The Book of Fathers (14 page)

On Friday afternoons the extended family would gather in Grandfather Aaron’s house, spending the evening and the following day together and passing Shabbos free of work, as prescribed. The three girls—all married by now—took turns to bring dinner in pans, jugs, and dishes whose number increased with the size of the tribe. The food was laid on the table and the candles were lit early in the afternoon, so that when they returned from the synagogue of Ben Loew, there would be nothing left for them to do. After dinner the grandchildren would beg Uncle Aaron to tell them about the old days. These tales had only one listener more attentive than the children, and that was István Stern. He had preserved in his memory many fragments of the past of the Stern (Smorakh) family, whose meaning fell into place only very gradually. Grandfather Aaron reveled in the telling of the tales, with frequent digressions, and returning again and again to certain details. He etched in vivid colors the Smorakh home in Lemberg, which had burned to the ground when hotheaded scoundrels threw flaming torches onto the half-tiled roof. This was a scene István Stern had seen many times, but only later was he to discover why.

The children could not understand who those scoundrels were and why their heads were hot.

“It was a pogrom,” said Aaron Stern.

“What’s a pogrom?”

“It’s when Jews are attacked for no rational reason. People can be very wicked.”

“What does rational mean?”

There was no answer to this. The room fell silent, only the crackling of the wood in the grate.

Éva grasped the shoulders of her older sons (the smallest had fallen asleep in her lap): “Don’t you worry, there will never be a pogrom here.”

After the children had gone to bed Grandfather Aaron told his sons-in-law how the family’s library of books, collected over four generations, went up in flames in Lemberg’s Haymarket. “Two of the curs threw the books out of the window, the pages sizzling as they flew; another two made a bonfire and shoveled the knowledge of the world onto it: literature, holy scripture, everything. The paper quickly caught fire; the bindings burned more slowly, giving off thick smoke, and the choking smell penetrated our clothes; we could smell it for days. Elise’s mother herded everyone behind the house and took them over to the Market Place where a cart was waiting for us … Yes, that’s how it was. I have never since felt like buying books, as my first thought is: what if the fire gets it … stupid notion.”

Indeed, Aaron Stern’s house contained very little reading matter; his library consisted of yearbooks and almanacs. The Torah rolls that had been Rabbi Ben Loew’s gift, he kept in a locked chest.

Though regularly invited, the Rabbi was not a frequent visitor to the Sterns’ house. But he was a weekly institution at the István Stern household. The latter had never been called the Stern house: after the avenue of trees before it the house was always called the Chestnuts. The Rabbi’s preference for István Stern was all the more curious because, in the words of Grandfather Stern, “He isn’t really a Jew, we just sort of took him in.”

In fact Aaron Stern was beginning to take offense at the Rabbi, who had, when all was said and done, him, Aaron, to thank for settling there, but preferred to give his attention to a person who had also him, Aaron, to thank for settling in Hegyhát. István Stern was aware of the tension and even mentioned it to the Rabbi, who replied: “I am not in the debt of Aaron Stern, nor of any other local, just as they do not owe me anything either. We all of us owe thanks only to Him whom we cannot mention by name.”

Conversation flowed easily in the Chestnuts, at the ash table with wine bottles and peeled fruit, in the reed armchairs lined with soft lambskins. Rabbi Ben Loew told parables from the Talmud that István Stern, who still considered himself a tyro in matters of the history and traditions of his chosen people, was happy to make notes of in his head. In the company of the Rabbi he became unusually loquacious and found himself gabbling, as he had in his childhood. Often he would disrespectfully interrupt the Rabbi, of which he was much ashamed.

Not infrequently he would complain how hard it was to assimilate into their community. In the synagogue he was never sure whether he had to bow or stand and some of the Hebrew texts had never been explained to him, and he mouthed them without knowing what they meant. The long and short of it was that he still felt himself a stranger among the Jews.

“Everyone is a stranger in this world,” said the Rabbi. “Above all the Jews. The pharaohs drove them from their ancient homeland, they dispersed to all points of the compass. They are to this day not allowed to buy land in many places. If, after all that, you have asked to join them, why should they not accept you?”

