The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  True, all Lodz echoed his triumph, and not only Lodz but the neighboring towns as well, but the thousands of rubles he had been forced to lay out left a huge gap in Haim Alter’s coffers. In addition, the season was slow, and the banks had grown leery about lending money. Because of this, Haim Alter felt vexed these days and unconsoled by his momentary success.

  And as if out of spite, the thought of his indebtedness assaulted him just as he paused for the silent rendition of the eighteen benedictions at morning prayers.

  True, he had no exact knowledge of the extent of his losses since neither he nor Samuel Leibush could decipher the ledgers, but he knew that things weren’t going as usual. Cash was constantly short; notes fell due and went unpaid. In addition, the payrolls could not be met on Thursdays, and the workers were prevented from observing their Sabbaths.

  Not that they dared complain. But they sighed aloud, and this upset him. Worst of all, he couldn’t pray in peace. At a time when a Jew must divest himself of all extraneous thought, business took precedence in his mind over piety. He no longer even enjoyed his meals or his naps on the soft, plush ottoman.

  Haim Alter racked his brain for a way out of his dilemma. The factory was working full time as usual. Whether their wages were paid on Thursdays or a few days later, the workers did what they were supposed to. They worked late on Saturday and Thursday nights, as they always had. They continued to buy their own candles. Samuel Leibush was as faithful as any dog. What other savings could be effected?

  No matter how hard he thought, Haim Alter couldn’t come up with the answer. Why had the profits diminished? What was wrong?

  Even more than he hated being forced to think, Haim Alter abhorred worry. Ever since his marriage (he had used his dowry to open the factory), he had known no serious problems to speak of. He had always lived well, as befitted a man of his station. Things were sometimes a bit better or a bit worse, but he had never taken such fluctuations to heart. He knew that this was normal in business. He didn’t even concern himself with an occasional bankruptcy by a debtor. He merely absorbed the loss and raised his prices to make up the difference. It became a part of the overhead, along with the payroll, the raw goods, and the rest. Then again, you could always come to some kind of arrangement with the bankrupts—sometimes for half the amount due, sometimes for a third—however God ordained it. You couldn’t have business without bankruptcy or bankruptcy without business. It was all part of the game.

  Things had gone along this way for years. He didn’t keep accounts for the simple reason that the more you figured, the less profit you ended up with. He knew that he was comfortable, one might even say rich. There weren’t too many men of his standing in Lodz, and people knew him. When he entered banks, the managers bowed deeply. Even the bank presidents, those clean-shaven snobs, invited him into their offices and offered him cigars.

  Someone else in his position might have grown corrupt and surrendered his beliefs, but Haim Alter had remained a Jew, a Hasid. The Hasidim knew this and respected him accordingly. The rabbi himself paid him his due.

  Nor was he parsimonious. No one could accuse him of that. He was forever making contributions toward the prayerhouse or financing the wedding of some indigent bride. He donated generously to his rabbi’s court. He wasn’t like other rich men who pinched their pennies, for he knew that there was not only a material world but also the world to come, one much more grandiose than all the money ever minted. And a Jew had to prepare for the other world. He had to enter it with a record of good deeds. Otherwise, God forbid, one had to be ready to face Gehenna with all its fires and tortures.

  He therefore spent with a generous hand and never regretted a groschen laid out for charity, for he knew that a Jew must be a Jew. God, the Almighty, required everything in this world—rich men and paupers, philanthropists and spongers. In His infinite wisdom, He had selected him, Haim Alter, to be among the rich. The Creator had arranged it that money should pour into Haim Alter’s pockets so that he might spread charity among the poor, see to it that his workers had a house of worship, a reader to lead them through the prayers, and citrons for Succoth. It was also his, Haim Alter’s, God-given obligation to pay for his inferiors’ weddings, funerals, and circumcisions.

  There were also his own household expenses of which he never knew the amount. Each time Priveh held out her bejeweled hand, he filled it with money. And she knew even less than he precisely how much she spent. The money simply dribbled between her fingers. She forgot where she mislaid it; she often lost it, then sent her maids into tears, accusing them of robbing her. If the banknote or piece of jewelry turned up, she only lost it again moments later.

