Where once were shops, now people make their homes. Peering through their windows, I see them eating or talking with each other. They sit in groups around large boxes, on one panel of which a grainy photograph seems to be moving. It’s very strange!
Even Ciacierski’s café looks drab inside, with little to offer. A bored woman, the waitress, sits at a dingy table, painting her fingernails.
Most of the street names have changed. The old Talmud Torah sits now on Lenin Street, who could believe such a thing, opposite a large state building stretching from Wigierska all the way to Ciesielska Street! Half of my own Noniewicza is gone, crushed beneath more of these glass monstrosities. It looks as if a new city has been dropped from the Heavens, quashing portions of the old town beneath it, wherever it fell.
It must be very late at night. I cross into my old courtyard. The apartments are dark, the residents are sleeping certainly, although through one window, I see a bright red dot glowing brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, moving up and down in a curving arch. Someone cannot sleep and is smoking.
From the old Mintz apartment, I hear a series of tinny bells ringing and a groggy voice answers, “Hello?”
Is it possible each apartment now has its own telephone?
My old warehouse, with my office in it, is locked. Grasping the knob, I rattle the door, but cannot budge it. The timberyard is stacked full of wood. My gardens are in bloom. But who could be tending them? Big Andrzej is long dead, surely. Do his grandchildren work my gardens, assuming it was he and not I who planted them?
I bend to pick up a nice, solid rock, determined to shatter all the windows in the court, to see who might come running, when I notice the oddest thing. In a scattered pile of rubble is a stone, glowing faintly with a pale green light. Hobbling nearer, I touch it with my cane, dislodging it from its pile. It rolls upon the ground, crumbling into pieces and leaving a trail of glittering sparks. I hesitate to pick the curiosity up by hand. Perhaps it will burn me. There is a similar rock about three meters further down the road. It too glows with the same tarnished gleam.
“What is this?” I whisper to myself.
Peering further into the gloom, I see they have been dropped, these rocks, periodically into the distance, as though someone were leaving a trail.
Despite my great fatigue, I follow the trail back into the forests, picking up the rocks and collecting them in my old traveler’s sack. They are pleasantly cool, not hot, as I expected. And oddly, the sack grows lighter, not heavier, the more rocks I place into it. Although the silver glow emanating from beneath the flap is cool, it warms the part of my ribs I carry it against, like a cold fire, if such a thing may be imagined.
At one point, I must simply stop to gaze at the bulky collection, ripping aside the leather flap. Even the dust, crumbling off the rocks in speckled motes, is alive and burning with this greenish light.
I can’t help laughing, I don’t know why.
My trail ends at a small hut in the middle of the woods.
“Hello?” I call, knocking at its door, surprised by my own boldness.
I hear a shuffling and low murmurs and the scraping sound of someone walking on the other side.
The door opens a crack, revealing a narrow segment of an old face, its red beard, and one blue eye, glaring.
Seeing me, the eye softens and the door is further opened. An old man, with stooped shoulders above his full red beard, pulls happily on his bristling sidelocks.
“Gut Shabbas,” he says.
“Gut Shabbas,” I stammer in reply.
“Gut Shabbas,” he repeats.
“There is still Shabbas,” I say, leaning into him, “even without Jews?”
“Who is it, Kalman?” a voice inside calls out, and the Hasid turns away from me to address his companion.
“It’s Reb Chaim,” he says simply.
“Reb Chaim?” sounds the voice, amazed.
“Nu, Zalman? He’s arrived for Shabbas.”
“Reb Chaim has arrived here for Shabbas?”
“Reb Chaim, please,” says Kalman, turning again to face me, offering his limp and freckled hand. “Come in, come in. We’re about to light the candles.”
60
I can tell by the feel of his pale hand on mine that the man before me is alive. When I hesitate to enter, he tugs at me, circling his arm around my shoulder, pulling me inside.
“Welcome, welcome,” he nuzzles my ear. “I have been calling you. Did you never hear me?”
He takes the bag from my shoulder and deposits it into a nearby corner, where, for a moment, it appears to float before settling onto the floor. The hut is dark. Through a window in its back wall, I can see that the sun is setting. The sight is troubling to me. Wasn’t it deep night only moments before?
The other Hasid, Zalman, closes a book and rises from his seat. “Reb Chaim,” he says, approaching me, both hands outstretched in welcome. “How long we have waited for you to cross our humble threshold!”
“And today of all days,” says Kalman. “On Shabbas!” He returns from the sideboard with a silk skullcap for me to wear. “May our Merciful God be praised!”
“Praised be His Invisible Hand,” says Zalman.
Despite their bristling, matted beards, nearly a foot wide across their wrinkled faces, the one silver with streaks of black, the other red with stains of grey, these two stooped Hasids seem as gay as children. From out the pockets of his long black coat, the one called Kalman removes a pair of short candles with an air of mischief, as though he were performing an impossible magic trick. He reveals the two sticks of wax, one in each freckled hand, and although I cannot explain it, my heart is pierced with sadness at the sight of his clownish pranks.
“Who shall light the Shabbas candles,” he says, “and usher in a day of perfect peace?”
