In Babylon. Marcel Moring

At first he closed his eyes, because he thought he had been captured by dybbuks and that his life on earth was at an end, but then he realized that their faces, a few of them at least, looked familiar.

      ‘Wait till your father hears about this!’ cried one of the girls.

      Mendel opened his eyes. Before him stood Rivka Davidovitz. He had seen her once or twice in the women’s section at the shul, a hazy figure behind the wooden grating.

      ‘And when your father hears you’ve been talking to me …’ said Mendel, but he couldn’t think of what might happen because he had the feeling that Rivka Davidovitz’s sparkling eyes were pulling him to his feet.

      ‘Then what?’

      Mendel swallowed. He opened his mouth and made an unintelligible sound.

      The girls laughed and then ran off, Rivka last of all. He watched her go, she looked back, he smiled unhappily, she waved. He sank back against the bundle of bark and raised his eyes to heaven.

      Mendel and Rivka had met and, as young people who in some strange way are meant for each other often do, they sought each other’s company again and again in conspicuously inconspicuous ways. They met at the watering place, outside the shul, at Aaron Minsky’s wedding, and when spring had come and summer and then a year had gone by, the whole village, except for the fathers, knew that these two were courting.

      This went on until Yom Kippur, the time when one forgives the sins and misdeeds of others and repents for one’s own, when the poor Jews of Kotzk felt even more insignificant than they already were. On this High Holy Day the men of Kotzk sat in the shul in their shrouds, thinking glumly about all that had happened to them and all that they had done to others. Yankel Davidovitz was among them, brooding over the feud between himself and Schloime Krei-sky. When he had brooded long enough and the silence between him and the man sitting opposite him had taken on outlandish proportions in his guilt-ridden mind, he got to his feet. He offered Schloime his hand and said, ‘I’m the miserable swine’s tit, Schloime, forgive me.’ But Schloime, who had borne the smell of hog’s piss, tree-bark, and rotting hides ever since he was a boy – his father had been a hide trader, too – could not forget the affront. He jumped up, jabbed a forefinger into Yankel’s chest and yelled that he had nothing to forgive a man who, as far as he was concerned, didn’t even exist. Yankel, whose mind was shadowed by a breathtakingly dark cloud of sin, clapped his hands together and bowed his head. As he stood there before Schloime, who was trembling with rage, a voice rose from the group of men that had gathered around them. It was Aaron Minsky. ‘Stop this childish nonsense!’ he shouted. ‘The two of you can’t even make peace, when your own children have been courting for more than a year!’ It was as if Schloime had swallowed a shovelful of live coal. He dropped down onto a rickety bench, gasping for air, his head shaking, and asked if it were true, that his son Mendel, pure as the driven snow, was courting one of those Davidovitz witches, and which one …

      The commotion in the shul carried on until late that evening, until after midnight, when an exhausted Schloime and a shattered Yankel stood outside the door of the rebbe’s study, shuffling their feet like two boys who know they’re about to be punished for stealing apples. For a long time it was quiet, until finally Yankel took half, not even half a step forward and softly whispered the rebbe’s name. It remained silent inside the room that had swallowed up Menachem Mendel ten years before. ‘Reb?’ Yankel asked again. Nothing happened. Schloime, who had bags under his eyes from weariness and care, shoved Yankel aside, pounded on the door, and cried, his voice breaking, ‘Open this door, you moth-eaten brushface, miserable sod, tapeworm …’ Yankel stared at him in amazement. From behind the closed door came the sound of slow footsteps. Yankel made ready to flee, but Schloime’s hand bit into his kapok coat. The door opened slowly and the amused face of Reb Menachem Mendel appeared.

      ‘What did you say, Schloime?’

      ‘Monkey’s arse, slimy old shoelace, piece of …’

      Reb Menachem Mendel looked at Yankel and, tilting his head towards Schloime, asked, ‘What’s the matter with him?’

      Yankel told him what had happened ever since Menachem Mendel had called Schloime ‘a certain name’ and what he, Yankel, had said and that they hadn’t spoken to each other since, but that their children were now courting and that since it had been Yom Kippur, he, Yankel, had wanted to make amends, but that Schloime had not, and that Aaron Minsky had said they should purge the water at its source and they thought …

      ‘… that this was the source,’ said Menachem Mendel.

      Yankel nodded.

      When Yankel Davidovitz and Schloime Kreisky came out of the shul later that morning, a group of weary men stood there waiting for them, in silence. Aaron Minsky who, since his marriage, had grown in many ways and had emerged as the village spokesman, stepped forward, raised his eyebrows, and said, ‘Nu, Yankel and Schloime?’ But Yankel shook his head and walked straight past him, while Schloime stared at him with vacant eyes and an astonished expression and then, shaking his head, trudged off down the road.

      In Kotzk the days slipped by and grew shorter and shorter, until December came and preparations were made for Chanukah, the festival that relieves the long winter gloom and points hopefully to the inevitable budding of trees and flowers, the festival that brightens the Jewish year like a light in the distance when a man has lost his way and is searching desperately for a place to shelter from the cold of a winter’s night. At Yankel Davidovitz’s house, spirits were high. The kugel was browning in the oven and the gleaming menorah stood on the table. The master of the house, surrounded by his seven daughters and wife, lit the first candle. Yankel stood before the menorah and stared into the swelling flame until it had stopped smoking, and then turned to Rivka. ‘The time has come,’ he said, ‘to speak of you and Mendel Kreisky.’ Rivka pricked up her ears. If what she thought were true, she would finally hear what all of Kotzk had been eager to know for the last two months.

      ‘When Schloime Kreisky and I were at the rebbe’s …’ began Yankel. His eyes strayed to the dancing candlelight. He shook his head and sat down in the chair at the head of the table. The eight women followed him respectfully.

      ‘We found ourselves in a room where books were piled high, on tables, on chairs, on the floor. The bookcases along the wall reached all the way to the ceiling. Books, papers, everywhere you looked. The rebbe cleared two chairs and invited us to sit down and then came and stood before us. Behind him was an oil lamp. The light seemed to wrap itself around him, like a tallith. “So, you’ve come to find the source?” Schloime nodded, a bit guiltily. His unceasing river of abuse had run dry the moment he saw the room. “Well then,” said the rebbe, “here is the source.”’

      Yankel turned to Rivka.

      ‘There’s no stopping the love between two people, Rivka. Even if Schloime and I hadn’t been to see the rebbe, you and Mendel Kreisky would have been allowed to marry. Even a pauper with one cow and a stinking hide trader know that much.’

      Rivka opened her eyes wide.

      ‘What the rebbe said had nothing to do with either of you, or with that senseless silence between Schloime and me, or with any of the other trifles one finds along the way. “What gives you the right,” said the rebbe, “to drag a man out of ten years of silence?” We bowed our heads. Schloime cleared his throat. “You’re still our rebbe,” he said. Menachem Mendel shook his head. “I haven’t been your rebbe for ten years. A rebbe is a teacher, not a hermit. I have nothing to do with you. I am the billygoat.” He’s lost his mind, I thought. He said, “Do you know the story of the holy billygoat?” We nodded.

      Yankel looked around at the eight faces gazing back at him, glowing with excitement. ‘You know the story, too. The old man who heads for home one winter’s night and the snow is falling and the wind is blowing so hard, he can barely see the road. He walks for an hour and then stops to catch his breath. He gropes around in the bag over his shoulder and realizes he has lost his tobaccobox. He tears his hair, he beats his breast. Ayyyyy, he wails, my tobaccobox! Here I am, lost in the storm, and now my tobaccobox box is gone, too! He shakes his head