Love and Exile

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  “Nothing bad. Only that he likes to gamble and take risks.”

  “Yes, that’s one of his aberrations. Do you at least have a domestic passport?”

  “I don’t even have a birth certificate.”

  “We can go to Danzig. You don’t need a foreign passport to go there since it’s a free city. No, that wouldn’t do. It’s too far from there to Rumania. We must go to Zaleszczyki in Galicia and from there cross on foot into Rumania. There are smugglers everywhere who will guide you across the border for a few zlotys.”

  “They wouldn’t let me aboard ship without a foreign passport. I couldn’t get the certificate without it either,” I said.

  “What? A regular foreign passport costs four hundred zlotys. To receive a concession on this price you have to present all kinds of petitions, and the starosta and the government commissariat set up delays and obstacles. They might even levy taxes against you or at least demand proof that you don’t owe any. Do you have such proof?”

  “I have nothing.”

  “You have nothing …. Where do you live anyway—on the moon?”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Well, I see how things are. Margolis only sends me young men to waste my time so that it will all come to naught. He is my enemy but I don’t know why. Are you hungry?”

  “Hungry? No.”

  “You look hungry. I don’t want you to pass out in my room. I know of a young man who starved himself for so long that he dropped dead. We have a maid; that one who let you in. But we can’t pay her a salary so she has become like the mistress of the house. If she feels like it, she cooks, if she doesn’t, we eat dry food. She’s been with us since I remember and she’s like part of the family. She adored my younger sister but she spites me at every turn. My sister is dead.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So he told you everything, the old chatterbox. Totally lacking in character. If he weren’t my father I’d call him a dishrag. But I know he wasn’t always like this. There are troubles that can change a person’s character. Be that as it may, our maid hates itors, particularly mine. Come, we’ll go down to a café and grab a bite. I see that all my plans will come to nothing, but I do believe that your intentions are good and in my situation even a little goodwill helps. Come.”

  “Really, I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ll eat, you’ll eat. I won’t order too much for you anyway since I must literally count every groschen. It’s come to it that when I have to go somewhere, I walk to save the few groschen trolley fare.”

  I got up to go but at that moment there was a knock on the door. It was Isidore Janovsky. He said to Stefa:

  “You’re wanted on the phone.”

  “Who wants me?”

  “Since you’re wanted—go!”

  “It’s Treitler, eh?”

  “Yes, Treitler.”

  “Papa, I’m not at home to him.”

  “Daughter, I told him you were home. Don’t make me out a liar.”

  “I’ve told you countless times that I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Tell it to him yourself. I’m not your errand boy.”

  5

  There was no restaurant in the immediate neighborhood and Stefa took me to a café on the same street. She spoke to me, but she kept her face averted giving the impression that she was talking to herself.

  She asked: “What kind of name is Treitler? Jews have such odd names.”

  “It comes from Treitle. Perhaps a German name.”

  “And what’s the meaning of Treitle? And how is it my father is called Janovsky? It just so happened that this name came in handy when I was attending the Gymnasium, and even more so at the university. Janovsky is a true Polish name but my birth certificate lists me as Sheba Leah. These are all trifles, but one suffers because of them. When my Polish teacher pronounced the name Sheba Leah he did it with such venom, such irony! I never wanted to be Jewish, but to accept Jesus—another Jew and martyr—that wasn’t to my liking either. Must people belong to a group and drag along all its burdens of superstition and discrimination behind them? Why can’t there be one united mankind with one language?”

  “Dr. Zamenhof tried this too. I actually live on the street named after him which used to be part of Dzika Street. People don’t want to belong to a united mankind.”

  “Why not? In Palestine I’ll probably become Sheba Leah again. Jewish nationalism has reared its head there. They return to a land they left two thousand years ago. They want to revive a language that was dead even then. The Jews spoke Aramaic and Greek in the time of Jesus. I’ve read Graetz, I’ve read him. I thought he would solve the Jewish enigma for me but he himself was a fervent nationalist and committed to all its dogmas. Here we are.”

