The Penitent

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  * * *

  THE PENITENT

  Contents

  THE PENITENT

  Author’s Note

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  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  THE PENITENT

  Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1904 in a village near Warsaw, Poland, and grew up in the city’s Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter. Although he initially considered becoming a rabbi like his father, Singer abandoned his religious studies in his twenties in favour of pursuing a career as a writer. He found a job as a proofreader for a Yiddish literary magazine and began to publish book reviews and short stories. In 1935, as the Nazi threat in neighbouring Germany grew increasingly ominous, Singer moved to the United States of America. He settled in New York, where he worked as a journalist for a Yiddish-language newspaper, and in 1940, married a German-Jewish refugee.

  Although Singer published many novels, children’s books, memoirs, essays and articles, he is best known as a writer of short stories. In 1978, he won the Nobel Prize, and he died in Florida in 1991.

  In 1969 I had my first opportunity to catch a glimpse of the Wailing Wall, about which I had heard so much. It looked somewhat different from the Wailing Wall carved on the wooden cover of my prayer book. That one showed cypresses, but I didn’t see any trees here. Jewish soldiers guarded the entrance way. It was daytime and a crowd of Jews of all kinds had gathered. There were Ashkenazic and Sephardic. Youths with earlocks hanging to their shoulders, wearing knee-length breeches, rabbinical hats, and low shoes, spoke among themselves in a Hungarian Yiddish. A Sephardic rabbi dressed in white and surrounded by a circle of the curious preached in Hebrew about the Messiah. Some visitors recited the mourner’s prayer, and others chanted the Eighteen Benedictions; some wound phylacteries around their arms, others swayed over the Book of Psalms. Everyone wore skullcaps, even those who were clean-shaven. Beggars held out hands for alms, some even haggling with their benefactors. The Almighty conducted business here on a twenty-four-hour basis.

  I stood and looked at the Wall, and at the surrounding streets, which were inhabited by Arabs. The houses seemed to stand as if by a miracle, one looming over the next and leaning out and jostling for a better view of the stone wall that stood as a memento of the Holy Temple. The sun blazed with a dry heat and everything smelled of the desert, of ancient destruction, and of Jewish eternity.

  Suddenly a little man in a long gaberdine and a velvet hat came up to me. Through the gaping front of his coat one could see a wide ritual garment with fringes that hung nearly to the knees. He had a whitish beard but a young face, with eyes black as cherries. They bore witness that he was a young man who had grayed early.

  “I knew that you would come here,” he said.

  “You knew?”

  “If you come here every day you’re bound to meet everyone you want to sooner or later. The Wall is like a magnet that draws Jewish souls. Peace be with you.”

  And he shook my hand as rabbis do, softly, without pressure.

  “I still don’t know who you are,” I said.

  “How could you? When his brothers sold Joseph, he didn’t have a trace of beard yet, that’s why they didn’t recognize him later. The last time you saw me I was clean-shaven. Now I’m a Jew like a Jew should be, thank God.”

  “A penitent, eh?” I used the words baal tshuvah.

  “baal tshuvah means one who returns. I came back home. So long as Jews were real Jews, only the body was in exile, not the soul. But when the Jews cast off their spiritual yoke, the body became emancipated and the soul went into exile. Oh, was that an exile—a bitter exile!”

  “I still don’t know your name.”

  “My name happens to be Joseph. Joseph Shapiro.”

  “A good Jewish name. Where did we meet?”

  “Where didn’t we? Whenever you lectured in New York, I was in the audience. I was a fervent disciple of yours. True, you didn’t know me. I had to introduce myself to you wrote. Here, I’ve stopped reading all that worldly stuff. But I occasionally still glance into a Yiddish newspaper and I see your name. At my age I became a yeshiva student here. We study the Gemara, the Tosaphot, other commentaries. Only now when I’m studying the Torah do I see what I’ve been missing all these years. Well, praised be God that we’ve met. How long will you be staying in Jerusalem? Where are you staying? You once wrote that you like to hear stories. I have a story for you, something unusual.”

