, a scholar praised my father's book, telling me that Father “interprets what he sees.” For him, the plain meaning of the text was more important than overly subtle hair-splitting. He compared Father to the early commentators. I then asked the scholar if he knew that rabbi who would come to visit us, and if he indeed was such a genius.
The scholar replied, “Disjointed blather … lots of hot air … In his quibbling analyses he tries to bring East and West together. Can you bring two walls together? Futile attempts … he doesn't even come up to your father's ankles.”
 
 
A few doors from us there was an apartment whose tenants were dissolute. It wasn't a house of prostitution, God forbid, but the people who lived there were decidedly low-class. The man probably dealt in stolen goods; in Warsaw lingo he was called a fence. He may have had another profession which wasn't too kosher either. His wife went about bareheaded. In my parents' view, everything about that apartment was loud and brazen. The walls were colored rose and red. They had a gramophone that squeaked out all kinds of theater songs from early in the morning until late at night. They had a cage with canaries and a parrot. And as if that wasn't enough, they also kept a dog.
The man's wife was chubby, with big breasts, a short neck, and a round face. She didn't speak; she sang. Her Yiddish was a kind of Warsaw slang; she added letters to words and changed prefixes. She also spoke Polish. She had a baby girl whom she took out on walks in a stroller. We considered all these things gentile ways.
In that apartment they were still asleep at 10 a.m., for they went to bed at three in the morning. Aside from breakfast, lunch,
and supper, they also took a second supper at midnight. Their gentile maid would go down late at night to bring them crackly fresh rolls, salami, turkey breast, liver, roast meat, goose, or a platter of cold cuts, all of which they dipped into mustard and washed down with beer. Sometimes they would eat hot sausages. And during this meal the men—the owner of the apartment and his guests—spoke loudly and shouted. The women's laughter could be heard in the entire courtyard.
Every manner of evil was imputed to them. The man shaved his beard. He didn't even attend synagogue on Sabbath. The woman did not go to the ritual bath. They had a balcony next to ours and on it they did all kinds of forbidden things. Men kissed women. They used uncouth expressions. My mother once saw the mistress of the house kissing her dog. “How low can people sink?” Mother asked. “That's what happens when people turn away from the Jewish path.”
Once, they threw a party and invited the police. Father immediately removed his rabbinic hat and put on a velvet one with a high crown, for he did not have a permit to be a rabbi. He was afraid that while they were celebrating, the police might decide to inspect his apartment. The thought that Jews were sitting at one table with peasants, eating and drinking and having a good time, struck him as wild. How could one enjoy one's food when a peasant was sitting opposite you? How could the grandchildren of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be fraternizing with the enemies of Israel?
Father said, “Alas, it's all because of this dark and bitter exile that we're in. It's high time for the Messiah to come. It's time, high time!”
Mother also walked about the house upset. We heard men shouting, women laughing, and after a while the gramophone played a march and we could hear them dancing. Men and women were dancing together, and all of this was happening no more than a door or two away.
One day I saw some policemen going up to that apartment. I thought that our neighbors were having another party, but it was something entirely different. The owner of the apartment had been arrested. I saw him coming down, a tall man with a long face and a long neck, wearing a shirt without a collar. Strangely, a pair of brand-new boots bound by a string was hanging from his shoulders. The new boots fascinated me more than the fact of his arrest. One boot dangled over his chest, the other over his back. Was he going to stay in jail for years? Did he know in advance that he would be imprisoned? And if so, why didn't he run away?
His wife followed him, as did many others. Once outside, the policemen and our neighbor boarded a droshky and off they went—to prison, no doubt.
For a couple of days the apartment was quiet. Not a sound came from the gramophone, the dog, the parrot, or the canaries. A weird silence emanated from the rooms from which the owner had been taken. Father insinuated that perhaps now those people would repent, for if they were already being punished in this world, what had they gained? But he was mistaken.
Soon the gramophone was heard once again playing the same merry little tunes and ditties as before. Once again we heard the dog and the birds. And if that was not enough, a rumor circulated in the courtyard that the woman had taken a
lover. A man began visiting. He wasn't as tall as the apartment owner, but he was broad-shouldered. He had a wide nose, a thick mustache, and the eyes of a libertine. He wore a Polish jacket and a pair of baggy riding breeches. His boots had such narrow uppers it was hard to imagine how a man's foot could slip into them. He always came with presents in hand: all kinds of small packages tied with colored ribbons and held with little wooden handles.
Mother came into Father's study and said, “These things are unheard of even among respectable gentiles … an adulterous woman!”
