The Fifth Son Read online

  “ ‘To the end,’ he repeated.”

  “Do you remember, Reuven?” Bontchek asked again. “We were going from miracle to miracle. You crossed the street without getting shot? A miracle. You met an SS officer and you were still able to go home? An even greater miracle. God was hiding behind His miracles. The Angel demanded two hundred and fifty furs? We had only half that. And yet, at the appointed time, they were all delivered. And the boxes of silver. And the dollars, the napoleons. How did you accomplish so many miracles, Reuven, you who, at least at that time, did not believe in them?”

  “Be quiet,” said my father, suddenly grim.

  “But your associate, Rabbi Aharon-Asher, the grandson of the famous preacher of the same name, he believed.”

  “Be quiet,” repeated my father. “The Rabbi was a saintly man. You have no right to ridicule a saintly man who is no longer of this world.”

  “Was it he who brought you back to faith? If so, then I am right in saying that he performed miracles!”

  It was Friday night. We were four around the table. Simha and my father seemed unusually calm. Simha, who had a good voice, refused to sing the customary hymns. My father barely touched his food. Only Bontchek, who was slightly drunk, appeared to be in a good mood:

  “Do you remember the Angel? Tell me, Reuven, do you remember him? Handsome man, wasn’t he?” Bontchek continued, moving restlessly in his chair. “Always elegant, well-groomed, closely shaven, an intelligent smile, gloved hands.… A man of culture, and what an education! Unfair, don’t you think? Killers should be frightening; our Angel inspired confidence.”

  “Be quiet, Bontchek,” said my father. “This is not a proper conversation for Shabbat.”

  “But it is for a Thursday night, yes? In that case, why don’t you invite me for next Thursday?”

  My father and Simha exchanged embarrassed glances and said nothing.

  “As for me, I find the subject perfectly suitable for the Shabbat mood,” said Bontchek. “After all, we are talking about an Angel and what would Shabbat be without the Shabbat angels? You see, Reuven, I know a few things. I am not a rabbi but I am smart.”

  “Shall we go visit the Hasidim?” suggested my father to change the subject.

  “Good idea,” said Simha. “It seems that the Rabbi of Belz is here on a visit from Jerusalem. I’d love to see him hold court.”

  “His faithful pray very rapidly, they say. The reason: to outwit the demon who attacks Jewish prayers to prevent them from reaching the celestial throne. The aim is to finish before he arrives.”

  “You’ve already reached heaven?” exclaimed Bontchek. “I’m still in the ghetto.”

  “Let’s go,” said Simha. “Let’s go to Belz. On the way we can stop at Lubavitch or Wizhnitz. I love their songs.”

  “I’m staying,” said Bontchek.

  “So am I,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to come with us?” asked my father. “You usually like to take a walk on Friday nights.”

  That is true: I usually did. Friday nights in Brooklyn you walk through a peaceful and melodious universe: almost like Central Europe before the catastrophe.

  “Not tonight,” I repeated.

  And I remained alone with Bontchek who opened for me the gates of Davarowsk, where the Angel was sovereign.

  “Would you like me to tell you the story from the beginning? One day, the commandant Richard Lander appeared in the middle of a session of the Jewish Council to break the news: ‘Berlin has ordered me to institute new regulations which I consider useful. Do you trust me?’ What a question. Of course, the Jewish councillors, the Jewish inhabitants of Davarowsk trusted him: was he not our protector, our benevolent Angel? ‘I am sorry I must point this out to you so brutally, but frankly, the local population is not very fond of you. You cannot imagine the extent, the intensity of its hatred. If we were not here to restrain the mob, you would be in trouble, believe me.’

  “We believed him, of course. We sincerely believed him. Protected by the occupier, our former neighbors had removed their masks and covered us with spittle and abuse. After this first statement, the Angel launched into a scholarly exposé on the causes of anti-Semitism: ‘The hatred that all nations feel for you is, in fact, regrettable but at the same time undeniable. What should one attribute it to? How should one interpret it?’ The list was long: greed and hunger for power, abnormal sexual appetites, taste for the occult, for falsehood, for ritual murder; all were invoked. Then came religious quotations, modern slogans; he was in top form, the Angel. And as he spoke—and he went on and on, for perhaps two hours—I felt myself overcome with anxiety as at the approach of an implacable threat.

