Joel Yabloner, tall, lean, his face sallow and wrinkled, had a shiny skull without a single hair, a sharp nose, sunken cheeks, a throat with a prominent Adam’s apple. His eyes bulged and were the color of amber. He wore a shabby suit and an unbuttoned shirt that revealed the white hair on his chest. Yabloner had never married. In his youth he suffered from consumption, and the doctors had sent him to a santorium in Colorado. Someone told me that there he was forced to eat pork, and as a result he fell into melancholy. I seldom heard him utter a word. When I greeted him, he barely nodded and often averted his eyes. He lived on the few dollars a week the Yiddish Writers’ Union could spare him. His apartment on Broome Street had no bath, telephone, central heating. He ate neither fish nor meat, not even eggs or milk—only bread, vegetables, and fruit. In the cafeteria he always ordered a cup of black coffee and a dish of prunes. He would sit for hours staring at the revolving door, at the cashier’s desk, or the wall where, years ago, a commercial artist had painted the market on Orchard Street, with its pushcarts and peddlers. The paint was peeling now.
The president of the Writers’ Union told me that although all of Joel Yabloner’s friends and admirers had died out here in New York, he still had relatives and disciples in the land of Israel. They had often invited him to come there to live. They would publish his works, they promised (he had trunks filled with manuscripts), find an apartment for him, and see that he was taken care of in every way. Yabloner had a nephew in Jerusalem who was a professor at the university. There were still some Zionist leaders who considered Joel Yabloner their spiritual father. So why should he sit here on East Broadway, a silent and forgotten man? The Writers’ Union would have sent his pension to him in Israel, and he could also have received Social Security, which he had never bothered to claim. Here in New York he had already been burglarized a few times. A mugger had knocked out his last three teeth. Eiserman, the dentist who had translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into Yiddish, told me that he had offered to make Yabloner a set of false teeth, but Yabloner had said to him, “There is only one step from false teeth to a false brain.”
“A great man, but a queer one,” Eiserman said to me while he drilled and filled my own teeth. “Or perhaps he wants to atone for his sins this way. I’ve heard that he had love affairs in his youth.”
“Yabloner—love affairs?”
“Yes, love affairs. I myself knew a Hebrew teacher, Deborah Soltis, who was madly in love with him. She was my patient. She died about ten years ago.”
In connection with this, Eiserman told me of a curious episode. Joel Yabloner and Deborah Soltis saw each other over a period of twenty years, indulging in long conversations, often discussing Hebrew literature, the fine points of grammar, Maimonides, and Rabbi Judah ha-Levi, but the pair never went so far as to kiss. The closest they came was once when both of them were looking up the meaning of a word or an idiom in Ben-Yahudah’s great dictionary and their heads met accidentally. Yabloner fell into a playful mood and said, “Deborah, let’s trade eyeglasses.”
“What for?” Deborah Soltis asked.
“Oh, just like that. Only for a little while.”
The two lovers exchanged reading glasses, but he couldn’t read with hers and she couldn’t read with his. So they replaced their own glasses on their own noses—and that was the most intimate contact the two ever achieved.
Eventually, I stopped going down to East Broadway. I sent my articles to the newspaper by mail. I forgot Joel Yabloner. I didn’t even know that he was still alive. Then one day when I walked into a hotel lobby in Tel Aviv I heard applause in an adjoining hall. The door to the hall was half open and I looked in. There was Joel Yabloner behind a lectern, making a speech. He wore an alpaca suit, a white shirt, a silk skullcap, and his face appeared fresh, rosy, young. He had a full set of new teeth and had sprouted a white goatee. I happened not to be especially busy, so I found an empty chair and sat down.
