The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  When they had reached the south gate, their task complete, and they turned to walk back to the synagogue, Hiram Liebmann was filled with gratification by the service he had performed. No matter that he was not pious himself; he had done something useful for the people. Izzy Kracauer was less than satisfied. He was, in fact, in pain. The knuckles on both his hands were bleeding, scraped and splintered from knocking hard on all those doors. The sides of his hands was bruised and turning purple. He had knocked with them after the pain in his knuckles became too great. He showed his hands, hanging limp as cabbage leaves, to Hiram. Hiram held out his own; they were not bloodied, not bruised. He pulled out his handkerchief, wrapped it around his fist, showed it to Isidor. The boy placed the flat of an aching hand to his forehead. He winced at the pain in his knuckles. “Izzy the Dummkopf,” he said.

  At the conclusion of the morning service, Izzy and Hiram were summoned to meet in Rabbi Simcha’s study with that gentleman and the Chief Rabbi. Nervously, Izzy explained what had happened. The Chief Rabbi frowned into his beard.

  “How can we be certain this won’t happen again?”

  “What I was thinking,” Izzy said, knowing he might oversleep on any day, “is that the shammus — that’s me — has an assistant. Hersch Liebmann. So perhaps the Schul-Klopper — which is also me — should also have an assistant. Hiram Liebmann. This gentleman here. If it’s not against the rules.”

  Rabbi Simcha looked at his superior. He knew the Chief Rabbi would not want to admit a mistake to the community, would not want to admit so soon that he had chosen wrong. “Since this is about assistants, Rabbi,” he said, “perhaps I should handle it.”

  “A good idea.”

  The Chief Rabbi strode out of the study in bad humor. But within his beard he was also chuckling. Poor lad with his bleeding hands. The wise aren’t always wise in the ways of the world. A subject for his class at the yeshiva, perhaps. Surely he could find someone who illustrates that, in Genesis, or Leviticus. Somewhere in the Torah, it was his experience, he could find an illustration for just about anything. Also, a justification for almost anything.

  In Rabbi Simcha’s office, Izzy was examining the floor. It was plain wood here, no red carpeting as in the Chief Rabbi’s study. Hiram Liebmann was looking at the ceiling, smiling at his private thoughts. Rabbi Simcha was burdened with that pink scar on his face, and also pox scars. Surely he would help a deaf mute. Yahweh had made freaks of them both.

  “Can the Schul-Klopper have an assistant?” the Rabbi asked. “An interesting question. Looking at your hands, Isidor, I would say that, for this evening, you must have an assistant. For medical reasons. So I would urge you to walk together, and let Hiram do the knocking — with his hand wrapped in a rag. Just as Solomon Gruen, peace be upon him, always wrapped his hand on the Sabbath. This afternoon I will read in the Talmud. To make sure dividing the job is not forbidden. When the Sabbath is over, you both will meet here. Is that understood?”

  Isidor said it was. He led Hiram out the door. Somehow with his aching hands he would find a way to explain.

  Later, after dark, Rabbi Simcha presented Isidor Kracauer with the new hammer made by the cabinet maker. “You are still the official Schul-Klopper,” he said. Then he presented Hiram Liebmann with the worn hammer that had been used by Solomon Gruen. “And you can help him,” he said, pointing from one to the other, and knocking on air. Hiram nodded, smiled. The meaning was clear.

  “There will be no formal ceremony,” the Rabbi said to Izzy. “He’s just your helper. Understood?”

  Izzy said he understood. He thanked the Rabbi. As they left the study, he reached up and put his arm around the shoulders of his new assistant.

  The next afternoon, Hiram, with a handful of kreuzer in his pocket, walked to the shop of the rag dealer Ephraim Hess. He pointed to a long black coat that was hanging in front of the stall. Indicating that he wanted to buy it, he held out his palm with coins on it. The rag dealer took eight of the coins. He lifted down the heavy coat with the frayed sleeves.

