“When we win the war,” says the first voice, sniggering.
Restless children, elderly dreamers, the gods of love, his ungovernable demons, they are all swirling around in his throbbing head. Will he never again encounter them in freedom?
“But what do you want from me? Believe me! I swear on my own head, I don’t understand, I don’t …”
In the past, Shaltiel says to himself, a pious adolescent, I would have known what to do: I would have followed tradition and asked to establish a small
Bet Din
, a three-man court. I would have told them about my bad dream and they would have exorcised it by repeating the ritual incantation three times, “The dream you had is good, is good,” wishing me peace, happiness, maybe forgetfulness and everything else.
That was the past. Here, I don’t know anyone, except the angel of horror; he wears the mask of the executioner.
Where are Shaltiel’s loyal friends?
As if to tear himself away from the present, he recalls Nathanael’s story. Why him? Why not. When a tale comes to mind, there is no dismissing it.
It’s like the story from his childhood, far away from here. The story he had been told: Once upon a time, in a small Romanian or Hungarian town, depending on the period, or the fantasy of the rulers, there was a little Jewish boy living alone for several weeks in a Christian family. It was during
the war. He was still alive, he said to himself, thanks to Ibolya, a blond and mischievous little girl of about ten. She had discovered him in the fields, asleep, famished and lost. She ran to fetch her mother, Piroshka, a flamboyant redhead with sparkling eyes. Mother and daughter brought him home, to a house on the edge of the forest. The father was at the Russian front. They called the little refugee Sàndor, but his real name was Nathanael: gift of God. Later, Shaltiel was to see him in a Jewish school in Brooklyn.
A dream that brings on dreams?
Jewish memories. Each more painful and scalding than the next, bound together and tightened by the same fist that points the way to shadows, silent and distorted by anguish. Shaltiel relives them and shudders, a lump in his throat.
His head is full of images of a boy, still young, who has feelings of embarrassment, even remorse, about growing up; words, dreams, sobs, stories, more or less muddled. In Europe, he cultivated them. In New York too. His father, Haskel, a peddler of old books and ancient documents in Brooklyn, wasn’t always at home; he was too busy trying to sell his merchandise, which the rich didn’t want and the poor couldn’t afford. His stepmother worked in other people’s houses. As a ten-year-old, Shaltiel spent his days in school, but he didn’t get to sit at the table with the other schoolboys; he sat apart, because the teacher felt the new immigrant was too young to learn to read the Aramaic texts, much less assimilate them.
But he learned them. By heart. In a low voice, cautiously, he would repeat what the tutor said, singing to himself: what
Rabbi Akiba said, what Rabbi Ishmael replied. Hillel’s disciples said one thing, Shammai’s, usually obstinate, said another. The chess player within him, even at so young an age, was of great assistance in remembering and foreseeing their thoughts.
When the students had their snack, Shaltiel made do with a bowl of milk given to him by the tutor’s wife. One day, I’ll have buttered bread, which I’ll share with everyone, the child said to himself. And my father will be happy. And he’ll no longer be exhausted. This thought was enough to buoy him up in his solitude.
The evenings, when he could spend them by his father’s side, were a time of joy. Shaltiel admired and loved his father. To calm his son’s hunger, the father gave him almost everything he received. Actually, he was never hungry when they were together.
The best time for Shaltiel was when his father and he played chess, their mood serious and attentive. Both were anxious not to make an irreparable mistake. Shaltiel also liked it when his father talked him to sleep at night. He talked about everything, even about Shaltiel’s dead mother. The father would listen to his son recite his bedtime prayer and watch him sleep. The child, though, only pretended to sleep. He liked to feel his father’s gentle gaze caress his face. He felt it to the edge of drowsiness, while in his head he went over the chess games that were yet to be resolved. Over there, far away, he sometimes wondered whether God, on high, wasn’t playing chess with someone too, but with whom? Now that’s the great question.
Some weeks Shaltiel saw him only on the Sabbath. Exhausted by his trips, Reb Haskel would run to the
Mikveh
for his ritual ablutions, purifying himself so as to welcome the sublime
Sabbath Queen fittingly. He was no longer the same man. His whole being would glow with a secret, beneficial light.
