א as in Avraham
ב as in Bein haMetzarim
ג as in Ghever
ד as in Daniyel
ה as in Yeled
ו as in V’haya
ז as in Zekharya
ח as in Hanukkah
ט as in Tu BiShvat
י as in Isaia
כ as in Kippur
ל as in Lag baOmer
מ as in Moshe
נ as in Nisan
ס as in Sukkot
ע as in Asarah BeTevet
פ as in Pesach
צ as in Tzom Gedalya
ק as in Katan
ר as in Rosh haShanah
ש as in Shabbat
ת as in Tishri
Who knows what Henry would have said
if he had seen
this creature of his
recite the alphabet from memory
along with the months, prophets, and Jewish festivals.
This little David
is really bright.
Perhaps a little too bright.
It’s no coincidence
that when Uncle Mayer and Uncle Emanuel travel
they prefer to take
his brother:
today as well, when they are expected in Louisiana.
There are still three hours to go.
Even if they seem near on the map
it’s not so short a ride
from Montgomery to Baton Rouge.
And when you think that the slaves
do this whole road
on foot,
as Roundhead Deggoo
told them,
who once
before cotton
worked sugar in Louisiana.
Sugar.
Meaning sugarcane, of course
and not the white one
of sugar beet
which Aunt Rosa
—Henry’s widow, that’s what they call her now—
keeps in small lumps
in a glass bowl
and when her children drive her ’round the bend
“Bertha! Harriett! Leave the cat alone!”
just to enjoy a moment’s peace
“David! Will you stop shouting?”
she gets them to play a game:
“All right children: a sugar lump
for each of you:
now put it on your tongue
mouths shut
and the one who keeps it longest wins!”
This is the only trick
to get some silence
in the house made all of wood
that Henry built beam by beam,
he who over there in Rimpar, Bavaria,
had built a whole shed
in wood
for his father’s cattle.
But of all four children that Henry has left behind
there is one
who had never much liked
sugar lumps on the tongue,
for the simple reason
that no games are needed
to keep him silent:
the little boy is silent
by character
naturally
totally silent
a worthy descendant of his granddad Abraham,
in fact his nickname “Dreidel”
was given to him
at the time
when he was a baby
at the age of da-da-da
when he amazed everyone
on an evening of festivity
when he took a spinning top
between his tiny hands and said without hesitation,
when he said word by word,
in almost perfect Yiddish
“Dem iz a dreidel!”*
to the enthusiastic approval of his relatives who
with hugs and kisses
greeted the precocious phonetic debut
of a natural future orator.
They were wrong.
Entirely.
For Dreidel
—who would in fact take the name of his Uncle Mayer,
in honor of the fact that he alone was present at the birth—
stopped talking very early:
that eruption
marked the beginning and the end
of his eloquence.
From then on
for several years
the child confined himself
to a bizarre counting of other people’s words:
he listened as they talked, with sharp gaze,
suddenly bursting out
with phrases such as
“Uncle Emanuel, that’s 27 times you’ve used the word HORSE,
42 times you’ve used the verb TRADE
25 times you’ve said UNFORTUNATELY
14 times you’ve said AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT
and 9 times you’ve used CONSTRUCTIVE.
What exactly does CONSTRUCTIVE mean?”
This was the little boy’s obsession:
unable to make a conversation of his own,
Dreidel kept count of what others said
with mathematical precision
and was able to say how many times
in the last week
his mother had called
his brother, David,
an ass, a devil, or a pest.
Then even this slowly vanished,
so that he fell
into such a strange silence
that
the Lehman house
felt a growing conviction
that Dreidel
in his silence
was turning his back on the human race.
A matter of no small significance
for a young kid in short trousers.
Aunt Rosa, it has to be said,
for her part did not reproach him.
Indeed
the other three made so much noise
that a quiet child
seemed heaven-sent,
and might
—Aunt Rosa thought—
even be an offering from that father
so prematurely departed
who
being a good head as he was
had had the forethought to include a silent child
in a litigious family
of arms and potatoes
left suddenly
orphaned of its brain.
And for this she accepted him,
heartily thanking her dear departed Henry.
Every so often
however
certain questions arose
in Emanuel’s and Mayer’s minds.
About the future more than anything else.
About the future of the business.
For it was clear
—and old Abraham, in Rimpar, had even written them about it—
that one day Lehman Brothers
king of cotton
would slide
naturally
without realizing it
onto the gentle slope of lineal descent,
and then
from three sons of a cattle merchant
to the grandchildren of that Lehman with two n’s.
And then? To whom?