  When they were being summoned to services that evening, people on the west side of the lane greeted a Schul-Klopper carrying the hammer of Solomon Gruen, and wearing the familiar long coat of Solomon Gruen. Some, before they saw his face, wondered for a moment if a miracle of resurrection had occurred. Quickly, however, they shed the notion; they did not believe in resurrections. Later, Yetta was startled to find the familiar black coat with the frayed cuffs and the milk stain back in her apartment. She sat on a kitchen chair, wiped her brow with her apron. She looked up at the ceiling. “Adonai,” she said, “I’m an old lady. I have an old man to take care of. Bitte, don’t play games with me.”

  —You heard about the Schnapper girl?

  —I heard! People were angry. Everyone was whispering. The nerve of her!

  —Right into the schul she ran. Right down among the men. Then she hugged him!

  —She hugged him? That I didn’t hear. Whom did she hug?

  —The new Schul-Klopper. Rubbed her breasts up against him, they say.

  —In front of the Rabbi? The Schul-Klopper rubbed her breasts? Who says?

  —Those who saw. Then it got worse. She lay down in front of the gate guard. In the dark!

  —No!

  —Afterward she stood right by the gate. Close enough to kiss him.

  —She kissed the gate guard? You saw?

  —I didn’t see. I’m telling you what I heard.

  —For shame! For shame!

  —People saw through their windows. She was walking alone in the lane. When any good girl would have been home sleeping.

  —It just goes to show. It’s a curse on her father, the Court Jew, Schnapper.

  —A curse? For what?

  —For chutzpah. To name a girl Guttle. The Good. He was asking for trouble. Maybe she’s not so good.

  —I never thought of that. It looks as if she’s Guttle die Schlecht.

  — Guttle the Bad! I’ll have to tell my wife. She always said the Schnapper girl was too come-hither, with those down-turned lips of hers.

  —Too come-hither for what?

  —It was dark, I didn’t see. You’re the one who saw.

  All day Saturday she stayed in her room. She came out only to eat, which she could barely do, and to empty the chamber pot. When her mother asked what the matter was, she said her stomach hurt. Which was true. She felt as if she’d been kicked by a horse, so loathsome had been the words of the Kapitäin.

  His invisible leer had drained her spirit. She’d always acted as if bereft of care, eager to take risks, to explore the unknown — as much as was possible between the ghetto walls. Never afraid to speak her thoughts. She did not know from where this penchant came; her mother was far more timid. Now she had to ask herself if her mother’s way was better. If the Kapitäin had really wanted to have his way with her, she realized, he could have kept silent about barters. He could have quietly unlocked the gate. In her naiveté she would have gone out, to gaze at the river rippling in the light of the moon, at the trembling reflections of boats held fast in the current. But at what terrible cost?

  Thirsty, she forced herself to stir from her bed, went to the kitchen of the empty house, poured herself water from a pitcher, and drank. In the vegetable basket on the counter were a large cabbage and three potatoes. Her mind made a connection, her rage began to build anew. With both hands, as if performing a ceremony, she lifted the cabbage out of the basket and set it on the cutting board. From a nail on the wall she took down a heavy cleaver with a large rectangular blade, the one they used for quartering chickens; the blade was thick and sharp enough to crunch through bones. Staring at the cabbage, pale green and white, tightly wrapped, she tried to find in it the face of the Kapitäin. She squinted, trying to resolve it into features. It was no use, the night had been dark, and the morning seemed long ago. Regardless, she lifted the cleaver high above her head. She tensed, ready to split the cabbage in half with a strong downward stroke

&nbs
p; Her raised arm began to shake. She couldn’t do it. She put the cleaver down.

  Returning the cabbage to the basket, she turned away, humiliated, took two steps towards her room. Then, with a demonic smile, she turned back. She fondled the three potatoes, clutched the longest, slimmest of the three, set it on the cutting board. It wobbled slightly; she steadied it with her fingers. When it was still, she lifted the cleaver, and quickly, with a swift, downward thrust, lopped it in two. But her aim missed the point intended.

