“Babye leto,” he uttered in surprise.
“Yes,” she agreed, responding to his aroused state.
She stepped closer to him and began to draw him onto the table.
Although he did not want to contradict her wishes, he found himself protesting in puritanical query, “The bed?” Only ten or twelve feet away, it seemed much more hospitable than the table with the tall candles that burned relentlessly down toward their heavy silver base.
“The Rosh Hashanah table,” Rachel Leah proclaimed in exaltation, drawing him onto it and then onto her.
In his timid fear, he lay still, anxious that his feet not knock over her plate and glass or that her hair, spread beneath her like a great speckled heavy mat, not touch the candles. Beneath him he felt Rachel Leah beginning to move her overripe pear-shaped torso in long, slow, comforting undulations. Recalling the Alexandrovsky Gardens, he tried to relax and join Rachel Leah in her celebration of the New Year. Although he desperately wanted to consent to her desires, he lay still, as if paralyzed. Rachel Leah continued her slow, wavelike undulations, which grew stronger and quicker until they gave way to forceful thrusts that flung Grisha about. He, however, still could not respond. Except for his eyes, all parts of his body seemed distant and unattached to his purposeful will. He dreaded desire; not Rachel Leah’s, but Dmitri Cherbyshev’s and Stalin’s with its testicle-crushing spurt of blood. Offended by such impure thoughts, he closed his eyes to drive them from his mind.
Rachel Leah seemed to respond to his closed eyes with increased vigor, and she reinforced her pelvic thrusts with a writhing of her entire body. Grisha clung to her just to keep from falling. He thought he saw a flash of orange-yellow light through his closed eyelids and imagined he heard a crackling sound. Opening his eyes, he gazed at Rachel Leah making love, her head wreathed in a halo of flames.
Grisha lunged forward, pulling the long crackling strands of burning hair from the candles that had ignited them and swiftly beating the flaming crescent crown against the tabletop to extinguish it. He pressed his forearms against the small flames that had begun to lick toward her shoulders, but even as he did so, his already scorched hands were smoothly and surely caressing the fiery halo nearer her head, suffocating the fire against the still unburnt hair nearest her scalp. With small patting gestures he stifled the flames before flying onto the next smoldering patch. Only when he was certain that she was in no danger of immolation did he stop his frenzied cupping of her head and turn more calmly to pat some of the longer ringlets that still glowed with the potential to rekindle the fearful flames. For good measure, closing his hands in a half-fist, he pushed away the two great silver candlesticks. He then slid back to face her. Rachel Leah’s expression of divine ecstasy had not lessened. He wondered whether she was even aware that she had almost burned to death.
“Are you all right?” he asked gently.
In answer, she guided him back inside her. Amid the horrible, almost suffocating stench of burned human hair, he successfully culminated the physical act—gently mourning their lives while softly celebrating their union.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MINUTES LATER, AS HE LAY NEXT TO HER, THE PAIN OF his burned hands ground through him in a stream of pulsating agony. The flames had even singed his eyebrows, shrinking and frizzling them into hard little wires. He recalled the day in the Angel of Death so long ago when he had saved the Torah, and emerged in ashes to be awarded Rachel Leah.
“The Day of Remembrance. Nothing has changed,” he said to himself and to Rachel Leah.
“Something has,” she insisted.
“We must elevate the royal purple garment that lies on the floor,” he said.
“We already have,” she informed him.
He turned to her with a questioning look.
“I’m pregnant,” she announced with quiet certainty.
Grisha feared that she believed it, poor thing. He wondered why she had continued to lie uncovered. He had offered her the purple sash, but she had refused, explaining that it was as hot as fire in the room. He knew all about that. Indeed, with the pain in his hands, he would ask her to dress him. That was only fair; after all, she had undressed him. But pregnant? After all these years? Poor Rachel Leah was mad. Well, she came by that legitimately from her father, the Krimsker Rebbe. Yes, he must remind her to read her father’s letter. Suddenly Grisha thought that maybe she had. No, she couldn’t have. Perhaps she didn’t need to, since she was the rebbe’s daughter. She already knew the secret of Rosh Hashanah: creation. That must be why she thought she was pregnant. Grisha would have to ask her what the rebbe meant about his being “not too old to fly.” Most of the other things he understood, even if he didn’t believe them.
He turned to ask what the rebbe meant about learning to fly, leather jackets, and scarves, but he saw Rachel Leah lying next to him. Her face was at the center of a shell of twisted, scorched hair the color of ash. The ends of the once long mane that had burned away were indeed a light gray. In the midst of such destruction—a hairbreadth from disaster—Rachel Leah’s face was perfectly serene. How long had it been since he had seen her like that? Had he ever? He couldn’t disturb her, but she was the rebbe’s daughter, and Grisha was sure that she knew what the letter meant. Well, if Grisha wasn’t quite serene himself, he was exhausted and in pain, and he had had more than enough insights for one day. Enough for a lifetime, and he could face Lenin and Stalin, which was only fair, for ultimately “they” were he. He, however, was even worse, because he himself had debased the King’s porphyra, the royal purple garment that is Israel and God’s glory. But now in some sense he was more than “they,” for he had recaptured a little of Rosh Hashanah.
