God’s Trial

I. Avraham-Yisroel, the Forest-Writer’s Son Comes to Town

When the forest-writer Avraham-Yisroel moved from the woods into the city, he had his own wife, three daughters, and two sons. He also had some meager savings but had no idea about the kind of work he might undertake. In his youth, immediately after he married, Avraham-Yisroel longed powerfully for city life and to be a part of the Jewish community. He wanted to visit the Kotsker Rebbe, not by himself from the woods as an innkeeper, but with other Jews “in the multitude.” He had been orphaned, and was full of sorrow and lonely in his wooden forest hut. However, he made a living and lived without envy. His young wife was happy and had no greater desires for herself. She was small and had a double hunchback, one hump in the front and the other in the back. Having very plain features as well, she had no use for city life. When her husband, with his longing for urban life, stared out the window beyond the forest to the market that led to the town, she understood what he meant and grudgingly spoke out:

“What don’t you like about living here? You forget that you are already, may God spare you, a father. We need a ‘living,’ and, without flour there are no dumplings!”

This short, inaccurate saying was a sincere recomposition of the lines “If there is no flour, there is no Torah.” [ . . . ]

Now, eighteen years later, when forest life seemed to end and Avraham-Yisroel had to move to the city, the “dream-locale” no longer enticed him. It can be compared to someone who has lived his whole life in poverty and, in old age, becomes rich when he cannot enjoy his new-found riches. Or, it was like a barren woman who becomes prosperous on the doorstep of old age, when her breasts are already withering.

Avraham-Yisroel’s faraway dream had already become “stale.” The Kotsker Rebbe was no longer alive. He yearned for the abandoned forest, as if it were some relative. The narrow apartment in the city was always full of children’s wailings and curses from the mother. Avraham-Yisroel had become a man burdened with many children. He had both boys and girls and . . . a little money saved. His beard was still brown, very slightly threaded with silver hair. He felt as lonely among the city people as he had among the trees in the forest. [ . . . ]

Raisel, Avraham-Yisroel’s wife, had actually taken the move to the city quite differently. She had erased the eighteen years of living in the country from her memory, as if in one day. She immediately felt as comfortable as if she had never lived in the forest, but only in the city right from the beginning. She bought a pack of white wool right away and sat down by the wheel. She wanted to knit socks for “her man” for Yom Kippur. She knit many pairs, to last the whole year. When chatting with the womenfolk, she fit right in, as if she had always taken part in their chatter. Her voice resounded out of an open window as she joined in the choir of women singing out the holy words sung usually by Jewish children.

“Blessed be He, and Blessed be His Name, Amen!” Babbling on, they muttered, “In the merit of small children, merciful Father!”

Be that as it may, inside of her, the poisonous worm did not stop nagging. She had three daughters, and the oldest, Masha, was already seventeen years old. Masha, herself, had a small hunchback, a face with a red nose that was always moist, and a voice with a nasal drawl.

Her second daughter, Rana, was a glutton who ate straight out of the pots and was lazy. The whole day she sat like a “doll.” She did absolutely nothing, and constantly fought with her sisters and told lies all day long. She didn’t utter a word of truth. She had earned herself the nickname of “glutton-liar.”

The third daughter, Hannah, the youngest at age fourteen, was crazy. Her one hand did not know what her other hand was doing. Her mouth did not know what it was saying, as long as it was “wagging.” The two boys . . . forget it! One requires money for such daughters. Without money, no personable match will ever be found, and, he, Avraham-Yisroel, did not seem to care. As every day went by, his money dwindled and he, did he care? No way!

“For heaven’s sake, Avraham-Yisroel! Why do you forgo everything and do nothing! We are eating up all our earnings. We will become beggars, it should happen to my enemies.” With these words, his wife accosted him of an evening when he returned from the prayer house and sat down to browse a book by candlelight. She stands before him with her hands on her tightly bound, aproned stomach. She starts scratching her head quickly and nervously under her headscarf, out of a lack of patience.

She yells, “A person is a murderer to his own wife and children!”

“What do you want me to do? What work should I put my mind to?”

“A store!” Again, she screams out, repeating what she had said yesterday and the day before. [ . . . ]

2

The Sabbath passed by somberly. His wife had refused to give him a shirt for the Sabbath. He had always been accustomed to donning a clean shirt for the holy day.