Emanuel Lehmann,
stubborn arm
and as such
animated with muscular fervor more than loving tenderness,
seemed far distant
not just from being a father
but even from choosing a wife,
his brother being convinced
that the ribs chest and spinal column
of any poor woman
would snap to pieces
at the first embrace.
Mayer Bulbe on the other hand
already had a pregnant wife,
feeling in this expectancy
not merely the birth of a son
but a future for the family business
so that
not a day passed without him repeating to his Babette
“I know you can do nothing about it,
but if there is something,
then concentrate on it not being a girl.”
In the meantime,
while putting their trust
in order of importance
on the Eternal One, on fortune, on Babette’s confinement, and on
Mother Nature,
the two Lehman brothers
carefully
watched
Aunt Rosa’s young boys,
and though they still had their milk teeth
for them they were already in line for power.
Exactly.
This made them tremble.
How was it possible that a head such as Henry
so thoughtful to a fault
had produced as offspring
two males who had not even the minimal hope
of professional achievement?
Since,
while Dreidel didn’t speak,
his brother, David, would have been worthy
without a doubt
of the same nickname
as his brother but in a very different sense:
in his case
he himself was the spinning top
incapable of staying still
frantic and restless
who had gone as far as telling his mother:
“I don’t want to sleep because it’s a waste of time.”
but was then incapable of using his time
for anything other than acrobatics
so that
he seemed destined
evidently
for something quite different from a role in commerce
and instead
—his uncles said as they watched him—
for a promising career, yes,
in a circus.
The fact is that
Dreidel & Dreidel
grandsons of a cattle dealer
were incapable of playing hide-and-seek
or with a skipping rope
or on a seesaw
without seeing Uncle Mayer and Uncle Emanuel
hovering around
like two large flies
visibly worried
so worried
that when David snatched a lollipop from a younger sister,
Emanuel went immediately to Aunt Rosa
shouting furiously
“No one in our family business
has ever appropriated the resources of another!
and Mayer added
darkly
that three days before,
when he tested
his young nephew,
the boy had mistaken
ordinary hemp for first choice cotton.
Unforgivable.
Having therefore ruled out
hot-headed David,
seriously destined
for an athletic, military, or equestrian career,
the two brothers’ hopes
could only be placed
on the silent scion
whose nevertheless razor-sharp gaze
—as he slowly grew up—
instilled in more or less everyone
the uncertain thought
that Dreidel was an extreme
though undependable
concentration of wisdom,
worthy heir—for sure—to the paternal head,
and that in this condition of perfect cerebralism
he understood the workings of the world so well
that he had no words to express his contempt.
He remained silent, yes,
but deliberately so.
Aunt Rosa
did not mind such a picture.
And indeed she allowed
the family to give this three-year-old
the label
which inspired awe in more or less everyone
of something halfway
between philosopher and rabbi
who therefore
—it went without saying—
would assume
a future role in the company.
For which reason
it was decided that Dreidel
should accompany
Mayer and Emanuel
year after year
on occasional business trips
like this one
along the slave road
as far as Baton Rouge in Louisiana.
Did sugar
have an irresistible attraction
on the Lehmans too?
Well yes.
Sugar.
The one who mentioned it first
was Benjamin Newgass
one of Babette’s brothers who lives in New Orleans,
where sugarcane is lord and master:
“You have your cotton, of course,
fortunately, you have already found your line of business,
but I swear to you that sugar in Louisiana
seems like a gold mine.
If you’re interested, just to find out, come and see for yourselves!”
And Emanuel is interested for sure.
For when all is said and done
to an arm, cotton sleeves feel tight
and I haven’t come here to America
to shut myself up in Montgomery
just as if I were over there in Bavaria.
Mayer, however, no.
He disapproves.
And he has told him so,
straight out:
“There’s work to do here, and you want to go off to Louisiana?”
but since a potato doesn’t know how to talk straight
and an arm is still an arm, even at the age of forty
three days later they were in the coach
accompanied
by a silent spinning top
on their way to Sugarland
where hundreds of thousands of slaves
lined up in rows
cut, trim, and stack
whole fields of crop
as far as the eye can see.
After which
greeted warmly
arm potato and spinning top
sit down
in the shade of a white veranda
sipping fresh lemon juice
with this man with full beard
dressed in a white white suit
the color of sugar
which is said in these parts to be King:
“You have asked to meet me?
To be honest, I don’t understand why.
Of course, Messrs. Lehman, your fame
has reached as far as Louisiana:
it is said you’ve done wonders
on the cotton market . . . But I don’t deal in cloth.”
Of the three
arm potato and spinning top
unfortunately
it is Emanuel, an instinctive limb
who replies
aggravated here by the exhaustion of the journey:
“Have you taken us for two cloth dealers?”
