The door opened and a bareheaded woman came in. It was rare for a woman to enter our apartment with her head uncovered; even those women who went about bareheaded would don a kerchief before coming in. But this woman was apparently too upset, too agitated to think about anything else besides her shame and utter disgrace. She was of average height, rather chubby, with a florid face and blondish hair combed back in a bun and held together with hairpins. This woman had surely once been a beauty, but now she looked disheveled, bitter, and angry. She had already begun yelling in the kitchen.
“He’s a murderer! A bandit! I can’t take it any longer! I want a divorce! A divorce!”
Evidently, Mother knew her. She lived across the street from us at 15 Krochmalna Street. Amid shouts and curses, she described what her husband, that outcast, that scoundrel, was doing. He wasn’t supporting the family, he paid no attention to the children, he spent days on end in the tavern at 17 Krochmalna drinking with hooligans and loose women. But the trick he had
pulled the other day went beyond all bounds. This she wouldn’t keep quiet. This she wouldn’t forget even when she lay with her feet toward the door and shards on her eyes.
“What did he do?”
“Rebbetzin, he gambled away our stove!”
“The stove? How can one gamble away one’s stove?”
This man apparently didn’t have a built-in tile stove in his apartment like we did; he had a removable iron stove. And it was this stove that he had lost at cards. Men had come into the apartment and removed it.
The woman was shrieking away in an unearthly voice. Mother usually attempted to make peace among couples, but this incident touched her to the quick. Embarrassed at how low a man could sink, she stood there silent. The woman began enumerating an entire list of flaws, one worse than the other. Mother was so preoccupied with the woman she didn’t even notice me there. Under different circumstances she would surely have chased me away. I had already known that people commit all kinds of wrongs, but I had never heard of such abominations. Who could have imagined that such evildoers were living so close to us?
Father sent me to summon her husband, and I went with great curiosity. I climbed up to a high story and found a half-opened door. Several children were playing, yelling, screeching. On a broken sofa lay a man, fat, unshaven, with a thick yellow mustache, wearing a shirt with a studded collar and boots with matching high bootlegs, the sort that were worn by hooligans and common riffraff. He was bareheaded and his sandy-colored hair was closely cropped. He looked sleepy, drunk, and angry.
“What do you want?”
“Your wife is summoning you to the rabbi.”
“To the rabbi, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Does she want a divorce?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. I won’t keep her!”
The man stood up. He told the older girl to keep an eye on the little children. A couple of minutes later he was in Father’s courtroom. His wife greeted him with curses, shouts, and balled fists.
But he let out a roar and drowned her out: “Be quiet! If you want a divorce, there’ll be a divorce! Just stop shrieking!”
Father called Mother aside for a private chat. Mother maintained that the quarreling couple should not be divorced because they had children. Father agreed. When he returned to the room where the couple was waiting, he told them what he usually did in such cases: A divorce is no small matter; such things should not be done rashly. One should give it serious thought; one must consider the children.
The woman started fuming. “In that case, I’m going to go to another rabbi.”
“No other rabbi will give you a divorce on the spur of the moment.”
Father smiled slightly as he said this. He had lied in order to keep the peace. There were indeed rabbis in Warsaw who didn’t stand on ceremony and performed quick divorces for whoever wished one. One rabbi in our street, whom I will not name, especially excelled in these instant divorces. Who knows, perhaps he was driven by need. That rabbi actually had a divorce factory—on occasion there were several scribes sitting in his apartment simultaneously writing bills of divorce. Warsaw rabbis had often spoken of proclaiming his divorces invalid.
For a long while husband and wife sat in our apartment insulting and cursing each other. The racket could be heard in the street. The woman recounted all her husband’s nasty deeds and all the trouble and humiliation she had suffered at his hand from the day her horrible luck had driven her to marry him. At one point she cried, at another she yelled at the top of her voice; now she spoke softly, as though pleading, and then once again she became wild. Her hands were always groping for something. Had she found an object in our apartment with which to hit her husband or throw at his head, she certainly would have done something wild in her murderous rage. But there was nothing for her to grab except books. The man hardly said a word. When he did open his mouth, he spoke like a boor who was both afraid of and prepared for battle.
