More Stories From My Father's Court

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  “Let’s hear what you have to say a year from now, God willing,” his wife said.

  “I’ll never divorce you again. I’d rather die a thousand deaths.”

  “Stop it, you’re embarrassing me in front of all these people.”

  “What’s the embarrassment? We’re not strangers to each other.”

  During the ceremony, the woman cried. She covered her face with a kerchief. Father recited the blessings and gave the bride and groom a sip of wine from the goblet. Afterward, the young man seized his former wife and began kissing her. He even tried dancing with her. She tore away from him, but he said, “Now it’s permitted.”

  He gave the men of the minyan large slices of sponge cake and poured out full glasses of brandy. He too drank. He grew more and more excited. The woman went into the kitchen to speak to Mother. Mother began whispering to her, murmuring something about counting days, bedding, a ritual bath.

  The young man came in and said, “Well, my wife, let’s go.”

  “Now you can reveal it: where are you taking me?”

  “To the Hotel Krakowski.”

  “I’m not going to a hotel.”

  “Where are we going to sleep—in the street?”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “There are no more trains today.”

  Mother asked, “Do they have a mezuzah on the door?”

  “For me today is like the night of Pesach. On Pesach the demons have no power,” the young man declared. “Today we don’t need a mezuzah.” The young man pointed to his wife. “She’s my little mezuzah!”

  “Oh, he’s crazy!”

  “Rebbetzin, you don’t know what I’ve gone through the past couple of years. We had a lessee who had a barn full of cows. A Jew came and bought a barren cow from him. The cow cried all the way home. It cried all day, it cried all night. This went on for two days, three days, a week. Rebbetzin, the cow cried until it died. It was longing for its mother or the other cows. The same thing happened to me. One day I divorced her and the next I began crying. The crying was within me, here, in my heart. I always thought I could damp the longing, make it mute, but it became worse and worse. If I hadn’t returned and if we hadn’t gotten married again, I would’ve ended up like that cow.”

  “And I—didn’t I suffer plenty, too?”

  The man took his wife and walked down the stairs with her. Outside, he waited for a droshky. He waved his parasol right and left. Finally, an empty droshky pulled up. The young man helped his wife get in, then he climbed up after her. He cast one last look at our balcony—the look of a man half crazy with love and impatience.

  SHE SURELY WILL BE ASHAMED

  In Father’s courtroom all kinds of divorces took place, but this one was different. The husband and wife loved each other; they had lived together more than forty years. The husband was himself a rabbi. She was a rebbetzin. They had married children and grandchildren. The couple exuded Torah learning and familial lineage.

  Why, then, did they want a divorce in their old age?

  Because the husband, the rabbi, wanted to go to the Land of Israel, but his wife, the rebbetzin, did not want to leave her children and grandchildren.

  The rabbi could have left without getting a divorce, but the fact of the matter is that a scholar cannot live by himself even in the Land of Israel. A Jew must have a wife. He needs somebody to cook him a warm meal, prepare his bed, send his clothes out to be laundered, and darn his socks. Never mind how useful a wife can be! The truth is that one is forbidden to be without a wife because that can lead to impure thoughts and is an obstacle to Torah study and prayer. A Jew who wants to lead a pure and holy life has to have bread in his basket. In other words, he has to have a home and a wife.

  The preparations to travel to the Land of Israel took years. A couple does not impetuously decide to divorce. But the rabbi was drawn to the Land of Israel as if by a magnet. For nights on end he could not sleep out of longing to be by the Western Wall; by the Cave of Machpela, where the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried; by the tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem; and by other holy graves and ruins. He was also afraid that he might, God forbid, depart this world and lie buried in exile, in a land belonging to gentiles. The rebbetzin could under no circumstances decide to leave her family, so it gradually became clear that a divorce was the only way out.

