nailed to the doorpost, Zeitlin opened the door into what he called “the traveling circus.”
In a large room, filled with precarious piles of books, candelabra, canvas cases and halfopened boxes, a tall old man with a white beard and ringlets, wearing a black caftan and yarmulke, stood erect at a stand facing toward Jerusalem, reciting the Eighteen Benedictions. A silver pointer with an outstretched finger showed his place in the open Talmud.
The book was draped with silk, for the holy word could not be left uncovered. This man, Rabbi Abram Barmakid, was not Zeitlin’s father but he was another link to the world of his childhood: this, Zeitlin thought wistfully, is where I came from.
Rabbi Barmakid, once the famous sage of Turbin with his own court and disciples, was now surrounded by sad vestiges of the silver paraphernalia that had previously beautified his prayerhouse and studyhouses. There stood the Ark with its scrolls in velvet covers and silver chains: golden lions with redbeaded eyes and bluestoned manes kept watch. It was said the rabbi could work miracles. His lips moved quickly, his face seizing the joy and beauty of holy words in a time of disorder and downfall. He had just celebrated Yom Kippur and the Days of Awe camping in this godless house, and the only happy man in it was the one who had lost everything but kept his faith.
In 1915, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, the CommanderinChief, had declared all Jews potential German spies and driven them out of their villages. They were given a few hours to load centuries of life onto carts. Zeitlin had rescued the rabbi and his wife, putting them up in St. Petersburg illegally because they had no permits. But while they denounced their godless daughter Ariadna, they were still proud, in spite of themselves, that she had married Zeitlin, a man with oilfields in Baku, ships in Odessa, forests in Ukraine…
“Is that you, Samuil?” a hoarse voice called out to him. In the cupboardsized kitchen next door he found the rabbi’s wife, Miriam, bewigged and wearing a silk housecoat, stirring a cauldron of soup at an old gas stove with two sideboards, the separation of milk from meat roughly enforced on a sprawl of halfwashed kitchenware.
“Sashenka’s been arrested,” said Samuil.
“Woe is me!” cried Miriam in her deep voice. “Before the light, a deeper darkness! This is our punishment, our own Gehenna on earth, for children who all turned away from God, apostates each one. We died long ago and thanks to God, you can only die once. My son Mendel’s a godless anarchist; Ariadna’s lost to God: a daughter who, God protect her, goes out half naked every night! My youngest boy, Avigdor, whose very name is dead to me, abandoned us altogether, long ago—where is he, still in London? And now our darling Silberkind’s in trouble too.” In her childhood Sashenka had been blond, and her grandparents still called her the Silberkind—the silver child. “Well, we mustn’t waste time.” The old woman started to pour honey onto an empty plate.
“What are you cooking?”
“Honeycakes and chicken soup for Sashenka. In prison.”
They already knew, via the household grapevine. Zeitlin almost wept—while he called ministers, the old rabbi’s wife was cooking honeycakes for her grandchild. He could hardly believe that these were the parents of Ariadna. How had they produced that hothouse flower in their Yiddish courtyard?
He stood watching Miriam as he had once watched his own mother in their family kitchen in a woodenhutted village in the Pale of Settlement.
“I don’t even know what she’s been arrested for,” Zeitlin whispered.
Zeitlin was proud that he had never actually converted to Orthodoxy. He had not needed to do so. As a Merchant of the First Guild, he had the right to stay in St. Petersburg even as a Jew—and just before the war he had been elevated to the rank of the Emperor’s Secret Councillor, the equivalent of a lieutenantgeneral
In a large room, filled with precarious piles of books, candelabra, canvas cases and halfopened boxes, a tall old man with a white beard and ringlets, wearing a black caftan and yarmulke, stood erect at a stand facing toward Jerusalem, reciting the Eighteen Benedictions. A silver pointer with an outstretched finger showed his place in the open Talmud.
The book was draped with silk, for the holy word could not be left uncovered. This man, Rabbi Abram Barmakid, was not Zeitlin’s father but he was another link to the world of his childhood: this, Zeitlin thought wistfully, is where I came from.
Rabbi Barmakid, once the famous sage of Turbin with his own court and disciples, was now surrounded by sad vestiges of the silver paraphernalia that had previously beautified his prayerhouse and studyhouses. There stood the Ark with its scrolls in velvet covers and silver chains: golden lions with redbeaded eyes and bluestoned manes kept watch. It was said the rabbi could work miracles. His lips moved quickly, his face seizing the joy and beauty of holy words in a time of disorder and downfall. He had just celebrated Yom Kippur and the Days of Awe camping in this godless house, and the only happy man in it was the one who had lost everything but kept his faith.
In 1915, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, the CommanderinChief, had declared all Jews potential German spies and driven them out of their villages. They were given a few hours to load centuries of life onto carts. Zeitlin had rescued the rabbi and his wife, putting them up in St. Petersburg illegally because they had no permits. But while they denounced their godless daughter Ariadna, they were still proud, in spite of themselves, that she had married Zeitlin, a man with oilfields in Baku, ships in Odessa, forests in Ukraine…
“Is that you, Samuil?” a hoarse voice called out to him. In the cupboardsized kitchen next door he found the rabbi’s wife, Miriam, bewigged and wearing a silk housecoat, stirring a cauldron of soup at an old gas stove with two sideboards, the separation of milk from meat roughly enforced on a sprawl of halfwashed kitchenware.
“Sashenka’s been arrested,” said Samuil.
“Woe is me!” cried Miriam in her deep voice. “Before the light, a deeper darkness! This is our punishment, our own Gehenna on earth, for children who all turned away from God, apostates each one. We died long ago and thanks to God, you can only die once. My son Mendel’s a godless anarchist; Ariadna’s lost to God: a daughter who, God protect her, goes out half naked every night! My youngest boy, Avigdor, whose very name is dead to me, abandoned us altogether, long ago—where is he, still in London? And now our darling Silberkind’s in trouble too.” In her childhood Sashenka had been blond, and her grandparents still called her the Silberkind—the silver child. “Well, we mustn’t waste time.” The old woman started to pour honey onto an empty plate.
“What are you cooking?”
“Honeycakes and chicken soup for Sashenka. In prison.”
They already knew, via the household grapevine. Zeitlin almost wept—while he called ministers, the old rabbi’s wife was cooking honeycakes for her grandchild. He could hardly believe that these were the parents of Ariadna. How had they produced that hothouse flower in their Yiddish courtyard?
He stood watching Miriam as he had once watched his own mother in their family kitchen in a woodenhutted village in the Pale of Settlement.
“I don’t even know what she’s been arrested for,” Zeitlin whispered.
Zeitlin was proud that he had never actually converted to Orthodoxy. He had not needed to do so. As a Merchant of the First Guild, he had the right to stay in St. Petersburg even as a Jew—and just before the war he had been elevated to the rank of the Emperor’s Secret Councillor, the equivalent of a lieutenantgeneral
Similar Books