After lengthy arguments and complaints the couple departed. Warsaw was a huge metropolis and even Krochmalna Street was a big city. Several days passed, perhaps even a few weeks, and we heard no news about the couple. A quarreling couple was no big deal! It happened every day, even ten times a day. Indeed, there were couples on Krochmalna Street who would go out to the street when they wanted to fight and wait for a crowd to gather. What sense was there fighting in one’s own apartment in front of the four walls?
Suddenly one day the door opened and the man who had gambled away the stove at cards entered. He seemed thinner, rumpled, neglected. His cheeks were hollow, his formerly ruddy
face now pale. His mustache wasn’t twirled upward like a spring but drooped miserably like that of a down-and-out janitor. Even his boots had lost their former shine.
“Is the rabbi here?”
“Yes, in the next room.”
For a while the man was silent. Mother was silent, too, but I sensed that both of them wanted to talk. Finally, Mother asked what had happened.
“Oh, Rebbetzin, things are bad.”
“What? Tell me.”
“They divorced us.”
“Where?”
The man mentioned the street.
Mother clapped her hands in dismay. “Shame on them! For a couple of rubles they’re ready to destroy people!”
Silence fell once again. Then Mother asked, “What are you? A Kohen? A Levite? An Israelite?”
“Me? Um, I don’t know.”
“Did your father ever give the priestly blessing in the synagogue?”
“My father? Give the priestly blessing? No. Why do you ask?”
“Go in to see my husband.”
Mother, a rabbi’s daughter, knew very well what she was asking. A Levite or an Israelite is permitted to remarry the woman he has divorced. But a Kohen is forbidden to marry a divorcee, even if it is his own ex-wife.
The man was filled with regrets and he poured his bitter heart out to my father. He had been angry, his wife had been in a foul temper, too, and a rabbi had coveted those couple of
rubles. And so he divorced them, one two three. But their anger passed. The children were crying and longing for their father. His wife was beside herself. He, too, longed for his wife and kids something awful. Yes, he knew that he had behaved badly, but he wanted to become a decent person once more. He had vowed never to touch cards again. He would stop drinking. He loved his wife and he was a devoted father. He was ready to give up his life for his children. And he wanted to remarry his loyal wife.
“You are not a Kohen?” Father asked quickly.
The man said no, but Father sent me to get the man’s ex-wife and tell her to bring either the divorce document or her marriage certificate. Father confirmed that the man was not a Kohen. He was happy. Mother’s mood improved as well. Now that the harm could be rectified, Father began preaching to the man: Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? How can one be so deeply involved in sensuality? Man’s soul stems from the Throne of Glory. It is sent down into this world to be improved, not spoiled. One does not live forever. There comes a time when a person must give an accounting …
The man nodded in agreement to everything that Father said. The woman stood there wringing her hands—not in the courtroom, but in the kitchen doorway. In the interim she had also become pale and melancholic. She showed Mother that she had lost so much weight her dress was falling off her shoulders. She could not sleep at night. There was a knot in her throat and she couldn’t even cry …
Suddenly she began wailing in a voice so fearsome it was hard to imagine it could be human. I understood then that husband and wife loved each other with an enormous love and were
bound to each other with a force that no divorce could rend asunder.
Yes, that rabbi, the manager of that divorce mill, had taken those couple of rubles. But the wedding took place in our apartment. Bride and groom laughed and wept under the wedding canopy. The next Sabbath, husband and wife were strolling arm in arm on Krochmalna Street, accompanied by their little children. A terror comes over me when I think what would have happened, God forbid, had that man been a Kohen …