I Become a "Writer"

Every day, at a certain hour, "Doddeh the Scribe" would come from the town, to teach my father’s pupils to write Yiddish and Russian, and to teach arithmetic. My father, who used to concern himself very little with the religious education of his own children, did not fail to see that we should receive a certain amount of secular education, e.g. to be able to write down a Russian address, to do a calculation, etc. And although he had never been taught mathematics, he could still do the longest calculations off the top of his head. He could also write the most beautiful Hebrew, with such small, neat lettering which you had to look at in wonder. He even liked to show off by writing a hundred words on a postage stamp. And if you were looking for a grammatician....there was, next to him, no equal...not among the Zastavia’s few "freethinkers", or even among the well-known big-city intellectuals on the other side of the bridge. So as for my request, that he should let me sit together at the table with his older students, so I could also learn "the art of writing", he was quite agreeable.

"Doddeh the Scribe", as he was called, was truly a nice little Jew, a quiet soul. And although he spent much of his lesson-hour talking politics and local events withmy father, even so the students made great progress in their studies. As for me, he drew on a large piece of paper a "template" and told me to copy it. I spent so much time tracing over and over his beautifull-written letters, that I felt I was already a "scribe" myself.

And then there were my sister’s letters. Pesheh was recognized in the village as being very well-educated. In the long winter evenings, a fair number of "American wives" and young women used to gather in her house...and she would read for them romantic novels. She read with heart, with sould, and with feeling, just as our mother would read for her women-folk the Yiddish Pentateuch. My sister’s young listeners would sit holding on to each other and stare with longing eyes at my sister’s lips as she read, so as not to miss a single word. They would re-live the tragic adventures of those love-struck heroes...in one story, a trouble-maker, an evil man without a trace of God in his heart, had set out to sabotage the love of a young couple, who had sworn eternal love to each other....but fortunately, God cannot stand idly by and watch young, innocent hearts being virtually torn apart from pain and longing...so he punishes the evil one, and the young lovers are finally re-united, "for ever and ever".

And then there was a "most interesting" novel about a a Jewish prince and a Jewish princess, the daughter of a queen, who was, alas, captured by an enemy, who tried to convince her that she should love him instead of the other, with whom she had long since sworn eternal love. The unfortunate princess sat in her "gilded cage", locked up in the palace, and waited for her "heaven-ordained" to come and free her from her captivity.

More than one of my sister’s listeners could be seen wiping away a tear...more than one of them felt that she herself was the captive princess, and that soon, soon the handsome young prince, her beloved, would rescue her, hold her in his strong arms, and whisk her away on his horse...together they would ride off to his magical castle, which stood on a high, green mountain...

And so practically the whole village used to come to my sister Pesheh, she should write letter for them. Letters from lovesick brides to their betrothed...burning, passionate letters from "American wives", to their far-away husbands, who were off in that distant, Golden Land. And what letters she would write!...long letters, full of love, as though she were writing to her own husband (who was by now also in America). She didn’t even have to ask them what to write...she already knew what was in her clients’ hearts. Besides this, she had a cache of "stock" love letters, which she guarded as the apple of her eye. In any case, when she would read for her clients the letters she had composed for them (which were as long as the Book of Esther), they would practically cry themselves to death...and my sister herself would often have to wipe away the tears from her dark eyes...

Those "stock letters" of hers were for me a treasure! I used practise recopying them over and over again. I loved even the names: "Herr Goldshmidt, Shteynfeld, Goldnagel"...such fine-sounding names, the likes of which, here in Zastavia, you never heard of! They became to me like dear, close friends. I knew every letter down to its smallest detail...and thanks to those letters, my own vocabulary was enriched by their many "Germanisms" such as: " mein hertzens geliebte" "mein teurer viel hochgeshützter gemahl", and many other such fine, lofty espressions, which signified that the one who used them, whether in speaking or in writing, was an man of culture...

My mother was herself also an "American mother". She had lost already two sons to that "non-Kosher land". The elder son, Leyzer, ran off shortly after the collapse of the First Russian Revolution, in 1905...and the second one, Moshe-Ber, ran of on account of "the draft". One of them became a taylor and the other one a cigar-maker. For this reason, mother carried in her heart an anger, an enmity, towards this America, which had snatched away from her those two dear children, who might have become learned men, and had instead become proste (common) baaley-melukhos....this America, which had taken away those living, breathing, children, and given in return nothing more than "pieces of paper"...short, terse letters that never came often enough and couldn’t make up for the absence of her sons.

When father would read for her these letters, she used to, between her tears, whisper along with her lips each word...and even father himself sometimes had to steal a tear. For the rest of the day she would carry the letter close to her heart, and at night she would put it under her pillow. And when she thought no one was looking, she would take it out and stare closely at the letters as though in those mute symbols she would be able to hear her childrens’ voices. She envied her husband, who could at least communicate on paper with her sons, while she, alas, could not.

One time, at night, when father was off in the House of Study with his friends, she called to me:

"Falikl, my son, could you teach me, so that I might be able, with my own hand, to write a letter to the boys?"

I was stunned by her sudden, unexpected request. My tongue seemed to abandon me...but when my eyes met her eyes, which had seen so much pain and sorrow, I was overcome by a wave of pity for her. I jumped up, ran to her and announced out loud: "Come mother, I will teach you to write!" I took a sheet of paper, and with a pencil wrote out the whole alphabet in large letters.

With a trembling hand, mother began to trace over the letters with her pen. Drops of sweat covered her face, her eyes strained, and her hand shook...she was like a child taking its first steps. But her strong will, and her longing to be able, with the help of those symbols, to communicate her motherly feelings to her children, all the way in America....had given her the courage to overcome all difficulties, until finally she learned to write the alphabet. Spelling was still a problem for her. I would sit with her and she would tell me the word...then I would dictate the letters. But when, from her own hand, she wrote those first, heart-felt letters to her sons, there was no limit to her joy. And to my own joy, there was also no limit...