He leaned over and kissed Rachel Leah’s hand. She responded by gently tracing her finger across his cheek, smoothly and tranquilly. He lay quietly so as not to disturb her. So he would never learn to fly.
She lay quietly so as not to disturb their child.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN THEY CAME FOR HIM THAT NIGHT, THEY KNOCKED on the upstairs door just the way they were supposed to. There were four of them. Orlov was not among them, although he might have been, since they were all “new men,” correct and efficient. They asked him to identify himself; they requested his pistol; they told him to follow them. For his part, Grisha complied fully, but he couldn’t muster the defiance of a Sergei Gasparov or summon the submissiveness of a Dmitri Cherbyshev. Stolid and dull, he had lost the grace of his earlier insights. Led down the grand staircase, out of Mironov’s mansion, and into the impenetrable darkness of a black Fiat, he was simply fearful. Fearful of suffering, fearful of dying. He felt very small and incapable of bravery, despite the dull awareness that his burned hands ached and that his most sensitive flesh stuck painfully to his pants as if glued with honey.
He felt too old to fly, which was a tragic shame; that might have been the only way to escape when the bullet tore into the back of his head in the basement of the Lubyanka.
AIR WAVES
IN SPITE OF A SEVERE HEADACHE THAT HAD SUDDENLY attacked the rebbe on Rosh Hashanah eve, 1936, and plagued him for nine whole months, the rebbe continuously scanned the skies for unidentified aircraft. A powerful intimation of unknown planes suddenly appearing in American Hawaii had begun to haunt him; and he vaguely sensed a danger from the Far East. Nor did he discount the more benign possibility that his son-in-law, Hershel, would have to escape to St. Louis by an Asian-Pacific route; therefore the rebbe peered anxiously and expectantly into both the western and eastern skies. This swiveling of his aching head, necessary for patrolling two horizons, proved excruciatingly painful. Shayna Basya, his rebbetzin, could not get him inside the house. As winter approached, she feared for her husband’s health and yearned for the days back in Krimsk when he had disappeared into his study. With the help of Sammy Rudman, son of Boruch Levi Rudman from Krimsk, she convinced the rebbe to transfer his private air patrol from the street onto their large second-floor balcony, which opened of
f the kitchen.
From inside the door the rebbetzin kept him supplied with blankets and hot thermos bottles of coffee. At sundown, complaining of a headache but never of the cold, he would stagger inside and collapse onto his bed. During this period he did not descend below the second floor, and therefore he effectively disappeared from the beis midrash and the life of St. Louis, if not from view (the balcony overlooked the street). He even lost interest in the American Indian. When F.D.R. wanted to appoint the rebbe to a national Indian commission in Washington, D.C., the rebbe evinced no interest whatsoever. When Yitzhak Weinbach sent his son-in-law, Sammy Rudman, onto the air patrol balcony to try to convince the rebbe to accept the honor, the rebbe momentarily lowered his gaze from the skies and said, “If Reb Zelig were still alive, I think I would have him say kaddish for General Custer and remove Tsar Nicholas II from his list.” Sammy understood that the rebbe’s attitude had changed. He reported back to his father-in-law that the rebbe feared that too much Jewish interest in the Indian question might raise the charge of dual loyalties. Sammy’s reform Jewish father-in-law readily accepted the rebbe’s demurral and congratulated Sammy on his spiritual mentor’s political acumen. For Hanukkah, Yitzhak Weinbach sent the rebbe a dozen pairs of all-wool stockings.
The rebbetzin accepted the gift, thinking that a mere dozen pairs would prove insufficient to see the rebbe through his “heavenly exile”—for that was how she and the Jewish community referred to it—but she was wrong. Although the heavenly vigil continued throughout the winter, one night in the late spring, the rebbe woke the rebbetzin.
“Do you hear crying? A baby crying?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “Why?”
“It certainly sounds like our grandchild, but it’s probably just the holy Shekinah crying in the impure diaspora,” he murmured, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
The rebbetzin listened carefully, but heard nothing. She could not fall asleep for some time. When she awoke in the morning, it was already late. She rushed into the kitchen to make coffee for her husband, who by now must have been searching the skies for several hours. She put up the porcelain coffeepot and hurried to the balcony to apologize for having overslept. Not seeing him, she had opened the door to go outside when she heard a voice behind her.
“Close the door, please. That creates a terrible draft,” the rebbe said.
She turned around to find the rebbe seated at the kitchen table, leisurely reading the morning paper.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in surprise.
“Reading the paper. I’ll be finished with it in a minute. Do you mind?” he asked solicitously.
“Oh, no.”
“Please, the draft,” he reminded her.
“Yes, sorry,” she said, and closed the door.
When she served him his coffee, she couldn’t help blinking her eyes to be sure that he really was perusing the newspaper at the table and not scanning the skies from the porch.
“Anything new?” she asked searchingly.
“Nothing very good,” he replied, exchanging the paper for his coffee.
“You’re not going outside today?” she asked tentatively.