  The rabbi was apparently quite a bit older than the rebbetzin. His beard was as white as milk. He was dressed not like a rabbi but like a Hasidic rebbe: in a broad silk coat and shoes with white socks and a sable hat. For some time he had radiated the sanctity of the far-off places which he would visit. Father said that the rabbi was studying Kabbalah and assumed self-imposed fast days. When he stood to pray the Afternoon Service in our apartment, it took him exactly an hour to finish. He muttered, sighed, raised his hands up high. He pounded his chest as a Jew does on Yom Kippur when he recites the “For the sins that we have committed” prayer. He bent and bowed like Jews had once done in the Holy Temple. For supper he ate a piece of dried challah and drank a glass of curdled milk.

  The rebbetzin had red cheeks, lively eyes, and a mouth that loved to nosh. She had arrived with a kerchief full of biscuits and candies on which she continually nibbled. She sat in our kitchen and said, “This isn’t for me, Rebbetzin. I’m used to this place. I have my apartment, my bedding, my children and grandchildren, may they live to be one hundred and twenty years old. How could one leave all this behind? Sure, the Land of Israel is a holy land. When the Messiah comes, we will all be there, God willing …” The rebbetzin took out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

  “This is all rather strange,” Mother said half to the rebbetzin and half to herself.

  “Rebbetzin, he is a sage!” the woman said. “He is more in heaven than on earth. He was quite ready to go without a divorce, but I knew that he would suffer. Who would care for him there? He’s the father of my children, may he live to be one hundred and twenty years old.”

  Mother sat silently. I saw on her face that she was angry at the rebbetzin. My mother felt that a wife must accompany her husband wherever he goes. All the more so when one has a husband like this one. The man was a saint! But what could be done? The rebbetzin had her own reasons. Just as part of her husband was in heaven, so she, the rebbetzin, stood with both her slippered feet on the ground. She loved her children with a passion. From time to time she stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked her lips. After a while she looked around to see how my mother kept house and I could tell by her expression that she was dissatisfied with my mother’s domesticity.

  While the scribe was writing the divorce document, and even before that, when the witnesses were being instructed how to affix their signatures, the rebbetzin spoke about fish, meat, fritters, beans, and pancakes. She gave my mother all kinds of advice regarding cooking and baking. The more the rebbetzin spoke, the clearer it became how earthbound she was, how deeply she was immersed in the pleasures of this world.

  Mother nodded, but I saw that she had no patience for all this talk. Finally she broke in: “What’s the point of being so occupied with eating?”

  The rebbetzin looked askance. “If you’re already eating, why shouldn’t it taste good?” she asked.

  “It has a good taste.”

  “I feel that if the dish is not prepared exactly as it should be, I can’t put it in my mouth,” the rebbetzin declared. “My mother, may she have a bright Paradise, would say, ‘What one puts into the pot is what you take out. The pot cannot be fooled.’”

  “It’s better to fool the pot than oneself,” my mother answered sharply.

  In the other room sat the rabbi. He swayed back and forth, holding his high forehead, and for a while was lost in thought. The man was no longer here but somewhere in Jerusalem, in Safed, by the ruined synagogue of Rabbi Yehuda the Pious, by the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

  When it was time for the divorce, the rabbi placed the writ in the rebbetzin’s hands and she wept. Then she said
, “I did it for you so that you can go to the Land of Israel.”

  My father cast a glance into the holy text he was reading and addressed the rebbetzin: “If you want to get married, you must wait three months and a day.”

  The rebbetzin began crying once more. “May it happen to my enemies!”

  “That is the law.”

  “I had one husband and one God …”

  The rebbetzin left. Even the previous night she had slept at her daughter’s house. The rabbi bade goodbye to Father. There was an oppressive heaviness in the house. Father paced back and forth. “No small thing, the Land of Israel! It is written that he who does not live in the Land of Israel is as if, God forbid, he had no Creator.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to go, too?” Mother asked.

  “If only I could …”

  “Why can’t you? So many Jews are accepting charity there—so there will be one more.”

  “Well, well …”

  “If you want a divorce, you can have one,” Mother said with resentment.

  “God forbid!”

  Weddings brought a festive atmosphere into our apartment. Divorces left an emptiness. Mother went back to the kitchen and spoke to me as though I were a grownup. “What does she have to do here? Her children are already grown. They can live without their mother. Grandchildren can certainly survive without a grandmother. But she’s afraid she’s not going to have enough meat. It’s the fleshpots of Egypt.”