“I don't want to hear about it! Enough!” Father replied.
“It's like getting slapped in the face when I look at them!”
“So don't look! What's there to look at?”
“Perhaps you should summon her to your courtroom.”
Father sighed. First of all, he knew that anything he said would do no good; second, he didn't want to hear the voice of such a wanton. He said, “She would defile the apartment.”
“One must warn someone before imposing punishment!” Mother answered, quoting the Talmud.
Father placed his handkerchief on the Talmud he was studying. “Who should summon her?”
“Mama, I'll go.”
Father cast an angry glance at me. “I don't want you to have anything to do with such people.”
But there was no one else to go. Furthermore, if a stranger went, the woman would surely pay him no heed. I heard Mother telling Father, “What does he know? He doesn't know a thing …”
“Well then, all right.”
They told me to summon the woman, and I went off at once. I was a bit afraid of the dog, but my curiosity to see this dissolute apartment was greater than my fear. As soon as I knocked on the door, I heard the dog barking. Then I saw the mistress of the house. She wore an unbuttoned, lace-decorated housecoat and a pair of wide bloomers also adorned with lace. I could see her breasts, too. She stood next to me, a hunk of evil impulse, Rehab the prostitute, a Biblical harlot, a half-naked piece of riffraff. All kinds of unkosher smells emanated from her. The entire woman was one chunk of
trayfness.
My nose was subjected to such awful smells I couldn't even speak.
“Papa is summoning you!” I barely managed to say.
“And who's your papa?”
“The rabbi.”
“What does the rabbi need me for?”
And she began to laugh, displaying a set of broad teeth. Here and there a piece of gold glinted. Her lover came into the room; he wore no jacket but had on a gold, polka-dotted little vest. The parrot began screeching. The dog began barking again.
The man asked, “What does the little jerk want?”
“I'm being summoned to the rabbi.”
“Tell his father to go fly a kite,” the man responded, slamming the door in my face.
I left, stung to the core. I told my parents what I had seen. Father said in Aramaic, “Since he has so much impudence, it's obvious that he's a bastard.” In this fashion Father took his revenge upon the wanton by quoting a line from the Gemara.
Nevertheless, half an hour later the neighbor came to our apartment. Father began lecturing her, but the woman denied everything.
“Never mind what people say,” she said. “People have big yaps, so they shoot off their mouths. Let ‘em babble, let 'em blab with their behinds. Let 'em spit up blood and pus. Sure, as if I've got nothing better to think about when my husband is sitting in the clinker than another man! … May their bones rot! A fire in their kishkes!”
“One is forbidden to curse.”
“Rabbi, it's the truth.”
“One is forbidden to curse even if it's the truth.”
“Rabbi, I'm a kosher wife. It's all a lie. There's not one bit of truth in it. He's my husband's good friend, so he comes into the house to hear news. What should I do? Throw him out?”
“God forbid.”
“Then what?”
“It is written that one is forbidden to give people the opportunity to be suspicious.”
“Is it my fault that people have big eyes? May their eyes go blind, dear sweet Father in heaven!”
Father apparently believed her, because he went on: “Why do you keep a dog? It's not a Jewish trait.”
“Rabbi, the street is full of thieves. If not for the dog, I'd be in the poorhouse.”
You're full of baloney! You're talking through your hat, I thought to myself. You can pick a pocket just by looking. But Father became milder and milder. He said, “One doesn't live forever. It is written that when a person dies, God forbid, neither
silver nor gold accompanies him. Not precious stones and pearls but only
mitzvahs
and good deeds.”
“Don't you think I know this? I have a little charity box hanging in my kitchen. I light candles every Friday night. Every day I put in a couple of coins. May my husband come back to me in good health! …”
Before she left Father wished her well.
As soon as she had departed, Mother came in. “Well, what have you accomplished?”
“She denies everything.”
“And do you believe her?”
“People dream up all kinds of stories.”
Mother was annoyed with Father, saying that anyone could fool him. Then she quoted a Biblical verse to him that was hardly complimentary. He sat there with his head bent. By nature he trusted people and didn't like to delve into sins and wickedness. He had but one wish: to return to studying his sacred text.
 
 
A couple of months later the woman's husband was released from jail, but her lover—that's what they still called him on the street—kept coming to the apartment. The gramophone played on, the dog barked, the parrot screeched, and the canaries trilled. Again they gave a party and, evidently, once more invited the police. It was summertime and hot in our apartment, but Father ordered me to close the windows and said, “Why are you wandering about? Go study a Gemara.”
BOOK: More Stories from My Father's Court
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