The Street Sweeper

by Elliot Perlman

  Two such Jews sat drinking coffee in a Warsaw café at the end of a day at school. One of them wanted more than anything else to earn his living as a historian, the other felt the same way about psychology. This other was Chaim Broder, a man who had studied under Wilhelm Wundt, the pioneer of experimental psychology, what seemed like many years earlier.

  ‘Emanuel, you’re an inveterate optimist, you know that?’

  ‘I have to be,’ said the younger Emanuel Ringelblum.

  ‘You’re a historian who works on his own trying to learn all he can about this wretched history of ours. The Jews themselves don’t care to know even though it’s their history and the Poles definitely don’t want to know. You and your Jewish colleagues are afraid to give papers on Jewish history at professional conferences and –’

  ‘We’re not afraid. As a rule they won’t let us because they don’t consider us to be a “nation”. But sometimes they do. It’s not all as hopeless as you think.’

  ‘Sometimes they do!’ repeated Chaim Broder with gentle mockery. ‘And that’s why you’re an inveterate optimist?’

  ‘No,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum, ‘I told you, I have to be an optimist. You want to ask why?’

  ‘Would it make any difference if I didn’t?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘All right then, so why?’

  ‘Because I have to see you every day. Anyone forced to see you every day needs to be an incorrigible optimist.’

  ‘I’m not a pessimist, Emanuel. Science is neither for nor against hope.’

  ‘I know. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times before. In Leipzig you studied under Wundt and now you’re a scientist of the mind.’

  ‘Well, I …’ Chaim Broder paused to sip his coffee before continuing, ‘and every day I go and teach little children. I teach children, Jewish children. What am I doing this for? Why?’

  ‘You need to earn a living like the rest of us and you teach children so they can grow up and –’

  ‘Emanuel, the best of them will be lucky if they’ll be allowed to teach little children.’

  ‘But Chaim, you’re preparing them. If it changes who will be –’

  ‘If it changes? If it changes?’

  ‘Gentlemen, I see you’re sitting here arguing as usual,’ said a third man who had just arrived at their table. ‘Good to see, anything else would be a quite disconcerting change and, anyway, I have someone charming for you to meet. It would be wrong to give her an atypical impression. Better she should have an honest and unfavourable one.’

  The man was Rafal Gutman, the head of the Jewish community education system for all of Warsaw, and with him stood a young woman.

  ‘This is Miss Rosa Rabinowicz, originally from Ciechanow. She will soon be a qualified teacher. And I thought part of her training really should include learning to put up with people like you two. May we join you?’

  The two seated men stood up to greet Rafal Gutman and more particularly the slip of a girl passing as a woman, Rosa Rabinowicz.

  ‘Rafal, we must have done something right. I can’t remember the last time you introduced us to someone so charming,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum, briefly taking the young woman’s hand.

  ‘Never,’ said Rafal Gutman, ‘I have never introduced you to someone so charming. But the better question is, “What has Rosa done that is so wrong that she deserves to meet the likes of you two?”‘

  ‘And what have you done that is so wrong, Miss Rabinowicz?’ asked Emanuel Ringelblum.

  ‘Me? Well, nothing I’m sure,’ she said a little nervously to the two cosmopolitan intellectuals.

  ‘Rosa already knows a little about both of you.’

  ‘Well, only a little. I know one of you is also a historian and the other is … is it a psychologist? But I might as well confess that I don’t remember which of you is which. I’m sorry. And, at the risk of embarrassing myself further, I’m not really even all that sure what a psychologist is.’

  ‘No need to be embarrassed at all, Miss Rabinowicz,’ said Emanuel Ringelblum. ‘I am the historian and Chaim here … well, it really doesn’t matter what Chaim does. He’s such a pessimist about everything, even he doesn’t really think he matters much. And since there’s no one who thinks Chaim matters more than Chaim thinks he does, you can immediately see how much validity there is to his pessimism.’