  Many weeks passed. One day a letter arrived from the Land of Israel. The stamp was Turkish. Father carefully opened the envelope and removed a very small sheet of paper. The rabbi had written Father from Jerusalem, describing where he had been and what he had seen. He also included an original interpretation of a Talmudic passage. Father carried this piece of paper around; he read it once and then again. He said to me, “This little piece of paper has been in the Land of Israel.”

  “Very thin paper,” I observed.

  “Even objects become holy in the Land of Israel,” Father declared. “They absorb its holiness.”

  “And what about mud?” I asked.

  “Little silly. What is mud? Earth and water.”

  “And what about garbage?”

  “What is garbage? The Almighty has created everything.”

  One day Father returned from the shtibl quite agitated. “Oh my, oh my!”

  “What happened?” Mother asked. “Has the Radziminer Rebbe come up with another miracle?”

  Father explained that the rabbi’s wife had gotten married. She had found a wealthy older man.

  “It can’t be!”

  “Mordecai the trustee himself told me.”

  Mother’s thin lips began to move. I knew she was about to make a pointed, stinging remark, but instead she covered her mouth with her hand. “I’d better be quiet,” she said, suppressing her desire to speak slander.

  At a bris, where my father was given the honor of holding the baby during the ceremony, my mother met the former rebbetzin. No longer a rebbetzin, she had now become a businesswoman. She was adorned with lots of jewelry, which her new husband had given her, left over from his deceased wife. The former rebbetzin wanted to embrace my mother, but Mother retreated from her. The woman bragged about her beautiful apartment, which was full of carpets, silverware, dresses, and fur coats which her husband had made for her. She explained to Mother, “Rebbetzin, it’s so hard to be alone. Children are children, but one must have a home. Being without one is like being lost at sea.”

  “Do you hear anything from him?” Mother asked.

  “He writes very little.”

  “Has he married?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who knows. He’s not a man, he’s an angel.” The woman bit into a big slice of honey cake and drank some sweet liqueur.

  “May we continue to meet at happy occasions!” was her wish for Mother and herself, too.

  More time passed. Father again returned from the Hasidic shtibl discomfited.

  “What happened now?” Mother asked.

  Father told us that the rabbi who had divorced his wife in our apartment had died.

  “Was he sick?”

  “Who knows!”

  Mother lowered her head. It’s an old story: the gluttons, the guzzlers, the swindlers, the thieves live long lives. The righteous ones die before their time—but why should this be so? Well, one can’t ask questions of the Master of the Universe.

  Father said, “He was buried last Friday. He won’t have to undergo the suffering in the grave.”

  Father and I went into the study. “What is this world of ours? The years fly by. How long has it been since I was a little boy? It seems only yesterday. Man takes nothing with him except Torah and good deeds.”

  “Will the rabbi be in Paradise?” I asked.

  “That’s some question you’re asking!”

  “And will the rebbetzin go to hell?”

  “God forbid. Why should she? … But you should know that even Paradise has various levels.” Father spoke at length with me about the sanctity of the Land of Israel. He said that according to the law, we are all impure, but the Almighty above has compassion upon us—for it’s not the poor Jews’ fault. Our exile is as long as the night, but salvation will come, it will come.

  “When, Father?”

  “When we are worthy.”

  “When?”

  “It depends on you.”

  “On me?”

  “Yes, on you and me, and every Jew individually. The poor Messiah is pleading that he wants to come, but he’s not allowed to because Jews are sinful. Repent, and the Messiah will come!”

  The former rebbetzin lived another couple of years; then she, too, died. People discussed this in the Radziminer shtibl. I thought that the woman would certainly be ashamed to appear in the world to come. What would she say to her ex-husband, that righteous man? Wouldn’t she be ashamed to stand in his presence?

