In Babylon

The Kotzker

HE WHO WORKS his way past five mangy chickens, Yankel Davidovitz’s bony cow, and the massive stench of the rubbish dump behind the house of Schloime Kreisky, the hide trader, will be rewarded with a view of the sagging door of the Kotzker shul. It hangs in its cracked leather hinges like an unwashed dishrag, begging for a lick of paint, yammering for a little consideration, and maybe a nail or two. Around the door the walls of the shul struggle to hold each other up. The mortar between the bricks is brittle and crushed, the beam anchors rusty, the high windows black with soot. But even before his fingers have touched the door handle, a glob of snot dangling from the wood, even as he stands upon the threshold, trying to decide whether this wretched pile of bricks could possibly still be in use, his ears are graced by the gentle singsong and soft murmuring of the morning service, his nostrils teased by the smell of books, candied ginger, smoking oil lamps and the wax with which the rebbe’s wife polishes the tables, the chairs, in short, the entire shul.

Which brings us to the rebbe, the Reb, or simply, Menachem Mendel, the spiritual and social leader of the motley crew that constitutes Kotzker Jewry. Thirty years ago he came here from Pzysha and has been the rabbi of Kotzk ever since, thirty long years, the past ten of which he has spent in utter solitude, in the unrelent-ing, self-imposed confinement of his study. The last his followers ever heard from him, and that was seven years ago, was a furious, incomprehensible shout. Schloime Kreisky was the cause of this outburst, stinking Schloime, doomed to walk the earth amid the reek of rotting hides, hog’s piss and mouldering bark, Schloime, who had taken himself to the place of silence to ask the Reb what it meant when a slice of bread fell to the ground butter-side down, and was told in no uncertain terms that he was a ‘stinking swine’s tit’. Inquisitive as they are, those Kotzker Jews, the last-recorded words of Menachem Mendel were discussed at length, pondered, weighed, held up to the light, sucked on and chewed over until, at the end of a long night, Yankel Davidovitz slammed his palm down on the long wooden table in the middle of the study-house and roared, ‘But Schloime is a stinking swine’s tit!’ Whereupon the deeply wounded Schloime leapt to his feet and screamed at Yankel that while he might smell a bit unusual, at least he, Schloime Kreisky, hide trader of Kotzk, didn’t have daughters who disgraced the village by flirting shamelessly with every straw-haired fat-bellied Polak and that he could swear with his hand on his heart that he, Schloime Kreisky, would never milk an innocent cow dry like ‘some people around here’, to which Yankel shrugged his shoulders and said that his troubles were his own concern and that his cow, even if, God forbid, she should die, was still too good to serve as merchandise for a certain ‘hide trader’. From that day on, the silence between Schloime Kreisky and Yankel Davidovitz had been as profound as that surrounding Reb Menachem Mendel, and would have remained so, had not the Lord of the Universe in his immeasurable wisdom decreed that Schloime’s youngest son Mendel should fall in love with one of Davidovitz’s wanton daughters.

Mendel fell for Rivka like a rotting oak before the woodsman. He was young, barely eighteen and, like most lads his age, preoccupied with finding some rhyme or reason in this madly spinning world. His eyes drifted searchingly through the tops of the drooping oaks around Kotzk and sometimes, in autumn and spring, but now it was autumn, Mendel could feel his heart pounding wildly and he had to stifle the urge to sing and shout. Not that singing or shouting (in Kotzk there wasn’t much difference between the two) would be considered strange, on the contrary, but Mendel was afraid of what might fly from his lips. There was a tumult raging in his breast that he thought it might be better to suppress.

One autumn morning, Mendel arrived at the watering place along the road to Worki with his daily load of bark. He had been journey-ing since daybreak, and now that the sun was up and the sky had changed from purple to red to orange, he felt it was time for bread, water, and rest. He flung his load under an oak tree, scooped up water in the bowl of his hands, drank, sat down against the bundle of bark, and fell asleep. He began dreaming, something about the pile of hides behind the workshop. They rose up and came running after him, and he fell and they started dancing around him, but then he awoke and saw that he was surrounded by seven young women, all looking down at him and smiling. 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 and sinks down in the snow. There he sits, his head in his hands, like a weary horse that knows its end is near. Suddenly, in the distance, he hears a heavy drone, as if the very earth is shaking. The trees tremble, snow tumbles from the highest branches, the night is filled with sound. The old man looks up, and there, standing before him, is the holy billygoat. Enormous. The biggest billygoat he’s ever seen. His curved black horns reach to the stars. The man claps his hands to his eyes and starts praying. But the holy billygoat bows his head and says: Cut off as much of my horns as you need for a new tobaccobox. Trembling with awe, the old man takes his knife and cuts out a piece of the gigantic horns. He thanks the creature and runs the rest of the way home. Nobody believes him, of course, but from that moment on, each time he opens the tobaccobox, people flock around him and cry: Doesn’t that tobacco smell delicious! Where did you get it?’

