Shosha

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You still don’t know? How long can you go on not knowing? Tsutsik, I seem to be able to make peace with everything but death. How can it be that all the generations are dead and only we shlemiels are allegedly living? You turn the page and can’t turn it back again, but on page so-and-so they’re all right there in an archive of spirits.’

  ‘What do they do there?’ I asked.

  ‘That answer I don’t have. Perhaps we are there already, dreaming the same dream. Either everything is dead or everything is alive. I want you to know that it was only after you left that Morris became great – he never had been as great as he was in those months. He lived with us on Zlota Street until the Jews were herded into the Ghetto in October of 1940, which was more than a year after the Germans came in. As you know, before the war he could have gone to England as well as to America. The American consul urged him to leave. The war with America didn’t start until 1941. He could have traveled through Rumania, through Hungary, even through Germany. With an American visa they let you pass. But he stayed with us. One time I said to Celia, “I’m ready to die but I want one favor from you and the Almighty if He exists – that I never see a Nazi.” Celia said to me, “Haiml, I promise you that you won’t see their faces.” How could she have promised such a thing? She herself had grown in stature. She wasn’t the same Celia any more. Our situation and Morris’s moving in with us uplifted her to a degree that can’t be put into words. She became beautiful!’

  ‘Where you jealous of him?’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense. I too grew a bit. The Angel of Death waved his sword but I stuck out my tongue at him. Outside, it was the destruction of the Temple, but inside our house it was Simchas Torah and Yom Kippur rolled into one. Next to them I, too, became cheerful. I’m not telling these things in proper order – how can you speak of such things in order? My only uncle died in the month of October. It wasn’t possible to go to Lodz – a Jew couldn’t show his face anywhere. Still, I dared the dangers. I walked the whole distance on foot. The trip there and back was a real odyssey.

  ‘As you know, Celia had prepared a room we called the Cave of Machpelah. She started to prepare it while you were still in Warsaw, but the day they announced on the radio that all men were to cross the Praga Bridge and you decided to leave together with Shosha, that day the room became Feitelzohn’s and my only place. We ate there, we slept there. Morris did his writing there. I had brought money from Lodz – not paper money, but golden ducats my father left with my uncle for me. They were saved from the time of the Russians. Just the fact that I had returned with such a treasure to Warsaw and wasn’t searched or killed on the way is beyond belief. But I did come back. Then Celia had her jewelry. At that time you could get everything for money. A black market developed almost at once.

  ‘After my odyssey, I was so depleted that my last drop of courage drained away. Like Morris, I wouldn’t go into the street, and Celia became our contact with the outside world. Each time she went, we weren’t sure we’d see her again. Your Tekla, too, ran errands for us. She risked her life. She had to go back to her village because her father died.

  ‘The days were days of sorrow. Our life started at night. There wasn’t much to eat, but we drank hot tea and Morris talked. He talked those nights as I never heard him talk before. The heritage of generations had wakened within him, and he hurled sulphur and brimstone against the Almighty; at the same time the words themselves blazed with a religious fire. He castigated Him for all His sins since the Creation. He still maintained that the whole universe was a game, but he elevated this game until it became divine. That was probably how the Seer of Lublin, Rabbi Bunim, and the Kotzker spoke. The essence of his words was that since God is eternally silent, we owe Him nothing. It seems I once heard similar words from you – or maybe you were quoting Morris. True religion, Morris argued, was not to serve God but to spite Him. If He wanted evil, we had to aspire to the opposite. If He wanted wars, inquisitions, crucifixions, Hitlers, we must want righteousness, Hasidism, our own version of grace. The Ten Commandments weren’t His but ours. God wanted Jews to seize the Land of Israel from the Canaanites and to wage wars against the Philistines, but the real Jew, who began to be what he is in exile, wanted the Gemara with its commentaries, the Zohar, The Tree of Life, The Beginning of Wisdom. The Gentiles didn’t drive us into the ghetto, Morris said, the Jew went on his own, because he grew weary of waging war and bringing up warriors and heroes of the battlefield. Each night Morris erected a new structure.

