MANES SPERBER
47
prayers, who sometimes lied to my father and mother and
teacher- all these doubts did not shake my belief in the god of my
forefathers, though they diminished my confidence that the Creator
of the world could be helpful to us in our hour of need. One day, to
be sure, when the Messiah would appear, everything would be ar–
ranged for the best, and no one would need God's help. But in the
meantime, life was hard, or so I thought, even though my parents
pampered my brothers and me . .. .
Urtschy was a tall old man who despite his years held himself
as upright as a birch tree. In my memory everything about him was
white-perhaps that accounts for the image of the birch . Not only
his beard and forelocks, and his shaved head, but also the shirt,
which he wore tieless , and his long socks were white . Moreover he
was known for wearing a white tunic on high holy days, instead of
the usual black caftan. This was his professional costume, by which
he was known in the villages, where he always functioned as prayer
leader. He was usually paid in kind, in food and bottles of liquor,
which the village Jews distilled, sometimes legally, more often not, as
did their non-Jewish neighbors.
Urtschy was the first alcoholic I met. My grandfather had been
his fellow pupil in their youth and remained his closest friend all his
life long. He could drop in at any hour of the day and far into the
night, to ask after my father , with whom he always had "important
matters" to discuss. This was usually a pretext to wet his whistle, for
which he needed at least two glasses of brandy . He hardly ever ac–
cepted an invitation to meals and would excuse himself by saying
that his son was waiting for him. Everyone knew his daughter-in-law
seldom let him cross their threshold .
Why do I think of him now, of whom I probably knew nothing
more than that he had lost his wife early, that he was a drinker, and
in addition, my grandfather's best friend? Because of a strange event
that occurred on the last of the autumnal holy days. In the night of
the
Simchath- Tora,
the festival of joy, on which Jews annually give
thanks to God for burdening them with his commandments -late at
night someone knocked at our door, hesitantly at first, then more
urgently. I woke up and listened. Fatherlet a man in and lit the lamp
in his office. I got out of bed , out of curiosity but also to assure
myself that my father was in no danger. Through the glass pane of
the door I saw U rtschy , again dressed entirely in white , sitting on
the divan, his head wavering back and forth.
"I cannot sleep," he said, without opening his eyes .