“Go do some business. Go do something.” She pushes him.

Avraham-Yisroel will not take her words seriously. However, for this specific reason, he had found work in a forge in the Kotsk district. Without having changed his shirt, he goes and sleeps in the prayer house, on the bench in his weekday shirt. However, this does not make him happy. No, he is not feeling any happiness at all. He is forced to eat at a strange Sabbath table, like a guest. This actually does not bother him as much as wearing a dirty shirt does. Nonetheless, the day must not pass without some kind of happy feeling. In the evening, the people who have been all day at prayer seem worn out, sitting around the prayer-house table. They are like melancholy horses standing around an empty corral. [ . . . ]

There were three eligible girls in the house. They were not pretty or accomplished. There were, besides those three, two sons in a yeshiva, somewhere. Those sons again had to stop eating from the charity of others [“essn teg”] and start taking care of themselves because they could not get any more care packages from home. Avraham-Yisroel was six years older and more fatigued than when he had emerged from the forest. He had no money, no means of maintaining the house.

9. Raisel’s Life’s Goal

A hard life had begun for Avraham-Yisroel’s household. In the narrow, half-dark little store, near the marketplace in Shlomo-Yakov’s house it was humid from the oils and salves. The girls continuously struck their elbows while serving customers and constantly got into each other’s hair. They cursed and teased each other. It was tight and cluttered in the little store. With a careless move, a cup of varnish had spilled. In addition, a dipper of cod liver oil was turned over and then it was much ado about nothing! For Heaven’s sake! The whole family worked in the little store, from morning until late at night, and, in order to make the Sabbath, they had to borrow from the store. Nonetheless, there was no money to pay the rent.

The landlord of their house was a nouveau-riche dealer in old clothes. He was short, stocky, and had a neatly trimmed, black-gray beard. He was topped off with a hat with a glossy band around it and bore a lacquered visor. Since he had become rich and had bought this house, he would walk with mincing steps as if he were walking on soft eggs. The landlord always came of an evening when Avraham-Yisroel was at home; not having been invited in, he nevertheless spread himself out in a chair by the table and turned with a boorish smile.

“Reb Avraham-Yisroel Hassid, you do know what the holy Torah, it should have long life, says when one does not pay the rent on time?” [ . . . ]

She, Raisel, looked yellow like a lemon, skinny and dried out, like a three-year-old esrog. She was now only a hunchback. From the front and the back, her two humps had grown. They got higher, and she, in that same measure, got more bent-over and smaller. The only thing that kept her alive at this point was not concern for her husband and children. What kept her alive now, giving her strength and energy and “feeding” her, as oil feeds fire, was nothing other than hatred. Hatred toward Meir Rafalovitch’s house in which she had the fervent hope to live long enough to gain revenge on him. [ . . . ]

Many years passed. The store expanded and became a hardware business, with oils and paints. Time moved on. Middle-aged people moved into old age. The old died. Different new things came up in the world and in the village. However, the family’s hatred of Rafalovitch and their longing for revenge did not lessen, not by a hair’s breadth. At every meal Hannah would spout her curses. Her mother answered with some religious counter-curse, like a silent prayer. Masha became a bride. A match was formulated for her, not for the family’s sake.

Raisel remembered well and did not forget for a moment that the household had been broken because of Rafalovitch. They had not been able to make a required match for Hannah at the time. The youngest daughter, Hannah, had to marry a widower. Hatred again flamed up with every look at the groom and thereafter at the son-in-law’s blind-cataracted eye. It flamed at his deafness, his stammering, and his inability to contribute to Torah conversations. She had not wanted to marry him, crying, and once even throwing a chair, thereby expressing her protest. Nonetheless, she married the widower. Added to this fiery hatred toward Rafalovitch was another flame.

When Avraham-Yisroel passed away, at the gravesite, when fragments were laid upon his eyes, Raisel could not hold back but yelled into the grave, “Remember, Avraham-Yisroel, carry forward my grievance to the Heavenly Court.” [ . . . ]

The town was aware of Raisel’s curses and it was said that Rafalovitch became richer and happier all because of Raisel’s, Avraham-Yisroel’s wife’s curses.

Every curse becomes a blessing for Rafalovitch when she uttered them. However, Raisel still kept hoping. She hoped and became ever more certain that she would, that she had to live to see Rafalovitch’s downfall.