“Perhaps it’s not their fault. Maybe I have no talent for something that you have to be born for.”

“And what might that be, that you have to be born for?
Look around: which Jew lives a life more Jewish than you? You do not have to tell me. Many of them eat forbidden meats, for example Aaron Stern does … they fail in kashruth, mixing milky and meaty plates and cutlery, they are strangers to the synagogue. It is not a very attractive thing, being Jewish, you may be assured of that.”

Another of their recurrent topics was István Stern’s miraculous gift of memory. The Rabbi wanted to understand exactly how the past began to stream for him. Could it be induced or accelerated by any particular type of behavior? Could he influence the periods that unreeled? István Stern could not supply satisfactory answers; all he could say with any confidence was that when he was agitated or excited, the images came more frequently and in greater numbers. If he was calm, say after a good meal, he could not even remember what he previously wrote in the Book of Fathers.

Rabbi Ben Loew asked to see The Book of Fathers. He wanted to borrow it, but István Stern would not let him take it. “Begging your pardon, but I don’t want to be parted from it for a moment.”

“Understandable. May I look at it here, in your presence?”

“As long as you please.”

The more the Rabbi read, the more questions he asked. As if he were writing a history of the Sternovszky/Csillag family. István Stern readily responded to every query, thinking ruefully meanwhile that neither his dear mother nor his younger brother, nor even his good wife, had expressed so much interest in his forebears. Nor his own sons, though perhaps their interest would develop later; after all, even the oldest was just coming up to seven.

“My dear Stern, I wonder: have you ever tried to look ahead?”

“Ahead?”

“Into the future.”

István Stern stared at Rabbi Ben Loew in astonishment. After a while he said: “That perspective is the privilege of Him whom we do not call by name.”

“Let me be the judge of that, and answer my question.”

“No, I have never looked into the future.”

“You cannot or you will not?”

“I would hardly dare to try.”

“Pity. What pain and suffering you could spare yourself and all your loved ones!”

This remark set István Stern thinking. That night, after the Rabbi had departed, he stayed on the veranda as darkness fell, watching the shadows lengthen along the avenue of chestnut trees and by the three small silver firs that he had planted when each of his sons was born. The chestnut trees had grown taller than the average man (not as tall as István himself), while the firs, like organpipes, were respectively only a few inches ahead of his Richard, Robert, and Rudolf. How tall would the chestnuts be in ten years’ time? Twice this height, perhaps. And the firs? We shall see. Hopefully …

Were he able to do what the Rabbi suggested, he could find out now what awaited him—awaited them all. The thought made him break out in a cold sweat. He recalled the Gypsy who had told his fortune in Tokay. The entire family had gone by cart to the fair and everybody got a souvenir. Richard got the little monkey that a large Gypsy family was exhibiting for a fee; it was no bigger than a medium-sized hare. Aaron Stern thought it must be a baby monkey, but the Gypsies swore it was twelve years old and called it Aster. After this, only the haggling separated Richard and the frightened little creature, which had now settled on his shoulder and clung to him like a baby to the breast. Aaron Stern gave up the haggling more than once, but each time István Stern resumed it and in the end it was he who paid. He was ashamed to admit that he was taken with the little
monkey perhaps even more than was his son. From that night onwards, despite his mother’s protestations, he slept with the little creature in his bed, cuddling and kissing it constantly through the day, calling it Aszti, my little Aszti.

The oldest female member of the Gypsy family, a vast rotund creature dressed in red silk from top to toe, inhabited the darkness of the tent and would read one’s fortune from one’s palm, using cards, or her glass ball. To general surprise Aaron Stern paid for all the male members of the family to have their fortunes told. István Stern was the last to reach the fortune-teller’s table, which was host to a lazy black cat curled around the iron base of the magic ball.

“What’s it made of?” asked István Stern, thinking of the mysteriously shining ball.

“Just show me your palm!” said the Gypsy, grasping his hand and drawing the palm into the pool of light under the oil-lamp suspended close to her head. For a long time she studied the various lines and grooves, touching here, prodding there. István Stern thought her stocky fingers were sticky and wanted to draw back his hand, but the fortuneteller would not let it go. “I see great fires,” she declared at length with some solemnity.