  Rafal Gutman and Emanuel Ringelblum had been flattering and amusing. But Chaim Broder had not uttered a word. It had taken him only one look at this young woman to begin to experience things he had not lately experienced; excitement, even hope. He must not allow this introduction to be all there was to this chance meeting with this girl, Rosa Rabinowicz. He had to see her again. But rendered too embarrassed and shy by grainy memories of past romantic disappointments to know what to say, he had not yet said anything.

  ‘Please forgive my ignorance, Mr Broder, but what exactly is psychology?’ Rosa Rabinowicz asked Chaim Broder while Rafal Gutman ordered coffee from a waiter for both Rosa and himself.

  ‘Miss Rabinowicz, there is nothing at all to be embarrassed about,’ Broder said, embarrassed at the quiver in his voice. He cleared his throat and, trying to steady himself, continued, ‘Admitting ignorance about something is a virtue, not a fault.’

  ‘Oh dear, had I known I was being virtuous I might not have asked.’ Rosa smiled.

  ‘It’s neither a virtue nor a fault to ask questions about the nature of psychology,’ interjected Emanuel Ringelblum. ‘But it is a folly if you’re asking a curmudgeonly pessimistic psychologist like Chaim.’

  ‘He makes fun of me, Miss Rabinowicz.’

  ‘He does,’ said Rosa. ‘But from the way you take it, I can see that it’s not at all true.’

  She was as charming as Rafal Gutman had said. She had a sense of humour and, worse still, she was kind. What was Rafal doing introducing this beautiful young thing to him, a single man whose loneliness he tried to wash off each morning before getting dressed for work? He wanted to touch her. The soft skin he could see on the top of her hand would do. What on earth was wrong with him? he wondered. He had thought of himself as an educated, cultured man, a man of science. It was this image of himself that had got him through most things most of the time; his loneliness, the professional obstacles and the various indignities and humiliations he had endured throughout his life. Now in an instant he’d been reduced to a tingling adolescent boy.

  ‘You see how they argue,’ offered Rafal Gutman. ‘It’s back and forth, positively Talmudic.’

  ‘Talmudic?’ asked Ringelblum rhetorically. ‘Well, only God could have been crueler to Chaim than I’ve been. And judging by what Chaim has to say, He was.’ The waiter came to deliver the most recently ordered coffee.

  ‘Charm and beauty and an enquiring mind, Miss Rabinowicz,’ said Broder, ignoring Ringelblum’s jibe. He wondered if he wasn’t being excessive in his praise.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Broder.’ Rosa blushed.

  ‘Please call me Chaim. Psychology is,’ Broder continued, ‘to put it very simply, the scientific study of the human mind. It’s a very new discipline so it’s not at all surprising that you’re not familiar with it. But tell me, how do you find Warsaw?’

  ‘It’s beautiful but I’ve never lived in a place with so many people. Sometimes it’s a bit daunting. It’s a far cry from Ciechanow.’ There was the opening he had hoped for. Now was his moment to push himself forward or forever damn himself to solitude for nothing but cowardice.

  ‘It would be my pleasure to show you around, if you have time.’

  This was how it happened that Chaim Broder managed to take on the role of tour guide, caregiver and confidant to young Rosa Rabinowicz. He showed her around the city, took her to both the Yiddish and the Polish theatre, took her to meet writer friends of his at the Writers’ Club, took her for walks and for meals for which he always paid. Not one zloty, not a groschen of her own did she ever spend when she was with him. He took her for walks past the religious bookshops
on Franciszkanska Street so that he might initiate conversation about religion in order to get a sense of whether she had sufficiently distanced herself from what Broder considered outdated provincial religiosity. If she hadn’t it would not have dampened his enthusiasm for her. It would have meant only that he was going to have to work on her beliefs to bring them closer to his. But although her values might have derived from a religious background, by the time Rosa was living in Warsaw she was at most ‘traditional’ in her religious adherence.