  “ ‘And so,’ concluded the Angel, ‘it was decided in high places to establish, for your protection, a special zone where your enemies shall not be able to pursue you. It bears an ancient name: ghetto.’ At last, a smile flickered over his face: he had become aware of the effect of the casually dropped word. I felt a chill. All over. A glacial hand crept down the length of my spine. ‘I see that you are pleased,’ said the Angel. ‘That proves to me that I am dealing with men of intelligence and foresight. Bravo! You shall live happy days. Happy and, above all, serene. I promise you: you shall be at home. In your own private little kingdom. You shall see only one person from the hostile outside world: me. Your intercessor. Your faithful friend. Your Guardian Angel.’ That is how he got his name: Angel. The Angel of uncertainty. The Angel of terror. The Angel of death. For we all knew the true significance of the word ghetto; its suggestive, destructive power had been etched in our collective memory for a thousand years. Ghetto meant solitude, isolation, exile, famine, misery and disease.

  “ ‘When?’ asked your father, his stance more rigid than ever. ‘When will the ghetto be established? When will the transfer, the population exchange, take place?’ He had asked the questions in a peremptory tone, placing the emphasis over and over on the when; believe me, it was impressive. ‘In one week,’ replied the military governor. ‘My staff has laid out the plans. The ghetto will comprise nine streets.’ ‘Which ones?’ ‘The streets that lead to the Small Market; there are already Jews living there, that will make things easier.’ ‘And the others? Where do you plan to locate all those who live in other areas?’ ‘You’ll squeeze in somehow, you’ll all be one big family. A little crowded perhaps? So what! That will be one of the charming aspects of the ghetto: when people love one another, a little promiscuity doesn’t hurt, quite the opposite.’ The Angel played his little comedy straight; not one muscle of his face betrayed his irony. Before adjourning the meeting, he turned to your father and told him: ‘And you, in the kingdom of David, you shall be king.’ And to Rabbi Aharon-Asher: ‘And you, you shall be its High Priest.’ Whereupon he burst into laughter. And stupidly, I swear to you, this laughter reassured me.

  “As soon as he left the room, I remarked aloud that the situation ought not to be viewed too bleakly: the prospect of Jewish life within a Jewish framework contained certain positive aspects, for … One look from your father made me swallow the rest of my speech. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked. The council members were too stunned to respond. Your father was on the verge of repeating his question when a young woman came in and whispered in his ear that an important person was waiting for him outside. ‘I am busy.’ ‘I told him that, but he insists.’ ‘Who is it? A German?’ ‘No. It’s your father-in-law.’ Your father went out. Seeing the panic in your maternal grandfather’s face—he was standing there with a handkerchief pressed against his mouth—your father could not resist striking a blow: ‘Well, well, now I’ve seen everything! You here!’ ‘True, I never thought that I would ever set foot in this place! Really, what a smell! What ugliness! How can you stand it, my dear son-in-law?’ Your father grew impatient: ‘You wished to see me urgently, what do you want?’ ‘I learned from reliable sources that the occupation authorities plan to establish a ghetto. And force us to live with … with people like these. I have decided to move to
the capital where I can count on support in high places. Come with us.’ And with a sigh: ‘And take your parents too. You see I am less selfish than you think.’

  “Your father felt the blood surge to his face; all kinds of words were rushing into his head: ghetto and Kaddish, kingdom and cemetery, salvation and escape. Was it such a simple choice? If your grandfather was right, the Jewish people was lost: the real Jews would perish; only renegades like himself would remain. ‘I thank you,’ he told him, ‘but I cannot.’ ‘You cannot?’ ‘I have responsibilities; I am in charge.’ ‘What about your family?’ ‘Speak to your daughter. She is free.’ ‘I have spoken to her. She refuses to leave you.’ Your father smiled a melancholy smile as if to say: You see? That’s how we are. ‘You’re mad,’ said his father-in-law. ‘Mad to expose yourself to unnecessary risks. Mad not to think about the future, about the generations to come.’ ‘Mad? Perhaps. But if one day you should meet my teacher and friend Rabbi Aharon-Asher, ask him to tell you the story of the fish and the fox.’

