Those who understand human nature and contemplate its affairs realize that one person can never really know another. People do things which seem to make no sense at all.
For example: the middle-aged man who married a woman fifteen years younger and then began to work as a salesman, traveling the length and breadth of Russia to sell the products of a big firm on commission. He got married, let’s say on a Tuesday, and then on Sunday, even before the traditional seven days of celebration had ended, his wife was accompanying him to the train bound for Petersburg. He had planned to be away three months, but ended up traversing all of Russia up to the Chinese border and didn’t return until seven months later.
He remained in Warsaw three weeks and then departed once more. When he came back again, the traveling salesman found a baby in a cradle—his own.
I won’t recount all his trips here. At the lawsuit his wife listed each one in detail. He had been at home no more than one month during the year and sometimes not even that long. Another child
was born. The children were already seven and eight, but they did not really know their father. He came, brought presents, and once more began preparing for another journey. After each trip he would promise his wife that his roaming and roving had ended, but he never kept his word.
He looked like a traveling salesman: average height, rather chubby, with a black mustache and the smile of a peddler. He had a premature potbelly on which hung the gold chain of a pocketwatch. He dressed fashionably: a derby, a pinstriped suit, a stiff collar with rounded edges, and a black necktie. His boots were polished to a high shine. Even the way he inserted a finger into his vest pocket and lit his cigarettes with a lighter proved he was a worldly man.
He said in a pleasantly hoarse voice, “Is it my fault I have such a livelihood? This is how I make my living. This is how I support my family.”
The way he blew smoke rings through his nose and from the side of his mouth showed me, the little boy, that he was full of grown-up cleverness and that he knew what he was talking about.
But above all, I liked his cuffs with the gilt cuff links set with blue gemstones. A man with such cuffs just doesn’t babble aimlessly.
But his short wife, who had a girlish face and wore a hat over her head of girlish hair, countered, “What kind of a living is this? He goes away for years on end. I’m a living widow and the children are living orphans. On Pesach I have to go to my mother’s for the Seder …” The woman took out a small handkerchief and wiped away a solitary tear.
Father placed his hand on his forehead and asked, “So what do you want?”
“Rather than live such a life, it would be better for him to divorce me,” the woman said. “I can’t go on like this. It’s a miserable way to live.”
“What do you say?” Father asked the husband.
“Rabbi, if she wants to divorce me, I won’t force her to stay. My principle is that two people have to want a marriage. If one side is dissatisfied, it’s no good.”
The word “marriage” smacked of storybooks and novels serialized in the newspapers. Even the word “dissatisfied” had a Germanic ring.
Mother came in and asked, “What’s the purpose of such a life?”
She said it partly to the woman and partly to the man. The traveling salesman smiled sweetly, displaying some of the gold in his teeth. His words, too, were golden: “What shall I do, Rebbetzin? Every person has his occupation. Do you think it’s a pleasure to sit days on end in a train? One day I’m in Moscow, the next I’m in Petersburg; one day I’m in Nizhny Novgorod, and the next I’m in Vladivostok. And furthermore, living in hotels is no pleasure either. I long for my own bed and my wife. But no sooner do I want to return home than I get a telegram from my firm to go to the Caucasus, or the devil knows where. Then I have to pick up my suitcase and run to the terminal once again …”
“Children must have a father …”
“Of course, but my situation is such that I can see my children only once a year.”
I was only a little boy at the time, but still I sensed that this man was not as unhappy as he pretended to be. A joke always seemed to hover on his thick lips. He apparently enjoyed these trips immensely. His eyes gleamed with oily satisfaction and pride that he was needed by his firm and was obliged to undertake such lengthy journeys. It seemed he felt quite at home in all these trains, terminals, hotels. By now I had already heard readings of the Sholom Aleichem railroad story about two traveling salesmen who played cards on the backside of a Greek Orthodox priest—and it seemed to me that this traveling salesman was one of those two men. He sits in the train, drinks tea, plays cards, and tells stories. Who knows what could have taken place in all those far-flung places?