  She knew very few people there and quickly grew quite dependent on him. Broder was aware that some of her evident feeling for him was simply gratitude. But then isn’t gratitude a constituent component of affection? Chaim Broder asked himself. However, that was some time later. On that first day, the day they met, their attention had returned to the conversation Emanuel Ringelblum was having with Rafal Gutman.

  ‘Hundreds of thousands of Jews all over Poland toil away in misery. They’re barely able to survive on the pittance they’re earning. They don’t own any property. They’re lucky if they own a cow. Look, even here in Warsaw there are Jews who live in frightening poverty yet –’

  ‘Emanuel, you won’t get any argument from me on this,’ said Rafal Gutman. ‘But I don’t understand what you think you can do with it. How do you think your historical studies will help?’

  ‘If the Polish historians, the establishment, better understood the truth of the Jewish historical experience it would help us to be seen without prejudice and as we really are.’

  ‘This is where he loses me,’ said Chaim Broder.

  ‘No, no, it’s not as hopeless as you make it out to be, Chaim. Already there’s a professor at Warsaw University, Jan Kochanowski, a Pole, and he has some time for my arguments. He’s quite open to me and a few of my colleagues.’

  ‘No, it’s not the existence of one sympathetic Polish historian here or there, an existence I admit you’d know more about than I would,’ interjected Broder. ‘It’s that Emanuel here seriously thinks this piecemeal process will eventually lead to a radically different perception of Jews throughout Polish society. I’m sorry but it’s just … it’s fanciful!’

  ‘Don’t both successful and unsuccessful undertakings begin with small bands of enthusiasts?’ asked Rosa Rabinowicz. Despite her partial support for Ringlblum, Chaim Broder smiled with a pride in her he had not earned a right to. Nor was he going to argue with anything she said. The discussion might have continued for the rest of the day had not Rafal Gutman, with Rosa Rabinowicz in tow, left for a meeting at the Jewish Orphans Home on Krochmalna Street. For him it was a routine event but for her it was so stirring an experience that she subsequently started going there to help with the teaching in a voluntary capacity.

  Some weeks later Chaim Broder asked Rosa Rabinowicz out for dinner for the first time. He had reserved a table at an expensive restaurant. Arriving to pick her up from the orphanage after work, a young boy mistakenly took him to the office of the director, Dr Janusz Korczak, who, after apologising for the misunderstanding, personally accompanied him to where Rosa was teaching. They talked as they walked.

  ‘It’s never been my good fortune to actually meet you in person, Dr Korczak. I’m pleased the young boy’s misunderstanding has given me the privilege.’

  ‘You’re kind to say that, Mr Broder, but it appears to me that your good fortune far exceeds meeting me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Korczak, I’m afraid I’m not following you.’

  ‘I’m referring to Rosa, Mr Broder. She’s a gift to us all but especially to you, I understand.’

  Chaim Broder blushed. Janusz Korczak had assumed an intimacy between Broder and Rosa Rabinowicz that Broder dreamed of but one that, in reality, had not yet developed. Fortunately for him they reached the room where Rosa was working with the children before candour would have required Broder to disabuse him and he left the assumption hanging in the air unchallenged. As they stood looking through the open door at Rosa at a table surrounded by children, Korczak explained that she was chairing a meeting of the editorial board of the children’s newspaper. Sitting to one side of her a young girl of about fourteen was speaking quietly to the group without making eye contact with any of them.

  ‘My grandmother had wanted my mother to marry a scholar, a Torah scholar … My troubles started before me. He was … he was a mean man. I think my mother’s life ended on her wedding day.’ The assembled group sat in silence listening.

  ‘But what were your first memories?’ asked Rosa quietly with her hand casually resting on the young girl’s hand. ‘If we all agreed that the pieces should start with your first memories and end with your hopes for your future then we do need to be strict about where we start and where we stop. Avram, how many words do we have in each autobiography?’