“No, if you want to use the balcony, go right ahead. In this sunny spring weather, it’s really very pleasant.”
The rebbetzin nodded.
“You’ll enjoy it,” he said. “Excuse me, I have work to do,” he added, taking his coffee and going into his study.
The rebbetzin glanced down at the headlines. Hitler, that horrendous German anti-Semite, was featured prominently in them, but she didn’t think the newspaper had anything to do with the rebbe’s ending his vigil. The business about a baby, much less a grandchild, crying in the night seemed more relevant, but that didn’t make any sense either. In fact, the one thing she was sure of was that she really didn’t know what to think. No, she was sure of one other thing. The rebbe had ended his heavenly exile.
She walked over to the door and went out onto the lonely balcony. The rebbe was right; it really was very pleasant in the spring sunshine. Without thinking, she began to imitate the rebbe and looked about the sky as if she were a member of the civil air patrol. As awkward as she felt, she knew that she certainly wasn’t a participant in the heavenly exile. Still, she wondered whose crying baby had awakened the rebbe.
The rebbe returned to his beis midrash and a more normal life for the remainder of the decade, but even the rebbe wasn’t completely impervious to time. During the winter spent exposed to the elements he had grown older, although from his appearance alone, one could not guess his age. He was aging, all right, but as he did so, the smooth skin simply stretched tighter across the strong facial bones, preventing any wrinkles from forming, even though it was plain that the skin itself was not fleshy and vibrant like that of a younger man. He was aging, but very slowly, and in a manner that suggested preservation more than deterioration, like a gourd. His hair and beard were no longer as dark as they once had been. Here and there were areas that might be described as no longer black, but rather the dull shade of very dark ash. The most pronounced sign of age, however, was that the Krimsker Rebbe just did not move so quickly. One could no longer imagine him scrambling onto the roof of an automobile to deliver a eulogy, as he once had.
After Hitler invaded Poland, everyone everywhere, including in the beis midrash, was talking about the fate of Jews in occupied Poland and especially in Krimsk, but when the rebbe entered for the evening service, everyone quieted down. That is, everyone except for one congregant. The young American came forward and announced that now, in the light of the latest events in the old country and in Poland, in particular—for now Krimsk had fallen under Hitler’s rule—it was clear how smart the rebbe had been in getting the Jews out of there and in bringing them to America. “An act of genius, bringing the Jews to the blessed land of America,” he declared. “Why, we should dance on the tables from joy!”
The rebbe, who had taken his seat on the eastern wall behind his table upon which the young enthusiast proposed to dance, looked up with a frown.
“Stay off the tables; they are holy!” he ordered.
The rebbe turned to Sammy and said, “America is blessed. Here idiots don’t have to run around with their mouths open; they can even become president.” The rebbe was referring to Warren Harding. For reasons Sammy had never understood, the rebbe had never gotten over his disappointment in Presidents Harding and Coolidge.
Sammy often understood the rebbe’s cryptic remarks; what the rebbe didn’t say often left him uncertain. What Sammy was wondering now was, if America did get involved in the war, might the prediction the rebbe had once made about him come true: would be become a pilot? Suddenly the rebbe glanced at him and advised, “Stay out of airplanes. You’re married.”
In 1941, when America did enter the war and civil air patrols were formed, the city remembered the rebbe’s peerless vigil and turned to him for advice about training and winter observation, but by then he was unavailable. The rebbe had entered his study and was not to be disturbed.
II
THE STRENGTH OF STONES
If stones fall on a clay cooking pot, woe unto the pot; if the pot falls on stones, woe unto the pot. In any event, it is woe unto the pot.
—Midrash Esther Rabba
WARSAW
1942
YOM KIPPUR
(THE DAY OF ATONEMENT)
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it is forbidden to eat or to drink.
Accompanied by penitence, either death or Yom Kippur atones for sin.
Yom Kippur atones for sins between man and God.
Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man and his fellow until one has placated his fellow.
—The Mishnah, Tractate Yoma
If it were not for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the world could not exist, for Yom Kippur atones both in this world and in the world to come. Sometime in the future when all other festivals and holy days disappear, Yom Kippur w
ill remain.
—Pirkei Rabbi Eliezer
DEFINITIONS AND FINDINGS
IN RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY, THE Bund suggested that Jews should be socialists who lived their modern socialist Jewish lives speaking Yiddish in Europe. It wasn’t always easy to define the Bund, just as it wasn’t always easy for them to define themselves, and many people had serious doubts about them. The universalist Marxists found them parochial, the labor Zionists found them in Europe instead of Palestine, the traditional religious Jews found them in violation of Jewish law, the halacha. One political entity harbored no doubts but did have a single criticism: Hitler found them alive.
THE GHETTO
ONLY MISERY AND JEWS WERE IN ABUNDANCE IN THE Warsaw ghetto. As the misery increased, the Jews declined; by July 1942 over 100,000 of the ghetto’s inhabitants had died within its walls. In the same month, July, the Nazis began mass deportations, which lasted until early September. Special transport trains removed an average of 5,000 to 7,000 Jews each day, for a total of over 300,000.
Two for the Devil Page 12