Yabloner did not speak modern Hebrew but the old holy tongue with the Ashkenazi pronunciation. When he gesticulated, I noticed the sparkling links in his immaculate shirt cuffs. I heard him say in a Talmudic singsong, “Since the Infinite One filled all space and, as the Zohar expresses it, ‘No space is empty of Him,’ how did He create the universe? Rabbi Chaim Vital gave the answer: ‘Before creation, the attributes of the Almighty were all potential, not actual. How can one be a king without subjects, and how can there be mercy without anyone to receive it?’ ”
Yabloner clutched his beard, glanced at his notes. Once in a while, he took a sip from a glass of tea. I observed quite a number of women and even young girls in the audience. A few students took notes. How strange—there was also a nun. She must have understood Hebrew. “The Jewish state has resuscitated Joel Yabloner,” I said to myself. One seldom has a chance to enjoy someone else’s good fortune, and for me Yabloner’s triumph was a symbol of the Eternal Jew. He had spent decades as a lonely, neglected man. Now he seemed to have come into his own. I listened to the rest of the lecture, which was followed by a question period. Unbelievable, but that sad man had a sense of humor. I learned that the lecture had been organized by a committee which had undertaken to publish Yabloner’s work. One of the members of the committee knew me, and asked if I wished to attend a banquet in Yabloner’s honor. “Since you are a vegetarian,” he added, “here is your chance. They will serve only vegetables, fruits, nuts. When do they ever have a vegetarian banquet? Once in a lifetime.”
Between the lecture and the banquet, Joel Yabloner went out on the terrace for a rest. The day had been hot, and now in the late afternoon a breeze was blowing from the sea. I approached him, saying, “You don’t remember me, but I know you.”
“I know you very well. I read everything you write,” he replied. “Even here I try not to miss your stories.”
“Really, it is a great honor for me to hear you say so.”
“Please sit down,” he said, indicating a chair.
God in Heaven, that silent man had become talkative. He asked me all kinds of questions about America, East Broadway, Yiddish literature. A woman came over to us. She wore a turban over her white hair, a satin cape, and men’s shoes with low, wide heels. She had a large head, high cheekbones, the complexion of a gypsy, black eyes that blazed with anger. The beginnings of a beard could be seen on her chin. In a strong, mannish voice she said to me, “Adoni [Sir], my husband just finished an important lecture. He must speak at the banquet, and I want him to rest for a while. Be so good as to leave him alone. He is not a young man any more and he should not exert himself.”
“Oh, excuse me.”
Yabloner frowned. “Abigail, this man is a Yiddish writer and my friend.”
“He may be a writer and a friend, but your throat is overstrained. If you argue with him, you will be hoarse later.”
“Abigail, we aren’t arguing.”
“Adoni, please listen to me. He doesn’t know how to take care of himself.”
“Well, we shall talk later,” I said. “You have a devoted wife.”
“So they tell me.”
I took part in the banquet—ate the nuts, almonds, avocados, cheese, bananas that were served. Yabloner again made a speech, this time about the author of the cabalistic book The Treatise of the Hasidim. His wife sat near him on the stage. Each time his voice became scratchy she handed him a glass of white fluid—some variety of yogurt. After the speech, in the course of which Yabloner demonstrated much erudition, the chairman announced that an assistant professor at the Hebrew University was writing Yabloner’s biography and that funds were being raised to publish it. The author was called out on the stage. He was a young man with a round face, shining eyes, and the tiniest of skullcaps, which blended into his pomaded hair. In his closing words, Yabloner thanked his old friends, his students, all those who came to honor him. He paid tribute to his wife, Abigail, saying that without her help he would never have been able to put his manuscripts in order. He mentioned her first husband, whom he referred to as a gen
ius, a saint, a pillar of wisdom. From a huge handbag that resembled a valise more than a lady’s purse, Mrs. Yabloner took out a red kerchief like the ones used by old-fashioned rabbis and blew her nose with a blast that reverberated throughout the hall. “Let him intercede for us at the Throne of Glory!” she called out.
After the banquet I went over to Yabloner and said, “Often when I saw you sitting all alone in the cafeteria I was tempted to ask you why you didn’t go to Israel. What was your reason for waiting so long?”
He paused, closing his eyes as if the question required pondering, and finally shrugged his shoulders. “Man does not live according to reason.”