  We agreed that he should come to my hotel the following day. I invited him for lunch, but he didn’t believe hotel kitchens were strict enough in their observance of the dietary laws.

  The next day precisely at three he knocked on my door. I had ordered fruit and cookies for him. He sat down on the sofa and I took a seat on a chair. This is what Joseph Shapiro told me.

  THE FIRST DAY

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  1

  Where shall I begin? First of all, let me tell you about myself. You should know that I’m a member of a rabbinical family, descended from holy Jews. On my mother’s side I stem from Shabbetai Cohen and whoever stems from Shabbetai Cohen also stems from Rabbi Moshe Isserles, from Rashi, and from King David himself. At least, that’s what the genealogical specialists say. But what does it matter? I was in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis, may their name be blotted out, bombed Warsaw. I fled with other Jews over the Praga Bridge and went on foot to Bialystok. Although my beard is white, I’m a few years younger than you. I won’t tell you my whole life story, it would take too long. I wandered through Russia, I starved, I slept in train depots, I suffered the whole gamut of troubles. Afterward, in 1945, I smuggled myself out of Stalin’s land and came to Lublin. I met my former sweetheart there. Our meeting was a miracle, but when you don’t have faith, you don’t see the miracles. We had one answer for everything—chance. The world was chance, man was chance, and everything that happened to him was chance. In Warsaw I had been a member of the Young Men of Zion. My father, may he rest in peace, had a dry-goods store on Gesia Street and I helped him out a bit there and gave the rest of my time to Party affairs and reading.

  My girlfriend, Celia, was an avowed Communist. We often waged fiery discussions. When I disagreed with her, she said what all Communists say in such instances—that after the revolution she’d hang me from the nearest lamppost. But in the meantime, we went to the opera and often to lectures at the Yiddish Writers’ Club. You weren’t lecturing at that time, but you did publish in the Literary Pages. Both Celia and I were devoted readers of this magazine, although I didn’t like its leftist views and Celia felt it wasn’t leftist enough. We liked Yiddish literature, Yiddish culture, and all the rest. We attended the Yiddish theater. Celia came from a Hasidic family, too. Her father was a follower of the Gur rabbi and her brothers wore long earlocks. They all perished.

  When we met in Lublin again, it was almost like a resurrection of the dead. I had been sure she was dead and she considered me a corpse, too. She was already cured of the Communist affliction. Anyone who lives in that country can no longer nurse any illusions. But naturally we both remained what is called progressive. I remained a Zionist, and she still believed that socialism was the cure for all the world’s ills. Certainly Stalin was no good, but if Trotsky or Kamenev had remained in power, or if the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks had united, Russia would now be a paradise. You know their delusions: “If Grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley.” At our very first reunion we discussed how to save the world, as befits two members of the intelligentsia. Soon we took our bundles and struck out in the direction of Germany. You couldn’t do anything legally then—we had no passports or other papers. The worldly laws are so designed that if you don’t want to be a partner to their crimes you must become a victim o
f their crimes. We have our own country now, thank God, but our leaders learned much from the Gentiles. Don’t stand here and don’t sit there. Everything is forbidden. They mock the Shulhan Arukh, but their codes of laws, excuse the comparison, has a thousand more restrictions than ours. But more of that later.

  Of course, neither of us was a virgin any longer. What would have restrained us? Walking and dragging our packs and fearing murderers of every kind, we confessed to each other. While we starved in Russia, and—if you’ll forgive me—deloused ourselves, we indulged in love affairs. I had Jewish women, young shiksas, and older Russian women, and she had her own adventures. The truth is that I had never forgotten her. Although I did not believe in the hereafter, I often spoke to her soul and justified myself for the way I was living. Celia told me that she had similar feelings about me. Why drag it out? We got married in a German D.P. camp not far from Munich. I hoped to get a visa to Israel, but it just so happened that in 1947 we got visas to America. All the refugees envied us—what luck to go to the Golden Land!

