The Collected Stories

group called ‘The Love of Friends.’ It costs a few rubles, but how does the saying go—let it be a mitzvah. We pray with a rabbi who barely has a piece of bread. His wife comes to me to buy ten pounds of coal. What are ten pounds of coal in the winter? I add a piece just for good measure. If there is a God, then why does He allow the Poles to beat up the Jews?”
    “I don’t know. I wish I did.”
    “What does the Torah say? You seem to know the fine points.”
    “The Torah says that the wicked are punished and the righteous rewarded.”
    “When? Where?”
    “In the next world.”
    “In the grave?”
    “In Paradise.”
    “Where is Paradise?”
    A waiter approached. “For me, light beer and chicken livers,” the coal dealer ordered. “What do you want?”
    The rabbi was at a loss for an answer. He asked, “Can one wash one’s hands here?”
    The coal dealer snorted. “Here you eat without washing, but it’s kosher. They won’t serve you pork.”
    “Perhaps I will have a cookie,” the rabbi muttered.
    “A cookie? What else? Here you have to wash everything down. What kind of beer do you want? Light? Dark?”
    “Let it be light.”
    “Well, give him a mug of oat beer and an egg cookie.” After the waiter left, the coal dealer began to drum the table with his sooty nails. “If you haven’t eaten since morning, that isn’t enough. Here, if you don’t eat you’ll drop like a fly. In Warsaw you have to be a glutton. If you want to wash your hands for the benediction, go into the toilet. There’s a faucet there, but you’ll have to wipe your hands on your coat.”
    “Why am I so unhappy?” the rabbi asked himself. “I am sunk in iniquity just like the rest of them—even worse. If I don’t want to be Jacob, I have to be Esau.” To the coal dealer, he said, “I don’t want to be a teacher.”
    “What do you want to be, a count?”
    “I would like to learn some trade.”
    “What trade? If you want to be a tailor or a shoemaker or a furrier, you have to begin young. They take you as an apprentice and the master’s wife tells you to pour out the slops and to rock the baby in the cradle. I know. I learned to be a carpenter and my master never let me touch the saw or the plane. I suffered with him for four years and when I left I had learned nothing. Before I knew it, I had to go serve the czar. For three years I ate the soldier’s black bread. In the barracks you have to eat pig, otherwise you have no strength to carry the gun. Did I have a choice? When I was discharged, I went to work for a coal dealer and this has been my trade since. Everybody steals. They bring you a wagon of coals that should weigh one hundred pood but it weighs only ninety. Ten pood are stolen along the way. If you ask too many questions, they knife you. So what can I do? I pour water on the coal and that makes it heavier. If I didn’t do it, I would go hungry. Do you understand me?”
    “Yes, I understand.”
    “So why chatter about a trade? You most probably warmed the bench in the study house all these years, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, I studied.”
    “So you’re good for nothing except to be a teacher. But you have to be fit for that also. There’s a Talmud Torah on the block where they had a softy of a teacher. The boys who study there are all hoodlums. They played so many tricks on him he ran away. As for the rich, they want a modern teacher who wears a tie and knows how to write Russian. Do you have a wife?”
    “No.”
    “Divorced?”
    “A widower.”
    “Shake hands. I had a good wife. She was a little deaf but did her job. She prepared my meals, we had five children, but three died when they were babies. I have a son in Yekaterinslav. My daughter works in a hardware store. She boards with her employers. She doesn’t want to cook for her papa. Her boss is a rich man. Anyhow, I’m alone. How long have you been a widower?”
    “A few years.”
    “What do you do when you need a female?”
    The rabbi blushed and then became pale. “What can one do?”
    “For money, everything can be had in Warsaw. Not here on this street. Here they’re all infected. You go to a girl and she has a little worm in her blood. You get sick and you begin to rot. There’s a man in the neighborhood whose whole nose has rotted off. On the better streets the whores have to be inspected every month at the doctor’s. It cost you a ruble to be with one of them, but at least they’re clean. The matchmakers are after me