10. Stronger than Death

I, the narrator of this specific event, am the son of Baruch, the grandson of Avraham-Yisroel and his wife, Raisel. When I remember my early childhood, my grandfather was no longer alive and my grandmother lived with my Aunt Hannah and her husband Yitsḥak. [ . . . ]

As I think back to that time, in the entrance to the town, near the town park, across the street, displayed in front with acacias and spread-out branches from the chestnut trees, stood a two-story house with large windows and an entrance door carved out of oak wood. The lock was shiny and glossy and the short little brass sign was highly buffed and shone as bright as a mirror. The only thing written on it in Polish was “Marian Rafalowicz [the Polish spelling].” I have very few clear memories from those quiet days. However, I do remember that rich, quiet house. It so happened that I passed by that place. I stood and looked at the rich building with its rare flowerpots adorning the windows. I tried to imagine the kind of extraordinarily beautiful and rich life that was proceeding behind those finely polished window panes. I tried with longing to see something.

Once a coach came out and stopped in front of the house. A person in a military uniform emerged. He must have been someone of high rank, because a Cossack sitting next to the coachman jumped down. This Cossack had an earring in one ear. Hurriedly, he opened the door and stood at full length, straight as a string. In the street, the Jews moved off to the side, placing their forelocks behind their ears. However, when this man, all-embossed in red military uniform started walking to the house and opened the door, he was faced with someone dressed in civil garb, coming from within the house. He had a moderate, white beard, no hat. He greeted the military man by shaking his hand and they began speaking in an ordinary way.

Even in my young mind, it became clear that the man in civilian garb held himself as not less important than the proud general. In the heder, where I learned, I found out from the boys that this man, without a hat and with a white beard, was called Meir Rafalovitch. He was very rich, a millionaire. The most important thing was, he is a Jew. This made us all proud. The rich Marian or Meir Rafalovitch who speaks with generals and talks as if with his own people is a Jew. [ . . . ]

Rafalovitch employed half the town. People were ready to jump into a fire for him and they encircled his name with rays of grandeur.

What of Rafalovitch’s enemies? He probably did have enemies. No person is free of enemies, and Rafalovitch, with all his fancy deeds, surely had some. However, he did not have overt enemies. Most people kissed up to him, each in his own way. Every person needed something from him; each person was dependent upon him and everyone was terrified of him.

But . . .

In the marketplace in a small store, from where smells of oils and paints would emanate in the half-darkness, among the rusted iron and tools, there would wander a very bent hunchbacked old woman with sunken cheeks and eyes dimmed from cataracts. She was old and always carried a torn tobacco handkerchief in her apron pocket. From time to time, her weakened eyesight would be jolted back to seeing clearly after she sniffed her tobacco handkerchief. [ . . . ]

This same old woman, half-beaten, was Rafalovitch’s overt blood-enemy. Her entire present life was justified by her hatred to Rafalovitch. [ . . . ]

One evening in summer, my little brother, Aunt Hannah’s children, and I were playing in the sand in the courtyard. Suddenly, the maid appeared.

“Children, inside. Grandmother is calling you!” Naturally, we did not feel like abandoning our game to go inside. Soon, grandmother herself came out. So we had no choice. We had to abandon building our mud palace and go inside. Inside, an inquiry was held. Each grandchild was questioned separately: “Did you say your prayers?”

“Are you obeying your parents?”

“Are you running around?”

Only after all this, of course the answers all being satisfying ones, did we get a nosh, a cookie or a fruit.

“Say a blessing,” Grandmother reminded us.

Grandmother is now especially pressing us to listen to what she tells us. We kick each other, understanding what she means. When she tells us to go into our alcove and sit down on the coffer, my cousin Aaron-Leib, Hannah’s son, gives me a pinch on my arm.

“Again she is starting her ‘song.’” Grandmother indeed opens her mouth and says, “When your Grandfather, may he rest in peace, came from the forest into the town. . . .” She rests for awhile, before coming to the most important part of her story.

“So the ‘predator,’ the evil Rafalovitch started stealing himself into our hearts and the little money that we had saved up, like a thief, a robber, he came in, in the darkest night, into a home that was full.”

