Chaim Grade’s ‘Sons and Daughters,’ Chapter Seventeen

A thick snow fell steadily. Tilza gazed out the window, imagining her parents’ house somewhere high above earth, surrounded by wind and clouds. Her imaginary world had no contours, no recognizable forms or faces, and this notion brought her pleasure. As before her marriage, she again enjoyed pining and suffering—for no reason, just because. Around her drifted her mother, sister, and youngest brother, all waiting for her to rejoin her husband. Her inability to make them understand heightened Tilza’s suffering, and she felt at odds with herself. She and her sister Bluma Rivtcha agreed on nothing, and Refael was still too young to understand her grieving heart. Her girlhood friends had all married and become ordinary women. Tilza wasn’t drawn to them, and because she’d become a rebbetzin they didn’t visit her either. But there was one former friend who showed up.

Liza Hirschhorn, a lanky woman with kind, bright eyes and a soothing voice but a pockmarked face, was uninterested in reading books, nor did she dream of life in a big city. What she’d wanted, instead, was to get married as early as possible and raise a houseful of children. But this kind of talk frightened young men, who preferred to spend some time as a couple first. Her craggy face and taciturn demeanor didn’t help attract potential fiancés either. When all her cheerful friends were already raising children, she was still unmarried. The townswomen all thought her incapable of wooing a man. No suitable shidduch materialized. Until, somehow, she’d found herself a husband.

Monia Mintz, a supplier of wood and food products for the Polish army, hated chaos more than anything. Which was why he’d chosen to remain a bachelor and live in Morehdalye, despite having business in Lomzhe, Zembin, and Bialystok: in a small town, life was more peaceful. For the same reason, he lived in high style, dropped into the beis medrash on occasion, and gave often to charity. If people didn’t regard him as a miser or freethinker, they’d leave him in peace. But as he grew older, and suffered his first long bout of sickness, he looked around him and realized he needed more people in his orbit.

He first began to pay Liza Hirschhorn regular visits; then he sent a shadchan. Liza was over thirty by then, and he was twenty-five years her senior. It was said that he presented Liza with a stipulation: they were not to have any children. Some townswomen agreed it was better to have a husband like him than no husband at all. Others felt the opposite: better to remain an old spinster than to take on such a stubborn mule.

When she visited Tilza, Liza’s voice was soft and warm, just as always. Her eyes shone sadly and maternally, like a woman who loves hosting loads of family—sisters and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews. Sitting in Tilza’s room, Liza asked so many times about her little son in Lecheve that Tilza could bear it no more and revealed she was pregnant again. Liza was so overjoyed at the news the tears sprayed from her eyes.

“I’m so happy for you, Tilza. I know your husband is a gracious man and holds a significant place among scholarly Jews. Once you give birth, I’ll come visit to see your children. My Monia will certainly allow me that. Every time I visit old friends, Monia reminds me not to forget to buy gifts for their children. It’s only he himself who has no patience for children, though I’ll never understand how one can lack the patience for sweet little boys and adorable girls.” Liza laughed, her eyes still gleaming with tears.

The visit rattled Tilza to the bone. In the evening, she sat with her mother in the dark beis din room and repeated her conversation with Liza. Her mother listened and nodded her head with concern. “Now, do you see? Your friend would give everything for the joy of having a child.”

Anxious already that Sholem Shachne had not yet returned and that she hadn’t heard from him or their son-in-law, Henna’le found this an opportune moment to rebuke her daughter. But she spoke in a low voice, so that Bluma Rivtcha, lolling around in her room, would not overhear. “You know what I can tell you, Tilza? It’s true you’re spoiled, as Father claims. You know your husband will put up with anything you do, so you do whatever you want. If you’d have been married to Liza’s husband, Monia Mintz, you’d never dare sail off and leave him with a child on his hands, because you’d know that Monia would never let you come back home.”