  “Your grandfather shrugged with disappointment and disgust, shook his son-in-law’s hand and left. Your father thought he would never see him again; he was wrong. Two or three months later, the police brought your maternal grandparents back from the capital. Like it or not, they were Jews and thus came under the anti-Jewish laws. Like it or not, their place was inside the ghetto.

  “But I am digressing: let us not forget the Angel since tonight is Shabbat. He often came to inspect his kingdom. He appeared to enjoy its squalor, its filth, its pain. He would let his gaze wander over the alleyways, the crowded yards, the hovels, the barns that served as warehouses and shelters. He looked at his creation and found it satisfactory. He usually chose to come alone and leave alone. Outside, he hardly ever moved without a host of lieutenants, experts, adjutants and SS orderlies. But inside the walls, he had no one. He came and went, sometimes stopping to knock at a door, politely asking permission to enter: ‘So, there are quite a lot of you in this one room.’ If the residents agreed, they risked losing one of their own; if instead they protested that there was room enough, more people were sent in. The way this was usually handled was to tell him respectfully that he alone was judge of the situation. A variation on the same theme at the hospital: ‘You are sure, absolutely sure that it would not be better to transfer some of the gravely ill patients to a better equipped hospital?’

  “But his main performance was reserved for us, the members of the Jewish Council: a speech on law and order, a speech on the majesty of power and, for good measure, the power of majesty; a complaint about the egoism of the masses who do not sufficiently appreciate the cult of authority, and on the foolishness of the individual who prefers submission to domination. In short, he loved to speak, the Angel loved to hear himself speak. As for us, we followed every word, every inflection, with excruciating intensity, knowing that what he said held implications for the survival or extinction of our people. ‘For the moment, things aren’t going too badly,’ commented Rabbi Aharon-Asher after he left. ‘He speaks and we listen, he teaches and we learn. That’s neither a crime nor a sin. Our immediate duty: vigilance. As soon as we sense a change, we must reconsider. One thing is certain: we shall not become instruments in the hands of the enemy. One other certainty: one day the Angel will cease to play and so shall we. That will be the beginning of the true ordeal.’ ”

  “You were wrong not to come with us,” says my father returning from Belz. “You would have lived unforgettable moments. This Shabbat is unlike any other.”

  But I see Rabbi Aharon-Asher, I listen to his solemn, reassuring words, I follow him through the crowded alleys of the Davarowsk ghetto whose heartbeat becomes the languid murmur of the sick and I say:

  “You are right, Father. This Shabbat is unlike any other.”

  ONCE I feared solitude. I felt evil spirits prowling around me, waiting for me to be alone to pounce on me and take me away. Of course, I never told my father but I managed not to let him out of my sight. I accompanied him everywhere. On the days when I was off from school, I went with him to the library.

  “Won’t you be bored?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll read.”

  In truth, I was happy just to look around.

  All those regular visitors to the library, were they aware of the fact that I was observing them? I followed their movements; I observed every one of their gestures, spontaneous or deliberate, as if I had been hired by the police to spy on them. I told myself that the more I learned about them, the more I would know about my father. Of course, for appearance’s sake, I accepted the few dollars that the director magnanimously handed to me every month for restoring returned volumes to their proper places; he never would have suspected that my motives were personal and that money was not one of them.

  Among the faithful readers there was a woman of a certain age, white-haired, flirtatious; she would sit there, happily reading the same book—a nineteenth-century novel—over and over again. Moved by her constancy, I bought her a copy. A memorable day for her and for me: she refused my gift.

  “Young man,” said she, “you don’t understand these things, you’re too young. Do you think I come here to satisfy my literary tastes?”

  Indeed, I had been blind: she came because she was in love. Not with that particular novel but with my father.

  An elegant man—graying hair, high forehead, silk shirt, fine briefcase—made his appearance every Wednesday at the same hour, 3:14 P.M., opened whatever volume I handed him, had a good cry and left.

