Our income limped along, so from time to time my father gave private Talmud lessons to one youngster or another to help pay the rent. One such boy was Dovidl. He had no father and his mother had remarried somewhere in greater Poland. Dovidl was raised by his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer, and he brought a measure of the secular world into our house.
Dovidl was eighteen years old, a handsome youth with black curly hair cut in the “German” fashion. He wore a rather short gaberdine with a slit in the back that reached only to his knees, a collar, a tie, a dickey, and polished chamois shoes. Except for his gaberdine, which looked like a frock coat, Dovidl wore Western-style clothes. His cloth cap was so small it lay on his hair like a tiny pot lid. He wore pince-nez glasses, which hung on a little gilt chain, and of course he had a watch and chain in his vest. He also studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory. It seemed that he wore this slit gaberdine and the small Jewish cap only when he came to study with Father, for Father would not have given Talmud lessons to anyone in modern dress.
This Dovidl was highly accomplished. He was fluent in Russian, Polish, German, and even French, but he spoke Yiddish best of all. He was a fountain of bon mots and witticisms that he had heard from merchants, traveling salesmen, and business agents. He had no great love of learning, but his grandfather had asked Father to give him Talmud lessons several times a week. Dovidl often brought his violin along and would entertain the entire family with the Saturday night “Hamavdil,” a Wallachian dance tune, or other traditional melodies. Jokes streamed from him as though he kept them up his sleeve. He could even excel at Talmud when he put his mind to it, which he seldom did.
Even stranger than Dovidl was his grandfather Reb Layzer Gravitzer. Wondrous things were said about him: He looked like a rich man and conducted himself like a millionaire—but reportedly he had more debts than hair on his head. He declared bankruptcy every year, sometimes twice a year. Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a large man with a big paunch, a straight neck, and a leonine head. His white beard was sparse, as was fashionable among wealthy Jews. He wore a hat with a high crown, a collar without a tie, and a somewhat shortened gaberdine. His face was always ruddy. From under his bushy brows gazed a pair of dark eyes, cold as steel.
Everything Reb Layzer Gravitzer did was grandiose. When he blew his thick nose, it resounded throughout the entire apartment. When he spoke, his voice thundered. Each time Reb Layzer Gravitzer came to visit us there was a tumult in the street. He’d arrive in a droshky with rubber wheels. Instead of paying the coachman the usual forty groschen, he’d pay fifty. Poor people besieged him from all sides and he’d hand out
four- and six-groschen coins. Even before he knocked, the door was opened for him. The doorway seemed too narrow and low for such a big man. He discussed Torah with Father and wanted very badly to catch him in an error. The truth of the matter was that Father was almost always right. Reb Layzer Gravitzer had already forgotten a lot. But my father was not overly proud and he’d say, good-naturedly, “Well, we’ll have a look at the text.”
How did Reb Layzer Gravitzer make a living? How could he run such a big house filled with sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and maids? What enabled him to travel a couple of times a year to his rebbe, offer generous gifts, bring expensive wine, and pay for the upkeep and lodgings of poor students? In Warsaw, it was estimated that he spent several hundred rubles a week. Where did the money come from?
He had lots of businesses, but Reb Layzer Gravitzer lived on bankruptcies and shady transactions that could have landed him in jail. It was also rumored that he either dealt in or made counterfeit brand labels. People whispered that Reb Layzer Gravitzer bought packets of tea, removed the customs tax stamps by machine, and then mixed the tea with one of inferior quality. He was also supposedly a partner in an illegal lottery. But even though all Warsaw and Lodz knew that Reb Layzer Gravitzer was a bankrupt, a swindler, a schemer the like of which Poland had never seen, he nevertheless always had partners and credit. It was said that he could persuade a stone to give milk. If not for his huge expenses and investments in all kinds of risky enterprises he would have been a millionaire.
Reb Layzer Gravitzer loved two things: prestige and danger. Some people had actually witnessed him lighting his cigar with
a five-ruble note. If there was a chance Reb Layzer Gravitzer might get his skull cracked open over a deal and be imprisoned to boot, he’d throw himself headlong into it. He had countless enemies. The rich men of Warsaw and Lodz had often tried to drive him from the marketplace, to get him out of the way, and indeed throw him in jail. Could there have been a greater punishment for Reb Layzer Gravitzer than being forced to wear a prison uniform, wooden clogs, and a round cap, and live among thieves and murderers? Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew that imprisonment was lurking over him. Troops of enemies encircled him. Investigating judges and prosecutors had sworn that they would ruin him. But Reb Layzer Gravitzer knew the law; in fact, he knew the entire legal code. He slipped out of every net and trial. He instructed his lawyers how to argue and what to do. Had Reb Layzer Gravitzer studied jurisprudence at a university, he surely would have been a legal genius. But he used his knowledge only for his own purposes.
