The Collected Stories

eyes, he stammered, “I am Fulie … You are my grandfather.”
    Reb Mordecai Meir stood dumfounded. He had never heard the name Fulie. Then he realized that this was most probably the modern variation of the old Jewish name Raphael. It was Zelda Rayzel’s eldest son. Reb Mordecai Meir felt both pain and shame. He had a grandson who tried to imitate the Gentiles. He said, “So come in.” After hesitating a moment, the boy came in and put his suitcase down. Reb Mordecai Meir asked, “What kind—is that—?” and pointed to the book.
    “Economics.”
    “Of what use is that to you?”
    “Well …”
    “What’s new in Slonim?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked. He didn’t want to mention the name of his former son-in-law, who was an anti-Hasid. Fulie made a face as if to indicate that he did not fully comprehend his grandfather’s question.
    “In Slonim? Just like everywhere else. The rich get richer and the workers have nothing to eat. I had to leave because …” and Fulie stopped himself.
    “What will you do here?”
    “Here—I’ll look around—I’ll …”
    Well, a stutterer, Reb Mordecai Meir thought. His throat scratched and his stomach started to turn. It was his daughter Zelda Rayzel’s son, but as long as he shaved his beard and dressed like a Gentile, what would he, Reb Mordecai Meir, do with him? He nodded his head and gaped. It seemed that the boy took after the other side of the family with his high cheekbones, narrow forehead, and wide mouth. His bedraggled and famished appearance reminded Reb Mordecai Meir of the recruits who starve themselves to avoid conscription.
    “Wash your hands. Eat something. Don’t forget that you are a Jew.”
    “Grandfather, they don’t let you forget.”
    In the kitchen the boy sat down at the table and began to leaf through his book. Reb Mordecai Meir opened the kitchen closet but found no bread there; only onions, a string of dried mushrooms, a package of chicory, a few heads of garlic.
    He said to Fulie, “I’ll give you money, go to the store and buy a loaf of bread or something else you might like to eat.”
    “Grandfather, I’m not hungry. And besides, the less I’m outside the better,” the boy answered.
    “Why? You’re not sick, God forbid, are you?”
    “All of Russia has the same sickness. Everywhere it is full of denouncers and secret agents. Grandfather, I am not altogether ‘clean.’ ”
    “Have you been called by the military?”
    “That too.”
    “Maybe you can be saved?”
    “All mankind needs to be saved, not only I.”
    Reb Mordecai Meir had decided not to get angry, no matter what his grandson did or said. Anger won’t win anyone over to piety. There were moments when Reb Mordecai Meir wanted to spit on the impudent fellow and drive him out of his house. But he restrained himself with all his might. Even though Fulie spoke in Yiddish, Reb Mordecai Meir did not fully comprehend what he was saying. All of his talk boiled down to one complaint: the rich live in luxury, the poor suffer deprivation. He continuously mentioned the workers in the factories, the peasants who tilled the fields. He spoke against the czar. “He resides in a palace and lets others rot in cellars. Millions die of hunger, consumption. The people must wake up. There must be a revolution …”
    Reb Mordecai Meir clutched his beard and asked, “How do you know that a new czar would be better?”
    “If we have our way, there will be no new czar.”
    “Who will rule?”
    “The people.”
    “All the people can’t sit in the ruling chair,” Reb Mordecai Meir answered.
    “Representatives will be chosen from the workers and peasants.”
    “When they get power, they may also become villains,” Reb Mordecai Meir argued.
    “Then they’ll be made one head shorter.”
    “It is written: ‘For the poor shall never cease out of the land,’ ” Reb Mordecai Meir spoke. “To whom would one give charity if there were no paupers? Besides, everything is ordained in Heaven. On Rosh Hashanah it is decreed in Heaven who shall be rich and who shall be poor.”
    “The Heavens are nothing but air,” Fulie said. “No one decrees anything.”
    “What? The world created itself?”
    “It evolved.”
    “What does that mean?”
    The boy began to say something, then got stuck. He mentioned names which Reb Mordecai Meir had never heard. He mixed Polish, Russian, and German words. The sum total of his talk was that everything was accident, chance. He babbled about a