Noises drifted in from Bluma Rivtcha’s nook. It sounded as if she were singing under her breath, in an angry, tuneless key. For days now, she’d been sitting in her room reading books, sewing, embroidering, or having long conversations with her brother Refael’ke. With Tilza, however, she could not see eye to eye. Bluma Rivtcha had told her sister point-blank: just as she’d never had the courage to defy her father, she now lacked the courage to leave a husband she didn’t love.

Henna’le’s eyes darted around the beis din room as if its shadows could eavesdrop, and then leaned her head toward Bluma Rivtcha’s room. “Ever since Tzesneh Ginsburg left for Warsaw to be with Zindel—at least, that’s the rumor—your sister’s been avoiding her friends. All day she lounges around the house. Can you imagine your Yaakov Asher capable of such a thing, two-timing and humiliating his fiancée the way this dandy—the scholarly Zindel!—has? Everyone already considered him Bluma Rivtcha’s fiancé and the future Morehdalye rabbi!”

“Bluma Rivtcha claims—and rightfully so—just like you and Father, that I’m a dreamer and she’s the practical, sober one. Well, Zindel is even more practical than her, and he chose a bride who’s more useful to him,” Tilza said, her coal-black eyes flashing angrily. But her anger quickly abated, and she cried to her mother, “I know Yaakov Asher loves me and he’s a dedicated father. But he loves me in his pious way, the same way he washes his hands before he eats bread. He’s never teased me or laughed with me like other young couples do. I’m so lonely in Lecheve. But I can’t be seen with women who don’t live a pious life. I’m the town rebbetzin! Never mind attending one of the evening discussions organized by the town’s youth. That’s out of the question! So I ask Yaakov Asher to sit with me at home. But he groans and carries on about how busy he is. After all, he’s the rosh yeshiva and rabbi. He rations his time the way a poor man rations his bread, making it suffice for all his children. I always dreamed of a different sort of life.”

“So you dreamed! So what?!” Her mother, incensed, slapped her hands against her apron. “And if you’d have married someone who wasn’t a scholar, wouldn’t he have to attend to his business matters? So your husband’s no chatterbox and he’s measured with his time. Would you rather Yaakov Asher take his beard off when he’s home with you and turn into a loafer? A frivolous lover? Bluma Rivtcha’s right. Even though you cut your braids off many years ago, you’re still wearing them in that head of yours. Your father and I have spent a life together and loved each other without such fantasies.”

“That’s exactly the problem! You and Father swooned over each other even though you had an arranged marriage, and now you can’t understand why your daughter can’t do the same.” Tilza sighed, and Henna’le, caught off guard, blinked her eyes as she always did when she didn’t know how to respond, pretending to be deaf.

But her mother and sister were right. It was true—in her imagination, Tilza still wore her long braids. She had not yet forgotten her Hebrew teacher, Ezra Morgenstern, who’d spoken so eloquently about Eretz Yisroel and weighed her heavy braids in his palm. After she’d gotten married, she realized how greedy and sweaty a man became as he drew near a woman, and ever since, she’d enjoyed recalling Morgenstern with his thick hair and dark-skinned face, his fiery eyes and full lips. Whenever he led discussions, you could tell he was a seething kettle, but he was always polite with her, hands at his sides. If she’d have known then what she knew today about men, she would have made the first move, drawn close to him, solicited hugs and kisses. If her father had not chased him from Morehdalye and they’d married, how different her life would be. These days, her father was powerless against the new breed of Morehdalye chalutzim. He couldn’t even keep Refael’ke from contemplating a move to Israel, where he planned to work on a kibbutz.

This past autumn, the Morehdalye chalutzim had hired themselves out to timber merchants to chop down trees. They lugged cords of firewood through deep mud to the yards of the well-to-do. The chalutzim’s fathers, wealthy men themselves, discussed this in the beis medrash, praising their children for acting on their words. To live in the land of Israel, their children asserted, you first had to experience suffering.