“What sort of fires?”

“Blazing fires, flames as tall as a human being.”

“What is ablaze? Stubble? Logs of wood? Or a roof?”

“Snow-white, square birds tumble into the flames, burning to death.”

István Stern could extract nothing more from the Gypsy. Later he asked his father-in-law: “What can it mean?”

“Nothing good.”

“I still don’t understand it.”

Aaron Stern grimaced: “And for this I paid good money!”

István Stern imagined the scene a hundred times. He saw the snow-white birds as doves; it was his own house that had burst into flame, the wings would be trying to
extinguish the fire—that’s why they dive onto it in suicidal frenzy, the smoke darkens the tapestry of the heavens. But he kept coming up against one thing: who has ever seen a rectangular dove?

One summer night, when a seasonal storm burst over the house with ear-splitting rolls of thunder and heavy rain, the past was again summoned up in István Stern’s mind and when he had again lived through what he had lived through so many times before, the Rabbi’s question occurred to him, as well as the Gypsy’s prophecy. Now, he thought, now or never! Eyes shut, he waited for the superhuman powers to launch in him the visions, this time the visions of the unknown regions of tomorrow. As his heartbeat accelerated, so it grew louder and began to shut out the roaring of the heavens. Then, then, oh, there came shreds of the first tableau, which eerily resembled the Gypsy’s prophecy: vast flames leaped from somewhere and white blotches flew about, which perhaps resembled scraps of white lawn more than birds. But he had no chance to make them out properly. He could not even be sure that what he had been vouchsafed was indeed some tiny fragment of the future and not just images of the Gypsy’s prophecy.

Rabbi Ben Loew hummed as he listened to István Stern’s account, as if he both believed it and did not. “Was that all?”

“That’s all I saw.”

“Don’t give up hope. Whoever gave you this will give you more, when the time comes.”

The profit from the vineyard that year was especially bountiful. The late summer heat had ripened the grapes to bursting and the mountain yielded a superlative nectar. Orders for István Stern’s S-branded containers came pouring in from every quarter. Aaron Stern winked happily at his son-in-law: “If it goes on like this, we might even get rich!”

With István Stern it was not only his family, but the entire Jewish community of Hegyhát that was extremely satisfied. He was a model husband, who gave his wife the respect and material security that was her due. A strict but warmhearted father, for whom his sons would give their right arm if necessary. A generous patron of the poor in the whole region. An assiduous visitor to the synagogue. At the forefront of those who observe the law and maintain the customs. Intelligent, comfortably off, yet without putting on airs. There was little evidence that he was nonetheless … in actual fact … to put it bluntly: that he joined the community of his own free will. He was equally respected by the Calvinist tenant farmers: in matters viticultural he would be the first they turned to; his word was widely respected even when the issue was the taste of the wine. Some tenant farmers would cheat by sugaring their wine or even watering it: to deal with them the Wine Protection Union of Hegyhát and Tokay was formed, with Tivadar Frank as its president, after István Stern had categorically declined this high office—whereupon he was elected deputy president, by acclamation.

Éva Stern was proud of her husband and liked to say that she was the only woman who gained her own name on marriage for a second time. She admitted to only one weakness in respect of her husband’s activities: his visits to the marital bed were not as frequent as she would have liked. This weakness she ascribed to her husband’s excessive devotion to the successful business; he often came home late and it was commonplace for him not to join the family at dinner. Éva did not even suspect that it was not always overwork that kept István Stern from the bosom of his family. Not infrequently he spent his evenings in the house of a widow of substance whom he had encountered in the course of plying his trade, since from her late husband she had inherited one of the finest model vineyards of the Tokay region.
It was one of Éva’s regular pleas to her husband that they should shed the daily yoke of labor and go somewhere where they could take their ease for a while. István Stern was not minded to have his bones shaken on the way to some far-off place. But slowly the whole family came round to Éva’s view, and even Grandfather Aaron urged them to take a rest: “Off with you! Years have passed without your taking a rest from your bottles!”