  She loved shopping for bargains, and she bought whatever caught her eye, whether she needed it or not. Her house was always filled with tradesmen demanding payment for articles she didn’t even remember buying.

  She also loved to visit spas and to consult foreign specialists whose expertise served as a topic of conversation for the whole following winter. She went from resort to resort and from physician to physician. All her dressers and bureaus were filled with phials, ampules, jars, and boxes of variously tinted medicines, tonics, and pills that she never took. She also brought back bargains from abroad—suitcases full of silks, jewelry, lace, crystal, antiques. She always tried to smuggle these items past the customs officials, and she was always caught, and from the subsequent squabbles she grew sick again, compelling her to visit new spas and new specialists and to repeat the whole cycle again and again.

  The house was in a perpetual state of disorder as Priveh was eternally replacing the furniture and tapestries. Since the other Lodz ladies were forever redecorating, Priveh refused to be left behind.

  Haim Alter knew that all this took lots of money, but he couldn’t refuse his Priveh anything. He loved her too much for that. Despite her grown children, she was a handsome woman and one with excellent taste. When he walked with her in the street or at the spas, men turned to look at her, and this filled him with pride. Therefore, when she held out her plump, dimpled hand for money, he gave her whatever she wanted.

  Besides, he was no mean spender himself. In addition to contributing to his rabbi and the house of worship, he himself took the baths every summer and enjoyed other luxuries.

  But Haim Alter knew that all this was as it should be and that even the money squandered on clothes and redecorating wasn’t a sin. Because, first of all, why skimp? What was man, after all, if not temporal? Here one day, gone the next. Why then live like a pig?

  Secondly, it was good for business. Lodz admired nothing more than wealth. Lodz knew what was cooking in everyone’s pot. It sufficed for a Lodz businessman to skip one season at the spa or have his wife attend a party minus jewelry for gossip to begin that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, ready for the poorhouse.

  Haim Alter didn’t want an accounting. He knew that the factory was rolling along nicely, that the workers weren’t sitting around idle, that the looms were clacking away, that people in the street looked at him with awe, and that he lived like a mensh, a person good to God and to man.

  Nor would he skimp on his children. Hadn’t he sought out the best match in Lodz for his daughter? Hadn’t he provided the biggest dowry, the most princely wedding? In all this time he had never even considered the cost of the affair. Priveh had thrust her hand out, and he had filled it with money again and again.

  Now, after all the fuss and bother, Samuel Leibush came to him with a long face. From all sides, artisans and tradesmen Priveh had engaged at fees she herself couldn’t recall were descending upon him. Bills flooded in from all over. Tailors, cobblers, seamstresses, rugmakers, grocers, butchers, fishmongers attacked like a swarm of locust.

  Samuel Leibush couldn’t assuage them. In the factory the workers sighed and grimaced, anxious for money for the Sabbath. From abroad came huge bills for the raw materials. No cash was coming in, and the banks had cut off Haim Alter’s credit. The ruble was hard to come by in Lodz, and Sa
muel Leibush bowed his head before his employer as if it were all his fault.

  “Reb Haim,” he said, averting his eyes like some thief, “I’m afraid we’re in a tight squeeze.”

  At first, Haim Alter waved a fat, hairy hand in disdain. He was too tired from the wedding to listen to any sob stories. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  But Samuel Leibush wouldn’t be put off. For days he had pored over the ledgers, adding, subtracting, multiplying, moving the beads on the Russian abacus, each time arriving at a new total and beginning anew. His head began to ache, his eyes grew bloodshot, but he couldn’t get the figures to tally. Finally, he tossed it all aside and advised Haim Alter to call in a bookkeeper.

  Haim Alter wouldn’t even hear of it. “I hate bookkeepers!” he exclaimed. “You know what I always say: the more you count, the less you have.…”

  He couldn’t stand those Litvaks, those enemies of Israel, who had become the bookkeepers of Lodz. But Samuel Leibush persisted and persisted until Haim Alter gave in.

