The Invisible Wall

by Harry Bernstein

  God saved her from sin, she said simply. God rescued her from the devil, and sent her home without the umbrella. All day she could not rest, thinking of that umbrella lying there on the bench, just waiting for someone to pick it up and take it home. Oh, how she prayed that the park would remain empty until sunset, when she could return and claim her prize. And as soon as the sun had set, and the last prayer was said in the synagogue, Mrs. Harris rushed back to the park. But, alas, the umbrella was gone.

  She had never forgotten it. She sometimes even to this day, years after the incident had taken place, dreamed of that umbrella. “But I am not sorry,” she told my mother. “I did not sin.”

  Hearing this story again from the lips of the woman who was involved, my mother was almost convinced that she could not permit Lily to take the exam on a Saturday.

  “Perhaps,” she said to Lily, “we could ask them to let you take the exam on another day.”

  “No, no, no,” cried Lily, thinking no doubt what she did not dare say, that she would only be calling attention to the fact that she was a Jew. This would make it even harder still for her to get into the grammar school.

  “Couldn’t you at least talk to the headmaster about it?” my mother asked. “If he’s so anxious for you to take the exam, perhaps he’ll do something about it. All you have to do is tell him that on Shabbos we’re not allowed to write.”

  “No,” Lily again cried, “I can’t do that. I can’t tell him that.”

  “Why?” asked my mother, bewildered. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  There was no doubt of it, Lily could not be made to do this no matter how much was at stake for her. My mother brooded for a while over the possibility of going herself and talking to the headmaster, but instead decided to go to the rabbi and discuss it with him.

  It was this that saved Lily’s life—because she’d sworn once that if she couldn’t take the exam she would kill herself. My mother came back from her talk with the rabbi smiling. He had given dispensation. Under the circumstances, he had said, because her entire future depended upon it, and especially because she had threatened to take her own life if she could not take the exam, it was permissible.

  I saw Lily close her eyes and draw in a deep breath when my mother told her this. Her hand went to her heart, as if there had been a pain there. How much it had meant to her we could scarcely realize. We watched her from the door as she went off on a Saturday morning to take the exam. All the other people on our street were going off to the synagogue at that time, all marching down the street behind one another carrying the little velvet bags that contained their siddurs and talithes. She turned onto Brook Street, and we watched her walk swiftly forward, her long silken hair swaying behind her back.

  I noticed that Arthur Forshaw had come out onto his doorstep and was watching her too.

  Then late in the afternoon she came home looking pale and worn, and not very happy. My mother looked at her anxiously, and asked, “Well?”

  “I failed,” Lily said simply.

  A shocked look came onto my mother’s face. “You failed? They told you already?”

  “They didn’t have to tell me. The results won’t be in for a while yet. But I know I failed.”

  Relief showed now on my mother’s face. She knew her well. She always thought she had failed after a test at school. And she always passed, and passed well.

  “You’ll pass,” she said, confidently.

  “No, I won’t.”

  She went upstairs, and she slept all through the day and the evening and through the night and part of the next day. She mustn’t have slept properly for weeks, and she was making up for it.

  THE DAYS SLOWLY GREW LONGER, the weather warmer. It rained, and the sun shone intermittently through the clouds, and a long curved rainbow formed behind the square brick tower of the India Mill. The sparrows were busy in the gutters of our houses, and you could hear their chirping in the early morning, and see them during the day picking up bits of old dry manure from the horse droppings and flying back with them to the gutters to build their nests.

  At St. Peter’s they were preparing for holy week. Once again the partitions were being pushed back during the day, and everyone stood on the benches to sing Easter songs. At cheder, at night, we were learning about our own holy week, Passover. We were studying the Haggodah, and the story of how Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and away from the wrath of the Pharaoh. We were also learning to recite the four questions and sing the songs that we would have to know at the seder, the feast that was held in every Jewish home on the first two nights of Passover to commemorate the release of the Jews from slavery. The rabbi sang well in the fine, deep, rolling voice that we’d heard often in the synagogue, and we sang with him.

  We came trooping in one night, as late as usual, perhaps a bit later because it was a warm night. We had loitered even more than ever gazing down through the mill grating at the stoker, feeling guilty and prepared for a good hard scolding from the rabbi, only to find him in an extraordinarily good humor.

  He was standing in front of the fire, which was blazing less heartily than in the winter, but was lit nevertheless, his back toward it, the long cigarette holder in his hand. He was actually smiling, and did not make his usual sarcastic remarks, but only seemed anxious for us to take our seats.

  Once we had seated ourselves, he said, “I have a surprise for you tonight, an announcement to make. We are going to be honored by the presence of a brilliant young Hebrew scholar, who will speak to you about Passover and its meaning to the Jewish people. He is a young man whom I have known since the day he was born.” He smiled, and paused, and puffed on his cigarette, and continued. “As you know, I am not only a rabbi and your teacher, I am a father too, and the young man of whom I speak is my son. If I sound boastful, you must forgive me, but I am no different from all fathers. I am inclined to feel that my children are superior beings endowed only with the greatest of qualities. However, it is common knowledge that when my son was ten years old he could read the chomish from beginning to end. He also studied the Talmud. He speaks and writes perfect Hebrew.”