“You, Kalman, please.”
They argue over the honor.
“No, Zalman, may the merit be for you.”
“For you, I insist.”
“Shall we ask Reb Chaim?”
“He is our guest, after all.”
I demur. “I couldn’t,” I say, afraid my black mood will offend against their joy. “You’re my hosts,” I bow out, simply. “May the merit be for you both.”
The two Hasids confer and agree to light one candle each, which they do, hiding their eyes behind their translucent hands until the blessings have been said. They gaze upon the flames as though upon the first small lights of Creation, tears welling in their eyes.
“Remember how my Chaya and your Chana used to light the Shabbas candles together?” Kalman wipes his cheek against his sleeve.
Zalman stiffens. “You mean my Chaya and your Chana,” he says.
Kalman squints.
“I was married to Chaya. You, Kalman, to Chana.”
“God forbid I should not remember my own wife, God forbid!”
“We married sisters,” Zalman explains to me.
“Not to mention my own sister-in-law you’re suggesting I forget?”
“They were twins.” Zalman explains. “Identical.”
“Zalman, they were fraternal!”
“God forbid I don’t remember!”
“He doesn’t remember, Reb Chaim, it’s been so long.”
Zalman shrieks. “It’s you, Kalman, who has forgotten who doesn’t remember!”
“One of us doesn’t remember,” Kalman says kindly, making peace, “but which one it is, to tell you the truth, we can no longer recall.”
It’s understandable. My head is swimming. If they move too quickly about the room, I myself forget who is who, and must wait until one addresses the other by name in order to reestablish their identities.
“But enough!” says one. “We’re driving our poor guest mad.”
“Reb Chaim,” the other clucks his tongue. “Sit, sit, sit.”
They escort me to a chair in the middle of the room. The table, with its three chairs, is simple, hewn from pine. The dark hut is sparse, its dirt
floors swept clean. In one corner a pallet is covered with straw, on top of which is a jumble of blankets. Here, I assume, the two must sleep. Below one window, a small shelf is stuffed to over-flowing with holy books. Near the other window, a battered grandfather clock ticks with a slight irregularity.
The Hasids return to the table, the one carrying a bottle of wine, the other a silver Kiddush cup. The wine is poured, the blessings recited. The evening is now sanctified. Each offers the others a toast and good health, and the two Hasids drink.
“Reb Chaim?” says Kalman, lowering his cup from his lips. “You are not drinking?”
“There is something wrong with the wine perhaps?”
I move the glass away from my plate, gently, with two fingers at the base of its stem.
“Perhaps you have not realized,” I reply, “but my wounds were fatal. It’s gracious of you not to have said anything or drawn undue attention to them. But I understand you could not have helped noticing.”
The two Hasids grunt, looking at the table. They nod their embarrassed assent.
“As a dead man, it is, of course, impossible for me to drink.”
“But today is Shabbas,” says Kalman, peeking over the hedge of his beard. “Today, even the dead may eat and drink.”
Among their Hasidic pieties is the quaint notion that the dead, on the Sabbath, are released from their torments and may feast. Our more rational philosophy never concerned itself with such fairy tales. And yet, despite everything, here I am, stuck in a kind of netherworld I never anticipated and so out of politeness and from a measure of curiosity—after all, if I have learned anything since my death, it is that one must never grow accustomed to the seeming laws of one’s existence, for as soon as one does, they are certain to change—I raise the cup to my lips and drink. The wine is inordinately sweet. My esophagus tightens around it. We toast each other again, raising small thimbles of Russian vodka and my empty belly is roused by the liquor’s fiery warmth. Tears well up in my good eye. The three of us are moved to exchange moist kisses. We step into the cold evening breeze to wash our hands at the well and return in silence to the table for bread and then for soup.
“A simple meal, a simple meal,” says either Kalman or Zalman, who can keep them straight?
The steam from the soup rises to fill my nostrils. Despite its tasty aromas, I sink back into my chair, utterly morose, my appetite dwindling away like blown straw. How can we eat and drink when so many have perished? I don’t care if it is the Sabbath!
Carefully, the Hasids blow upon their raised spoons and I find I cannot look at them.
61
“And so,” I say, addressing my hosts, my hands folded neatly before me, “how is it you two managed to survive?”
Despite my pleasant tones, something of the bitterness I am feeling towards them has broadcast itself through my speech. The mood in the room instantly sours. Kalman lowers his spoon and looks to Zalman for help. Zalman pushes away his bowl, waving a hand over it.
“Reb Chaim, forgive us,” he says. “We don’t mean to make you feel in any way …”
“Aggrieved,” suggests Kalman.
“But there are worse things …”
“Worse things, oh yes.”
“… than not surviving.”
They nod gloomily and, helplessly, I regret my words.
“Forgive me,” I whisper, ashamed of myself. “It is, of course, wrong for me not to rejoice that Jews still walk the earth.”
“In the pitch black of night!” Zalman says bitterly, knocking his bread plate halfway across the table.
“Zalman, let us not speak of it on Shabbas,” his brother-in-law hisses between tight teeth.