Together, hand in hand, united by ties that seemed indestructible, father and son went to a Hasidic shrine for the service. Along the way, his father asked him his usual question: “What have you done with your days and evenings during this whole past week, my dearly beloved son?”
“I listened.”
“Whom did you listen to?”
“Reb Moshe-Hayim the Melamed, the tutor.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that our Sages not only knew how to express themselves well, but also how to listen well.”
“What else?”
“He said that God also listens, but He alone understands.”
Proud and happy, the father stroked his son’s head and said: “Remember that’s the most important lesson you’ll have learned in life.”
“Why?”
“Because, with it, you’ll be able to build palaces in time and cultivate gardens in your mind.”
And, after a silence, “Do you know, my son, that God conceived and created the world with twenty-two letters? And not just the visible world, but scores of others that aren’t visible. Later, you’ll learn about their power. Each one represents a superior and inflexible force. When you know how to assemble some of them, according to established but obscure rules, you’ll be powerful and victorious.”
Shaltiel kept his father’s words inside him. He knew they were true. With his father by his side, he feared and envied no
one. Returning home on Friday nights, his father was radiant: He put aside his worries about health or money. The three candles on the table, one for each member of the family, the wine for the Kiddush, the two braided breads so skillfully and lovingly prepared by Malka, his stepmother—Shaltiel lived all week long for these moments. It didn’t matter that the meal was meager; it brought the three of them together at the same table, sometimes with his cousin Arele, savoring the little they had, united by a love that made their hearts glow. What more could they want?
Haskel and Malka were exhausted by their week’s work, but it didn’t show on their faces. They liked to linger at the table. They told each other about the events of the week. They talked about Haskel’s customers, both the generous and the heartless ones. In one place, he would have been welcomed with a smile, though he might have left empty-handed; in another, he was greeted with the door slammed in his face. Haskel talked about the well-to-do families who sometimes didn’t realize they were humiliating him. He didn’t complain. Such is the mystery of the Sabbath: Joy predominates. Haskel and his nieces, Koli and Ahuva, when they were together, sang the appropriate songs. On occasion, they would ask Shaltiel to sing alone. And he would think: Thank you God for being God. And for having given us the most beautiful gift, the Seventh Day, so different from the others, a day whose peacefulness makes the trees and the stars in the sky sing.
The only anguish of the Sabbath was watching it slip away.
Somewhere, in an ancient Hasidic work lent to him by his father, he had read that at the Rabbi’s court, during the Third Meal, tinged with melancholy, they implored the Lord to slow the rhythm of time, to suspend it, since the parting from the
Sabbath was so painful. It heralds the return of the everyday with its dangers and fears. Everywhere, men and children were hoping Mother or Grandmother was not in a rush, that she still had time to recite “
Gott fun Avrohom
,” “God of Abraham,” the song of farewell to the Sabbath, that she could extend the peacefulness for a few more minutes—the sun had not yet set at the glowing red horizon.
Like his son, Haskel looks out the window to see if three stars are shining in the firmament, signifying that the holy day has ended. Day and night battle for the last rays of the sun. The young Shaltiel, with his naïve and poetic imagination, is convinced that the presence and departure of the Sabbath depend on his father, on the songs he sings in a strong or halfhearted voice, that his father’s power is immense.
As soon as the evening prayer is finished, father and son hurry home to light the candles that separate the sacred from the profane and Israel from other nations. And they wish each other “Good week, good week.” Let it be good for each of them. But, Shaltiel thinks, how could it really be good as they will not be together? From morning to night, his father will knock at the doors of hardhearted strangers, and he, Shaltiel, will be isolated at school from the boys luckier than he, listening to the tutor or imagining an invisible chessboard.
Later on, he will find the word describing his state of mind: exile. That is what he is all week, torn away from his parents, an unpopular exile who arouses uneasiness everywhere, and who drags his anguish along with him. A vague anguish, elusive, pernicious, imperceptible but all-consuming. Stifling. Worse: demeaning.
In school, at first, people made fun of young Shaltiel. They
teased him and tried to provoke him. They had no compunctions about hurting him.
