My Father's Friend
SINGER, ISAAC BASHEVIS
A MEMOIR My Father's Friend By Isaac Bashevis Singer Often I hear Yiddish writers speak of publishing a book. Terms such as matrices, composition, plates, and stock come up. But to me these words...
...The police stopped talking and began to search the apartment...
...One day, for some reason or other, my father sent me to Reb Nachman...
...I blushed...
...everything harmonized-Torah, wise words, girls, tasty dishes, a table full of pencils, inks, brushes and seals...
...Was that to be my fate...
...On the other hand, Reb Nachman also resented the Radzymin Rabbi, for whom he worked some years before...
...He also had socialistic leanings and complained that those who worked hard had nothing, while the idle never lacked money...
...If only they'd strike," my brother said, "the bosses would have to give in...
...Father enjoyed the wit of Reb Nachman, who, in turn, was pleased with Father's gentle speech...
...And what Reb Nachman had to say about heretics was revealing to me, since I had wondered for a long time what their views were...
...Certainly not...
...My brother referred to Palestine where Jews led normal lives as farmers...
...During the search, which took about three hours, I almost passed out from sweating...
...He sat at a table in a skullcap and satin vest, with colored slate pencils and bottles of ink before him...
...Even my mother, after her return from my sister's wedding in Berlin, spoke in a manner that was strange for her...
...Since my father had been the author of numerous religious books, I learned early how a book is set in type, galleys are proofread, matrices struck, plates made, and all about printing and binding...
...At first they found nothing, then, suddenly they began to drag out cartons of cigarettes, cigarette paper, tobacco and other things wrapped in paper...
...I smelled cutlets frying in the kitchen...
...Suddenly there was a loud knocking on the front door, then noise and harsh voices...
...I felt as if I were suffocating as I looked fearfully at the swords, epaulets, whistles and medals...
...A tremor ran down my spine...
...The Jews had one protector: God...
...Then he showed me a piece of paper covered with flowers, lions, small birds and eagles...
...This apartment didn't seem as bare as ours...
...My father and his good friend, Reb Nachman, known for his own rabbinical books, copied the old manuscript for print...
...Reb Nachman grew white and his frightened daughters huddled in a corner...
...Isaac bashevis singer's books include In My Father's Court, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux...
...My shirt was drenched and rivulets ran over my entire body...
...No...
...I wished I could suddenly sprout a couple of wings and soar off through the window, or grow as strong as Samson and smite these Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, or wear a hat that would make me invisible...
...There were more children and more furniture...
...They both had red beards and blue eyes, but Reb Nachman was a kind of Hasidic dandy, with a dazzling alpaca capote, gold-rimmed glasses dangling from a black ribbon, and polished boots...
...The apartment, different from ours, was somehow similar...
...If there is a God, I thought, why is he silent...
...Terrified, I asked Reb Nachman if I could go home...
...Since Reb Nachman visited Father more often than Father visited him, I was welcomed warmly, and addressed as a grown up...
...Had the era of Chmielnitzky returned or the time when the Temple was destroyed...
...The boy sold the cigarettes to stores who resold them...
...If they let you," he said in a confused way...
...They insisted that I eat something else, but all I wanted to do was get away...
...These Russians with their swords, revolvers, mean speech and coarse jokes aroused hostility in me that I had never before felt toward anyone...
...It was discovered somewhere in a library: a notebook with yellow-grey paper and faded characters, but the writing, although 150 years old, was still legible...
...I was stopped at the door by a guard...
...After the police left, Reb Nachman clutched his beard and said, "You see where they've got us...
...Just a while ago, my friend Baruch David and I had seen the Pawiak prison: the yellow walls, the barred windows with wire mesh across the bars, the sallow faced prisoners peering out, and the black entrance gates...
...I had already heard my brother say that Polish Jews were storekeepers, brokers, idlers and parasites, and that there were more stores than customers...
...I kept trembling with fear and shame, even when the sweating stopped...
...I felt as if my time had come now...
...Eventually Reb Nachman's son came home, took the Russians into the bedroom and came to some agreement with them...
