A Shklov Moon on Arbat Street

The other day I met a Jew from Shklov on Arbat Street, directly opposite the entrance to the Vakhtangov Theater, and he told me about the moon he knew in Shklov, which urged him to Moscow. The Jew was sitting at a Moscow Rural Cooperative Administration drawer with cigarettes and held a holy book in his hands. All Moscow Rural Cooperative Administration sellers hold books in their hands and read. It passes the long hours during which they must sit by their drawers, and for short periods it brings happiness and sadness, distant and pale light, which shine out from the pages. [ . . . ]

I was interested to see what book he was reading. I got closer to him and saw—he was looking at his book—that the Jew was holding a copy of Ḥok le-Yisra’el in his hands [ . . . ] and I had the impression that my own father was sitting there, and I wanted to cry out, “Father, how did you come to be here?”

My father was an honest fisherman, a hardened laborer who would sail out on the lake to catch fish in the evening with his net. My father was a pious Jew and would often sit on Shabbat afternoons with Ḥok le-Yisra’el in his hands on the bench outside his village home. However this was another life, in another world, a world which has already disappeared. [ . . . ]

As I child I loved my father. I barely imagined who my creator was, but for me it was enough that he showed me the most beautiful moon in the world. Once he took me out onto the lake with him in the evening. He showed me how the moon rose up from one coast, pale and weak, and along the way grew and became clearer, and the lake shone in its light and bright beauty. [ . . . ] The same every night. Therefore I loved my father. But if it would now seem that my father had returned from the lake and settled himself here at work with selling cigarettes, I would feel hatred and would not want to know him. I moved closer to the Jew, asked him for a packet of “Extra” and meanwhile took a good look at him, the Jew, to see if it is my father or not.

No, this is not my father. This is indeed a Jew. A fine Jew. A Jew from Shklov. He could also be on the lake, but he sits here, at work. I neither loved nor hated him. But I found it difficult to leave him: in his breast pocket he kept his moon from Shklov and he was selling cigarettes. [ . . . ]

It’s a whole story, how he came to Moscow. It begins with a wife and prison. He lay in the prison, his wife had sent him an invitation from ZAGS [an organization that registers marriages, births, and deaths in Russia], he crept out of the prison. And now he is looking for a bride.

“Yes. Did you imagine that you have met a man of seventy years? It happened a total of forty years ago. We walked about. We talked about the Der shvartser yungermanshtik [a novel by Dinezon] and Yevgeny Oniegin. We went together to Shulamis and Bar Kochba [plays by An-sky]. We sang Eliokim Zunzer’s songs together. And the moon, my beloved friend, was always the same. [ . . . ]

He becomes a bookkeeper and she watches him closely and gives him a son. It didn’t all happen so quickly—my dear friend—Life too defends itself, it does not submit and a decade went by until it changed. And then another seven years went by. When we had lived together for seventeen years we became a bit cooler to each other, and one starts feeling unsatisfied in a certain place, considering a Jewess of thirty-five years who doesn’t want any more children. [ . . . ]

“It was all completely normal, my dear friend. A person’s life—either it is made up of material trivialities with a God in heaven or it is made up of material foolishness with a demon in the soul. A demon settled in her soul [ . . . ] she wanted to be a midwife. [ . . . ]

“A war broke out. There are always wars and—so be it! But when there was a revolution and then a second he became a bourgeois, and was left without a stitch to his name. And she became the provider and she brought new people into the home and new arrangements, and people said: he is sick, an idler. [ . . . ] People told him to go to work—he did not want to do so. Raissa Samoilovne—one must not write on Shabbat. It’s not good for the house . . . we lived together, but terrible cracks appeared in our lives, like a wedge in a log of wood. The children were in the city and we went about like two strangers and angry people, as though in a hostel. [ . . . ]

“She wanted to go to war. To which war? The Polish war. She wanted to go to Warsaw with Budionny. A Jewess from Shklov conquering Warsaw. [ . . . ] She was bored and from boredom she could do God knows what. She—a Jewess of around forty—took courses and became a doctor, but not a doctor—a doctor’s helper.