Now, the “song” that she was “singing” was not known to us and we no longer had great respect for Grandmother, and since the story was boring and long-winded, we started behaving wildly. We pushed out, backwards, and laughed. Grandmother whose cataract-eyes were staring out at us, recognized, finally, that her story held no interest for us. She resented this and started annoying us. [ . . . ]

11. In the Depths

Meir Rafalovitch lived a rich and famous life. A third of the town made their living from his generosity. Another third were employed in his business, earning meager salaries. The third portion lived from his “people,” salespeople and craftsmen. One always feared saying a bad word against Rafalovitch, almost as if he were the king. “Walls have ears” and one can pay dearly with one’s job if one says a word against him. Just as the big, rich, fully leafed tree did not realize that somewhere in its roots a worm was gnawing away; so, too, does the rich and fortunate Rafalovitch not realize that there, in the corner of the marketplace, in the narrow, orderly dark store, stocked full of short pieces of iron, paints, and oils, is an old shrunken and bent-over woman. She has already lived her life and her skin is like dried bark as she walks, bent over, almost in half.

However, she is not yet thinking of dying. She still has a goal in her life. She does not want to leave this life until she has achieved that goal. It consists of living to see Rafalovitch’s downfall. She wants to see him and his household in the same situation that she had been in, twenty-five years ago. That was the time he had subjected her husband to poverty.

Yes, this is her goal and she is sure that she will live to see it. It does not even occur to her that this is a dreadful sin. The opposite! She knows that, by herself, she is too weak. With God’s help, she wants to live to see this. She hopes and waits. An old woman, half-deaf, she sits the day through in her house. She goes nowhere. However, she is up to date with everything that is happening in and around Rafalovitch. No one knows how she is apprised of everything, but she knows. [ . . . ]

The old woman lived in this way. She had already made her calculations. She lived like someone who was already gone. However, she still had one thing to take care of. After that, she could go off to the cemetery. She existed as a forgotten watchwoman who has remained behind to stand guard for just one thing. Thus, nothing bothered her, neither someone’s deeds making him happy nor those bringing on sadness. When she was forty years old, her older son, Simcha Binem, died. She went to the neighboring town, went to the funeral, rent her garments, sat shiva, and then continued living.

Four years later, the second and last son, Baruch, died. He left a young widow with little children. So the old mother stood as if struck dumb by the grave and again allowed herself to rend her clothes. However, when the grave-digger put the last board over the coffin, she cried out with a raspy, old shaky voice: “My son! Let me attain my goal first, and then I will come and join you.”

Rafalovitch at that time had bought a coach on rubber wheels for his own use. This was the town’s first coach with rubber wheels. And, as he passed through the town, the streets filled with people who came to view the novelty. It was a new world that a Jew allows himself in the diaspora.

12. Unraveling the Goal

One by one, clangs were heard. Rafalovitch, the rich and greatly honored Jew, the pride of the village Jews, was not doing well. It seemed that his businesses were failing, going from bad to worse. It seemed that he was heading toward bankruptcy. Rafalovitch was going down. However, his behavior did not, under any circumstances, hint at a downturn in his fortunes. He seldom showed up by foot but always traveled in his coach with the rubber wheels. If he ever did go somewhere on foot, he would not be alone but was always surrounded by a group of people, with sons, grandsons, and his own “people.” His house was always the richest and widest in the district. With regard to philanthropy, Rafalovitch was never too generous with his money. Nonetheless, the rumors stretched further, those stubborn rumors. Rafalovitch’s businesses were not going well. [ . . . ]

Shortly after this, superintendent elections took place, and the Hasidim no longer chose Rafalovitch as their superintendent [dozor—Polish]. In the prayer house, another power was rising. The younger generation were mostly smart, “kept” [living with brides’ parents] sons-in-law and young merchants who only recently had become aware of Rafalovitch and his powers. They looked grudgingly at the very proud Rafalovitch and his family, who wore ironed collars and were just Hasidic enough to come for an hour on the Sabbath to the prayer house. The young Hasidim would probably not do anything by themselves. Now, however, they had many elders on their side. Rafalovitch lost, and, in his stead, yes, it is true, as it would appear, story-wise, Avraham-Yisroel’s son-in-law, Yitsḥak, who was Aunt Hannah’s husband and was pretty well-to-do, now became superintendent. This silent kill-joy nevertheless had brains enough to buy someone’s favor, with small loans from his Hasidim. Since he was not cold and hard, he sometimes did a favor.

