The Spinoza of Market Street (10 page)

Only afterwards did everything become clear. Helena had taken her mother's suggestion to dig herself a grave literally. After everyone was asleep she'd taken a shovel, gone into the orchard where her father had hanged himself, and dug a grave. Then she'd lain down in it and swallowed half a bottle of iodine. As it happened, everyone had been in a deep sleep that night, even the dogs in the kennel.

Dr. Yaretzky thrust his finger down Helena's windpipe, forced her to retch. He roused her mother and the servants, poured half a pitcher of milk down Helena's throat. The widow embraced Dr. Yaretzky, attempting to kiss him. The court echoed with loud voices, barking, cries. Helena's tongue was burned from the poison, her hair matted with mud and clay. She was barefoot and in her nightgown. Dr. Yaretzky carried her into her room and put her to bed.

The widow tried to keep the incident secret but the town learned all about it. Dr. Yaretzky had asked Helena for her hand. Before the widow and the servants he'd kissed Helena's seared lips. She'd raised her lids, taken Yaretzky's hand, put it to her mouth, and for the second time that day--kissed it.

VII

BETWEEN YES AND NO

The town prepared itself for a splendid wedding. At the estate tailors sewed Helena's trousseau, seamstresses embroidered lingerie. The town merchants imported numerous items from Lublin and Warsaw to supplement the bride's outfit. The orchestra tuned up its instruments. A ball was scheduled at the Military Club in honor of the engaged couple. Dr. Yaretzky, however, knew no peace. He felt as if he were at the edge of disaster. Precisely at one o'clock every night he would awaken with the sensation that someone was blowing into his ear. He would sit up trembling, sweating--heavyhearted. "What am I doing?" he would ask himself. "How have I managed to ensnare myself? Why am I suddenly getting married?"

The ardor that he'd felt towards Helena the night he'd found her poisoned, had deserted him. Only apprehension remained. He was well aware of the pitfalls of married life. "Have I lost my senses?" he wondered, "have I been bewitched? But there is no such thing as black magic!"

Dr. Yaretzky recalled how he had stared through the rabbi's window. "Could the scene between the rabbi and his wife actually have unbalanced me, deprived me of my convictions, my resolutions? If so, I have no character at all!" he said aloud.

He would get up and wander like a sleepwalker from room to room in the dark. Various remedies occurred to him: To run away while there was still time; perhaps put a bullet through his brain ... or write Helena a note breaking the engagement. He could not forget Schopenhauer's description of woman: That narrow-waisted, high-breasted, wide-hipped vessel of sex, which blind will has formed for its own purposes--to perpetuate the eternal suffering and tedium. "No! I won't do it!" he would shout. "I won't stumble into a ditch like some blind horse! Yes, I made a promise--but what is a promise? What is honor?" Yaretzky knew Schopenhauer's essay on dueling and his whole concept of honor. It was waste, refuse--a relic of the days of knighthood, an absurd anachronism! "A curse on the whole damned thing!" Yaretzky would say to himself.

After considerable struggle with himself, Dr. Yaretzky decided to run away. What ties did he have in this God-forsaken hole? Neither friends nor relatives, a house which was not his own, furniture not worth a kopeck. His money was hidden in a secret place, he could hitch up his britzska in the middle of the night, load it with clothes, books, and instruments--and be gone. What code ordained that a man must endure the human comedy to the end? No one could force him to swear faithfulness to a wife, to raise sons and daughters, to blend his seed with the seed of those who served blind will like slaves, celebrated its weddings, wailed at its funerals, grew old, broken, crushed, forgotten. It was true that he felt compassion for Helena; he agreed with Schopenhauer--pity was the basis of morality; but what of the generations he and Helena would spawn? It was worse for them. Their anguish would persist eternally. How does it go: The luckiest child is the one not born?

He had little time left, he'd have to move quickly. His maid was deaf and mute and in addition, a heavy sleeper. His coachman spent his nights with a sweetheart in a nearby village. The only obstacle was the dog. He would bark and raise a rumpus. "I'll have to give him something!" Dr. Yaretzky decided. He had various poisons in his cabinet. Would it matter whether he lived twelve years--or nine? Death was unavoidable. It was everywhere--in the bed of a woman in labor, in a child's cradle, it trailed life like a shadow. Those who are familiar with death smell the stench of shrouds even in the diapers of an infant.

