All of this, my brother, happened so long ago, it’s as if it had never been. And it may indeed have never been, does anyone know what in our life is a dream and what reality, when life itself is a momentary vision, a mirage in the desert and chasing the wind?
I’m living in Vienna again, my eternal beautiful dream, I’m already more or less an old man and let me add relatively wealthy, if this matters at all. Because does the soul satisfy itself with what it’s won, if it’s hungry for what it’s lost?
Yesterday at dusk I passed through the City Park, sat for a while by the little pond by the gilded Johann Strauss—that merry man with the violin—and threw pieces of croissant to the ducks. Then I dragged my feet along Wollzeile to my old friend St. Stephen, with its magnificent Steffel. Just opposite, at the corner of Graben and Kärtner, a girl with an indecently short skirt approached me:
“Hey, Uncle, shall we have some fun?”
“No.” I was shy. “Excuse me, thanks.”
She waved her hand and approached another uncle.
Loneliness.
What did that comrade from Berdichev mean by a “better life”? Really, what did he mean—it’s been written that one cannot live by bread alone, hasn’t it?
I made my way on foot to Margareten, passing through the luxurious underpass, which was crammed with drug addicts. What a calamity, my God, these poor boys and girls! At home, on the TV they were showing the next stupidity, meant for the other—the TV—addicts. It may not be such stupidity, but I don’t understand it—I’m like the old Boyadjian who felt lonely in Paris and eventually bought a tank.
Sister Angela from the cotton fields by Mississippi will have to excuse me, but it’s worth thinking about that Exodus from Egyptian slavery chosen by Stefan Zweig. I also have it in my bedside cupboard, this Exodus, three flasks of Dormidon, twenty pills each, for a good sleep. “You will sleep like a bathed child”—this is what the doctor said. Three by twenty makes sixty. Sixty bathed children.
Maybe before that I should’ve gone with the girl to have some fun?
No thanks.
I lie on my bed. What’s so difficult? One glass of Evian water, thirty pills. One more—another thirty, this makes a whole kindergarten of bathed children.
I close my eyes and I’m young again, and I’m in my hometown Kolodetz by Drogobych. I’m playing the violin and my world comes to life again, swirling in a merry Hasidic dance. Here they are—my mother Rebekha and my father Aaron, he’s in the red uniform of a hussar from His Majesty’s Lifeguards, here’s Uncle Chaimle and the old postman Avramchik, here are all the old soldiers from David Leibovitch’s café, who are rolling and unrolling the ball of yarn of poor Rothchild’s unsolvable problems. Here’s Pan Voitek, the mayor, who’s presenting a bouquet of yellow flowers to the Radish, yellow flowers like yellow stars. Do you see—Esther Katz is dancing with Liova Weissmann, our Catholic priest is clapping, happy as can be, in time to the Jewish rhythm, and there he is, my Zukerl, thumping with heavy boots in front of smiling sister Angela, my black angel! Doc Joe is secretly smoking in his palm, this is forbidden, and the little Italian with the wire-rimmed glasses is pointing his finger at him and shouting: “It’s him!” The Polish pan ophthalmologist is hugging with two hands Frau Zigrid Kubichek and crazily whirling her around, my three children—Ilyusha, Schura, and Susannah—with Kalashnikovs on their shoulders and their arms crossed, are squatting in time, the dear movie fool Semyonich is filming all this, probably for television, and Doctor Robert Boyadjian is drawing hammers and sickles on the whitewashed walls. The little soldier is looking at him sadly, takes off his cap, and crosses himself—for this they expel you from the Komsomol, and in the Internal Forces they punish you. And up there, on the stage with its peeled gilding, where my colleague Mozart once played, proudly standing and conducting all this is the chairman of the Atheists’ Club himself, Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David!
And where is Sarah, you’ll ask, where is my Sarah? Here’s my Sarah with the grayish-green eyes—like reflections of the water in the lake of Genezareth. This is she, I tell you, although she is so young! Of course, it’s she! I quietly put the violin down on the wooden floor and hug the girl with the grayish green eyes, I hug her and the two of us suddenly become light and fly up. And here we are, flying above our homeland and it’s painted now, this region, in the colors of this fellow Markusle Segal, or if you like, Chagall. Here, look, he’s painted us, Sarah and me, flying in love above our miastechko, here below is the Orthodox church, here are the Ukrainian women with their white feet, here’s the pregnant mare with a foal in her womb, and here are Sarah and I, flying away to the future, may it be good for everyone, amen.
I open my eyes. In the bedside cupboard the three flasks of Dormidon are sitting, still packed, I haven’t even touched them. Excuse me, Stefan Zweig, you sly old fox, who were teaching the others how to live, but yourself ran away! If life was given us to live it, we will live it, there’s no other way.
Laila tov, or in your words, good night!