  All this was already familiar to us, and the rabbi had good reason to be proud of his son. There were other things, though, that he did not mention and that we’d heard: rumors that there was trouble between the rabbi and his son, that the boy no longer attended the synagogue, that he did nothing in fact except sit in the library on St. Petersgate and read.

  It was as if all this was over and forgotten, and the rabbi awaited his son’s arrival that night with anticipation and excitement. He was in a joyful mood. Instead of boxing ears, he pinched them and patted heads as he went among us correcting our mistakes. He frequently consulted his watch that he kept tucked in a vest pocket, and would also look toward the doorway. Then at last we heard the door open, and footsteps sound along the hall.

  Quickly the rabbi halted the lesson, and we all glanced toward the door, waiting. He appeared in a moment, and stood hesitating in the doorway. He was of rather short stature, slim, with a pale, ascetic face, shiny glasses set on the bridge of an aquiline-shaped nose, and dark, curly hair. He resembled the mother a great deal. He was about sixteen then, the older of the two children the rabbi had, the other a girl.

  He did not seem to want to come in, and the rabbi went toward him, put an arm around his shoulders, and urged, “Come in, Max, come in. What are you afraid of?”

  He did seem a little afraid. He hung back a moment longer before he let his father lead him in, and then a little argument ensued between them in low voices. Sitting in the front row with the smaller children, I was able to hear some of what was being said. Obviously, Max had not wanted to come, but had been talked into it by his father, and now regretted it. He did not want to give us the talk he had promised.

  “But why,” I heard the rabbi say, “why don’t you want to speak to them? They have been looking forward to it all evening.”

  “
Father,” he said, “I might not say the right things.”

  “What are the right things?”

  “The things you want me to say.”

  “But I want you to say what you want to say, not what I want to say.”

  “You might be sorry, Father.”

  “Then, Max, I’ll be sorry.”

  He must have had infinite confidence in his son to have said that. He must also have known very little about him, and the wanderings his mind had taken in the past year or so. All he could think, perhaps, was that he had brought the boy back to the cheder, and the rest God would take care of.

  He retreated to the fire, and stood with the long cigarette holder in his hand, a new cigarette just fitted into it and lit, smiling and proud as Max stood in front of us.

  There was a pause, a brief silence broken by a slight tittering in the back row where Zalmon and his friends sat, quickly shushed by a look from the rabbi, and then Max began to speak.

  His voice was not very strong, nothing like his father’s. It was weak and shaky at first, though it gathered some strength as he went along.

  “Not too long ago,” he said, “I sat like you in those rows of benches, learning my Hebrew and, at this time of the year, learning the Haggodah in preparation for the seder, and listening to my father tell us about the ancient Hebrews and their flight from Egypt. Like you, my heart was warmed by this tale, and I felt new pride in being a Jew, and belonging to a religion that has endured thousands of years of suffering and persecution.”

  I could not help glancing at his father as he was saying this. The rabbi’s face was glowing and he stood erect with the cigarette holder in his hand and a little cloud of blue smoke in front of him—a large, strong man and quite a contrast to the slight figure of his son. He was drinking in every word the boy was saying.

  I too turned my attention back to the speaker. He was talking now of the seder.

  “There was nothing I loved more than the seder. The table decked out in its finest white tablecloth, the candles bright and shining, the wineglasses filled with red sweet wine into which we would dip a finger for each of the plagues that were visited upon the cruel Egyptians. The bitter herbs, symbols of our suffering, in their little saucers, nibbled at when the appropriate time came, the plate of matzohs covered with a cloth, the door open for the angel to come in. All of us gathered around, our heads buried in the Haggodahs, following the story as my father in his white robe intoned the long tale of the flight from Egypt, and the house smelling of chicken soup.

  “There was magic and wonder in it all,” he continued. “I looked forward to it all year long. I could hardly wait for the service at the synagogue to be over so that I could go home and sit with my father and mother and sister at the table. I wanted to listen to this ancient story of the Jews’ suffering and flight and the miracle that permitted the Red Sea to open and give them escape and all the plagues that God visited upon the Egyptians for their cruelty.” He smiled. “This particular bit of vengeance always pleased me,” he said. “God was more just than ever in that moment. Perhaps what I liked best of all was my own participation in the seder, when I rose to ask the four questions. It was the duty of the son of the household to do this, and I was the son. You all know the questions. I am sure that my father has taught them to you. ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ They begin with that one, and I always spoke loudly and firmly, and my father gave me the answers to each one. But that night, the night that is so important to me, when I was about fourteen, just a year after my bar mitzvah, there was a fifth question.”