  HE WANTS FORGIVENESS FROM HER

  The door opened and into the room came a fashionable, beardless young man wearing a stovepipe hat and a short jacket. He seemed to be in his late thirties. His appearance and manner of dress, indeed his entire bearing, radiated importance—that of a doctor, a lawyer, or, at the very least, an accountant. Especially authoritative were his pince-nez, which sat low down on his nose and were fastened to the buttonhole in his lapel by a thin black cord.

  “Well, what’s the good word?” my father said.

  The young man spoke half shyly and hesitantly. He began with these words: “Rabbi, you’re going to laugh …”

  It turned out that some twelve years before, the young man had been the fiance of a respectable Warsaw girl. Then he met another girl and married her. People warned him that when someone breaks off an engagement, a letter of forgiveness is required from the other party. But he was in love with his new wife and was ashamed to return to the first one to request the letter. He was especially ashamed before his in-laws. In short, he went off to live with the second girl, moved to another city, and hoped that time would smooth everything over. So a match dissolves, big deal!

  However, bad luck tagged after the young man. He opened a shop, but it failed. He established a factory: that, too, did not succeed. His wife had one child, a second child, a third child, but all of them died. The young man was not religious; still, these misfortunes reminded him of the wrong that he had done to his first fiancée. He began to ponder this, and started dreaming about it at night. Before long he became obsessed with the thought that he would have no respite until he got a pardon from his former fiancee, who he heard had married. The news prompted him to leave his business and come to Warsaw, where he discovered that his former fiancee lived in our—that is my father’s—district. That is why he had come to ask my father’s assistance in getting a letter of forgiveness.

  Father heard him out before saying, “Yes, it’s true. When a person is wronged, repentance is of no avail. One must request forgiveness.
”

  Father then sent me to bring the man’s former fiancée to the courtroom.

  Since she lived on Khlodna Street, the young man gave me money for the round trip on the droshky. It was weird sitting in a droshky without packages. The boys outside gaped in wonder. The shopkeepers, men and women, laughed and wagged a warning forefinger at me. I leaned my head against the side of the droshky and felt the springs swaying under me. I was so light I was afraid I might fall out. Nevertheless, I felt comfortable riding in the droshky. I closed my eyes and contemplated the strangeness of human relationships. Because a young man in Lodz or Kolish can’t sleep at night for thinking about his former fiancée, I, a young boy from Krochmalna Street, have to be in a droshky on a Wednesday noon.

  I passed through the elegant gate of the woman’s building, climbed up a marble staircase to her apartment, and rang the bell. A maid clad in a white apron opened the door and asked me what I wanted.

  “The lady of the house is being called to the rabbi’s courtroom.”

  The woman soon appeared. She was in her late thirties, still pretty, but her high bosom was heavy, and she had scattered strands of gray hair. She looked as imposing in her womanliness as did her former fiance in his manliness. She asked me why I had come.

  “Your former fiance is summoning you to see the rabbi—my father,” I said.

  The woman’s big dark eyes widened. “What fiance? And what rabbi?”

  As I told the woman everything I had heard, I noticed the color changing on her face—now pale, now red. One moment she was about to burst into laughter, the next she turned sad. At one point I thought she was going to yell at me and drive me from the apartment. Then she seemed to soften. “Do you already understand these matters?” she asked.

  “I understand everything,” I said with boyish boastfulness.

  “Wait. I’m going to phone my husband.”

  After I had waited for a long time in the corridor, the young woman came out wearing a coat and hat.

  “Let’s go.”

  I told her I had money for a droshky, but she said she’d pay for the droshky herself. Soon I was sitting next to her—a lady from Khlodna Street going to meet her former fiance, accompanied by a boy with red sidecurls, who knew bizarre secrets, was mixed up in the affairs of strangers, and was thinking wild thoughts. The woman herself did not interest me that much, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the horse. I sat to the side, where I could observe the horse’s broad hindquarters and long tail, which swayed and seemed to tell me mutely: I don’t care who I carry or where I go. I don’t know anything. I’m a horse’s rear and I’ll always be one. When I eat oats, I have the strength to pull this droshky. I don’t care whether a priest, a rabbi, or a Turk is sitting in it. From time to time the horse’s tail swished, a sign that its hindquarters were satisfied.