Again a few years passed. The typesetter on the newspaper for which I worked had lost a page of my most recent article, and since the article had to appear the next day—Saturday—there wasn’t time to send the copy by mail. I had to take a cab to deliver it to the composing room myself. I gave the missing page to the foreman and went down to the editorial department to see the editor and some of my old colleagues. The winter day was short, and when I came back onto the street I felt the long-forgotten hustle and bustle of the oncoming Sabbath. Even though the neighborhood was no longer predominantly Jewish, some synagogues, yeshivas, and Hasidic study houses had refused to leave. Here and there I saw in a window a woman lighting her Sabbath candles. Men in wide-brimmed velvet or fur hats were going to prayers, accompanied by boys with long sidelocks. My father’s words came to my mind: “The Almighty will always have His quorum.” I remembered the chants of the Sabbath-eve liturgy: “Let us exalt,” “Come my bridegroom,” “The temple of the King.”
I was not in a hurry any more, and I decided to have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria before I took the subway home. I pushed the revolving door. For a moment I imagined that nothing had changed, and I thought I could hear those voices of my first years in America—the cafeteria filled with Old World intellectuals shouting their opinions of Zionism, Jewish Socialism, the life and culture in America. But the faces were not familiar. Spanish was the language I heard. The walls had been painted over, and the scenes of Orchard Street with its pushcarts and peddlers had disappeared. Suddenly I saw something I could not believe. At a table in the middle of the room sat Joel Yabloner—without a beard, in a shabby suit and an unbuttoned shirt. He was emaciated, wrinkled, and disheveled, and his mouth again appeared sunken and empty. His bulging eyes stared at the empty wall opposite. Was I mistaken? No, it was Yabloner, all right. In his expression there was the desperation of a man caught in a dilemma from which there is no escape. With the cup of coffee in my hand, I stopped. Should I approach him to greet him, should I ask permission to sit down at his table?
Someone pushed me, and half of my coffee spilled over. The spoon fell on the floor with a clang. Yabloner turned around and our eyes met for a second. I nodded to him, but he did not respond. Then he turned his face away. Yes, he recognized me, but he was not in a mood for conversation. I even imagined that he had shaken his head in refusal. I found a table against the wall and sat down. I drank what was left of my coffee, all the while looking at him sideways. Why had he left Israel? Did he miss something here? Was he running away from someone? I had a strong desire to go over and ask him, but I knew that I would not get anything out of him.
A power stronger than man and his calculations has driven him out of Paradise, back to Hell, I decided. He did not even go to the Friday-night services. He was hostile not only to people but to the Sabbath itself. I finished the coffee and left.
A few weeks later, I read among the obituaries that Joel Yabloner had died. He was buried somewhere in Brooklyn. That night I lay awake until three o’clock, thinking about him. Why did he return? Had he not atoned enough for the sins of his youth? Had his return to East Broadway some explanation in the lore of the Cabala? Had some holy sparks strayed from the World of Emanation into the Evil Host? And could they have been found and brought back to their sacred origin only in this cafeteria? Another idea came into my head—perhaps he wanted to lie near that teacher with whom he exchanged eyeglasses? I remembered the last words I heard from him: “Man does not live according to reason.”
Translated by Alma Singer and Herbert Lottman
A Quotation from Klopstock
THOSE who have to do with women must boast. In literary circles in Warsaw, Max Persky was known as a woman chaser. His followers contended that if he hadn’t spent so much of his time on females, he might have become a second Sholem Aleichem or a Yiddish Maupassant. Although he was twenty years older than I, we became friends. I had read his work and listened to all his stories. That summer evening we sat in a little garden café, drinking coffee and eating blueberry cookies. The sun had already set and a pale September moon hung in the sky above the tin roofs. But remnants of the sunset were still reflected in the glass door which led to the interior of the café. The air was warm and smelled of the Praga forest, freshly baked babkas, and the manure that peasants gathered from the stables to dump into the fields. Max Persky smoked one cigarette after another. The tray filled with ashes and butts. Even though he was already in his forties—some maintained he was nearly fifty—Max Persky looked young. He had a boyish figure, a head of black shiny hair, a brown-complexioned face, full lips, and the penetrating eyes of a hypnotist. The two lines at the sides of his mouth gave him an air of fatalistic awareness. His enemies gossiped that he took money from wealthy women. It was also said that a woman had committed suicide over him. Our waitress, middle-aged, with a young figure, kept staring at him. From time to time she smiled guiltily at me as if to say, I can’t help it. She had a short nose, sunken cheeks, and a pointed chin. I noticed that the middle finger was missing from her left hand.