  He paused, and I happened to glance at the rabbi just then. He was holding the long cigarette holder upward in his hand, smoke curling from the cigarette, and his mouth was open a little, the round red cherry-like lips pursed as if in surprise. Then Max went on, and I swung my eyes back to him.

  “I must say this,” Max said. “I must be quite honest. My question did not come from within my soul, as if it were a miracle, so to speak. I had been doing a great deal of reading. I have always read a great deal. My father will testify to that. But in the early part of my life, until my thirteenth birthday, my reading was confined to the Talmud, the early Hebrew scholars, the ancient Greek philosophers, the British, French, and German classics. But then in the library I had stumbled on other books, writers of a different sort, with views that were strange to me at first, strange and disturbing. Gibbons, Smith, Seligman, Engels—and, yes, Marx. They mean nothing to you now. Perhaps they will someday, Marx especially.”

  Now, glancing at the rabbi, I saw a distinctly shocked expression on his face. It no longer glowed with pride. I thought for a moment that he was about to say something, but he checked himself as Max continued to speak.

  “So perhaps I was already primed for this question. Perhaps it had been there gnawing inside me for some time before. But I did not dare ask it that night. I would have upset the seder completely, and hurt my parents, and I did not want to do that. I kept it inside me, and it is there still, gnawing away, troubling me. I have tried for my father’s sake, for my mother’s sake, to eradicate it, but I cannot. It persists constantly, that fifth question, and especially now that another seder is near. I think constantly of all the suffering that is going on in the world, and all the injustices that are taking place. I think of the cruelties that man has inflicted upon man throughout the centuries, long before the Jews fled from Egypt to escape the wrath of the Pharaoh, and long after that. I think of the slaughters that have taken place in the wars throughout history, the one that is being fought now in France, and I ask myself, why does God countenance all this? If God is our creator, the supreme, kind, and benevolent being whom we all worship, why does he permit us to destroy one another? And why too does he permit one religion to persecute another when both are his children? And so there came that terrible question—supposing, supposing it is all fantasy—is there really a God?”

  “No!”

  The cry burst from the rabbi. There was an agonized look on his face. We all stared at him, and Max turned around to face him, a sorrowful look on his face.

  “I warned you, Father,” he murmured. “I said you were not going to like it.”

  “It is the devil talking. It is not you. Get out of here. Go home and cleanse your mouth.”

  Max did not say anything else. He turned and walked out of the room, and we heard his feet marching through the corridor and the door closing after him. The rabbi was pacing up and down before the fire, his head bent, an expression on his face that was bitter and filled with pain. He seemed completely oblivious of our presence. After a moment he roused himself sufficiently to wave a hand and say, “Go home.”

  We quickly sprang up from our seats and hurried out, chattering excitedly to ourselves over the strange thing we’d witnessed that night, not quite understanding it, not at all sure what it was Max had said that angered his father so much, but aware that it must have been something of great significance.

  IT CREATED A GOOD DEAL of talk on the street, and in my mother’s shop. They all knew about it from us, but they knew more than we did. Their heads were close together as they bent over the counter toward my mother, and their voices whispered excitedly. I heard some of it. I heard them say that he was a revolutionist, and that he was involved with anarchists and socialists and even, God help him, with the Russian Bolsheviks. They clasped their hands together and shook their heads back and forth and moaned, as if they were in the synagogue saying prayers for the dead.

  Soon, however, everyone was busy with other things, chiefly with preparations for the coming Passover holiday. Special dishes were being prepared in advance. The house smelled of fermenting beets that would become rossel, the red juice we would drink all through Passover, and another kind of smell from the mead my mother was brewing in the cellar, and still another from the chicken fat being rendered, which would be spread on the matzohs.

  Now the matzohs themselves arrived. This always created a lot of excitem
ent on the street, on both sides, with the Christians curious onlookers as Levine’s horse and cart came clattering around the corner and drew up at our curb. It was piled with boxes of matzohs, all ordered in advance by the families on the street. We clustered around eagerly as Mr. Levine, his pasty face sweating with exertion, handed out the boxes to us, calling out the names as he did so. “Jacobs, Mittleman, Cohen, Finklestein, Berger, Zarembar, Blank.” Hands reached for them, boys carried them into the houses, and there they were stored carefully to await the first day.

  Finally, after the house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the last of the forbidden bread removed from sight, usually given to some Christian family across the street, the remaining crumbs—the chometz—were swept up, placed in a bag, and taken out into the street to be burned. With all the Christians staring at us in something like horror at what must have seemed to them a pagan rite, smoke coming from all the bags, flames flaring upward, and the women murmuring prayers, we burned them.

  Then at last it was the first night of Passover. We dressed in our best clothes. That year, thanks to the shop, all of us had shoes, and all three of us boys had new suits, and we walked proudly to the synagogue, Joe carrying the little purple velvet bag that contained the one siddur we shared and our talithes. It was clear, warm weather. Everyone strode briskly, in front and behind us. New shoes squeaked as we marched through the streets. Mill workers coming home just then stared at us and then bent their heads and continued their clattering in the opposite direction.