  “All right, all right,” he finally said. “I need it like a hole in the head, but bring in one of the dunces.…”

  For eight days the scrawny Litvak with the pince-nez affixed to a thick black ribbon pored over Haim Alter’s ledgers, groping among the additions, notations, and erasures.

  “Incoming, outgoing …” he kept muttering, as he calculated. “The devil take it.…”

  Haim Alter couldn’t stand looking at this pauper with the stubbly jaw and rubber collar over the knobby neck. He could accept manufacturers and bankers abandoning their faith, but that such a ragamuffin should do so was beyond his tolerance. The Litvak was good for neither this world nor the next. He, Haim Alter, wouldn’t go near him, with his tattered jacket with its skimpy sleeves and the stink of Lithuanian garlic. But the Litvak wouldn’t leave him alone.

  “What’s this?” he asked in a grating voice, pointing to a row of convoluted numbers.

  Haim Alter said whatever came into his head, but the Litvak wouldn’t let him off the hook.

  “Expense isn’t income, after all, the devil take it!”

  After eight days the Litvak finally emerged from all the allusions, abbreviations “incomings,” and “outgoings” and produced a clear and accurate balance sheet with credits and debits, with rows of neat figures as level as troops lined up for inspection before a general.

  He stood up, stretched his skinny arms, straightened the dangling pince-nez, and, in his pronounced Lithuanian accent, announced with deliberation, “You are broke, Gospodin Alter.”

  Haim Alter leaped from his seat with even more fervor than he did at his rabbi’s table on Rosh Hashanah. “You don’t know your ass from your elbow, Litvak swine!” he shouted in a rage, and slammed shut the covers of his new account book that the bookkeeper had so painstakingly prepared.

  The Litvak didn’t take offense. He opened the ledger and with a bony finger pointed to the evenly aligned columns. “You are bankrupt, Gospodin Alter. Ab-so-lute-ly.…”

  His final word, issued in a drawn-out Russian, served to convince Haim Alter. The latter thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, pulled them inside out along with all the pockets of his red and blue dotted vest, and turning on his servant with fury, he demanded, “Well, what do you say to the state of your business, Samuel Leibush? What do you say?”

  Samuel Leibush’s face broke out in splotches as if indeed it were all his fault. And Haim Alter paced through his rooms unable to get the Litvak’s words out of his head: “You are broke, Gospodin Alter.… You are bankrupt.…”

  At first, Haim Alter tried to consult with his wife. But she didn’t have the patience even to let him finish. “You know that I don’t understand these things, Haimshe,” she said. “You’ll manage by yourself already.”

  Realizing that he wasn’t making any headway, he got down to brass tacks and asked her to lend him her collection of diamonds for a brief time so that he might arrange with Samuel Leibush to pawn them discreetly until things straightened out a bit. This would afford him at least a brief breathing space from the smaller creditors, all those pesky craftsmen and shopkeepers who were so persistently snapping at his heels.

  The blood drained from Priveh’s face, leaving her wide-eyed and with sickly red patches on her cheeks. “Mama!” she wailed, resorting as usual to her long-departed parent, blue eyes gushing tears. “I can stop eating. I can stop buttering my bread or drink tea without sugar. Is that what you’d like?”

  Haim Alter saw that he would get nowhere with his wife—it was all beyond her. Her only concern was whether she would be able to go to the spas that summer. Haim Alter reassured her and walked away.

  Early the next morning he sought out his rabbi for advice. But the rabbi was no more help than Priveh. To all of Haim Alter’s complaints he merely responded that the Almighty would help.

  Neither were Haim Alter’s sons of any assistance. All they knew was how to drag money out of their father. Haim Alter then turned to his last resort—his son-in-law’s father, Abraham Hersh Ashkenazi.

  Following the ceremony of ushering out the Sabbath, he went to his in-law’s house. Abraham Hersh placed his red kerchief between the pages of the Gemara as a sign that he was merely postponing his studies temporarily and calmly, mutely, and without interruption listened for an hour to his in-law’s impassioned words.

  Although the Ashkenazi house was cold and forbidding with its massive furniture, brown tapestried walls, huge iron safe, and the murky light of the kerosene lamp, Haim Alter sweated freely. He didn’t drink the glass of tea that was served him, but kept on talking with fervor and conviction. When he finally grew silent, Abraham Hersh fixed his dark eyes upon him and uttered a single word: “No.”