  ‘We could have escaped up to the time they locked the Jews in the ghetto; people went back and forth to Russia. In Bialystok there was a Jew from Warsaw, a half writer, half madman, and a whole martyr. His name was Yonkel Pentzak. He kept going from Bialystok to Warsaw and back again – a kind of holy messenger or a divine smuggler. He smuggled letters from wives to husbands and from husbands to wives. You can imagine the risk connected with such journeys! The Nazis finally got him, but until they did, he served as a sacred mail carrier. He brought me a few letters. Some friends of mine had gone there and they begged us to join them, but Celia didn’t want to and Morris didn’t want to, and after all, I couldn’t leave them behind. What was there for me in that alien world? The whole crew of writers and leaders that sent us greetings had overnight turned about and become ardent Communists. Denouncing one’s fellow was now the order of the day. Their writing consisted of praising Stalin, and the reward for this was at first a plate of groats and a bed, and later jail and exile and liquidation. I came to the conclusion that what people call life is death and what people call death is life. Don’t ask any questions. Where is it written that a bedbug lives and the sun is dead? Maybe it’s the other way around? Love? It wasn’t simply love. Tsutsik, do you have a match, maybe? I’ve gotten into the habit of smoking, actually right here in the Jewish land.’

  I went to get Haiml matches, and at the same time I bought him two packs of American cigarettes.

  He shook his head. ‘Are those for me? So help me, you’re a spendthrift.’

  ‘I took more from you than two packs of cigarettes.’

  ‘Eh? We didn’t forget you. Celia kept asking about you – maybe someone had heard something, maybe something of yours had been printed. After you left Warsaw, where did you go – not to Bialystok?’

  ‘To Druskenik.’

  ‘You were able to get there?’

  ‘I smuggled myself over.’

  ‘What did you do in Druskenik?’

  ‘Worked in a hotel.’

  ‘Well, you did the right thing to stay away from the writers. You couldn’t become a Communist, and the anti-Communists were soon sent to Siberia. Later they did the same to most zealous Stalinists. What did you do in 1941?’

  ‘Kept on going.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I dragged along till I came to Kovno, and from there I went to Shanghai.’

  ‘Got a visa, eh? And what did you do in Shanghai?’

  ‘Became a typesetter.’

  ‘What did you set?’

  ‘The Shitah Mekubbetzet.’

  ‘Well, a crazy race, the Jews. I heard there was a Yeshiva there that published books. You didn’t write?’

  ‘I did that, too.’

  ‘When did you go to America?’

  ‘At the beginning of 1948.’

  ‘I left Warsaw in May of 1941. Morris died in March.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take Celia along?’

  ‘There was no one to take along.’

  ‘Was she sick?’

  ‘She died exactly a month after Morris, in what they call a natural death.’

  3

  Haiml and I squeezed our way into a bus going to Hadar Joseph, a suburb of Tel Aviv with housing for new immigrants. The passengers cursed each other in Yiddish, Polish, German, and in broken Hebrew. The women fought over seats and the men took sides. One woman had brought along a live chicken. The bird tore loose from the basket and began to fly over
the heads of the passengers. The driver shouted that he would throw out anyone who caused a disturbance. After a while things quieted down and I heard Haiml say, ‘Well, a Jewish nation. The newcomers are all out of their minds – victims of Hitler, bundles of nerves. They always suspect they’re being persecuted. First they cursed Hitler, now they curse Ben-Gurion. Their children or perhaps their grandchildren will be normal if the Almighty doesn’t send a new catastrophe down upon us. What can you know of what we went through! You haven’t said anything, but you’re probably wondering why I had to marry again after Celia. Before, Genia and I were two worms crawling separately; then we began to crawl together. Until recently we lived in a tin shack. Later, we got the apartment we have now. How much can a body tolerate? She isn’t Celia, but she’s a good person. Her husband was a teacher in a Yiddish school in Pietrkow. A Bundist. Genia believed in Stalin for a while, until she got a taste of him. Funny, she knew Feitelzohn. She once went to a lecture of his about Spengler and he autographed a book for her. She’s an orderly in a hospital where they bring the wounded in ambulances. The Red Mogen David. It just so happens she’s off today. She knows all about you. I gave her your books to read.’

  We came to Hadar Joseph. Lines of wash stretched from one flat roof to the other. Half-naked children played in the sand. Cement steps led directly into Haiml’s kitchen. Outside, it stank of garbage, asphalt, and something else sticky and sweetish that was hard to identify. The kitchen smelled of sorrel and garlic. Next to the gas range stood a short woman with short-trimmed hair – black, mixed with gray. She wore a calico dress and over her bare feet cracked slippers. She had apparently undergone surgery, since the left side of her face was compressed, full of scars under the chin, and her mouth was crooked. When we came in she was watering a flower in a pot.

  Haiml called out, ‘Genia, guess who this is!’

  ‘Tsutsik.’

  Haiml seemed embarrassed. ‘He has a name.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just the opposite,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me, that’s how we refer to you,’ Genia said. ‘Four years I’ve been hearing it day and night – “Tsutsik,” “Tsutsik.” When my husband thinks well of someone, he speaks of him without stopping. I had the honor of meeting Dr Feitelzohn, but I only know you from a picture that appeared in the Yiddish paper. Finally I see you in person. Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing someone to the house?’ she said, turning to Haiml. ‘I would have put the place in order. We battle here constantly with flies, beetles, even mice. Years ago I didn’t consider that insects or mice were God’s creatures, too; but since I’ve been treated as if I were a beetle myself, I’ve come to accept things one doesn’t want to accept. Please, go into the other room. Such an unexpected guest. What an honor!’