  We had come to the restaurant. We went in, took a table, and Stefa said:

  “I’m not religious, actually, I’m an atheist, but there is some hidden force that directs people’s lives. It’s an evil force, not a good one. I was prettier than my sister, a better student, taller too. She took after Papa. But the men pursued her, and for some reason, ignored me. When she lived, the telephone never stopped ringing. A day didn’t go by without her getting some invitation. She left behind whole stacks of love letters, a regular archive. My affairs—if they took place at all—were brief and always filled with misunderstandings that embittered everybody. Mark came into my life after my sister’s death and I had the eerie feeling that it was she who had kept the men away from me. This was silly nonsense but all kinds of crazy notions flit through one’s brain. When Mark did what he did and had to flee, I got the strange feeling that my sister’s ghost—or whatever you might call it—had revived after the shock of death and that she had resumed her silent war against me. Deep inside we are all rooted in the Middle Ages or maybe even in prehistoric times. This Treitler is actually the only man outside of Mark who is in love with me. But he’s old enough to be my father, in his late fifties if not sixty. And I’d sooner let myself be hacked to pieces than marry him. No one has ever repelled me like he does. Nor can I understand what he sees in me. There couldn’t be two more opposite types than we are. Why am I telling you all this? It’s not entirely without a reason. I want a favor from you. You are my last straw.”

  “I am ready to do everything for you.”

  “Why, of all things? Because I am buying you a glass of coffee?”

  “Not because of that. But—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Once you hear what I want, you’ll have a change of heart and I’ll understand. The story is this. It’s already clear to me that I won’t be leaving on that certificate in the near future. There were several other young men before you and each of them brought his own complications. I’m convinced that this Margolis not only doesn’t want to help me but actually wants to place obstacles in my path. Even if he did want to help me, it would all be too late. I’ll be perfectly honest with you—Mark left me pregnant.”

  Stefa uttered these last words as if in a single breath. Just then the waiter came up.

  Stefa ordered two tomato soups, rolls and butter, and coffee. After the waiter left, she said:

  “Oh, you can still blush. That’s good. I had assumed this was no longer possible these days. You’re still young. I’m five years older than you and in my case, it’s as if I were twenty years older. He didn’t seduce me. You might even say that I seduced him. I desperately wanted to have his child and when it became clear that he would have to flee and we might never see each other again, I demanded that he leave me his child. You probably can’t understand such things because you’re a male. My parents don’t know a thing about it. If they ever found out it would cause a terrible row. They’re so old-fashioned—you might even say backward—they could be living two centuries ago. It would kill them both as surely as it’s day now. I’m not the hysterical sort but I’ve thought seriously about killing them both and then doing away with myself. After what they went through with my sister, I can’t subject them to a new blow.
I still hope that Mark and I can be reunited. Even if he came back to Poland and stood trial it wouldn’t be the end of it. He didn’t murder anybody, merely forged a piece of paper. Nor would I want to destroy his child. My parents still nurse hopes that I’ll provide them with a half-dozen grandchildren. What they need with grandchildren only God knows. The situation of the Jews here is desperate. The Poles have had quite enough of us and I can see their side of it. We’ve lived here for eight hundred years and have remained strangers. Their God is not our God, their history is not our history. Most of us can’t even speak a proper Polish. One time I watched a huge Zionist demonstration with blue and white flags and Stars of David and the whole falderal. They stopped the trolleys and shouted slogans in Hebrew or Yiddish. The Gentiles stood around staring as if at a freak show. Just the same my parents want grandchildren. If I choose not to destroy them and myself as well, I must go through with this phony marriage ceremony regardless whether we can leave at once or must first go through the thousands of formalities. So long as I bear someone’s name the humiliation won’t seem as great to them. Your soup is getting cold.”

  “May I ask what month you are in?”

  “Surely in the fourth and maybe even the fifth. Don’t look so alarmed. It was I that sinned, not you.”

  “I’m not alarmed …. You’re not showing at all … not even a trace.”