  We sailed to Halifax and from there took a train to the States. Celia had learned how to be a seamstress in Russia and a half dozen other trades. I had wandered as far as Tashkent. I had no trade, but my father had been a merchant, and when you’re born into a business household, you’ve got business in your blood. I began by working in a dry-goods store in New York, but another refugee proposed that I become his partner in a bungalow that he was about to build. This was the beginning of our real estate business. The one bungalow became ten, the ten—fifty. I began to earn big money. Celia decided to continue her interrupted studies and enrolled in Hunter College. She had graduated from the Gymnasium in Warsaw and had dragged her diploma over all the borders. She had also been a student at the Wszechnica, a free university. She finished college in a few years with honors; in the meantime, I had become a wealthy man. We rented a big apartment on West End Avenue and had a summer home in Connecticut. But we had no children. Celia had had an operation and she could no longer get pregnant.

  Now that I’ve become what I am, all these things seem foolish to me. What did I need with all that money? And what good did the education do Celia? She studied literature but the whole course consisted of taking some bad writer and ascribing meanings to him that he himself never even dreamed of. Well then, are the so-called good writers any good either? What important things did Eliot or Joyce have in mind when they were writing their empty phrases? What did they want? One page of The Path of the Righteous contains more wisdom and psychology than all their writings. They’re often boring, too, because they have nothing to say. She often read me her literary essays. She had learned good English. But during all this time we still read the Yiddish newspapers, and we didn’t miss a word you published. Whatever it may have been you said, at least you said it clearly. You know all the faults of modern man, no doubt, but you don’t want to elaborate on the consequences of your knowledge. If you took one step farther, you’d become a full-fledged Jew.

  “To know faults isn’t enough,” I interrupted.

  “You also know all the good traits of the real Jew.”

  “That’s not enough either. For this you must have faith that everything stated in the holy books was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Unfortunately, I don’t have this faith.”

  “Why do you say ‘unfortunately’?”

  “Because I envy those that do.”

  “We’ll talk more about this. Faith doesn’t come by itself. You must work for it.” He went on with his story.

  When a person makes a lot of money but lacks faith, he begins to concern himself with one thing: how to squeeze in all the pleasure possible. Often in the midst of all the hustling I’d ask myself, What do I gain from all this money? What does my material world consist of? I don’t need to be a rich man to eat! The people with whom I associated, my partners and others, only kept boasting about their conquests of women. Woe to those conquests! They spent time with call girls, plain whores that a madam sent to the motel when they phoned her. Others had mistresses. In the circles in which we traveled, adultery was considered the highest virtue, the very essence of life. Literature was nothing but a textbook of lechery. The theater presented more adultery, and so did movies and television. These conquests aren’t conquests at all, since modern women want the same as modern men. They read the same books, go to the same theaters, and have more free time than men.

  The fact is that Celia satisfied me and I had no need of others, but she often expressed a kind of wonder that I wasn’t having any outside affairs. When we went to the theater, the play often showed a wife deceiving her husband, and Celia laughed and applauded all the sly tricks and obscenities. In the theater, the father and wage earner is always presented as an idiot, and the lover is the wise one because he gets everything free. I often felt that there was something wrong in this attitude. Somehow I knew that Bolshevism, Hitlerism, and all the misfortunes of humanity stem from this contempt for the Ten Commandments. But how did you put it? “When you lack faith, what can you lean on?” At times I’d jokingly ask Celia, “Since you’re so enamored of modern culture and so fond of modern plays, how is it you haven’t taken a lover?” And she’d reply, “I’m too involved in my work.” We kidded ourselves as modern couples do who, even when they aren’t unfaithful, constantly tease each other and threaten infidelity.