  ‘No more than two thousand,’ said a boy of around fifteen.

  ‘It might sound like a lot but as we’ve seen everybody at this table has quite a story to tell. Remember, the idea in the first place was to provide examples and encouragement to the others, to get the others writing.’

  Rosa looked up and saw Chaim Broder and Janusz Korczak just outside the door.

  ‘I think that’s all we have time for today but next time we can continue where we left off. Keep your notes. Everyone will get a chance. Have a good night, children.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Rabinowicz,’ some of the children said.

  ‘Good night, Miss Rabinowicz,’ said some others, packing up their things and leaving the room.

  ‘My father was poor. I hadn’t realised we were so poor until I got to public school. The other kids didn’t have to wear rags. They had white bread. This must have been part of what made him so angry all the time,’ said the fourteen-year-old girl to Rosa as the others filed past.

  ‘You can write everything you want, you know. Talk about your parents and your grandparents, everything, and if it’s a longer piece we’ll use it for something else. But we can talk about that next time.’

  ‘Miss Rabinowicz … Maybe I could talk to you … alone some time?’

  ‘Of course you can, my darling. I have someone waiting for me now but we will talk. I promise you. As much as you want.’

  ‘Hello, Dr Korczak,’ two students said in unison as they left the room.

  ‘Good afternoon, Dr Korczak,’ said other departing students, one after another.

  Rosa’s smile as she greeted him when the last child, the fourteen-year-old girl, had left the room gave him a courage that evening that he had been waiting for. Almost a child herself but not a child, not an orphan but she might as well have been for all the help her parents in Ciechanow could give her in Warsaw, Rosa took his arm in the street. He would protect her. It was this promise of his that she heard that night back home in her bed as she considered the offer he had made when saying goodbye. Would she agree to marry him? he had asked her.

  Although he was kind and worldly, although she felt safe with him, he was not the man she had dreamed of. But a plant grows towards the light and he was her only light. This was how between these two people there came to be a coincidence of wants for just long enough for Chaim Broder, once of Krakow, and Rosa Rabinowicz, once of Ciechanow, to marry. The way he saw her didn’t change but by the time their daughter Elise arrived, the pull of the light he carried counted for less with her and he sensed this. He tried to blame it on the pregnancy, then on the birth and then on the demands of their baby daughter. But in the dark of the Warsaw night as they lay in bed together, Rosa always tired, always silent, always as far away as a shared bed would allow, there was no longer any light at all pulling her towards him. If she only knew, she didn’t have long to wait for her unhappiness to turn to fear, not of him, but of what was happening in Poland, in Europe.

  *

  William McCray sat outside Charles’ office waiting for his son’s receptionist to permit him to enter.

  ‘Turning chilly already,’ she said to him.

  ‘Pardon me?’
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  ‘I said it’s turning chilly already. I don’t remember being cheated out of fall this early, do you?’

  ‘It is a bit chilly but when the sun’s out it’s not too bad.’

  ‘Charlie, you want to come for a walk?’ William asked his son. ‘I’ll treat you to a coffee. Do you good to get some fresh air.’

  ‘No, I’d better not, Dad. I’m up to my ears in work here. I’ll only feel guilty if I go out.’

  ‘Guilty? Is it true what I hear about the meeting of presidents?’ William McCray asked his son Charles.

  ‘What meeting of presidents is that?’

  ‘Your president, the President of the University, what’s his name –’

  ‘Bollinger.’

  ‘Right, Bollinger. Is it true that your President Bollinger has invited the President of Iran to speak at the university?’

  Charles ran his palm over his forehead and closed his eyes. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I want to see that I understand this. Bollinger has actually invited Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hitler all booked up?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Dad what?’

  ‘Well, he’s not Hitler.’

  ‘Hitler wasn’t perceived as Hitler when Chamberlain tried to engage with him.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Dad? It’s a university. If diversity of opinion and free speech aren’t welcome here then –’