Jewels and Ashes by Arnold Zable

Author:Arnold Zable
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000, HIS022000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 1991-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

Father isn’t sure when he received his last letter from Bialystok. Despite the many hours he has spent sorting out journals and letters from a past life, there never seems to be an end to it. ‘At first I lose a valued document’, he explains. ‘Then I find it again, unexpectedly, when looking for something else. So 1 put it in a new place, which I am sure I can easily locate. But then I forget where it is and I have to start searching again.’ It is as if the past refuses to allow itself to be put in order, and is always intruding into the present with disturbing hints of a world of irredeemable chaos, forever spinning out of control.

Yet, as usual, when I press him hard enough, something seems to turn up, and father finds a letter from his brother, Isaac, dated August 1938. ‘Isaac was down to earth’, says father, ‘family oriented, ready to lend a helping hand in the toughest of times.’ He had joined Bishke as a partner in the family business, making deliveries to local subscribers. Eventually he branched out on his own, to work as an administrator in the offices of Yiddish newspapers.

Isaac writes of family matters and confesses to having become a simple ‘Yidl’, preoccupied with his son’s teething problems and bowel movements, immersed in ‘my little corner of existence where all yesterdays are the same as tomorrows’. His infant son is a rascal, a cheeky boy who leaves behind him a train of torn and broken objects. ‘But when he gazes at you with his wide-open eyes it is impossible to get angry, no matter how much damage he has caused.’

Father’s eyes light up as he reads me Isaac’s letter, and is reminded of friends he has not seen for over fifty years. Each one referred to by Isaac he expands upon, with eccentric accounts of their various deeds as young men about town.

‘Ran into Godel Perelstein the other day’, writes Isaac. ‘He carries your last letter around with him as if it were a precious treasure and apologises for not having replied. He claims he can only compose letters when he is in an appropriate mood.’

‘Godel was a great reciter of Yiddish poetry’, father adds. ‘He would perform in front of packed audiences in the Palace theatre, declaiming the works of my favourite writers.’

‘Moishe Poznanski sends his regards’, reports Isaac ‘He was a handsome man’, says father. ‘A leather-worker by trade. For many years we dreamed of setting up our own business with the name “Everlasting Shoes”. When at last we managed to scrape together the money, the business lasted for about a month before our creditors realised how hopeless we were and dismantled our fantasies.’

As for Zundel Mandelbroit, father needs little prompting. He was his best friend. ‘We used to go out into the fields on summer nights and camp under the stars. We wanted to penetrate the mysteries of the night. But if even a few mosquitoes attacked, we quickly forgot our resolve, broke off our philosophising, and ran back home.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.