Months went by, but he remained solitary, powerless. More than the others, he suffered from the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer. Some classmates occasionally wore new clothes for the holidays. Not he. Often a scapegoat, he didn’t take part in games, and didn’t laugh with the others when one of them acted stupidly or insolently. He was unconnected.
Then, one day, he made a friend.
He must have been entering his eleventh or twelfth year. That day, Reb Haskel had fallen ill. Shaltiel (or Shalti, as his relatives called him) wanted to stay by his bedside, but Haskel wouldn’t hear of it.
“A boy’s place is in school,” he ruled.
With a heavy heart, Shaltiel could only obey. In school, he could think only of his father. For the first time in his life, he didn’t listen to what was being said around the long, rectangular table.
It was winter. The streets of Brooklyn were covered with icy patches buried under snow. As though grieving, the city breathed in slow motion. The skyscrapers were wrapped in mist, in a hush.
That day, the students were studying the Treatise on Punishments in the Talmud and, in the Bible, the chapter where the young Joseph, hated by his jealous brothers, is cast into a pit filled with snakes and scorpions. In tears, he implores his enemy brothers to get him out. Impervious to his pain and fear, they sit down to calm their hunger. The tutor waxed indignant: “How
is this possible? Isn’t it a disgrace? Joseph is suffering and crying, and his brothers think only of their stomachs? And after that, what do they do? They sell him into slavery! He, son of Jacob, grandson of Isaac and great-grandson of Abraham! It is hardly surprising that in the Talmud our Sages, blessed be their memory, declare that day as one of the darkest in the history of our people! They sold him for a bit of money and shoes!”
At that point Shaltiel could not hold back his tears. The tutor noticed him for the first time, really, and congratulated him: “You’re crying for the unfortunate Joseph, that’s good. This shows you have a good heart—not like all those idlers sitting here.”
And so the other students glared at Shaltiel, as though it were his fault that Joseph’s brothers had behaved contemptibly. He felt their annoyance. He himself was surprised by the words he blurted out: “No, I’m not crying for Joseph. I’m crying for my father. He’s unwell, and there’s no one at home to take care of him.”
The students stared at him, some with astonishment, others with compassion.
“What’s wrong with your father?” asked the tutor, fondling his beard.
“I don’t know,” Shaltiel replied. “He’s sick. So sick that he stayed home.”
A silence fell over the children as if to punish them.
“Go home,” said the tutor, in a tone that was now charitable. “Your father needs you more than we do. Tell him it’s my decision, not yours. You’ll come back tomorrow.”
Shaltiel went home. Haskel didn’t hide his joy. As Malka was at work, he asked his son to make him tea. Then he fell asleep.
The next day, at school, Shaltiel was given a seat at the table. When it was his turn to read the text, Shaltiel had good diction and knowledge that no one suspected. The tutor and the schoolboys were all taken aback.
“Where did you learn to read the text and the commentaries of Rashi and the Tosafists?” the tutor asked.
“Right here,” Shaltiel answered.
“No one at home helped you?”
“No one. When my father isn’t ill, he’s away all week.”
“How did you do it?”
“Well, I have a good memory. It comes in handy when you play chess too.”
The tutor looked at him for a long time before smiling.
“It takes a lot to astonish me. But you did. And I’m grateful to you.”
Nathanael, the top student in the class, drew close to Shaltiel. And so the friendship was born.
This was such a long time ago.
Did I live, did I survive, for this? Shaltiel wondered. To lose my freedom, my right to happiness? I know the power of the irrational on the course of events, but why does it so often turn out to be harmful? From one minute to the next, everything changes. You breathe in another way. You hope for something different. One minute of respite is a blessing. Memories become a great help.
His world had shrunk to the size of a basement.
When I was freed, I found out that at home, when the sun went down, my family didn’t know what to make of my disappearance.
Usually I liked to watch the spectacle of the sunset with children and old people, and invent stories for them. “Enter here,” I said to them, “enter into my story, the one we may be living through and that I bring to life,” incantatory words like stifled cries responding to men’s heartbeats, to the wounds of the earth. As they listened, the children became sadder, the old men did not; they simply hoped for the sun’s return.