  “Soon it will show. I lace my corset so tightly now I can barely breathe.”

  Four

  1

  At first it seemed that Pilsudski’s coup would be bloodless. Pilsudski the marshal and Wojciechowski the president met on some bridge, and after Pilsudski called the other a name, Wojciechowski capitulated. That was what Mrs. Alpert had heard on the radio and that’s what she had passed along to me. But presently the shooting commenced and news came of dead and wounded. People had already paid with their heads or been maimed. A civil war threatened. It was in the interests of many elements that a blood bath erupt. The Ruthenians and White Russians who, following the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, had been left under Polish rule awaited the opportunity to break away from Poland. Russia had lost the war with Poland in 1920 but by now she already possessed a strong army and she wouldn’t have minded regaining her lost territories or simply seizing all Poland and instituting her order there. The Germans would have been delighted to take back Upper Silesia. The Communists at the Writers’ Club whispered conspiratorially and held clandestine meetings. Zinoviev and Kamenev were plotting the world revolution. They had their functionaries in Poland who came to the Writers’ Club with their directives. Nor was there a lack in Poland of those eager to exploit this opportunity to beat Jews. I wanted to do what Jews had done for two thousand years—flee or hide somewhere until the danger passed. But there was no place to run or hide. My enemies were Jewish youths, fledgling writers who lauded the Russian revolution, already glorified Comrade Stalin, wrote odes to the Cheka and Comrade Dzerzhinski, and demanded death for all rabbis, priests, bourgeois, Zionists, and even Socialists who didn’t follow the Moscow line.

  I was shocked to see how bloodthirsty Jewish boys and girls had become. Two thousand years of exile, ghetto, and Torah hadn’t created a biological Jew. All it took was a few pamphlets and speeches to erase everything the books of morals had tried to imbue in us throughout the generations. Within me asceticism warred with the urge to give in to all the passions. I reminded myself a hundred times a day that all was vanity; yet a friendly girlish glance or a compliment about my writing would be enough to arouse me. This inner lack of consistency both astounded and shamed me.

  I lay in bed in my room holding a book of the sort used by storekeepers to mark down their debts and credits and a pencil, ready once and for all to take an accounting of the world, to come to some firm conclusion and commence a life based on my convictions so that my conduct could serve as an example (or a maxim as Kant put it). On a chair nearby I had placed a history of philosophy and a number of other books which might help me restore order to my disturbed spirit. From Bresler’s Library I had borrowed a collection of Tolstoi’s moral stories and essays, Spinoza’s Ethics, Kant’s Critique of Practical Understanding, Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book by the pacifist Forster (I’ve forgotten its title), Payot’s The Education of the Will, and several books on hypnotism, autosuggestion (Coué Charles Baudouin), and who knows what else—all of them works that touched on the essentials. I had even bought The Path of the Righteous, by Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzatto, and the Book of Deuteronomy, which I had considered the wisest work ever created by man. I was ready to reappraise all values even as I heard shooting outside and was involved in an adventure that could bring me only grief.

  What didn’t I scribble into this account book that I had bought from a pushcart of remnants? Regimens for behavior, themes for stories, novels, plays; rules of physical and spiritual hygiene I had learned from this same Payot; all kinds of aphorisms which might have been my own or dimmed memories of something I had read and forgotten; sketches that I couldn’t finish since they lacked plots; and nothing less but a rewrite of the Ten Commandments. Bits of these revised commandments (I think they grew to twelve under my direction) I still recall to this day. “Do not kill or exploit the animal, don’t eat its flesh, don’t flail its hide, don’t force it to do things against its nature ….”

