Krochmalna Street was packed with houses of ill repute. In Yiddish they were called “little houses,” but the streetwalkers lived in cellars whose windows looked out from under the entrance steps. The men who patronized those places had to crawl through dark, cave-like corridors. At the square, thieves and pimps hung out. Even in those years I knew that there were prostitutes and that it was forbidden to look at them, because a single glance could make one impure. But I didn’t give much thought to precisely what they were or what they did.
I often saw them standing by the gate or at the square, their cheeks rouged and their eyelashes mascaraed, wearing flowered scarves and red or blue shoes. Occasionally, one of them smoked a cigarette.
When I passed by, they would call me names: “Hey, you little jerk! Hey, you sneaky little Hasid! Hey, you dummy!”
But now and then, when one of them gave me a little piece of chocolate, I would run off and throw it into the sewer. I knew that whatever they touched was defiled. Once in a while they would
come into our house to ask questions pertaining to religion. Mother would be embarrassed, unable to utter a word. But it made no difference to my father. He turned his glance aside from all women in any case. Their questions always pertained to the yortzeit, the anniversary of a loved one’s death, the only mitzvah the streetwalkers observed. They could never figure out the precise day on the Jewish calendar to light the memorial candle.
Once, a young man came in who looked like an artisan. He wore a little Jewish cap but a short jacket and buttoned shoes. His shirt had no collar, just a paper dickey from which a tin collar stud stuck out. He was unshaven and his cheeks were hollow. His aquiline nose was pale as though from an illness. His big black eyes shone with a mildness that reminded me of fasting and funerals. This is how mourners looked who came in to ask questions about sitting shiva and observing the thirty days of mourning.
Mother happened to be in the courtroom, and I sat over a Talmud and pretended to study.
“What can I do for you?” Father asked.
The youth began to stammer and turned red, then pale. “Rabbi, is it permissible to marry a prostitute?”
Mother was shocked. Father asked the young man a question and looked at me sternly.
“Leave the room!”
I went to the kitchen, and the young man remained in the courtroom for a long while. Afterward Mother came into the kitchen and said, “There are all kinds of lunatics in this world!”
Father decided that he could marry the prostitute. Not only was it permissible, but indeed it was a mitzvah to rescue a Jewish
girl from sin. The young man needed no more. He immediately requested that Father officiate at the wedding. He left in high spirits and gaily slammed the door. Father came into the kitchen.
“What kind of madness is this?” Mother asked.
“He has—how do they say it over there?—fallen in love.”
“With a prostitute?”
“Well …”
Then Father returned to his holy text.
I don’t recall how much time passed before the wedding took place. The girl had to count the prescribed number of days after her menstrual cycle and then go to the ritual bath. All kinds of women helpers began swirling around her. Everyone on the street knew what was happening and they discussed it in the grocery, the butcher shop, even the synagogue. Usually, only a few people attended a small wedding. My father would almost always have to send me to the Hasidic shtibl to gather enough men for a minyan. But this time our apartment turned into a Viennese salon. Every minute our door opened and in walked a thief or a pimp. But most of the guests were promiscuous girls fancied up in silk and velvet, and wearing hats with ostrich feathers. The madams came, too.
The fact that an honest young man had fallen in love with a whore was a victory for the underworld, especially the women. They saw it as a sign that there was hope for them, the rejected ones, too. The madams donned their marriage wigs and shawls, which they wore to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The streetwalkers wore long-sleeved dresses without corsets. They kissed the mezuzah upon entering and politely
greeted my mother. Mother stood there pale and disheveled. Our neighbors encircled her like a guard so that, God forbid, none of the impurity would rub off on her. But no change was visible on my father, who wasn’t bothered by any of this. He stood by his prayer stand studying a text and even wrote some comments on a sheet of paper. Everyone was waiting for the bride and groom.
From the balcony I could see people waiting on the sidewalk and by the gate. Several girls and madams joined me on the balcony. Suddenly there was a commotion. The couple had emerged from some courtyard, accompanied by an entire entourage. The bridegroom was spruced up in a new summer jacket and lacquered shoes. The bride, small and swarthy, looked like a girl from a fine middle-class family. The women on the balcony pulled out little hankies and began wiping away their tears.
“Look how pale she is!”
“Is she fasting?”
“She’s pretty as a picture!”
“I wish it’d happen to me!”
“God willing, may it happen to you!”
“Here they come! Here they come!”
“One should never lose hope!”
A huge pimp, blind in one eye and with a jagged scar on his forehead, kept order. A madam wearing a wide marriage wig shouted angrily at the girls and told them to stand near the wall. A girl with a face as pockmarked as a grater laughed with one eye and cried with the other. This wasn’t just a wedding but a show worthy of Kaminsky’s Yiddish Theater. Usually we didn’t
need a sexton, but the pimps brought one of their own, a short man who mingled with the crowd. When the bride entered the apartment, all the women threw kisses at her. They grabbed her, they hugged her, they didn’t want to let her go. They showered her with good wishes. To each one she said the same thing: “God willing, may it happen to you.” Each time she said this, all the girls choked back a sob.