  Still, the craziest character was a certain Donadio Ganz who claimed to be originally from Safed or Salonika, while at the same time denying, for reasons beyond my understanding, that he was Sephardic. His visits were irregular but memorable. He would wander from section to section, from room to room, haughtily taking in the scenery like a landowner making the rounds of his domain. What he said was unequivocal: “All these books are mine.” And so they were, not, mind you, because he had bought and sold them but because … because … What’s wrong with you, don’t you understand? It’s so simple: these books, he had written them. He? Yes. All of them? All of them. Except for the cookbooks, he would say with a feigned air of modesty. But the historical works, the novels, the medieval poems, Maimonides and Ronsard, Descartes and Cicero, Cervantes and Bahia ibn-Pekuda: all were his pseudonyms, that was the truth.

  One day I find him sitting by himself at a desk, immersed in a work by ibn-Gabirol, shaking his head, visibly distressed; I ask him whether I can be of help.

  “Unfortunately not,” says he. “It’s my fault. Three verses have to be rewritten.”

  Fearing a burst of inspiration on his part, I stay close by. I worry that he might tear out the few “regrettable” pages.

  “If only I could begin all over again,” he sighs. “I have so much to do, I beg your pardon: redo.”

  He winks at me. We understand each other. He is harmless, pathetic, likable, anyway, I love madmen. I invite him to eat something with me in the cafeteria next door; it is not easy to sustain an intelligent conversation here in the reading room.…

  “You are Tamiroff’s son,” he says. “You deserve the honor I am doing you by accepting your invitation. Were I not busy revising myself, I would do a book about him. What a life he has led!”

  “You know it?”

  “Do I know it? Who taught him philosophy? And modern literature? And the occult sciences, who, tell me, introduced him to them? Why do you think he is working in this library rather than in another? I had, I have something to do with that.”

  My luck, I thought. Finally I meet someone who knows everything about my father and he turns out to be insane.

  Around us, the multilingual voices of the metropolis, amazing social and ethnic caldron into which new immigrants plunge only to be reborn, able once more to face life and its obstacles, happiness and its illusions.

  I think of my father and
also my mother. I know that they played the game, surely my father did, my mother less. I know that they were registered in English courses for adults; that they studied the history, customs and basic laws of this young and hospitable nation. My father was determined and quickly passed his exams; my mother gave up midway. Nevertheless, they reached the same point: together they obtained their green cards, together they became citizens of the United States. I know that for many, many months my father was never without his passport, even when he went to bed.

  In the cafeteria I look at the men and women milling about and I feel gratitude toward their country which is also mine.

  In one corner, a student from the yeshiva across the street is leafing through a seditious pamphlet; from time to time his worried eyes wander over the rest of the room. Any danger? No, no danger. Reassured, he reopens the small book concealed in the palm of his hand. On the other side of the room, a pair of lovers: the boy is Puerto Rican, the girl looks Scandinavian; they still do not speak the same language but they know what to do; they are embracing; there is no need to say anything, at least not in words.

  Donadio Ganz sees nothing. Too absorbed by his own “work,” he tells me in detail how the idea came to him to write the Guide for the Perplexed, Plato’s Dialogues, Spinoza’s Ethics; he describes in detail the damp attic where he dictated portions of his work to the pantheist philosopher. Then he shares with me the true motives of Gérard de Nerval’s suicide; nobody knows it, but he, Donadio Ganz, refused to be his ghostwriter.… But, why indeed had he refused him his services? “Ah,” says he, “don’t you know? Gérard was a night person who didn’t believe in sleep whereas I, Donadio, was exhausted and all I wanted was to sleep.… By the way, I plan to rework his last poem, I owe him that much.…”

  THEODOR HERZL says somewhere that nothing that happens is ever as bad as one fears or as good as one hopes. At first that surely was true as far as the Jews of Davarowsk were concerned. The Angel had not been entirely wrong: for better or worse, people adjusted to the ghetto, settling into it as into an illness—with the hope of coming out of it sooner or later.