...Reb Nachman leaped from his chair and I arose, frightened by a strange sight-the kitchen was full of policemen, officers in brass buttons with "crowns" on their caps...
...Look," he said, "if someone told you this had drawn itself, you'd say he was crazy -but the heretics say the world created itself, and is that sane...
...And the border officials did not tear up our things, but addressed Father as 'Herr Rabiner.'" My brain was whirling with such information...
...I remember him also preparing for publication a manuscript of the famous Joseph Shor...
...The voice of the Torah arose from houses of prayer and study houses, but they were surrounded by Poles, Russians, innumerable Gentiles who hated Jews and considered them a burden...
...But what if the heretics were right...
...What had I worried about when it was possible to walk the streets unmolested...
...No matter how little my father earned, he saved money to publish his books...
...It was illegal to sell cigarettes without a stamp signifying that they had been taxed, but they had no other source of livelihood...
...Having heard that my brother Israel Joshua had become "corrupted," he discussed heresy with me...
...Well, where did the sun come from...
...I remembered the story of Rabbi Akiba, whose body had been raked with metal combs until he expired...
...It happened to be the right board, because all kinds of boxes wrapped in paper were revealed...
...I hadn't been arrested yet, but my desire for freedom became so potent that I wondered what I had been missing until then...
...The policemen laughed, seeing me so soaked, and one of them seized my sidelock, to find his hand wet...
...A girl my age with dark braids came in, and then another girl...
...I as well as Reb Nachman and his family would be sent to jail to rot behind the thick walls...
...The fathers-in-law starved in order to board their sons-in-law...
...Everything became inexpressibly dear to me: the Warsaw streets, our home, the summer day...
...No one was taken to jail and I had been afraid for no reason after all...
...But did the ape come from itself...
...His wife was arguing and pleading, but the police shouted at her to be quiet...
...Reb Nachman, who had a talent for drawing, would not only print and draw beautifully, but would embellish a title page with all kinds of flowers, circles and flourishes...
...I walked, seething, through the streets, my brother's words mixing with my own thoughts...
...Such things were never discussed directly with me, a mere boy, at home...
...They say the earth tore itself from the sun...
...Reb Nachman's daughters, despite the trouble in the family, looked at me and smiled...
...But to me these words have been familiar from childhood...
...A fine, intelligent person, of good heritage, Reb Nachman was a disciple of Rabbi Zadock Lubliner, whose numerous religious books he kept editing and publishing...
...I had no knowledge of Reb Nachman's illegal business and I stood there trembling...
...I loved to be present when Father and Reb Nachman conversed...
...He used to say, "A religious book is a permanent testament...
...Someone informed!," Reb Nachman called out...
...Man, they say, comes from the ape...
...With new insight I observed Warsaw's Jews: tiny shops, ragged men, grimy children, slatternly women...
...Reb Nachman conducted himself like a scholar and aristocrat...
...From the way the Russians, whom I did not understand, yelled and stamped and gripped their swords, I realized it was a raid...
...They say all kinds of nonsensical things to keep from admitting that there is a Creator...
...it seemed to me that I would soon dissolve completely...
...The police say 'please' and "excuse me' to everyone...
...Unfortunately, his writing and editing brought him nothing, and if his son did not make and sell cigarettes, Reb Nachman and his family would have starved...
...I felt sickened by the experience...
...But why should this happen to me, and what did they have against Reb Nachman...
...No, life in Poland was shameful...
...He was treating me like an equal...
...Cap in hand, the janitor followed them, and there was even a civilian officiai, a secret agent...
...Be quiet!," a policeman ordered...
...In Germany," she said, "people are polite...
...It's high time the Messiah came...
...Its title was Nutrikun, and like all Shor's works, written in a difficult literary style...
...As if this wasn't enough, the agent brought in a crowbar and wrenched a board from the floor...
...I was melting from anxiety...
...I was offered a glass of tea and a cookie...
...Had he been falsely accused...
...He had told Mother about the Bilgoraj sieve-makers who toiled in their shops all week and had to beg on Fridays...
Vol. 49 • December 1966 • No. 24