Yankel stared into space. ‘Schloime and I knew the rest of the story: after a while everyone starts going to the billygoat to get a piece of horn for a tobaccobox, until finally the goat is walking the earth without any horns at all. But Menachem Mendel said: “I am that billygoat. You carve up my horns to make boxes in which the tobacco will smell as delicious as that of the first man who saw me. But has anyone ever asked themselves where that smell comes from? No one. You search, you hunt, you explore. You think: To find the billygoat, one must suffer. Or: One must be humble. Or you interpret the billygoat’s every word, every movement, and think: The world is a whole, everything is connected to everything else, or you think that seeing the billygoat is some rare privilege. Nonsense, all of it. I ask you: where does that smell come from, what is it made of?” Schloime and I shrugged our shoulders. “I’ll tell you,” said the rebbe. “That smell doesn’t come from the billygoat, it doesn’t come from its horns, it has nothing to do with the encounter between the goat and the old man. That smell is in us, we smell what we are.” Schloime shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said, “why can’t we smell that smell, or –” and then he looked at me, “why doesn’t anyone ever smell anything but stinking hides?” The rebbe lifted a pile of books off the chair behind a large table and put them on the ground. He sat down and gazed into the light of the oil lamp. “That is because, Schloime, we only think we can smell. We walk past the house of a hide trader and what do we smell? Hog’s piss, tree-bark, rotting hides. That is also what we smell when we talk to Schloime Kreisky because he, and his father and his father’s father, have spent their lives surrounded by hog’s piss and tree-bark and rotting hides. But do we smell Schloime? Do we smell the life he leads? Do we smell his soul? No, we smell only what is around him, what he holds in his hands, what lies about in his yard. The smell of Schloime himself, which is heavenly and sweet like cinnamon, is masked by whatever else wafts our way. And we allow this, just as we allow the world to churn in our eyes, but never really see, just as we open our ears to every random scream, but never really hear.” The rebbe stared straight ahead and closed his eyes. “The secret,” he said, “is not to smell, not to hear, and not to see, and then, when all roads to the mind are closed, to open the heart and make the world anew, to see it anew, hear it anew, smell it anew.”’

Yankel looked at Rivka. She swallowed hard.

‘Rivka,’ he said, ‘never call a person what he seems. Try to hear his true voice, smell his true smell, and see his true face.’

The girl nodded.

‘And another thing,’ said Yankel, turning to his wife, ‘the kugel’s burning.’

Who’s There?

WHEN I AWOKE, the fire had died down to a smouldering heap. I got up from my chair and began piling wood on top of the remains. There was still enough life left in the red embers at the bottom of the hearth. The chimney drew the glow through the new layer of wood, and five minutes later the room was lit red once more by a roaring fire. I did my best to keep it low, but the draw was so strong that the flames shot into the chimney on the least provocation. In the hall, the door was still rattling. I picked up a few large chips of wood and walked out of the library to go and secure it. On the threshold, I stopped. The library had been heavy with the twilight of closed shutters and drawn curtains, so I hadn’t realized how dark it was outside. Here, in the hall, the sky behind the windows above the door was blackish-grey. An ominous, dull rumble echoed. From this close it was as if the wind itself had fists and was pounding on the door, demanding to be let in. Without knowing why, I looked up, at the barricade. I didn’t expect to see anything, no translucent ghost, no wild apparition in tattered robes with streaming black hair, yet my gaze was drawn to the first floor. Then I heard a voice. It came from far away, muffled. It was a voice that no longer had the strength to cry out, yet cried out all the same. I shook off my hesitation, ran to the door, and turned the key.

A vortex of snow and cold flew in, wrenching the door handle out of my hand. I was pushed backwards. The freezing air tore at my clothes, flakes whirled around my head and I heard nothing but the howling, raging, whistling and wailing of the wind. Just when I had got my foot behind the door and was about to push it closed again, a dark figure blew inside.