  Her hands were trembling as she put the cleaver down. How could she have done such a thing? She wondered if, like Melka of the South Gate, she was going mad.

  Melka, it was said, was locked in a fourth floor attic across from the cemetery, escaping sometimes at night to walk the lane while the people slept. She had been a rich girl, the legend went, who had lived in a fine house overlooking the river at the time the ghetto was built. As the walls went up around her, as the gates were installed and locked, she slowly went insane. That had been three hundred years ago, and still she lived in her attic, people said, mostly women, absorbing century after century the free-floating insanity induced by confinement within walls and gates, by the absence of sun, by inescapable stench. This the benefactress Melka did so that only she, not all those in the lane, would be mad. Some said her constant ingesting of the roots of madness had swollen her brain so large that her head could no longer fit through the door. Others said this could not be so, insanity has no mass, the human capacity for madness is infinite.

  Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Guttle pulled off her night shift and shuddered into her clothes. Her sister Avra appeared in the doorway.

  “Why did you cut a potato in half?”

  Guttle straightened her skirt, slipped into her shoes. “It wasn’t me, it was Melka. I only meant to circumcise it.”

  Avra stuck out her tongue and disappeared. Guttle returned to the mirror. As she pulled her comb through tangled locks they stung her scalp like the pricks of pins. She wondered if Melka, too, had longed to walk by the river — if that was how her madness had begun.

  8

  The weekly meeting of the Judengasse Council was held as always at three o’clock Sunday afternoon. It was a convenient time for everyone, the gates to the outside world being locked. The seven current members were seated around a long oak table in the council chamber at the rear of the synagogue. Through the back wall they could hear the muffled voices of the yeshiva boys.

  The Chairman achieved the full attention of the members when, after several preliminaries, he said: “The next piece of business carries over from last week. You will recall that we decided by a vote of six to none, with one absent, to petition the Frankfurt Town Council for a liberalization of the laws regarding Jews. Specifically, that we be permitted to leave the ghetto on Sundays, and that we no longer be forbidden to enter public parks.”

  Thaddeus Levi, an importer of silks, motioned to the Chairman. “I was unable to attend the last meeting because of a family problem. I would like to speak out against this action.”

  “We’ve already voted,” Wolf Schnapper said.

  “You can still hear my views.”

  “Very well, Thaddeus, go on,” the Chairman said.

  Levi, an elderly man with a stringy gray beard, rose in his seat. “I did not hear the arguments in favor of this petition. I imagine they are obvious. How wonderful it would be if the Frankfurt Council agreed to change the rules. How wonderful to take our children and grandchildren to the parks on a Sunday afternoon. Let them see flowers they have never seen, and lakes. Who could argue against that? But my question is, Why would the Frankfurt Council agree to such a thing? Why would they change the rules that have been in place for hundreds of years?”

  “The worst that can happen is they refuse,” Schnapper said.

  “That would be no small thing, Wolf. If we send this request, and they refuse, imagine the disappointment. Our people will be dreaming of precious freedoms, and their hopes will be broken. And we wouldn’t be able to ask again for maybe another fifty years. Worse than that, the Gentiles could get angry. They could impose conditions that are even worse.”

  “They could crack down on the import trade,” Max Kalter, a teacher, said.

  Levi glared at Kalter. “That’s not a fair remark. This is not about me or my business. It’s what’s good for the Judengasse.”

  Loud voices erupted next door. One yeshiva boy was shouting the brilliance of a certain point made centuries before by Rashi. Another trumpeted the “more current” views of Moses Mendelssohn. Nothing in the world gladdened the yeshiva more than a philosophical argument.

  Levi resumed his seat. Chairman Kalman Reis, a banker, had to wait for the shouting next door to die down. Then he said, “All right, Thaddeus, you’ve had your say. Does anyone want to change his vote.”

  No one stirred. “Then the vote shall be recorded as six for and one against.”

