The Glatstein Chronicles by Jacob Glatstein Page A

university student–turned–whiskey–errand boy, my dignity was being trampled on. It was a good excuse not to return, and so ended my union job, without my ever having laid eyes on the top man.
    As teacher in a Jewish school in a remote town in the Catskills, I was apparently working for a commune. I had been hired to provide spiritual nourishment not only for the children, but as well for the mostly tubercular adults, who endured winter days in their little business establishments, with not a cent of revenue coming in, waiting for summer’s redemptive bounty. During the long winter nights, after a day spent instructing their children, the teacher was milked for whatever he could provide in the way of literature, history, Jewish lore, culture, and other edifying fare. Sunday evening was the highlight of their week, the time of the weekly meeting, when they assembled to transact community business, all dressed to the nines, the men freshly shaved, their wives grotesquely fat or grotesquely thin. They made long-winded speeches and proposed various resolutions, quarreling among themselves, insulting one another, and spreading slander. The women took a lively part in the proceedings, violating all parliamentary procedure and forcing me, as if at gunpoint, to declare whose side I was on. They weighed my every smile, trying to guess at whom it was directed, and why. Only a Disraeli could squirm his way diplomatically out of this embarrassing situation.
    After I had successfully negotiated the slippery terrain, treading neutrally among the competing factions, I was given my reward. In my presence, the parents of the children would solicit contributions for my weekly salary. They were usually two or three dollars short, and this would lead to a long, oppressive pause. The women would throw me a look of pity and sigh over my plight. But invariably, always in the same heroic fashion, a savior would step forward, a veritable Lohengrin, and, every inch the proud philanthropist, toss down the missing few dollars. The expression on his face, however, warned that such largess would not be repeated and was not to be expected the following week. His generosity would be greeted by thunderous applause. At last the greasy bills—from the butcher, the shoemaker, the plumber, the blacksmith, the gas-station owner, the shopkeeper, the tailor, the grocer, the flour merchant, the hotel owner, the furniture dealer, the bootlegger, as well as a childless widow married to a Gentile, who donated her dollar to the cause of radical Jewish education in the mistaken belief that this would secure her a place in Paradise—would be thrust with a triumphant flourish into the teacher’s hands.
    I had many “bosses” in the Catskills, but the chief boss, the one who wielded the whip and threw me crumbs, spent his winters in warmer climes, and him I never had the good fortune to see.
    My latest employment was—and remains—that of writer for a Yiddish daily. I had worked there for eight long years without ever seeing my boss, the paper’s owner, who remained a phantom presence until it came time to negotiate a leave for the present trip. He was a shrewd businessman who knew that I hadn’t asked to see him to foment revolution, so he dispensed with me quickly. I sat scrunched down in the chair opposite him and he was obviously as eager to get rid of me as I was to have done with the whole uncomfortable business. I felt awkward and insignificant in the presence of the mighty one, who held my livelihood in his palms and brandished it over my head, as God did the Torah over the Children of Israel at Sinai—accept My Law and live, otherwise perish! I probably looked to him like some miserable child. My rectitude, my talent, my three slim volumes of poetry, my convictions—were all as naught when I imagined I heard outside the office door, clear as a bell, the pleas of my wife and three children not to make a false move or utter a wrong word, God forbid.