Refael’ke listened to these discussions and watched with envy as the chalutzim walked about hauling sacks on their shoulders. Nevertheless, he kept his distance, not wanting to cause his father any grief. With the arrival of winter, though, the young men were out of work. Instead, they gathered at the town’s library, exchanged books, and held discussions in the evenings.

On one such evening, Tilza wrapped a white wool shawl around her head and asked Refael’ke to accompany her to a library gathering. A shaft of light beamed from a nearby lamp, piercing Refael’ke’s glasses. He took them off, rubbed his nearsighted eyes, and deliberated over the right thing to do. If he’d been avoiding the chalutzim all this time to keep from hurting his father, he couldn’t go to the library now, either, while his father was away, since eventually he’d find out. In the end, Refael’ke said, “I don’t want to go,” and Tilza understood his reasons.

“And may I go?”

“You can go. Father won’t worry about you running off to Israel at this point.” Refael smiled and put his glasses back on. “It’s dark and slippery outside, so I’ll walk with you there. Just ask someone to walk you back home.”

The library building consisted of one large square room, with a stage for plays and lectures. On the rough wooden shelves that lined the room’s perimeter lay sparse rows of tattered books, more paperbacks than hardbound. A long electric light, hanging from the low ceiling, shone dimly through the clouds of cigarette smoke. The crowd was composed of young unmarried men in hats, short coats, and tall boots. Up on the stage, seated behind a table, was the chairman, a middle-aged man with a large bald spot, drooping cheeks, and a beard shaped like a trowel. Though he was silent, it was easy to tell by his wide mouth and thick lips that he had a powerful voice. Near him stood the speaker, a tall young man, unmarried, wearing a blue turtleneck sweater. He had a long face and protruding eyes, but his hair was thick and handsome, full of curls that coiled and crimped at his temples. On the table, midway between the chairman and the speaker, stood a pitcher full of lemonade and an empty glass. The audience gazed tensely at the lemonade from their benches, as if parched or perhaps bothered by the one, same question: Why had the pitcher been placed there on the table if no one was drinking from it?

As Tilza stepped inside and took a seat on the last empty bench, the audience turned their gazes from the stage. For a moment they stared at her, until they were bored and swiveled their heads back around. Either they hadn’t recognized her as the rabbi’s older daughter, or they had and it made no impression.

The man onstage spoke in a passionate, combative tone about committees, certificates, and white paper. He derided a British minister. He reserved even more anger for a certain sort of Zionist who was trying to split up the chalutzim movement. He went on about resolutions and divisions for so long that Tilza’s head began to ache. The chiseled faces of the young men, too, listening drearily in silence, looked worried and blank. The room’s stingy electric light grew even dimmer in the dense cigarette smoke, the plumes whirling upward as if the smokers were trying to escape their own confined and gloomy thoughts. The speaker, incidentally, concluded on a confident note, declaring that, despite all Zionist enemies from without and within, the fifth wave of immigration would not be blocked. But no one applauded or cheered.

The next speaker was a soldier in uniform, though his jacket was missing buttons and he had no military belt—a dark, slim, sharp-eyed young man. His speech was even blander than the last: “Compared to many other small towns in Lithuania, Polesia, and Volin, Morehdalye is backward. Up until now, it’s been impossible to find a single Jewish farm in the entire area that trusts chalutzim to work alongside non-Jewish farmhands. And the community shows no support for the chalutzim movement, despite us having our own city councilman here . . .” And with that the speaker glared accusingly at the trowel-bearded chairman. The soldier then turned back to the crowd and explained that next summer there’d be a work opportunity for chalutzim with a certain landowner. This farmer planted cabbage, carrots, onions, turnips, and potatoes, and was now planning to grow tobacco. The only problem, however, was that the apartment he reserved for trainees was far too cramped, forcing them to sleep three to a bed. This farmer also neglected to provide any flour for baking bread, never mind butter, cheese, eggs, or milk. All he’d permit was sour milk and potatoes twice a day. And even if a chalutz managed to acquire his own products for baking and cooking, there weren’t enough women comrades to manage the kitchen. The trainees would also need farm equipment, but the treasury was empty . . .

