ROBERT A. ROSENSTONE
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distance, or maybe it was the surf, the waves breaking, a waterfall, a
cascade of water sparkling in the sun, suddenly he is sinking in a
slow turn, weightless, wordless, a deep deep turning, now he hardly
needs to breathe because it is all being done for him, he is turning
slow into a dark pool of water secret beneath the crashing waterfall,
this is his place, this is his secret, deep beyond dreaming, floating
free, and here , here suddenly he is.
Robert A. Rosenstone
CHAIM BAER
There is a man who comes swimming into history . He first
appears in the middle of the Pruth River during the last quarter of the
nineteenth century . The exact date is impossible to determine, but
certainly it is in the late Victorian period, though he knows nothing
about that sort of label. Before he plunges headlong into the waters,
or gingerly steps into the waters , there is little to know about him, lit–
tle that can ever be discovered. He kept no diary and told no tales that
his children would ever remember. The waters of the river cleansed
him, washed away his past. Like some offbeat version of the Venus
myth, he arises naked and full grown, innocent of history . His wis–
dom, if any, is water wisdom, the wisdom of currents and sea foam.
He is not quite self-made, but certainly he is more than the creation
of some God's weary imagination.
The next twenty-five, perhaps thirty years, find the man-who–
swims-into-history living in Moldavia. His tongue, trained to the
disparate sounds of Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew, can never quite
adjust to the soft, Latin vocal of the native language . The wife he ac–
quires is fluent in Polish. His children, the three boys and four girls
Editor's Note: This is the first chapter of a book-length work in progress.
