Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  Abraham had remarkable business acumen. Long before department stores were introduced into Poland, he founded an emporium in Szczakowa, a small railway junction north of Krakow where trains converged from Austria, Prussia and Russia. This store stocked everything under one roof, from curtains, tables and washing boards, to wheels of Swiss cheese and women’s corsets.

  Spira’s store was the wonder of the region. People used to marvel that you could go in there naked, destitute and hungry, and come out clothed, fed and equipped for life. Abraham’s persuasive staff made sure that many customers left with considerably more than they’d intended to buy. Soldiers were sometimes persuaded that brassieres were double purses, and simple country women were talked into buying dresses three sizes too big for them. ‘That dress makes you look like Queen Jadwiga, it fits you like a glove,’ salesmen would gush, bunching folds of loose material behind the woman’s back. ‘Wojtek won’t be able to take his eyes off you at church on Sunday!’

  All the twelve Spira children worked in the store while Ryfka sat placidly behind the counter, taking the money. The sons, who were confident and good-looking, flirted with the wives and daughters of the district officials over their ribbons and laces and, according to gossip, occasionally augmented their income by taking money out of the till.

  Leonora, the oldest of the three Spira daughters, who came to be called Lieba, worked so hard in her parents’ store that one customer thought she was a hired help. ‘Why are you killing yourself for your employers? I’ve watched you slaving here from morning till night,’ the woman remarked. ‘It’s not right. Don’t let them take advantage of you like that!’

  The girl looked down, her fair complexion flushing with embarrassment. ‘I’m Lieba Spira. My father owns the store,’ she replied, and turned away from the woman’s shocked expression.

  At a time when there was no shortage of willing country girls to work in town in exchange for a few groschen, food and a corner to sleep, the Spiras’ acquaintances muttered that it was preposterous that Lieba should be a drudge in her parents’ store. But some people are destined for a life of unremitting toil and that turned out to be my grandmother Lieba’s destiny.

  When Abraham Spira made inquiries about the prospective bridegroom, he found out that although Daniel Baldinger wasn’t educated, he was respected in Kazimierz as a devout and honest man. He was pleased to see that, like him, Daniel wore well-cut suits and trimmed his beard, unlike those Chassids, whom he regarded as fanatics. With his knack for sizing people up, Abraham saw that this was a decent man on whom you could depend. The betrothal contract was soon drawn up.

  Tongues wagged when news got around that Lieba Spira was to marry a man who was neither young, handsome nor educated. And when they heard the scandal about his first wife, the neighbourhood gossips shook their heads in horror. Old Spira must have lost his mind. Fancy marrying a young maidl to a tradesman already advanced in years, and a divorced one at that. With all his money, why didn’t Abraham Spira get his daughter a doctor or lawyer, or at least a scholar?

  Neither Lieba nor her mother had any say in the matter. By now Ryfka Spira had become resigned to the fact that her autocratic husband always got his way. She was an energetic woman with deep-set eyes in a bony face. Daniel was pleased that his prospective bride had a softer, prettier face than her mother, and a rounded figure that looked promisingly fertile.

  Lieba, on the other hand, was bitterly disappointed with her father’s choice. At thirty-five, Daniel was almost twice her age. He was too old, too stern-looking and too serious. She had dreamed of falling in love with someone young and handsome, but instead of a glass slipper she was getting a second-hand shoe. Pouring out her heart to her younger sister Berta, she sobbed, ‘It’s awful to have to marry an old man who’s been married before. I don’t love Mr Baldinger and never will. I don’t want to marry him, but what can I do? Father will never change his mind.’ In their family, Abraham’s word was law. Lieba wasn’t rebellious enough to defy him, and besides, she had no money of her own and nowhere to go.

  When Daniel arrived in Szczakowa for his wedding, his father-in-law, who was only fifteen years his senior, strolled beside him along Jagiellonska Street, the dusty main street of this country town, where artisans plied their trade in poky rooms. There was the tailor, the shoe maker and the apothecary whose wooden drawers smelled of cloves, powder and mushrooms. As in most little towns in Poland, over one third of Szczakowa’s residents were Jews, and most of them were merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen, millers, innkeepers and retailers.