After lengthy discussions the traveling salesman promised that he would try to persuade his firm to have him travel less and do more work in Warsaw. He took his wife by the arm and departed with her. Even his manner of walking was sly and deceitful. I noticed that two round pieces of rubber had been added to his heels to make him taller. One could not hear his footfalls. I sensed (or perhaps I realize it only now) that his wife and children were no more than a joke for him—one of the countless comic and entertaining anecdotes which traveling salesmen tell on trains to one another or to perfect strangers.
After a period of not going to the cheder, I was enrolled by my parents once again. It so happened that this was the same cheder that the older son of the traveling salesman was attending. He did not study with my teacher, who taught Talmud, but with the teacher’s son, who taught the beginners’ class. The boy had a gentile first name: Kuba. He attended cheder for only a
few hours, because he also studied in public school. He came and went as he wished. The boy was a copy of his father: chubby, swarthy, with a pair of dark, laughing eyes, full lips, and dimpled cheeks. His pockets were always laden with nuts, chocolates, caramels, and all kinds of toys. Despite his age he was full of stories. He didn’t know that his parents had come to us to initiate a lawsuit, but I did know and played dumb. Children often have a good sense of what can be discussed and what must be kept secret. I already knew not to tell tales out of school …
Kuba was always blathering about his papa: how he traveled, how he saw everything, and what kinds of presents he brought every time he returned home. The boy had a set of trains with tracks and other such toys. Even the trifles he brought to cheder were treasures. He had, for example, an ivory pen whose shaft had a tiny window. Looking into it one could see the city of Cracow. He also had colored pencils and even a little box of colors with which one could paint only when they were wet with spittle.
At some point, a week passed and the would-be scholar (which is what the teacher called him) did not show up in cheder. The teacher then sent me and another boy to find out what had happened. Perhaps Kuba was ill.
We made our way to their house. The family no longer lived on our street but on Gnoyna Street. The apartment steps were dirty, but underneath the dirt one could see the white of marble. I rang the bell and a maid came to open the door. At first she didn’t want to admit us, but Kuba heard us and invited us in. I stood there amazed. The rooms were enormous. Kuba
was wearing something I hadn’t seen before; only later did I learn it was pajamas. He was supposedly a little bit under the weather. His throat was red, but he played with his toys and ran about over the waxed floors with the energy of a young colt. His mother yelled at him and the maid scolded him angrily in Polish.
Suddenly I noticed a man roaming about the house, but it wasn’t the traveling salesman. He was short, thin, with a pale face and blond curly hair. His tie looked more like a noose than a cravat. I asked Kuba who he was.
“He’s teaching Mama how to play the piano.”
“What’s that?”
“Come, I’ll show you.”
He ran to the piano and began banging on the keys. Tones and overtones filled the apartment. His mother began yelling at Kuba in Polish, and we, the two messengers, wanted to leave, but then she offered us a snack. Each one of us was given a biscuit and a glass of cocoa, as was Kuba, but he was in no rush to drink. He was already sated with sweets.
Kuba told us about the piano teacher. He could play anything. He was a professor of music and had performed with the Philharmonic. He was also crazy. When Mama did not play well, he plugged his ears with his fingers and yelled and swooshed the sheet music to the floor. Sometimes the teacher took Kuba and his little sister, who was now at school, to the movies, where they showed all kinds of little people on a screen. The piano teacher did not speak Yiddish, only Polish.
“Is he your uncle?”
“No, he’s not an uncle.”
I wasn’t suspicious at the time, but I understood that none of this was kosher. All these things smacked of promiscuity: a piano, a woman without a marriage wig, a man who gave piano lessons to a woman, a little boy who studied in public school and ran around bareheaded in the apartment. I never saw him again—not him, not his mama, not the piano teacher, and not his father, who dragged himself from one Russian fair to another and supported a nice-looking wife, two refined children, and a piano teacher to boot.
This traveling salesman who told countless anecdotes about others had transformed his own life into an anecdote. But why did he do this? Why did a man get married and then go off to faraway places? Did he have such strong faith in women’s fidelity? Or didn’t it bother him? And why did he need a family whom he saw so rarely?
A stranger certainly cannot answer this, but I don’t know if even the salesman himself could have explained it. Behind his jokes and tales a different being evidently lived in this man—one with another outlook and other calculations.