“I have taken you for who you are:
excellent cotton traders,
and I admire you, but it’s not my line of business.
Would you mind if my niece now plays the piano for you?”
Terror-struck by the sudden reemergence
of the unassuaged specter of the ivory-basher
Emanuel Lehman explodes into a kind of roar:
“I haven’t come to America
to shut myself up in a single line of business!”
“What do you mean, Mr. Lehman?
Are you proposing to abandon cotton?
Only a madman would do that in your situation.
Serenella, play us some Chopin.”
“Keep the child on a leash:
I’m not abandoning cotton or anything else,
I just wish to know: how much does your sugar cost?”
“I don’t discuss my sugar prices
with someone who doesn’t even know what it is.”
“For you know nothing at all of business,
you know less than this young boy of ours.”
At which point
his brother intervenes
smooth odorless as a potato,
stitching onto his face the picture of a smile,
taking Serenella’s hand
and sitting with her at the piano,
where they start a wonderfully lively duet,
over which Mayer can easily add a few choice words:
“My brother means to say, sir,
that the cotton trade is so very hard:
every three days it brings us trouble,
and therefore—if we choose—
might we not be entitled to sugar it as we please,
just to sweeten the palate a little?
Don’t lose the rhythm, Serenella: you have some talent!
We, sir, have plenty of customers: businesspeople.
I think we could do good business, we and you.
I have a feeling about it. Trust me.”
The sugar king
though cheered by the duet
looks at Mayer Lehman
with a certain vexation,
though not because he feels annoyed:
he wonders how
that Kish Kish way
fits with the rudeness of the man sitting next to him.
To sweeten the situation
he has a Bohemian glass bowl
brought to the table
filled with sugar as though it were gold:
“Before speaking, try my sugar,
the best in Baton Rouge: choice nectar.
If you like it, Mr. Mayer Lehman, we can talk.”
and he holds out three silver teaspoons,
for the tasting.
It is curious how at times
children
take only a moment
—only one—
to step from childhood to maturity.
In the case of Dreidel
(whom everyone considered already mature
indeed more than ever
verging almost on the wisdom of an old man)
it was to be a step backward,
and he took it
in an instant
dropping down
from the upper level of silent genius
to that humiliating position of stupid brat
just as
everyone on that white veranda
was extolling the pleasure of King Sugar,
he broke the silence
with the phrase
“I hate it”
repeated moreover several times
“I hate it.”
Insisting
“I hate it.”
with a voice no longer that of child but of a tenor
“I hate it.”
which was not enough
to stop
the looks of the servants
nor the smiling excuses of Uncle Mayer
nor the angry fit of the bearded sugar merchant
nor the hysterical cry of Serenella at the piano
nor even
the slap delivered directly across the face
which an uncle-arm
couldn’t help but administer
to teach the young boy
that in life it is better to keep silent
than to venture
into the perilous realms of speech.
They left
homeward
in silence:
the Lehman foray
into the land of sugar
had been worse than bitter
disastrously bitter
and now that Dreidel
had embarked on sabotage
a further shadow fell
over the future
of the family business.
All lay in the hands
—or rather: in the womb—
of tender Babette
whose last four months of pregnancy
were spent
as an accused man
might wait for
reprieve
or sentence of death.
The birth of a baby girl
would have been disastrous,
so that
no Lehman
prayed so much
as Mayer and Emanuel
in the anxiety
of those passing months.
It was a rainy afternoon
when Babette
all of a sudden
playing cards
during a particularly fortunate hand
fixed her eyes on Aunt Rosa
as if she were about to discard a joker
and had just enough time to say “What a strange sensation . . .”
before bending over in pain
and throwing her cards on the table.
Hurriedly
they sent Roundhead to call
hurriedly
her husband and brother-in-law
hurriedly
because the wait had certainly ended
and the labor had begun.
Someone related how
as soon as the two brothers
in great agitation
entered the house,
their faces turned pale
on seeing a terrible omen:
on the table
Babette’s cards
left there as a sign
were
a full set of queens.
It was a night of anguish
of torment and of sweat.
In the bedroom, Babette suffered.
But in the drawing room
they suffered just as much—if not more.
Emanuel pacing ’round the room,
Mayer on his round stool,
and a vague feeling in the air
that there was also someone else
on the ledge of the open window
with his legs drawn together
and an arm up at the back of his neck.
Then toward dawn
Aunt Rosa appeared at the doorway
smiled to Mayer
and said only
“You may come in.”
She hadn’t finished the phrase
before they were already inside.