  The Spiras lived on Parkowa Street, a wide tree-lined street facing the sand dunes. Unlike Daniel, who lived modestly, his future in-laws lived in fine style in their large one-storey house. Their table always overflowed with food and the ornately carved Biedemeier sideboard displayed Sevres porcelain.

  On the Saturday morning before the wedding, when he was about to leave for synagogue to read from the Torah, Daniel was astonished to find that his future father-in-law had left home without him. An impatient man who waited for no-one, Abraham had donned his black patent leather shoes and silk top hat, and strode to synagogue alone. The synagogue was around the corner from the Spiras’ house, in Kilinskiego Street, where the boughs of old chestnut trees formed a dense canopy overhead. Next door to the synagogue was the mikveh, the ritual bathhouse where women immersed themselves in a pool of natural water after menstruating or before their wedding, to cleanse and purify their bodies.

  The following day Lieba wore a long lace veil fastened with a garland of flowers when she stood beneath the chuppah beside her bridegroom. ‘Behold thou art consecrated unto me, according to the laws of Abraham and Moses,’ Daniel repeated after the rabbi, while Ryfka pulled back her daughter’s veil and placed the goblet of wine against her trembling lips.

  After the rabbi had blessed the newly-weds and read out the marriage contract, Daniel stamped on the glass goblet to crush it, in commemoration of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Ryfka dabbed her eyes as she looked at her comely, fresh-faced daughter. Mr Baldinger certainly did look old, but he seemed kind and gentle. She sighed and hoped that she’d done the right thing, giving in to Abraham on this, as in everything else in their life.

  After the wedding festivities were over, Lieba bade a tearful farewell to her large family to whom she was devoted. She had spent very little time with her bridegroom before the wedding and dreaded having to live with this solemn stranger. She felt that her dreams had been shattered just like the glass her new husband had crushed under the chuppah with his patent leather shoe.

  After the friendly forests and big skies of Szczakowa, Lieba felt miserable in the big city with its hard-eyed strangers and supercilious buildings. Entombed in her silent flat at 19 Miodowa Street, she missed the resinous smell of pine needles, the undulating stretches of biscuit-coloured sand and the hubbub of her large family.

  Her new home, which Daniel had bought with her oldest brother Judah and his wife Hania, was a handsome stone-faced corner house which stands there to this day. It faced the carved, colonnaded facade of the newly built progressive temple whose walls jutted out so that the rumbling horse waggons had to swing out sharply when they turned the corner.

  Miodowa Street was one of the boundaries of the Jewish district of Kazimierz. The Jews had been confined to this district after being expelled from Krakow in 1497 after a succession of pogroms. Although some had gravitated back to the city, it wasn’t until the new Austro-Hungarian constitution of 1867 that they were officially permitted to live wherever they chose. Wags used to joke that the only successful campaign in the revolution of 1848 was the march of the Jews from Kazimierz to Krakow. Like many others, Daniel took advantage of the liberal decree and moved to the outer edge of Kazimierz, closer to the city.

  Feeling sorry for the young girl he’d placed in a city cage, Daniel told her stories every night to cheer her up. He told long complicated stories about rabbis with magical powers who could see into peo
ple’s hearts, and sages who could see into the future. Although Daniel wasn’t talkative, he was a compelling storyteller who kept his new wife enthralled with his inexhaustible tales.

  ‘In the village of Lizhensk there lived a poor tailor called Moishe-Yudl,’ one story began. ‘Moishe-Yudl had eleven children, a wife and a mother-in-law, and they all lived together in one tiny room with all their chickens. The children screamed, the women fought, and the hens squawked. Moishe-Yudl was a patient and pious man, but he couldn’t stand this commotion, so one day he set off to see his rebbe for advice.’

  While he talked, Lieba noticed that her husband’s neat ears lay flat against his finely shaped head and that, beneath his jutting brow, his intense dark eyes looked kindly into hers. Like a child listening to a fairy tale, she moved closer not to miss a single word. ‘After hearing the poor tailor’s story, the sage said, “Moishe-Yudl, buy a goat and keep it inside your home. Come back to see me in one week’s time.” The tailor was horrified but you can’t argue with the rebbe. So he trudged home and got a goat as the rebbe advised.’