  After some time I let myself be swayed by my partners and acquaintances to go sniffing around for whores. But the moment it came down to brass tacks, I’d be filled with such revulsion that I literally had to vomit. I didn’t feel the slightest desire for them. The sex organs, for which wise guys have so many ugly names, express the soul of a man. They are by nature moral, spiritual, intended for love and devotion and reproduction. The Cabala calls the sex organs signs of the Holy Covenant. They are symbols of God’s covenant with man, the image of God. I don’t have to tell you this; you’ve studied and you know.

  Well, since whores were repugnant to me, I had to find a so-called decent woman. That’s how the expression goes—decent. What today’s man considers a decent woman, our grandfathers considered a whore. They dress like whores, they talk like whores, they read filthy books, they only seek adventures. Their “decency” consists of the fact that they don’t walk the streets looking for customers, and for this they demand a higher rate of pay. I found myself a woman like this. Her name was Liza. She had had a husband but she was divorced. She had a daughter in college who joined the hippies, although at that time they may not have been called that. What’s the difference? Liza supposedly had a job, but she complained that it didn’t pay enough to support both her and her daughter. She became my mistress and began to milk me for money. I paid her rent, took her to restaurants and theaters, bought her clothes, furniture, what not? But she needed more than I was willing to give her. Those who take from others never have enough. And just as she grabbed from me, her daughter grabbed from her. She wrote alarming letters from college and Liza showed them to me; a few times the girl came to New York. Knowing that I helped her mother out with money, she was particularly sweet to me, kissed me, hugged me, and told me that she regarded me as a father. Her mother even hinted that if I was good to her daughter, she would be good to me. I knew full well what she meant.

  Already by then, even during moments of passion, I sensed the tawdriness of this affair. I had bought love just like my partners. Well, when a man marries he also supports his family. Didn’t I provide Celia with all her needs? Hadn’t my father supported my mother? It’s true that my mother had a half dozen children with my father, ran the household, and worked even harder than he. But those were other times, other attitudes. Liza was often very passionate when she was with me, acted loving, and even tried to persuade me to divorce Celia and marry her. She told me her life story, all her problems and disappointments. According to her, she was a victim of male brutality. All she ever wanted was to be a faithful wife and a good mother, but she had married a charlatan, and so forth and so
on. She had divorced him and he had promised to pay her alimony, but he moved to another state and didn’t pay a penny. She had been forced to work and slave to raise her daughter.

  I sometimes heard Liza trying to lecture her daughter, but the girl responded with insolence. The daughter was even more greedy than the mother. Once she was arrested with a group for smoking marijuana, and I had to put up bail to get her out. She studied sociology, the so-called science of how to make the world better. While they befouled the world, they became experts on how to save it. I wasn’t so insensitive as not to see the shame and deception of all this, but I still wallowed in the slime because it offered me alleged comfort and because there was nowhere else to go—or so I told myself. What option did I have? To grow a beard and earlocks and become a pious Jew, like my father and grandfather? How did you put it earlier: “For that you must have faith,” and I had no faith at all that Moses gave the Torah that he took from Heaven. I had read the Bible critics who guaranteed me that everything said in our holy books was false. Didn’t the Mishnah make out of one law in the Pentateuch eighteen laws, and the Gemara, from the eighteen, seventy? Hadn’t the rabbis added new restrictions in every generation?

  Sometimes pious Jews with beards, earlocks, and hats just like this I’m wearing now came to my office asking for donations for yeshivas. I’d throw them a few dollars, but with resentment. I hated their sponging ways. I asked them, “Who needs so many yeshivas? And how did the yeshivas help when Hitler came to power? Where was God when they burned His Torah and ordered those who studied it to dig their own graves?” The Jews had no answers to this, or so it seemed then. The fact is that when they tried to talk to me, I interrupted and told them I had no time. I was sure beforehand that they couldn’t supply the answers to my questions. I gave them handouts convinced that it was money thrown away.