Father sat down to write the marriage contract, but then came a tense moment. He began whispering to the sexton. He consulted a holy text. It was senseless to write that the bride was a virgin, but neither was she a divorcee or a widow. Exactly what was done and whether they wrote into the document that the bride was to receive one hundred gulden or two hundred I do not remember.
Four pimps held the staves of the wedding canopy. Since both bride and groom were orphans, they were led to the wedding canopy by the brothel owners and the madams. Everything was done according to Jewish law and tradition. The bridegroom wore a white linen robe, as was the custom. The bride’s face was covered by a veil. Father recited the blessings and let the bride and groom sip some wine. When the groom put the ring on the bride’s outstretched index finger, saying, “Behold thou art consecrated unto me …,” all the prostitutes burst into tears. Even as a child I was amazed by how quickly women start laughing and crying.
After the ceremony everyone kissed and exchanged good wishes. The table was covered with wines, cognac, liquors, all kinds of drinks. Slices of sponge cake were offered as well. The women gingerly picked up pieces of cake with two fingers, pinkies out, taking small bites and little, sips like high-class
ladies. Today was their day. Today they weren’t just whores who lived miserable lives in cellars but friends who had been invited to a wedding. The pimps drank brandy out of tea glasses and began stammering as men do when they become tipsy.
One pimp ran over to Father and yelled, “Rabbi, you are a precious Jew!”
“It’s enough just to be a Jew,” Father replied.
“Rabbi, I’ll take whatever punishments are destined for you!”
“Oh, God forbid … one must not talk that way.”
“Rabbi, I’m not worth the mud on the soles of your shoes.”
Father began looking into his holy books. He wanted these people to leave so he could resume studying. But they were in no rush. They drank and drank. One of the brothelkeepers kept insisting that Father have a drink, too.
“I’m not allowed to drink,” Father said. “I have a stomach virus, may it not happen to you.”
“Rabbi, it’s only forty proof, not ninety proof.”
“I can’t. The doctor forbade it.”
“What do they know? Doctors don’t know a thing!”
After a lot of talk, Father finally tasted one solitary drop. The women wanted to take Mother into their circle, but she had already left the apartment. Mother had no intention of mingling with that crowd. I got wine, whiskey, and so much cake and cookies that I stuffed my pockets with them.
The apartment eventually began to empty I went out onto the balcony and watched the bride and groom being escorted in parade-like fashion back to the courtyard from which they had been led out earlier.
Only when everyone had left did Mother return. It wasn’t warm outside, but she opened all the windows to air out the rooms. She threw the leftover cakes and drinks into the garbage. For days afterward Mother went about agitated.
“I’d like to see the day when I can tell this street goodbye,” she said.
I heard people discussing this couple for a long, long time. Wonderful things were said about them. A former prostitute was leading the life of a decent wife. She went to the ritual bath every month. She bought glatt kosher meat at the butcher’s. She went to the synagogue every Sabbath and holiday. Then I heard that she was pregnant, and then that she had given birth. The women neighbors said that she never even looked at other men. From time to time I saw her husband. The glitter of the wedding day had left him, and he went about once more without a collar, wearing only a paper dickey. Once in a store I heard a woman ask, “But how can a man live with her when he knows where she has bounced around?”
“Repentance helps for everything!” a woman wearing a bonnet replied.
“Still, it’s disgusting …”
“Perhaps he loves her,” another woman called out.
“What’s there to love? She’s as thin as a stick.”
“Every man has his likes.”
“May God not punish me for my words!” the woman shopkeeper said. “Mouth, be quiet!” And she slapped her lips with two fingers.
From that time on I paid more attention to the girls who stood at the gates and by the lampposts. Some looked vulgar, fleshy,
mean; their heavily mascaraed eyes snickered with a depraved impudence. Others seemed to be so quiet, sad, and shrunken. One of the prostitutes spoke Yiddish with a Lithuanian pronunciation, which was an absolute novelty for us. She came into Esther’s candy store and said, “What have you got that’s delicious? How about a piece of cheesecake! I’ve got a hole in my stomach a yard long!”
I heard housemaids in the courtyard saying that the pimps rode around at night in coaches grabbing innocent girls, orphans, and girls from the provinces. They were forced into prostitution and then put aboard ships bound for Buenos Aires. There they had flings with black people. Then a worm would enter their blood and pieces of flesh would fall from their bodies.
These stories were sweet and appalling at the same time. Things were happening in this world. There were secrets not only in heaven above but also down here on earth. I had a burning desire to grow up all the more quickly so I could learn all these heavenly and earthly secrets, to which little boys had no access …