  Lieba’s eyes were round with astonishment. How could a wise man suggest such a thing? Surely he’d misunderstood the poor man’s predicament? Eleven children in one room with chickens, and now a goat! But Daniel just smiled and continued his story.

  ‘When Moishe-Yudl added the goat to his tiny hut, life became unbearable because now the goat was running riot as well. It was chewing up his cloth, unravelling the thread, upsetting his wife’s saucepans and eating their food.

  ‘Moishe-Yudl could hardly wait for the week to pass. When he came back to see the rebbe a week later, his hair was wild, his face was wrinkled, and his body sagged. “Oy vey iz mir! My life is not worth living,” he lamented. “I can’t work, my wife cries all day, my mother-in-law doesn’t stop cursing me, and the house, may heaven forgive me, is like a pigsty. Rebbe, what shall I do?”’

  Lieba’s brown eyes were glued to Daniel’s face. ‘“Moishe-Yudl, get rid of that goat and come back in a week’s time,” the rebbe ordered. This time when the tailor came back he had a big smile on his face and two plump chickens for the rebbe. “Rebbe, may the Almighty bless your wisdom, I got rid of the goat, and for the past week, life has been wonderful. Now all I have at home is just my wife, my mother-in-law, the chickens and the eleven children!”’

  Lieba laughed and clapped her hands with delight, but in years to come, there must have been times when she thought that only by getting a goat would her own household seem more tolerable.

  Gradually she came to like the serious stranger she had married. Although she would have preferred a livelier companion, Daniel was gentle and never broke his word. As he was more devout than her father, she had to observe more religious and dietary rules; but, accustomed to doing whatever was expected of her, she ran the household exactly as he wished.

  Daniel also realised that his wife was a treasure. Lieba was energetic, efficient and frugal, had good business sense and did her best to please him. The furniture gleamed, the silver sparkled, and every Friday night when he sat down to a dinner of rich chicken broth with flat white beans that melted in his mouth, succulent beef brisket and apple strudl with the finest pastry he’d ever tasted, he thanked the Almighty not only for the gift of the Sabbath but also for sending him such a devoted, competent wife.

  In fact, their life together would have been very pleasant were it not for one major problem. Children, the main goal of this union, failed to arrive. Month after long month, the tension between them grew. Doubts which neither dared articulate began to gnaw at them both. Each time Lieba discovered the relentless red stain, the spectre of Daniel’s first wife haunted her. He had divorced Reizel because she’d been unable to bear children. Was that also to be her fate? Initially she hadn’t wanted to marry him, but now she couldn’t bear to be abandoned.

  One day Lieba climbed the stairs, shoulders slumped, to confide in Hania, her brother Judah’s wife. ‘If I can’t have children, I hope a carriage runs me down in the street,’ she blurted. ‘Daniel divorced his first wife because she was barren. I couldn’t bear it if he divorced me,’ she sobbed.

  Her sister-in-law clucked her tongue. ‘It isn’t right to divorce a woman because she’s barren,’ she commented. ‘Maybe Daniel is the one who can’t have children. After all, he didn’t have children with his first wife either.’

  But Lieba shook her head. ‘I’m sure it’s my fault,’ she sighed.

  Every evening, after Daniel had finished his bookkeeping, Lieba watched the precise way he placed a sheet of carbon paper on top of his metal paper press to produce copies of accounts and receipts. As he worked he spoke little, but he felt increasingly uneasy. Perhaps God had intended him to be childless after all.

  In 1894, four years after they had stood under the chuppah, Daniel couldn’t wait any longer. Like Moishe-Yudl in his story, he went on pilgrimage to see his rebbe. Unlike rabbis, who were scholars trained to interpret Jewish laws, the rebbes were sages whom Chassidic Jews consulted whenever they had serious problems. Even though my grandfather didn’t belong to this ultraorthodox sect, throughout his life he consulted the Sanzer Rebbe just as his own father had done.

  With his devoutness on one hand, and his assimilated appearance on the other, Daniel stood at the crossroads of the traditional and progressive world. Unlike the Chassids who left their beards uncut, wore big black hats and long black coats, and displayed their prayer fringes outside their clothes, my grandfther trimmed his beard, wore European clothes and kept the prayer fringes out of sight.

