The door opened and into the room came a fashionable, beardless young man wearing a stovepipe hat and a short jacket. He seemed to be in his late thirties. His appearance and manner of dress, indeed his entire bearing, radiated importance—that of a doctor, a lawyer, or, at the very least, an accountant. Especially authoritative were his pince-nez, which sat low down on his nose and were fastened to the buttonhole in his lapel by a thin black cord.
“Well, what’s the good word?” my father said.
The young man spoke half shyly and hesitantly. He began with these words: “Rabbi, you’re going to laugh …”
It turned out that some twelve years before, the young man had been the fiance of a respectable Warsaw girl. Then he met another girl and married her. People warned him that when someone breaks off an engagement, a letter of forgiveness is required from the other party. But he was in love with his new wife and was ashamed to return to the first one to request the letter. He was especially ashamed before his in-laws. In short, he went off to live
with the second girl, moved to another city, and hoped that time would smooth everything over. So a match dissolves, big deal!
However, bad luck tagged after the young man. He opened a shop, but it failed. He established a factory: that, too, did not succeed. His wife had one child, a second child, a third child, but all of them died. The young man was not religious; still, these misfortunes reminded him of the wrong that he had done to his first fiancée. He began to ponder this, and started dreaming about it at night. Before long he became obsessed with the thought that he would have no respite until he got a pardon from his former fiancee, who he heard had married. The news prompted him to leave his business and come to Warsaw, where he discovered that his former fiancee lived in our—that is my father’s—district. That is why he had come to ask my father’s assistance in getting a letter of forgiveness.
Father heard him out before saying, “Yes, it’s true. When a person is wronged, repentance is of no avail. One must request forgiveness.”
Father then sent me to bring the man’s former fiancée to the courtroom.
Since she lived on Khlodna Street, the young man gave me money for the round trip on the droshky. It was weird sitting in a droshky without packages. The boys outside gaped in wonder. The shopkeepers, men and women, laughed and wagged a warning forefinger at me. I leaned my head against the side of the droshky and felt the springs swaying under me. I was so light I was afraid I might fall out. Nevertheless, I felt comfortable riding in the droshky. I closed my eyes and contemplated the strangeness of human relationships. Because a young man in Lodz or Kolish can’t sleep at night for thinking about his former
fiancée, I, a young boy from Krochmalna Street, have to be in a droshky on a Wednesday noon.
I passed through the elegant gate of the woman’s building, climbed up a marble staircase to her apartment, and rang the bell. A maid clad in a white apron opened the door and asked me what I wanted.
“The lady of the house is being called to the rabbi’s courtroom.”
The woman soon appeared. She was in her late thirties, still pretty, but her high bosom was heavy, and she had scattered strands of gray hair. She looked as imposing in her womanliness as did her former fiance in his manliness. She asked me why I had come.
“Your former fiance is summoning you to see the rabbi—my father,” I said.
The woman’s big dark eyes widened. “What fiance? And what rabbi?”
As I told the woman everything I had heard, I noticed the color changing on her face—now pale, now red. One moment she was about to burst into laughter, the next she turned sad. At one point I thought she was going to yell at me and drive me from the apartment. Then she seemed to soften. “Do you already understand these matters?” she asked.
“I understand everything,” I said with boyish boastfulness.
“Wait. I’m going to phone my husband.”
After I had waited for a long time in the corridor, the young woman came out wearing a coat and hat.
“Let’s go.”
I told her I had money for a droshky, but she said she’d pay for the droshky herself. Soon I was sitting next to her—a lady
from Khlodna Street going to meet her former fiance, accompanied by a boy with red sidecurls, who knew bizarre secrets, was mixed up in the affairs of strangers, and was thinking wild thoughts. The woman herself did not interest me that much, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the horse. I sat to the side, where I could observe the horse’s broad hindquarters and long tail, which swayed and seemed to tell me mutely: I don’t care who I carry or where I go. I don’t know anything. I’m a horse’s rear and I’ll always be one. When I eat oats, I have the strength to pull this droshky. I don’t care whether a priest, a rabbi, or a Turk is sitting in it. From time to time the horse’s tail swished, a sign that its hindquarters were satisfied.
As I climbed the stairs to our apartment with the woman, I noticed that her dress was narrow and long. She had to take small steps and was unable to negotiate two stairs at a time. The heels of her shoes were high and shiny. Pharmacy fragrances clung to her. She took me by the sleeve, as if to lean on me for protection. Her gloved hand was both light and firm. A strange, forbidden warmth ran through me, which turned me into an absolute ass.
The meeting between the once-engaged couple was like something out of a fairy tale. It also reminded me of the story of Joseph and his brothers. The man didn’t recognize the woman at first. They looked at each other in amazement, alternating between forgetfulness and remembrance. Finally, the woman declared, “Yes, it’s you.”