“Yes, how she went to war, when the Poles reached Kiev—I don’t know. But she came home with a green soldier’s jacket, with her hair sheared off. [ . . . ] And I walk around my own home, like an unwanted guest. I was a Jew, like all Jews, not very pious. I kept Shabbes, but that Erev Yom Kippur, after she came back from the Polish war, it was very happy in my home, like at the home of a fervent Hasid on Simches Torah: people gathered and she became a spokesperson—sitting above and commanding, holding a meeting there during Yom Kippur. And she laughed at me with her green laugh: [ . . . ]—and you—she said—are you going to shul or to the club? She was always free thinking—her father—a dried-out old maskil, a kinsman, a heretic—but before it wasn’t like this—to Kol Nidre in the club! What could I answer her? Why are you laughing? I ask her. —It’s funny—she answers—my soul was always constrained, but now it has become free. I feel younger, don’t you see? And you have completely lost it! You are finished! People told me—that you went to the rebbe, I found it funny—after thirty-five years of living together our relationship is over? . . . and the children are on my side. And I don’t even know what kind of doctor to call for you. But I won’t stop you. Go to shul and I will go to the club. [ . . . ]

“I took pity on her and sent a psychiatrist to her, as an old friend, ostensibly. He sat with her for half an hour and then left the room bright red, with his forehead beaded with sweat. She is healthy—he said—there is a lot of it about lately—mass psychosis.

“So may it be; I left the reins. I went alone to the bank of the river. The moon was out then. Alone, I recited the blessing for the new moon. I stretched out a hand and waved hello—hello. It was a clear sign: I had become an empty pot—everything had been taken from me and I accepted this with love.

“I went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I told him—Rebbe, what should I do?—Silence—he said—and unite your soul with God, it will be easier for you. And it became easier. I come home—and I find a note—an invitation to go to prison. I go. [ . . . ] In general there sat young people. With my Shklover luck this time a really handsome man was sitting there.

“What happened to you?—he asked and moved me under an original [painting]—Nothing—I answered him—Where do I sign? Here?—and signed my signature.

“Wait—he said—don’t be in such a hurry. You have three months to consider, perhaps you don’t want to. Perhaps you want something from the children, the house or the things in your home.

“I have already considered—I answer him and put a period after my signature. And above I catch sight of a little line: And the furniture, and the belongings, in the home of Citizen Beni Hurwitz . . . I add to it: ‘everything belongs to the citizen Raissa Samoilovne Hurwitz.’ She didn’t change the family name—either she liked the family name, or for the children. She got a certificate from the prison: ‘Beni Hurwitz is divorced.’ And now I am looking for a wife. How can a Jew live without a wife? And the Lubavitcher Rebbe ordered it also. But it’s not so easy to find one suitable for me with my ideologies.” [ . . . ]

“Yes, good. But how did you get to Moscow? And why are you selling cigarettes?”

“My good friend”—the Jew spoke softly to me—“I left her for Leningrad; there I had an old friend with a great knowledge of history and languages; I met there the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I asked him:

‘Rebbe, where to? Kharkov or Odessa? Or perhaps here with you?’

“He answers me:

‘To Moscow.’

“One doesn’t ask the meaning. I came to Moscow.” [ . . . ]

So my Jew finished. [ . . . ] The Jew started packing up to go home, tying a veneer casket to the painted Moscow Rural Cooperative Administration drawer. But something bad happened to my Jew. While he stood bent over his boxes and went to tie them tighter, and I wanted to help him, a passerby caught him with his foot and he fell, his armpit catching the corner of the box, and he remained lying in a faint.

The end was not sad. I had some more dealings with the Jew: something started acting up in him and he couldn’t get up from the spot, and he looked at me with the poor, sick eyes of a sleeping man. I sat him on a wagon and ordered it to take him home. He also agreed with me and even thanked me:

“Yes, it happens to him sometimes. It will pass. Thank you, young man.”

Very good.

But the Moscow moon hung over the high roofs of the city . . . and the moon from Shklov? and certainly quickly in a corner there lay down to sleep.

In this way the moon from Shklov was a guest on Arbat Street.