  Unlike most other Chassidic rebbes who lived in luxury, the Sanzer Rebbe was modest and unassuming, and that’s probably what appealed to my grandfather. It was to Nowy Sacz that Daniel came on pilgrimage over the Tatra mountains at the age of forty to ask the Sanzer Rebbe’s advice about the problem which had now obsessed him for fourteen years. There was an aura of piety in the austere book-filled room where Aron Halberstamm, the Sanzer Rebbe, held his court. After praying with the other worshippers, Daniel asked the Rebbe for his blessing so that he would have a son. Aron Halberstamm had piercing pale blue eyes and a grey beard that hung over his chest in two V’s like a Biblical prophet. When he looked at someone he seemed to be able to see inside their soul. ‘You will have a son,’ the sage told Daniel. ‘Call him Avner, after the son of King David.’

  Soon after this visit, Lieba realised with mounting excitement that the crimson stain which she dreaded so much had not appeared that month. She said nothing until she was absolutely certain. Telling good news too soon was a sure way of alerting malicious spirits which might, God forbid, cause a miscarriage. But when there was no longer any doubt, Lieba told Daniel the news he’d waited so long to hear. Looking at her flushed, smooth face and shining brown eyes, Daniel was filled with joy. ‘The Almighty has answered my prayers,’ he said.

  He knew that the child would be a son.

  CHAPTER 2

  When his longed-for son was born in 1895, my grandfather called him Avner, just as the rebbe had instructed. For Daniel, the birth of Avner was a sign of divine blessing. When on the eighth day the mohel performed the ritual circumcision which symbolises the Jews’ covenant with God, Daniel resolved to consecrate his son to the service of the Almighty. He carried little Avner tenderly to synagogue wrapped in his prayer shawl and, from the moment the baby was able to lisp out his first words, taught him to say Hebrew prayers.

  Avner did seemed blessed. A remarkable child with eyes like dark blue pools in a triangular little face, he had an astonishing memory and a precocious mind. He would become a rabbi. In a patient but determined manner that brooked no opposition, Daniel taught his little son that from the moment his eyes opened in the morning, he must remember that he owed his life and everything in it to God. To praise the Almighty, Avner had to wash his hands before saying his prayers, to wear his tzitzis, or prayer fringes, if he walked further than four kubits, and to say a blessing whenever he saw a rainbow.


  Every morning before dawn, Daniel woke the warm, sleepy child and took him to synagogue for morning prayers. As they crossed Miodowa Street, Avner dragged his feet, looking back at the pretty carvings and recessed windows of the important-looking building his father called ‘The Temple’. Dew still glistened on the cobblestones and the city was just beginning to stir. Horses’ hooves echoed in the streets as carters bent under bags of coal, blocks of ice, and freshly baked bread.

  Sometimes the child stared at water carriers in soft cloth caps trotting along the pavement to balance the buckets suspended from a pole across their shoulders. As father and son turned the corner into Kupa Street, they passed men in wide-brimmed hats and black coats which brushed the dusty ground as they walked.

  Inside the spartan prayer house called Chevre Tilem, where worshippers cloaked in prayer shawls swayed back and forth in prayer, Daniel held Avner’s little hand in his and basked in the admiration of the bearded faces around him. On the way home Avner quickened his step, longing for his breakfast of crisp kaiser rolls and poppy-seed sticks which the baker’s boy delivered each morning.

  Impatient for his God-given son to begin learning the sacred language of the Torah, Daniel sent him to cheder at Chevre Tilem when he was three years old. Most boys were enrolled at four or five, but Daniel couldn’t wait for Avner’s rabbinical training to begin.

  Cheder was the place where childhood ended. At this religious day school, Jewish boys learned Hebrew and studied the Torah. No coloured pictures, childish stories or lively games relieved the tedium of this dour classroom where Avner had to memorise words he didn’t understand, learn hundreds of rules and write strange squiggles.

  Avner was too small to see over the top of his wooden desk and fidgeted on his hard chair. Whenever he tried to scramble down to go to the lavatory, the melamed’s harsh voice told him that he’d already been. For six days a week he had to learn confusing rules and endless prayers. Whenever he stared at the shaft of light slanting in through the grimy windows, the teacher cuffed his ears or swished the birch cane against his little stockinged legs.