Nina lay on the marble floor like a fallen bird. She wasn’t moving. Her lips had a bluish sheen and her face was nearly as white as the snow that caked her jacket and legs. She had no shoes on and her stockings hung in shreds around her ankles. I took her in my arms and carried her into the library, where I lowered her into the armchair in front of the hearth. Then I ran to the hunting room. There, in the big linen cupboard, I found the sleeping bag Uncle Herman sometimes wrapped around his legs when he felt like sitting outside on a chilly night. The thing smelled strongly of mothballs. Back in the library I peeled Nina out of her coat and slid her into the downy envelope. She didn’t move; she didn’t even shiver. I threw more wood on the fire, took a candle and went into the kitchen, where I pushed open the outside door, filled the percolator with snow, and put it on the back of the stove. As the water bubbled up, gurgling and sputtering, I stared out the window. Now and then there was a lull in the endless storm and I saw the garden glowing blue in the moonlight. But then the wind would scoop up some snow and hurl it towards the kitchen and the dark hole above the lawn would turn white. I leaned over the sink and peered into the darkness. The drifts under the window and against the garden house were at least three feet high by now.

The water in the percolator began to turn brown. I got out mugs, spoons, and sugar and went into the hunting room. In the cupboard, Uncle Herman’s old clothes lay in neat piles waiting for someone who was never going to come back. I chose a pair of corduroy trousers, a jacket, thick woollen socks, and a jumper. Then, the clothes under my arm and mugs of hot coffee in my hands, I returned to the library. In the cabinet where Uncle Herman kept his liquor, I found a bottle of Irish whiskey. I poured a generous swig into the coffee. Nina was sitting in the chair by the fire, the sleeping bag up to her chin. Her eyes were open and her teeth were chattering loudly. I held the mug to her lips and helped her sip.

I had barely had time to think since she blew in. Now the first questions started coming. How, why? How long had she been pounding at the door? Why had she left? And then returned? What would have happened if I hadn’t heard her? I put the mug down on the table next to my half-eaten meal and looked her over.

‘Cold. I. Thought. I. Was. Going. To die,’ she said.

I kneeled down in front of her, unzipped the sleeping bag and pulled her feet towards me. ‘These stockings will have to come off.’

Her head sagged jerkily downward in slow, stiff arcs. Her eyes were open wide, the pupils deep holes in the sparkling green of the iris.

I slipped my hands under her skirt and tugged so hard on the pantyhose that she nearly slid off the chair. She kicked feebly and wriggled her way back up.

‘Can you put these on yourself?’ I asked. I held up Uncle Herman’s clothes.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She got to her feet, shakily, stepped into the trousers and pulled them up.

‘Better take off that skirt.’

She nodded.

‘That coat, too.’

When she had changed and was sitting in the chair with a fresh mug of coffee and whisky, I took hold of her feet. I slid her right foot under my jumper, next to my bare skin, and began rubbing the left one. It was like massaging a block of ice. The foot under my jumper was so cold, I could feel it burning against my skin. Nina dropped her head back and closed her eyes.

After a while I helped her out of the chair and sat down in her place. I pulled her onto my lap, laid the sleeping bag over us both, and clasped her tightly. She sat on my knee like a mannequin, cold and stiff. It wasn’t until she had warmed up and the whisky began to take effect that she relaxed.

Half an hour passed before the colour returned to her cheeks. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, her teeth had stopped chattering. The scent of her body rose from the sleeping bag. Her wet hair began to dry, the dark damp streaks grew lighter. I wriggled myself out from under her, tucked her back into the sleeping bag, and busied myself with the fire. It was a fire to be proud of, large pieces of wood that burned evenly and cast a fierce heat. In the library, black shadows danced against the orangey-red glow from the hearth.

‘What’s in this?’ she asked, after I had brought fresh coffee and sat down in the chair next to her.

‘Coffee in mine, coffee and whisky in yours.’

She smiled drowsily. Her cheeks were glowing now, her eyes were slightly moist, and they glittered. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll get drunk.’

I picked up the plate next to my chair and fixed her some crackers and cheese. She wolfed them down with the gusto of someone who hasn’t eaten for a very long time.

‘I thought you were going to rape me,’ she said with her mouth full.

I dug my cigarettes out of my jacket pocket and stuck one between my lips. ‘I always let my victims warm up first. I’m no necrophiliac.’

‘A cigarette. I must have a cigarette.’

Her voice was unsteady, the alcohol had set her adrift from the anchor of control. She leaned towards me and stared into my face. I lit her a cigarette, avoiding the piercing black pupils that were trying to bore their way into my eyes. She flopped back in the cracked leather and blew out smoke.

‘Why did you come back?’

At first she didn’t seem to understand my question. Then she raised her right hand and drew on her cigarette. She wrapped herself in a cloud of smoke and shook her head. A shiver ran through her. ‘I was nearly at the bottom of the Mountain. I drove into a snowbank.’