  ‘You see her cheek?’ Haiml pointed. ‘That’s where a Nazi hit her with a piece of pipe.’

  ‘Well, why talk about it?’ Genia said. ‘Go in the other room. Excuse me for the state it’s in.’

  We went into the other room. A big sofa stood there, one of those that serve as a sofa by day and a bed at night. The apartment had no bathtub, only a toilet and a sink. This room seemed to serve both as a bedroom and a dining room. There was a bookcase, where I spotted Feitelzohn’s Spiritual Hormones and several of my books.

  Haiml said, ‘This is our land, this is our home. Here, maybe we’ll have the privilege of dying if we’re not driven into the sea.’

  After a while, Genia came in and began to straighten up. Even as we sat there, she swept the floor and spread a cloth over the table. She excused herself again and again for the mess. Evening was beginning to fall by the time she served dinner – some meat for herself and Haiml, vegetables for me. It struck me that the couple mixed meat dishes with dairy. I had assumed that despite the fact Haiml talked like a heretic he would be observing Jewishness in the Land of Israel.

  I asked, ‘Since you aren’t religious, why did you grow a beard?’

  Genia put down her spoon. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Oh, a Jew should have a beard,’ Haiml replied. ‘You have to be different from Gentiles in some way.’

  ‘The way you have lived, you’re a Gentile, too,’ Genia said.

  ‘As long as I have never beaten or killed anybody, I can call myself a Jew.’

  ‘It’s written somewhere that whoever breaks one of the Ten Commandments must break them all,’ Genia said.

  ‘Genia, the Ten Commandments were written by a man, not by God,’ Haiml said. ‘As long as you don’t harm anyone, you can live any way you want. I loved Feitelzohn. If they told me to give up my life so that he could live again, I wouldn’t hesitate. If there is a God, let Him be witness to what I say. I love Tsutsik, too. The time of property will soon pass and there will evolve a man with new instincts – those of sharing: Morris’s very words.’

  ‘Then why were you such an anti-Communist in Russia?’ Genia asked.

  ‘They don’t want to share – they want to grab.’

  It grew silent and I heard a cricket – the same sound that came from the cricket that chirped in our kitchen when I was a boy. The room filled with shadows.

  Haiml said, ‘I am religious – in my own fashion. I am religious! I believe in the immortality of the soul. If a rock can exist for millions of years, why should the human soul, or whatever you choose to call it, be extinguished? I’m with those who died. I live with them. The moment I close my eyes they are all with me. If a ray of light can travel and radiate for billions of years, why can’t a spirit? A new science founded on this premise will emerge.’

  ‘When does the bus go back to Tel Aviv?’ I asked.

  ‘Tsutsik, you can sleep here,’ Haiml said.

  ‘Thanks, Haiml, but someone is coming to see me early in the morning.’

  Genia cleared the dishes and went to the kitchen. I heard her close the front door, but Haiml didn’t switch on the lights. A pale glow shone in through the windows.

  Haiml began speaking to me, to himself, and to no one in particular: ‘Where did all the years go to? Who will remember them after we’re gone? The writers will write, but they’ll get everything topsy-turvy. There must be a place somewhere where everything is preserved, inscribed down to the smallest detail. Let us say that a fly has fallen into a spiderweb and the spider has sucked her dry. This is a fact of the universe and such a fact cannot be forgotten. If such a fact should be forgotten, it would create a blemish in the universe. Do you understand me or not?’

  ‘Yes, Haiml.’

  ‘Tsutsik, those are your words!’

  ‘I don’t remember saying them.’

  ‘You don’t remember, but I do. I remember everything that Morris said, that you said, and that Celia said. At times you uttered ridiculous foolishness, and I remember that, too. If God is wisdom, how can there be foolishness? And if God is life, how can there be death? I lie at night, a little man, a half-squashed fly, and I talk with the dead, with the living, with God – if He exists – and with Satan, who certainly does exist. I ask them, “What need was there for all this?” and I wait for an answer. What do you think, Tsutsik, is there an answer somewhere or not?’

  ‘No, no answer.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There can’t be any answer for suffering – not for the sufferer.’

  ‘In that case, what am I waiting for?’

  Genia opened the door. ‘Why are you two sitting in the dark, eh?’

  Haiml laughed. ‘We’re waiting for an answer.’

  He just wanted a decent book to read ...

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