  To “Thou shalt not kill,” I added: “Control the birth of man and beast—He who said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ should have also said: “Thou shalt not overly procreate.’ …”

  To “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” I added that no marriage should last longer than fifteen years. Right next to this piece of audacity I drew a creature with the antlers of a deer, the scales and fins of a fish, and the legs of rooster. Contemplating what I knew of history and my own nature, I had already come to the conclusion that human beings are in constant need of adventure, change, risk, danger, challenge. The fear of boredom is as great as and often greater than the fear of death. But is there a base for ethics in the face of that biological necessity? Aren’t all commandments just wishful thinking? Can there be as much adventure in curbing the emotions as in letting them have their way? Can there be as much hazard in building as in destroying? Can man ever learn to indulge in the whims and excitements of his nature without hurting other people and animals? Many times I had decided that this was impossible, but I kept on returning to this problem of all problems which has been bothering me from my childhood. I still hoped against hope that science, art, technological advance, and permanent study of how to have fun without doing evil to others may replace the lust for murder, rape, treachery, revenge, and all the other destructive passions for which mankind pays such a terrible price. I was dreaming not only of a new philosophy, a new religion, a new social order, but also of new ways of amusing people and giving them the tension which they must have to be themselves.

  Whole pages of the book were filled with figures. Since my job as proofreader of the literary publication wasn’t secure and I was liable at any day to be left without an income, I tried to calculate the minimum amount I would need to avoid starving to death, sleeping in the streets, or asking my brother’s help. Now that he had the job with the Forward he offered me money at every opportunity but I was resolved not to accept it. I had seen so much sponging by the young writers at the Club that I had sworn to myself never to seek help from anybody. I figured out how much starch, fat, and protein one needed to survive and how much this would cost. As for vitamins, I probably didn’t know anything about them or didn’t believe in them.

  The net in which I entangled myself consisted of the fact that I had promised to marry Stefa, in name only, of course. Nevertheless, I intended to stand under the wedding canopy with her and even sign documents in such a way that her parents would be taken in. Thus, even if she didn’t manage to make it to Palestine in time it would mean that she had a husband and a father for her child—at least to the neighbors and distant relatives.
The whole scheme was insane since the child would be born some four and a half months hence and no one would be duped into believing me its father. By this time already, I realized that in moments of desperation people forsake all reason. The question merely was why I had agreed to this.

  The answer was that first of all, I was desperate myself—unable to sleep nights for fear of the draft. Secondly, I somehow couldn’t refuse such an elegant and educated young lady. And thirdly, I yearned for some of the suspense found in the works of Balzac, Victor Hugo, Tolstoi, Dostoevski, Flaubert, Alexander Dumas, and Strindberg. Yiddish and Hebrew literature both suffered from a lack of suspense. Everything in them centered around some yeshivah student who had gone astray, sought worldly knowledge, then suffered the consequences at the yeshivah or at his in-laws’. But I had already grasped the fact that suspense was the essence of both life and art. Mere description wasn’t enough. What was needed was tangled situations and genuine dilemmas and crises. A work of fiction had to draw in its readers. In later years the suspense in my life and in my writing fused in such fashion that I often didn’t know where one began and the other ended.

  The maid, Marila, knocked on my door to announce that I was wanted on the telephone. I asked her who was calling and she countered.

  “A pretty young miss.”

  2

  It was Gina calling. I was supposed to come to her for dinner that night and naturally, to sleep over. I was reconciled to the fact that Gina would talk about death. She often spoke in the tone of one gravely ill and whose days are numbered. I never took her words seriously since she often interspersed these conversations with plans leading months and years ahead. She intended to collaborate with me on a book, a play. I had long since perceived that talk about her death stimulated her sexually. Often in the nights she extracted my promise to attend her funeral and demanded declarations of how and with whom I would spend the time immediately following her death. She went into details that struck me as mad, but it was obvious that they aroused her desire. Even then I knew that one could not question the emotions and that the division between sanity and insanity was remarkably slender. Within every brain and nervous system lurked cells of madness and criminality. Well, but ever since I had moved out of her place I had been haunted by the suspicion that Gina was really sick. She had lost her appetite and lost weight. Her complexion had turned yellowish. She had begun to address me in a strange mixture of irony and maternal concern. She often reminded me that I had promised to say the Kaddish over her even though I had broken the laws of Jewishness and had communicated to her my outlandish theory concerning religious protest.