  Sweat drenched Haim Alter. “You would let me go under?” he blurted. “To whom then can I turn if not to you?”

  “He who lives without reckoning dies without confession,” Abraham Hersh responded with a parable.

  When Haim Alter resumed hotly and even seized his in-law familiarly by the beard, Abraham Hersh removed the red kerchief from the Gemara and resumed studying the laws regarding the number of lashes a sinner had coming. “How many lashes are forthcoming?” he chanted, oblivious to the other’s presence.

  Haim Alter left his in-law’s house so distraught that he even failed that night to recite the closing hymn, “And He shall give unto thee,” that he chanted each Sabbath night with such relish, and he spit out with rage the usual cigar Samuel Leibush brought him. “Lousy cigars!” he snarled. “Bitter as gall.…”

  He was just as displeased with the glass of sweet aromatic tea Hadassah brought him on a silver platter. “Couldn’t you make a fresh pot?” he raged. “Do I have to drink warmed-over tea?”

  Hadassah flushed deeply. “May my luck be as good, dear Father in heaven, as this tea. If the master would only taste—”

  But Haim Alter wouldn’t taste. Instead, he glared at his loutish sons as they played cards with unconcern. “Lousy wastrels!” he screamed, tearing the cards from their hands as if this were the first time he had caught them at it. “You and your cards will send me begging door to door!”

  At night he tossed on his three soft down pillows that had suddenly grown hard as stone. All Lodz passed before his eyes in the sleepless night, but he couldn’t choose the one person to whom he could turn in his moment of need.

  Only as dawn was breaking did it come to him suddenly—the very person he needed, one who had the money and yet had no immediate need for it. And he cursed himself for not having thought of it sooner.

  Mind relieved, spirit unburdened, Haim Alter sank into deep, dreamless sleep.

  Fifteen

  SIMHA MEIR LISTENED to his loquacious father-in-law’s troubles with an attitude different from his father’s. Haim Alter’s urgent words were appended with aphorisms, maxims, and parables, but they all ended on one note: “I tell you, Simha Meirshe, I’ll pay you a much higher interest than the bank.
And you can rest easy. I wouldn’t hurt my own child, after all, God forbid!”

  “Of course not, Father-in-law.” Simha Meir nodded sympathetically.

  Haim Alter exulted inwardly over his son-in-law’s swift acquiescence. “Your money will grow, Simha Meir, darling. You’ll get interest over interest, and you can still board with me for as long as you please. Do you understand, Simha Meirshe, darling?”

  “I understand, Father-in-law.” Simha Meir nodded amiably.

  But when it came time to go to the bank and withdraw the 10,000 rubles, he hung back. “I must consult with Daddy first,” he explained sanctimoniously.

  “Why burden your father?” Haim Alter asked, trying to mask his anxiety. “You’re not some simpleton, after all. You know yourself what you must do.”

  “Honor thy father!” Simha Meir quoted piously. “Without Father’s advice, I wouldn’t dare make such a move.”

  Haim Alter walked him through the house for hours, stroking and flattering him, praising his sharp brain and common sense, but Simha Meir remained obdurate. “Believe me, Father-in-law, I would trust you with my life. But without Daddy’s consent, my hands are tied. Honor thy father, you know. I’ll see him this very day about this matter.”

  Naturally he never consulted his father. He never even considered such a step. He had been under his father’s dominance long enough. Now he was free of him. The dowry was deposited in his own name, and he knew better than his father exactly what to do with it. But it was a good ploy to use against his father-in-law, and he let him stew a few days more until he was nearly jumping out of his skin. Only then did he come to him with his father’s alleged advice.

  His face serene, his words crisp and direct, his manner airy but resolute, he broached the matter during lunch. After buttering a roll, he bit into it zestfully, and with a mouth full of food, he enumerated his father’s demands: “Daddy says I should get collateral—guaranteed collateral.”

  Haim Alter jumped to his feet, face burning. “You’ll get IOUs, Simha Meir. I wouldn’t have it any other way!”