RACHEL EYTAN
591
He would copy the chapter, from beginning to end, on prewar
paper. After three hours or so, he would go out to hang the shreds of
the first draft for the masses to enjoy.
It
reminded me of the white
sugar he used to ration out for our tea, chipped from a great cone
that was wrapped in purple paper. He got the sugar from a British
military contractor and kept it hidden away in a locked drawer–
along with the final drafts.
As soon as he left, I would go in and read the next chapter. At
first I thought old Marshall Pilsudski (as we called my grandfather
behind his back) was doing the rent accounts for his heart-breaking
tenants, who were always slinking past us in the hallway, hat in
hand, begging for an extension. That was until the day I happened
to turn a page. In a house where clothes for women and girls were
made from his old suits, where conversations revolved around eter–
nal mortgages, accursed ration clerks and conscripted husbands, this
mute author sat and wrote awesome, wondrous tales that were still
only a gleam in Isaac Bashevis Singer's eye.
By guessing at ellipses and connections, I pieced together
knights on horseback, high-breasted Polish princesses, duels of
honor and threats of suicide, temptations and
seductio~s,
vows of
forbidden love, curses carried through generations, acts of the devil
and a lot of dot-dot-dot. I would fly on the wings of darkness and
dot-dot-dot to the towers of Zakopana, who burned with love - and
not for old men, either - in enchanted forests of primeval snow.
There was nothing there about rabbis, or yeshiva students, or mod–
est women. Nothing about what Hitler was doing to Poland.
It lasted until some impatient soul would bang on the door,
yell, "What are you doing in there?" and bring me back to earth with
an earthy Yiddish curse. I would quickly hang the chapter back
up - face to the wall- and sneak out feeling dizzy and full of guilt.
My grandmother, whose traditional second soul- the Sabbath
soul of the Jew-appeared to have been left in Poland, was offended
by what she called his "book-smearing" and his reclusiveness, even
more than she was offended when he hissed "Sha - sha" before he
tuned in the Saturday war news in violation of the Sabbath, gluing
his ear to the radio "so the neighbors shouldn't hear (the neighbors in
fact considered it life-saving, and so beyond the laws of Sabbath) or
when he moved his little flags around on the map of the European
theater above his desk that no one was allowed to touch.
My grandfather was an isolationist, at least when it came to
people. And he was sarcastic. And he piously refrained from talking
overmuch with the weaker sex.