“I recognized you right away,” the man said, intending it as a compliment.
“How long has it been? No, better don’t tell me,” the woman said.
“How the years fly by!”
“When did you start wearing glasses?”
“About three years ago. Maybe four.”
“Are you nearsighted, or what?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve become fat.”
While they were exchanging these banalities, Father perused a holy text, stroking his beard and rubbing his forehead. Just as I had been totally absorbed in the horse’s hindquarters before, I was now all eyes and ears regarding this couple who had almost become man and wife but had become estranged on account of a love affair. Both of them now had someone else, yet a closeness remained. They addressed each other in the familiar form. They stood face-to-face and couldn’t get their fill of looking at each other.
“What kind of man is your husband?” I heard him ask.
“A good man.”
“Are you happy with him?”
“One can’t always be happy,” she replied.
“Fania,” he said, “I’ve never forgotten the wrong I did.”
And his glasses clouded over as if someone had breathed a mouthful of vapor on them.
The woman did not reply at once. Her face began to twitch. I saw a mist in her eyes which might become a tear, but, too proud after twelve years to cry in his presence, she held it back.
She raised her head. “I’ve already forgotten everything.”
“Fania, God has punished me on account of you.”
“How can you say that? One can never be sure of such things.”
They talk; they murmur. Father waits, but he’s impatient. The talking and murmuring of this formerly engaged couple smacks of sin.
“You’re a married woman,” Father tells her. “And he, too, has a family. Give him forgiveness and the One Above will help both of you.”
“I forgive him,” the woman declares. “And God will surely forgive him.”
“It’s preferable for the forgiveness to be in writing,” Father says.
The word “forgiveness” makes me want to laugh. In Yiddish that word—mekhila—also has another meaning, and not a nice one: “rear end.” I want to burst out laughing like a little boy, but I restrain myself with all my might. Father writes a few words in Hebrew. He makes two copies. The man has to give her a declaration of forgiveness and she has to give one to him—and both have to sign them.
“I can sign only in Polish,” says the woman.
“All right, as long as it’s signed,” Father says.
She takes the pen in a grandiose manner, rests her finger on the holder, and, without removing her chamois glove, signs in a quavering calligraphy with her present husband’s last name. Her signature evinces education, wealth, and worldliness. Only people who live on Khlodna Street and have a marble entrance staircase and a bell on the door have signatures like this. The man writes his name in Yiddish, but his signature, too, has a modern flourish.
“What’s your name?” Father asks. “I can’t make it out.”
“Zigmunt.”
“How are you called up to the Torah?”
“To the Torah? … Zalman.”
“Sign again,” Father orders. “With your Hebrew name.”
The young man signs “Zalman.”
Father gets a ruble and I have a forty-kopeck coin in my pocket. The couple leaves the apartment together. It seems to me that Father wants to call them back and warn them that they are not allowed to go together, but before he can say a word, they are already on their way downstairs.
I run out to the balcony, waiting to see them emerge from the front gate. But it takes a long time and I don’t know what to think. Did they remain in the courtyard? Are they inside the gate? Or perhaps I missed them and they have already gone. I’m very impatient. Finally, they appear and he seems to be holding her by the arm. Not actually holding her, but supporting her elbow with his hand. Strange, how slowly they’re moving. They stop repeatedly. They go not toward Khlodna Street but toward Gnoyna. They’re so deep in conversation that they clearly don’t even know where they’re going.
I have already read the romances of the popular Yiddish writer Shomer, and my imagination is working overtime. Perhaps, I think, the man wants to take her to his castle. Perhaps he is a count. Perhaps she, the woman with him, is in disguise. Perhaps he will shoot her with a pistol and then take his own life. Perhaps the entire matter of forgiveness is only a ruse. Perhaps I should run down to the street and follow them. But no—they would recognize me. I remember the money in my pocket and decide to go to Tvarda Street to buy myself a storybook. Not one, but two. Not two, but six.
I run to Tvarda Street. The news vendor stands there wearing a little red cap. His small book rack is packed with books: Sherlock Holmes, Max Shpitzkopf, and titles like Terrible Secrets, The Secret of the Kaiser’s Court, the Captive Princess, The Enchanted Orphan Girl, The 1,200 Thieves. Each title pulls me like a magnet. Each booklet has its own mystery, cleverness, and bizarre intrigues. But I can’t buy them all. I have to choose.
I spend my last kopeck and carry home a stack of books. The street and the boys no longer concern me at all. I have only one wish: that my joy not be interrupted, that I have the time to read everything from beginning to end.
And at some point I muse that I, too, would like to write a storybook—full of secrets and mysteries, full of counts and orphan girls and enchanted thieves, starring a bride and groom named Fania and Zigmunt who haven’t seen each other for twelve years and who then meet at a rabbi’s house, whereupon their love is rekindled and begins to burn like a hellish fire.