Aside from saving his skin through legal trickery, Reb Layzer Gravitzer had also mastered the art of fleeing. Often, when the police came to arrest him, he would escape through a back door, or even out a window and down a ladder. When things got extremely dangerous, Reb Layzer Gravitzer would hide somewhere and lie low for a while. He had hiding places no one knew of, not even his own family. Folks said that illegal merchandise and all kinds of contraband were bricked into every wall of his house. It is superfluous to say that he gave bribes and weekly payoffs to people on the street from the local cop all the way up to the district police commander and even higher. On holidays he sent them wine, cognac, brandy, and money. The word was that there were only two high authorities in Warsaw that Reb Layzer
Gravitzer could not buy off: the minister of police and the governor general. He had tried, but with no success.
It was hard to find two people who were more diametrically opposite than Reb Layzer Gravitzer and my father. But Layzer Gravitzer had chosen my father to teach his grandson. Of course, he ended owing my father money. To whom did he not owe money?
Once Reb Layzer Gravitzer mentioned to my father that he had a sacred text that Father could not find anywhere in Warsaw. Father asked to borrow the book and Reb Layzer Gravitzer agreed to lend it to him. And that is how it happened that I was sent to Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s house. Before I went, Mother put a clean shirt on me and combed out my sidecurls. She told me to behave properly and not talk nonsense. Reb Layzer Gravitzer could have sent the book with his grandson, but apparently he wanted someone from our family to see how lavishly he lived.
I no longer recall where he resided, but I do remember walking through an imposing main entrance and climbing up a marble staircase. On each of the enormous doors, decorated with carvings and cornices, was affixed a brass plate with an engraved name. Doctors and dentists lived here. From behind one door I heard someone playing a piano. I rang the bell, but a long time passed before the door was opened a crack and someone peeked at me over a chain. After casting a sharp and searching glance at me, a man asked who I was and what I wanted. Then he told me to wait.
That wait was the longest I had ever experienced. First, I waited for the door to be opened, and then I waited in the corridor.
The corridor was full of doors, each one with frosted glass. Telephones rang. Behind those doors women spoke, laughed, sang, and whispered. Then came a leonine roar and I recognized Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s voice. Someone led me from one room to another to show me, I suspect, how spacious the apartment was. Finally, I was brought into a huge room lined with bookcases.
“Who are you?” Reb Layzer Gravitzer thundered, cocking his long, hairy ear.
Then he took the book, a Talmud, from the shelf and gave it to me. I said good day, but he did not respond. I wanted to leave through one door, but another door opened and in came a fat woman wearing a huge marriage wig overlaid with braids and curls and studded with little combs. A golden chain hung from her thick neck. Many rings bedecked her short fingers, and long earrings dangled from her earlobes. This was the mistress of the house, Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s wife.
Just as Reb Layzer Gravitzer had to play the role of the Biblical Og, the King of Bashan, so his wife had to be the saintly woman, the kindly soul. She approached and amiably asked me who I was, pinched my cheek, and wanted to know if I was hungry. I swore I was full, but she led me into the grand salon, where perhaps twenty women, young, old, dark, blond, each one beautifully dressed and bejeweled, were sitting. The place was full of sweet fragrances and the aroma of wealth. Some women picked up a certain type of eyeglass—a lorgnette—and looked at me. Some were amazed; others smiled. The very young ones laughed.
“The Talmud folio is bigger than he is,” one of them cried out.
They gave me a slice of sponge cake, a goblet of wine, and some brandy, which made my nose tingle and my eyes tear.
Someone asked me, “What would you like to be when you grow up, a rabbi or a teacher?”
I was already too old for such questions, so I replied, “I don’t know yet.”
This prompted an outburst of laughter, and they gave me some more liquor to drink. Then a woman packed some cookies and strudel in a paper bag for me to take home, as if I were a beggar.
Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s wish prevailed: he was never sent to jail. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy and died immediately. He had a big funeral where, it was reported, some people cursed him vehemently. Nevertheless, he was buried in the choicest of graves, in the very first row, and a rabbi delivered the eulogy.
After his death his creditors descended on his apartment like locusts. But everything had already been inventoried. The landlord finally evicted the family from the apartment and their furniture was auctioned off. Of all his possessions only the bedding remained.
I don’t know what became of Reb Layzer Gravitzer’s family, but I would occasionally see Dovidl on the street carrying his violin. He wore his hair long under a broad hat. People had predicted that Dovidl would become a great violinist, but as far as I know, no one in the musical world has heard of him. Along with Reb Layzer Gravitzer everything fell apart.
My father would say to me, “What a shame! Had he put his sharp mind into studying, he would have become a brilliant Jewish scholar.”