  Joshua Lamb, a younger man with ginger hair and a short beard, slim and powerful from regular exercises as captain of the Fire Brigade, by trade a dealer in used furniture, rarely spoke at these meetings, but he did so now. “Herr Levi has one good point, I think. About the disappointment if we are refused. I am still in favor of the petition. But perhaps we could agree to keep it a private matter, within the council. Make no mention of it until we receive an answer. Then, if it’s a joyous one, the entire Judengasse can celebrate. If we are turned down, no one needs to know.”

  Rabbi Simcha responded. “Our people have endured worse disappointments for centuries. They could endure this as well, if it happens. They should know what we are doing.”

  “I agree,” Kalter, the teacher, said.

  They took a vote. By a margin of five to two, they decided to keep the petition secret until an answer was received from Frankfurt. That could take months, they knew. Rabbi Simcha was asked to read aloud the draft petition he had written. He pulled a paper from his leather envelope, and he read:

  “To the most noble and illustrious City Council of Frankfurt-am-Main:

  “As a human being every Jew has the same rights as all others, and a just claim to freedom. There is no other place in Germany where Jews are so restricted in the enjoyment of fresh air and a clean street as we are. Jews in Vienna enter public promenades without hindrance. In Mainz and Mannheim and in nearby Hanau the parks are open to Jews. Only we are denied this right. We therefore do petition the Frankfurt Council to accord those rights to us, and to unlock the gates of the Judengasse on Sundays, when we can most readily exercise those rights.

  With all appropriate humility, etc.”

  The council members sat silently, taking in what he had read. They debated whether the first sentence, asserting equal rights for Jews, went too far; they were by no means asking for equal rights. Rabbi Simcha argued that the assertion of equality was the basis for all that followed. “It shows how little we really are asking for,” he said.

  In the end the vote on the petition was six in favor of sending it and one against. The Chairman said he and the Chief Rabbi would sign the request on behalf of the Judengasse, and would send it by post the next day.

  Another eruption of noise. Partisans of Rashi and Mendelssohn were shouting again. When their voice levels lowered, the Chief Rabbi spoke.

  “If I may, Kaspar, I have something unfortunate to tell the council. It concerns the funds in the synagogue. This afternoon our new shammus — he avoided saying Schul-Klopper, but sly smiles circled the table — “our new shammus — he does have a good mind, whatever you may be thinking just now — he came to me with disturbing information. He told me — and I ask that what I say now be held in confidence, not to leave this room — the reason why will become clear — he told me that as his first act as shammus he checked the financial records of the schul. He compared the information in the ledger, as to cash on hand, with the actual cash on hand. He expected no discrepancy — but found one. A large one. He discovered that a hundred gulden are mis
sing from the treasury.”

  An intaking of breath around the table led Rabbi Eleazar to pause.

  “The shammus, Isidor Kracauer, came to me at once. I personally went over the ledger. I personally counted the funds. The boy is correct.

  “I’ve known this information only a few hours. I felt the council should be told. But nobody else need know. Not now. We don’t want to smear the reputations of innocent parties. Especially of the deceased.”

  He waited for his inference to sink in. “The easy line of suspicion would lead to the keeper of the money, Solomon Gruen, peace be upon him. There is no evidence at this juncture to suggest that Solomon was involved. On the contrary, had he been involved, he could easily have tampered with the books, to make the numbers agree. He did not do that. Besides, I knew him well. He was a humble man, but one of great integrity. He loved the schul, he would never steal from it. Gossips in the street, however, need little evidence. So I ask the solemn pledge of all of you that this will not be mentioned outside this room, until we complete an investigation.”

  The Rabbi, who had been leaning forward over the table, his eyes fixing each of them in turn, leaned back in his chair.

  “What about that assistant of his, that Liebmann boy?” Thaddeus Levi said. “That’s two years’ salary for him. Didn’t they used to call him the Wild One?”

  “That was a long time ago,” the teacher said.

  “That was my first thought,” the Chief Rabbi conceded, “since after Solomon he had the easiest access. I spoke with him. Hersch Liebmann claims to have no knowledge of the money.”