Max Persky suddenly asked me, “What happened to that woman who was twelve years older than you? Do you still see her?”
I wanted to answer him but he shook his head. He said, “There is something about older women that the younger ones cannot supply. I, myself, had one, not twelve years older than I but thirty. I was a young man of about twenty-seven and she must have been in her fifties. She was a spinster, a teacher of German literature. She also knew Hebrew. In those years the rich Jews in Warsaw wanted their daughters to be versed in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. If they weren’t, they lacked kultur. A pinch of Hebrew did no harm either. Theresa Stein made a living teaching these subjects. You most probably have never heard of her, but in my time she was well known in Warsaw. This was a woman who took poetry very seriously, which proves that she was not too clever. She certainly was no beauty. To enter her small apartment on Nowolipki Street was an experience. Poverty hovered all around it, but she had turned her rooms into a kind of old maid’s temple. She spent half of her earnings on books, mostly gold-embossed with velvet bindings. She bought paintings also. When I was introduced to her she was still a kosher virgin. I needed a quotation from Klopstock’s Messiah for one of my stories, and I telephoned and she asked me to visit her that evening. When I arrived, she had already found the quotation I needed and many others. I brought her my first book, which had just been published. She knew Yiddish quite well. She worshipped Peretz. Whom did she not worship? She spoke the word ‘talent’ as solemnly as a pious Jew mentions God. She was small and roundish with brown eyes, from which radiated goodness and naïveté. Women like that don’t exist any more. Since I was young and played the part of a cynic, I immediately did everything I could to shock her. I denounced all poets as imbeciles and told her I was having affairs with four women at the same time. Her eyes filled with tears. She said to me, ‘You are so young, so talented, and already so unhappy. You don’t know yet what real love is, and therefore you torture your immortal soul. True love will come to you and you will find treasures that will open the gates of Heaven to you.’ To comfort me for being so misled, she offered me tea with jam cake she had baked herself and a glass of cherry brandy. I did not wait long before I began to kiss her—almost out of habit. I will never forget her expression at the first kiss.
Her eyes lit up with a strange light. She clutched both my wrists and said, ‘Don’t do it! I take such things seriously!’ She trembled and stuttered and tried to quote Goethe. Her body became unusually hot. I practically raped her, although not exactly. I spent the night at her house, and if someone could convey in a book all she said that night, it would be a work of genius. She promptly fell in love with me—with a love that endured to her last minute. I am far from being holy even today, but in those years I didn’t have a trace of conscience. I considered the whole thing a joke.
“She began to telephone me every day—three times a day—but I had no time for her and invented countless excuses. Nevertheless, I used to visit her from time to time—mostly on rainy nights when I had no other engagements. Every visit was literally a holiday for her. If she could manage it, she prepared a festive supper, bought flowers in my honor, and dressed in fancy gowns or kimonos. She showered me with gifts. She tried to persuade me to read the German classics with her. But I tore them all to pieces and confessed to her brazenly all my sins, even about the brothels I had visited in my youth. There are some women who can be shocked constantly, and for her I never lacked material. Just because she spoke gently, with flowery phrases and noble quotations, I used the language of the streets and called everything by its name. She used to say, ‘God will forgive you. Since He bestowed talent upon you, you are His favorite.’ The truth is that it was impossible to spoil her. Figuratively speaking, she remained a virgin to the end. She possessed a purity and love for humanity not to be erased. She defended everyone, even that famous anti-Semite, Purish-kevitch. She said, ‘The poor man is deluded. There are souls who sink in darkness because they never have the chance to see the divine light.’ I did not realize it then but I slept with a saint, like the Saint Theresa whose namesake she was.
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Page 52