When Dr. Yaretzky finally arrived at his decision it was too late. A gray dawn had appeared. Dew was on the orchard grass but he sat in it. He did not believe in colds. He leaned against the trunk of an apple tree and inhaled the aromas of dawn. He felt ravaged by the struggle that had gone on within him for almost two weeks. Insufficient sleep, inner doubt and lack of food had exhausted him. His body felt hollow inside, his skull seemed stuffed with sand. He was Dr. Yaretzky, yet, he was not Yaretzky at all. He fought alien, mysterious forces, listening as they met for the final battle, the outcome of which he could not determine until the last second. But the powers that said, "No," were nevertheless the stronger. They marshaled their arguments like armies, dispatched them to the most strategic positions, overwhelmed the affirmative faction, throttled it, pelted it with logic, mockery, blasphemy.

Dr. Yaretzky looked up at the sky. The stars shone against the dawn, divinely luminous, filled with unearthly joy. The heavenly spheres appeared festive. But was it truly so?--No, it was a deception. If there was life on other planets, it was the same pattern of gluttony and violence as on earth. Our planet also appeared shining and glorious if viewed from Mars or the Moon. Even the town slaughterhouse looked like a temple from the distance.

He spat at the sky but the spittle landed on his own knee.

VIII

SHADOWS OF THE PAST

The following night, Dr. Yaretzky made his escape. Three months later Helena left to take the nun's vows at the convent of Saint Ursula. Dressed entirely in black, she took a black trunk, much like a coffin. The widow died soon afterwards, reportedly of a broken heart. Her steward must have been a thief for the estate was left badly in debt and quickly deteriorated. Some of the property was divided among the peasants; the house was abandoned. Everyone knows that an unoccupied house quickly goes to ruin. Moss and nests covered the roof, the walls sprouted mold and toadstools, an owl perched on the chimney and hooted in the night as if mourning an old misery.

Time passed. The town now had a new doctor, a new rabbi. The new rabbi was not a sage like the other but he persevered assiduously. After the evening services he went directly to bed. At midnight, he was in his study poring over the holy books. He also wrote interpretations of the Talmud.

Fourteen years had gone by. One midnight, the rabbi raised his eyes from his book and saw someone looking into his window--a swarthy individual with black eyes, a high forehead and black mustache. At first the rabbi thought his wife had forgotten to close the shutter and some gentile was spying on him, but suddenly he realized that the shutter was indeed closed. In the pane, along with the lamp, the table and the samovar, the face was reflected. Terrified, the rabbi's cry for help choked in his throat. After a while he rose and with trembling knees went to his wife in the bedroom.

Since there is a measure of doubt even in the most pious, the rabbi himself decided that he had only fancied what he had seen and he told no one of the incident. In the morning, he ordered the scribe to examine the
Mezuzah
and that night, as a good luck charm, he placed a volume of the Zohar and a prayer shawl with phylacteries on the table. He was determined never to interrupt his prayers or look up at the window again. Deeply engrossed in his writing, having forgotten his fear, he suddenly looked up and saw the face again in the window, real and yet unreal, insubstantial, not of the world. The rabbi cried out and fainted. Hearing the thud of his body, his wife let out a mournful wail.

They revived the rabbi but he no longer could nor would deny what he had seen. He sent the beadle to summon the elders of the community, and secretly recounted his experience. After long discussion and much supposition, it was decided that three of the men would sit up with the rabbi to observe.

The first night, the three guardians sat until sunrise and saw nothing. Sensing he was suspected of fabrication and hallucinations, the rabbi swore that he had seen either a phantom or the devil. The next night the three men again kept the vigil. When the roosters had crowed and no one had appeared at the window, two of the citizens stretched out on the benches to sleep. Only one remained awake, leafing through a copy of the Mishnah. Suddenly he leaped from his scat. The rabbi, who'd been working on one of his tracts, was so startled that he overturned the inkhorn. He, himself, had seen nothing, but the other man told, with a tremor in his voice, of having seen the image in the window and furthermore, that he had recognized the face as Dr. Yaretzky's.