Yitsḥak, Avraham-Yisroel’s son-in-law, became superintendent instead of Rafalovitch. In the city and the district, this news was most engaging for some time, overshadowing all the news from Ha-Tsefirah and dominating local gossip. [ . . . ]

How Rafalovitch felt about this was not known. Apparently he had other concerns than the fact that he was rejected from the position of superintendent. Rafalovitch commented, “They took someone, a store person with hands full of pitch [because Yitsḥak dealt with these kinds of materials] and made him a superintendent in my place.”

Grandmother, however, did not wish to believe the whole story at first. She thought that they were trying to fool her, that her son-in-law, Yitsḥak, the “Zolenesher kasha miller,” the “snuggler,” the “ear-worm” (all of the names she would call him), became superintendent in place of Meir Rafalovitch. A grandchild who told this news to Grandmother was almost cursed by her. But then, she realized that this was not a joke but really was the truth. Her son-in-law Yitsḥak had really become superintendent in Rafalovitch’s place. [ . . . ]

Not long after this, Grandmother, as was usual in recent years, fainted. We thought that her end was near. After the midday meal, mother asked me to go to Aunt Hannah to see how Grandmother was doing. When I got there, my heart told me that it was “after everything.” This was the feeling, I had. In the house, a cousin, Mirel, Aunt Rana’s daughter, sat opposite me.

“What’s new?” I asked. “How is Grandmother?”

“Grandmother?” she repeated. “Not too bad. She is better.” Laughingly, she said, “As always, some old man appeared to her in a dream and offered a small flask for her to smell. So she woke up and is feeling more cheerful.”

“She probably has lost her mind,” I said.

“Go on, you little fool,” Mirel, my cousin, went on. “As always, she is waiting for Rafalovitch’s downfall. Now after Uncle Yitsḥak’s becoming superintendent, she is almost ready . . . I am telling you.”

And Rafalovitch kept on going and Grandmother returned to her shrunken state, as if she feared that Satan might pull a joke on her. Suddenly, word got around that the army was leaving our city, and . . . the military did leave. All this was done before the gossipers had settled among themselves whether the military was leaving and only border guards were staying or the opposite was to happen. Only a small number of soldiers remained. For our town, this was bad. The streets emptied. Storekeepers began complaining. Contractors and other suppliers were wandering around like lost souls. Rafalovitch’s properties emptied out. The barracks were silent and accursed. Everything emptied out around Rafalovitch. There was a silence all around, where before there had been life and noise. The military and officials moved out. Solitude spread, and this solitude also affected Rafalovitch and his household. Now everything grew topsy-turvy, as if someone were rolling downhill. No one saw Rafalovitch traveling in his coach with the rubber wheels. He did not appear at all. No one saw him anywhere, neither him nor his sons.

Yankel Hecht, Rafalovitch’s former “man,” who had recently met good fortune with a little money and a lot of impertinence, sued Rafalovitch over a sum owed to him, or something else. Yankel Hecht ran around, his little hat tucked up and with his colored necktie around the rubber collar. He walked around mischievously with his little walking-stick and boasted that he, Hecht, would bring the “big boss” down on his backside before everyone. And . . . one lovely morning, a commission came and sealed up the soap factory. [ . . . ]

A few weeks passed and the news became stale. They stopped talking about it as if this were agreed upon, that Rafalovitch was no longer Rafalovitch and was no longer worth talking about. No news items would come out of discussing it further.

After this, on the way to heder, I passed Aunt Hannah’s store and I went in for a while, as usual. There were a few people there. Grandmother was sitting as if moved by something. All the others were silently looking at Yankel Hecht in his colored necktie, filled with “naches,” leaning on his mischievous little stick, swearing loudly, as he usually did.

“Reb Avraham-Yisroel’s widow, I should only continue to be a father to my children for many days longer as I swear today ‘he’ came with Meir the potato-seller from Viershev for forty groschen. But he was ashamed and got off on the walkway.”

Grandmother sat with tears running down her face. From her old, shaky lips came a quiet murmur: “This is God’s justice, God’s justice!” she repeated. Shortly after this, Grandmother died. This was a unique kind of passing of a human being. She fell asleep on the Sabbath by the table, calmly and happily sleeping, like a little hen.