“Shabbas! And how do we even know this is Shabbas?”
“We know.”
Zalman tears the napkin from his chest. “Without a moon?”
“We know very well without a moon. You know what the holy books say.”
“Yes, I know what the holy books say!”
“That a man lost in a wilderness without a calendar may count the days, celebrating Shabbas on the seventh,” Kalman wags his finger at his brother-in-law’s face.
“Still, it is not the same!”
“It is the same,” insists Kalman.
“It’s not!”
“And if it isn’t, we can talk about it later. After Shabbas. But not today.”
“Reb Chaim,” Zalman continues, ignoring his brother-in-law’s pleas. “You have perhaps heard of two Hasids who pulled the moon from the Heavens?”
The story comes back to me. Vaguely, I recall it. A German head talking, a little Polish girl’s bedtime tale, or was it one of the Rebbe’s cryptic allegories, the sort of story he relished telling after the Third Meal, the sun sinking, with its light, from the sky.
“I have heard of such things,” I say guardedly. “Who knows if they are true?”
“We know,” says Zalman, “because we are those men.”
Zalman and Kalman cannot avoid looking at each other, sheepishly. So similar are their faces—big shaggy beards beneath fur streimels—I have the impression of watching one man encountering himself in a mirror.
“What we have done cannot be undone,” says Kalman, sucking on the red rectangle of beard beneath his lip.
“What my brother-in-law has said,” Zalman tells me in a lowered voice, as if in strictest confidence, “is not altogether true.”
But, of course, his brother-in-law is sitting right across from us, hearing every word.
“What did you just say?” he screams.
“Kalman, control yourself!”
“On Shabbas, you dare to speak of such things!”
“But it may not be Shabbas!” Zalman rails.
“It would be Shabbas, if you’d only agree that it is!”
“But I don’t feel in my heart that it is.”
“Because you keep acting as if it isn’t.”
“Is the rest of the world observing it today? How are we to know?”
“Please, Zalman, things were going so nicely,” Kalman murmurs. “We have a guest.”
“Reb Chaim, all I am implying,” says Zalman, giving in to his brother-in-law’s wishes, “is that I have perhaps found a way to return the moon to the sky.” He raises his hands, as if to erase his words. “More than that, I will not say until Shabbas has passed.”
I sigh, regretting that I ever knocked upon their door. How the living spin their plans and schemes, unaware of their utter futility!
“Now,” says Kalman with relief. “If everyone agrees, I think perhaps it is time to sing.”
And they drone their wordless melodies, these two Hasids, deep into the night, until finally their voices crack and I am allowed to sleep.
62
I spend the Sabbath hating them bitterly. Simply for being alive when I and my family are not. Where do they find the gall to persist in their petty lives? Choosing a hat, locking a door, corking a bottle of wine. The care they take over each and every pointless detail. It sickens me. My food grows tasteless in my mouth. I cannot swallow it. I look across the table into their beaming faces and see, instead, my own children’s faces and the faces of my grandchildren, and even their children’s faces, faces now that will never be born.
Many, many worlds have been lost, not simply my own.
As the Hasids renew their interminable singing, I can’t help longing for the delightfully quiet Sabbaths we used to spend in our own home in our courtyard on Noniewicza Street. Ester lighting the candles, my girls setting the table, everyone rushing around, rushing around, freshly washed, hurrying, hurrying, as though our very lives depended on having it all prepared before nightfall. Often, my father joined us, a widowed old man, sitting at my right, his white shirt starched beneath his frayed black coat, his yellowed beard newly combed and washed. As a boy, I hid behind my mother’s skirts, fighting not to have him make the blessings on my head. How big they were, these giants, my father with his coal black beard, my mother with he
r strong hands tearing at my frantic arms, pulling them, like garden worms, from around her tree-trunk legs.
Enough, Chaimka! Enough! Oh, how they’d shout at me!
And now, instead, I’m forced to listen to these Hasids noisily pounding the table with their soft and delicate fists. So much noise from such soft hands!
I can’t help longing for my solitude and my forests, for my bed of nettles and twigs.
63
Immediately following Havdalah, before Kalman has had time to resign himself to the new week and its work, and as I, myself, clear my throat in order to tender my perfunctory thanks and make my escape as quickly as possible, Zalman springs from the table and bounds ferociously over to the little bookcase with the speed of a man half his age.
Irritated by his brother-in-law’s abrupt dismissal of the Sabbath Queen, Kalman begins to protest. “But Zalman!” he shouts, still holding the braided Havdalah candle in his fist, smoke rising in curling lines from its many wicks.
I make a futile attempt to reiterate my gratitude and my farewells, but neither of them will listen to me.
Bending at the knee, Zalman finds the book he is searching for and returns with it to the table. With a long finger, he points into an open page.
“Reb Chaim, here is something you must see!”
“Zalman!” snaps Kalman. “Why are you rushing him so! Let him sit, let him sit. I’ll bring the schnapps.”
“Reb Chaim, Reb Chaim!” Zalman taps his finger impatiently against the page.
A Blessing on the Moon Page 16