The other two men were astounded. Why, of all people, would Dr. Yaretzky's ghost manifest itself here? Why should the spirit of such a rogue linger at the rabbi's window?

Although the elders promised to keep the story secret, it soon became common knowledge. The rabbi was unable to continue his studies--he was constantly attended by guardians--and each time, Dr. Yaretzky revealed himself to another witness. At times he materialized within one second and immediately afterwards dissolved. Other times he lingered a moment or two. Often the upper part of his clothing was likewise visible: a thin blouse, an opened collar, a sash around his waist. He would appear in the window like a portrait in a frame, absorbed, lost in meditation, the widely opened eyes focused on one point.

Within a short time, Dr. Yaretzky began to appear in other places. One night when a peasant awoke and went to see about his horse, which, tethered, grazed in the pasture outside, he saw the figure of a man bending over the grass holding his hands as if he were lifting some weight. The peasant thought the man a thief or a gypsy and he advanced, brandishing his whip, but at that moment, the other vanished as if the earth had swallowed him. According to the peasant's description it was evident that it was the spirit of Dr. Yaretzky. The invisible something which he'd been supposedly lifting must have been Helena since an old woman swore that it was the exact spot where Helena had dug the grave after she'd swallowed the poison, and it was from there that Dr. Yaretzky had carried her into the house.

Another time, the present doctor (who'd moved into Yaretzky's old residence) was preparing to ride off in the middle of the night to visit a dying patient. His coachman went out to the stall to hitch up the britzska, and spied someone sitting in the orchard under an apple tree, his head leaning against the tree trunk, his legs drawn up, a strange dog at his side. He was, to all appearances, asleep. The coachman was puzzled. The man did not look like a vagrant who slept under open skies, but like a gentleman. "He's probably drunk!" the coachman said to himself. He walked over to wake the other, but in that moment the figure disintegrated. Neither was there a trace left of the dog. From sheer terror the coachman began to hiccup and kept on hiccupping for three days. Only after the attack subsided was he able to tell what he'd seen.

The town separated into two camps. The faithful believed that the soul of Dr. Yaretzky wandered through all the tortures of hell and could find no resting place. The worldly citizens on the other hand, maintained that since there was no such thing as a soul, the entire thing was simply hysteria and superstition. The priest wrote a letter to the convent of Saint Ursula and an answer came back stating that Sister Helena had passed away. Dr. Yaretzky was apparently no longer alive either, since the spirits of living people do not roam about in the night. One thing remained a topic of discussion even among the believers: Why would the soul of Dr. Yaretzky hover in the window of the rabbi's study? Why should a Christian heretic seek the house of a rabbi?

Soon there was talk that lights could be seen at night in the windows of the crumbling estate. An old crone who walked past the ruin swore that she'd heard a thin voice as if that of a mother crooning lullabies to her infant and the old woman had recognized it as Helena's voice. Another woman confirmed this and added that on moonlit nights one could see on the wall of Helena's room, the shadow of a crib. . . .

After a while the ruin was demolished and a granary erected on the site. The rabbi's house was rebuilt. The doctor added a wing to his house and ordered the apple trees chopped down. Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted out and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid from unspun threads--unwoven nets.

 ---
Translated by Elaine Gottlieb and June Ruth Flaum

I

Shiddah and her child, Kuziba, a schoolboy, were sitting nine yards inside the earth at a place where two ledges of rock came together and an underground stream was flowing. Shiddah's body was made of cobwebs; her hair reached to her anklebones; her feet were like those of a chicken; and she had the wings of a bat. Kuziba, who looked like his mother, had, in addition, donkey ears and wax horns. Kuziba was sick with a high fever. Every half hour his mother gave him medicine made of devil's dung mixed with copper juice, the darkness of a ditch, and the droppings of a red crow. Shiddah, leaning over her son, licked his navel with her long tongue. Kuziba was sleeping the restless sleep of the sick. Suddenly the boy woke up.

"I'm frightened, mother," he said.

"Of what, dear?"

"Of light. Of human beings."

Shiddah trembled; and then spat on her son to ward off such evils.

"What are you talking about, child? We're safe here--far from light and far from human beings. It's as dark as Egypt here, thank God, and as silent as a cemetery. We're protected by nine yards of solid rock."