Read Online The Glatstein Chronicles by Jacob Glatstein - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jacob Glatstein
Ads: Link
about other people’s lives. Now here I was, making some concession to the evil impulse and beginning to root around in my memories in a way that I hadn’t done since I had left home.
Imagine a place with no dragons, no scorpions, no buffalo or bison, no lions or leopards, not even a ram or deer. Who can fathom the misery of a child in a town devoid of such fauna? Elsewhere the wide world holds many such blessings, but not Lublin, which contains nothing but a town clock and a fire warden who, every quarter-hour, sounds the hours until midnight, when everything slumbers but the flitting shadows around the synagogue. My Lublin didn’t appear on small maps, and on the larger ones was only a faint, barely legible marking. Really big maps, however, showed not only Lublin but also a tiny squiggle indicating the Bystrzyc rivulet (known to us by its Yiddish equivalent, the Bistshitse), a minor tributary of the Vistula River that flowed through Warsaw, home of the big-city branch of our family.
Long before I was conceived, there was a paternal great-grandfather with the German-sounding name of Enzl, and a grandfather called Yosl Enzls, neither of whom I knew. Enzl was just a name to me, and it sounded more like a nickname. The family archivists—that is to say, my older uncles and aunts—described him as a soft-spoken, sweet-tempered man, who earned his meager living as a sexton and who was reputed to be one of the thirty-six secret saints by whose grace the world is sustained. Grandfather Yosl Enzls was a more fleshed-out figure in my consciousness. He ran a workshop that sewed ladies’ garments for well-to-do customers—the high-born daughters of the gentry and of the governor, as well as wealthy women in general. A softhearted exploiter of the working class, he employed thirty or so girls, who ate and slept on tables in the shop, where they also warbled their love songs and collected their dowries, courtesy of the employer, when they left to get married.
This grandfather was no great scholar, but he scrupulously observed all the Jewish laws and attended daily prayer services. He prayed with even greater fervor when he knew that there were carriages pulled up outside the shop with customers waiting for him to return and personally fit them for wedding dresses—and wait they would, he was sure. Those who knew about such matters claimed that he wasn’t much of a craftsman, just an ordinary tailor, who got by on personal charm and his winning ways with people. He left behind seven sons, sturdy as oaks, and no inheritance, unless you count poverty a bequest. When he died of a stroke—brought on by the grief of seeing my father, his sixth son, go off to serve in the tsar’s army—all that remained was an empty, decrepit workshop.
My mother’s side boasted a line of small-town Polish rabbis, and a great-grandmother Drezl, also the wife of a rabbi, who was widowed young. Drezl was six weeks pregnant when her husband died. Since this might have led to ugly gossip, she announced her condition before the open grave, to forestall any dirty rumors that might be spread about her—God forbid! For added insurance, she named the daughter born to her, Bine, after her late husband, Binyomin.
As a respected rabbi’s widow, my great-grandmother was given an important community appointment, attendant at the
mikve,
the women’s ritual bath. I have clear memories of the meticulous way she would go about fulfilling her duties. My mother must have regarded my prepubescent masculinity as of no moment when she took me along to the mikve and sat me down on a wet bench while the women, young and old, splashed in the water, performing their ritual ablutions under my great-grandmother’s stern and competent supervision. During a break from her duties, she would press a coin into my hand, with the wish that my little heart be as open to Torah as was God’s Holy Temple.
When she died at the age of one hundred, her son, my grandfather, poor
Imagine a place with no dragons, no scorpions, no buffalo or bison, no lions or leopards, not even a ram or deer. Who can fathom the misery of a child in a town devoid of such fauna? Elsewhere the wide world holds many such blessings, but not Lublin, which contains nothing but a town clock and a fire warden who, every quarter-hour, sounds the hours until midnight, when everything slumbers but the flitting shadows around the synagogue. My Lublin didn’t appear on small maps, and on the larger ones was only a faint, barely legible marking. Really big maps, however, showed not only Lublin but also a tiny squiggle indicating the Bystrzyc rivulet (known to us by its Yiddish equivalent, the Bistshitse), a minor tributary of the Vistula River that flowed through Warsaw, home of the big-city branch of our family.
Long before I was conceived, there was a paternal great-grandfather with the German-sounding name of Enzl, and a grandfather called Yosl Enzls, neither of whom I knew. Enzl was just a name to me, and it sounded more like a nickname. The family archivists—that is to say, my older uncles and aunts—described him as a soft-spoken, sweet-tempered man, who earned his meager living as a sexton and who was reputed to be one of the thirty-six secret saints by whose grace the world is sustained. Grandfather Yosl Enzls was a more fleshed-out figure in my consciousness. He ran a workshop that sewed ladies’ garments for well-to-do customers—the high-born daughters of the gentry and of the governor, as well as wealthy women in general. A softhearted exploiter of the working class, he employed thirty or so girls, who ate and slept on tables in the shop, where they also warbled their love songs and collected their dowries, courtesy of the employer, when they left to get married.
This grandfather was no great scholar, but he scrupulously observed all the Jewish laws and attended daily prayer services. He prayed with even greater fervor when he knew that there were carriages pulled up outside the shop with customers waiting for him to return and personally fit them for wedding dresses—and wait they would, he was sure. Those who knew about such matters claimed that he wasn’t much of a craftsman, just an ordinary tailor, who got by on personal charm and his winning ways with people. He left behind seven sons, sturdy as oaks, and no inheritance, unless you count poverty a bequest. When he died of a stroke—brought on by the grief of seeing my father, his sixth son, go off to serve in the tsar’s army—all that remained was an empty, decrepit workshop.
My mother’s side boasted a line of small-town Polish rabbis, and a great-grandmother Drezl, also the wife of a rabbi, who was widowed young. Drezl was six weeks pregnant when her husband died. Since this might have led to ugly gossip, she announced her condition before the open grave, to forestall any dirty rumors that might be spread about her—God forbid! For added insurance, she named the daughter born to her, Bine, after her late husband, Binyomin.
As a respected rabbi’s widow, my great-grandmother was given an important community appointment, attendant at the
mikve,
the women’s ritual bath. I have clear memories of the meticulous way she would go about fulfilling her duties. My mother must have regarded my prepubescent masculinity as of no moment when she took me along to the mikve and sat me down on a wet bench while the women, young and old, splashed in the water, performing their ritual ablutions under my great-grandmother’s stern and competent supervision. During a break from her duties, she would press a coin into my hand, with the wish that my little heart be as open to Torah as was God’s Holy Temple.
When she died at the age of one hundred, her son, my grandfather, poor
Similar Books
Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz
Greg Lawrence, John Kander, Fred Ebb