Back in Lecheve, Refael’ke had already told Tilza about how hard the road was for chalutzim, both before and after the move to Israel. So Tilza listened to the speakers with downcast eyes, regretting that she’d come. No longer would she be able to daydream of that summer evening in the meadow with Ezra. Her thoughts were interrupted by the shout of someone in the crowd: “The pious zealots of this town and the rabbi are at fault! If not for them, Morehdalye would have had an agricultural training team long ago!” Tilza didn’t even raise her head to see who was shouting. She remained immersed in her thoughts of Ezra, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t really gotten to know him very well. If her father had let them go out a little longer, who knows, maybe she’d have lost her interest anyway. Quietly, Tilza shuffled out of the room to the dark outdoors. She had no desire to speak with anyone there, nor to ask anyone to walk her home.

So when Tilza’s husband arrived in Morehdalye, he didn’t have to put up a fight. She was ready to come home. As a result, Yaakov Asher told the family that Sholem Shachne had remained in Lecheve only to watch over Heshe’le and lecture the students. But alone with his wife, Yaakov Asher revealed the truth: as long as she stayed in Morehdalye, he refused to return. “I didn’t want to tell it to your family, because I didn’t want your mother and siblings to fight with you. I don’t want to force you to come back. But tell me, what complaints do you have against me?” He spread his hands out and his voice broke.

Tilza looked carefully at her husband’s hands, with their stubby yellow-freckled fingers, at his red beard that grew down over his neck, his protruding forehead, always crinkled and sweaty from toiling over the Torah or worrying about the yeshiva, and she asked herself: “Indeed, what is it I have against him? So I don’t like that he keeps gaining weight and his jacket keeps getting tighter? Why not focus on his good qualities? He’s well-mannered, smart, kind, educated, and a renowned rosh yeshiva. He has such kind eyes that, with a mere glance, all your limbs grow warmer. Who am I to cause him such suffering?”

Tilza listened silently as her husband spoke to her in the same manner her father once did. “You’re a fine woman, and you were raised in a devout Jewish town with a long history. How is it you’ve come to lust after the glitz of material objects? I love my students deeply for their sharp minds, their piety, sincerity, and kindness, for their willingness to travel to a foreign town just to grow in their study of Torah. But all you see in my students is their unattractive clothes and unworldly behavior. You know, there are moments when I’ve thought of standing in the middle of the market and crying out: ‘Who is like our nation of Israel, one nation on earth?’ Where in the world can you find such honorable Jews as the Jews of Lecheve? They take food from their own mouths to feed our students, and their greatest hope is to find a scholar for a son-in-law. They practically cut their own fingers off to pay me a rabbi’s wage, and even add a little more for being the rosh yeshiva. But all you see is poverty and miserable lives, disheveled women and dispirited men. Filth and barbarians—that’s all you see in everyone and everything. The Lecheve men and women feel it. They know how you act toward them, but they ignore it on my account. Even my students, young boys, are aware of all I’m forced to swallow for you.

“Your father says I’m at fault, that I’ve spoiled you. And he’s right! If you weren’t pregnant, I’d give you the option—there’s such a thing as divorce in Judaism, after all,” Yaakov Asher said, and his voice, like his hands, shook with great aggravation. To say such words to his own wife!

But her reply, which she, too, uttered with an aching heart and burning eyes, was unexpected. “I don’t want to divorce you either. I’ll go home with you. But don’t walk around here sighing and brokenhearted. I don’t want Bluma Rivtcha to think I don’t love you and am only going home because I have no other choice.”

“Why do you care what Bluma Rivtcha thinks?” Her husband, face covered in sweat, eyed her with a weary smile.

“I just don’t want it!” Tilza stamped her foot and flung her head back, as if she still had long girlish braids to toss.