Remorse, A Love StorySean Shapiro
4000 words I reached the climax of my vignette, a ribald number about a couple who happen to run a brothel in their basement looking to match their daughter up with some pious schnook, and everyone was gleefully agog and aghast. Everyone except this sullen yeshiva bocher. ‘Maggid,’ he said, with not even the dust of civility in his voice, ‘do you ever regret telling a story?’ The room went quiet. I chose my answer carefully. I said: ‘There are times, yes, I’ll admit. But—and this is a principle by which I live—while I may regret telling a story, I never have remorse for having told it.’ The bocher was not much impressed by my answer. ‘Is that supposed to sound clever? Aren’t regret and remorse just fancy ways of saying the same thing?’ ‘No, boychik,’ I assured him. ‘They are very different creatures, in ways that only a very fine and perceptive mind can apprehend—though to a genuine chochem those little details loom as large as the Leviathan. Nu, I’ll tell you a story that’ll illustrate it far better than any long-winded drosha from me ever could …’ 
It happened some time ago in Vilna that there was a man, a certain Sender Rosenberg, who loved his wife Pearl with all his heart and all his soul. And it happened that Pearl loved him back, loved him deeply, very deeply indeed. But it also happened that she loved her children more, far, far more than her husband. And her youngest, Jonas, she loved most of all. His hair was tawny and lustrous, his eyes penetrating, his teeth perfect, his body lithe, his movements graceful. Heads turned (men’s as often, though not as openly, as women’s) when he sauntered down an upmarket boulevard. Painters and sculptors offered him gifts and money to pose for them. He had charm, wit, poise, the voice of an angel. And when the stage (nu, how could it be otherwise with his gifts?) became his vocation, he performed to nothing less than rapt admiration. His performances drew the crowds and the cognoscenti. And no one attended more performances than his mother, Pearl. Nor did anyone do more to keep Jonas in the limelight. When the budget was blown, when the sets were ruined by fire or water, when the censors threatened to cut a pivotal number and the moralisers wanted to shut the show down for good, it was Pearl who found the funds, Pearl who furbished the sets, Pearl who placated the fuddy-duddies. And who provided Pearl with funds, connections and influence? Her husband, of course. Her immensely wealthy husband, Sender Rosenberg, who loved her with all his heart and all his soul. How it happened Sender was never quite sure, but suddenly he was paying the salary of a theatrical manager to book and produce plays for his son and hiring a talented young playwright, a certain Lukas Melnikas, to write the leading roles that best encompassed his son’s range. It wasn’t long before Lukas and Jonas were collaborating on cabaret tunes and droll monologues of their own devising and not long after that they were sharing a house (rent courtesy of Sender) in a most bohemian part of town, collaborating on their art late into the night or, indeed, any time inspiration struck, and their friendship blossomed and bloomed until it wasn’t long before Lukas was as frequent a weekend and holiday guest in Sender’s home as his own son, Jonas. They were discrete, of course. But their desire burned as brightly as their love and one balmy summer night, like Abimelech king of the Philistines who just happened to look out his window and catch Isaac ‘frolicking’ (as the Torah puts it) with the woman he claimed was his sister, Sender just happened to wake up with a pain from belly gas and en route to relief, passed his son’s bedroom and heard the unmistakable sound of Jonas and Lukas ‘frolicking’. The next morning Sender took his son aside and spoke to him in private. The young man was outraged and upset. ‘Never! Never! Never!’ he shouted. ‘Never see him again!? How can you be so cruel, Father?’ Sender maintained his composure. It was important that his son understand the consequences of his attachment to Lukas—he could lose his audience, his liberty, his physical safety. ‘And what if (Heaven forbid!) your mother should find out?’ The blow was not quite as devastating as Sender expected. Jonas merely shrugged. ‘We hurt no one,’ he said. ‘Mother will understand when I explain.’ At this, Sender lost his composure. The truth of the matter was—as Sender well knew—she would. Pearl would most definitely understand her son’s feelings. ‘Not another kopek, not another loan or a favour’, he bellowed, ‘will you get from me if this goes on!’ ‘We make enough on our own these days, thank you very much,’ replied Jonas. Many more words were exchanged that morning, many of them intemperate, but before they parted, Sender softened his tone and said: ‘Promise me, Jonas; promise me you won’t say a word of this to your mother.’ ‘I don’t want to hurt her, Father, but I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep either.’ ‘Promise me,’ Sender hissed. ‘No, Father.’ 
‘You look like a herring somebody left out in the sun,’ said Abba Karpinovitch. ‘Huh?’ ‘Your face, it’s all grey and pasty. Plus, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Nu, tell me, boychik.’ The grizzled racketeer paused to light Sender’s cigar. ‘Is this tsoris on your shoulders also my tsoris or is it a private tsoris?’ ‘Private, Abba.’ Abba nodded knowingly, opened the bottom drawer of his capacious writing desk, withdrew a bottle of the good stuff and two glasses and plonked them on the table. Pouring generous measures, he said: ‘You wanna talk about it?’ Sender’s pained expression intimated otherwise, but he accepted the proffered glass and half a bottle later he was telling Abba his troubles. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Sender. But listen, you’re going about this completely the wrong way.’ ‘I am?’ ‘You’re wasting your breath on the boy. He’ll grow out of it soon enough. Meanwhile the more you hak him about it, the closer you drive him to his little bird, hmm? Anyway, Jonas isn’t the one that needs a good talking to.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean when a certain someone visits another certain someone with a nice bundle of notes and a nice new set of luggage and a one-way train ticket to Minsk or Pinsk or Moscow and leads him to understand that leaving town would not only benefit a person’s financial situation but would also be good for his health and wellbeing, that’s what I mean.’ ‘Maybe not this time.’ ‘Why not this time? What’s so different about this time?’ ‘I know the lad. He’s not a bad boy.’ ‘Suddenly you come down with scruples?’ ‘This isn’t business. It’s a matter of … of the heart.’ Abba scoffed. ‘It’ll be a matter of disgrace. For the whole family. When it comes out. And the way they’re carrying on it will come out, believe you me. Do me a favour, take the favour. Disgrace’s no good for business. Yours or mine.’ Sender did no more than wince. ‘So that settles that,’ said Abba. 
Days later Menachem paid Sender an unannounced visit. Menachem was one of Abba’s ‘boys’ (as Abba called them), a hulking fellow with a lumpy face and an air of surly hostility. Not bothering with petty preliminaries like ‘hello’ or ‘good afternoon’ he said, ‘I could do with a thank you and a l’chaim.’ ‘For what, Menachem?’ ‘Saved you a bundle, didn’t I?’ He smiled a jagged barracuda smile. ‘Also, that sheigetz will never touch your boy again.’ ‘What are you on about, Menachem?’ ‘I paid the degenerate a visit. Lucky for me he was at home.’ ‘What d’you mean home?’ ‘The one your son shares with his little bird.’ ‘You went to my son’s home!?’ ‘Nu, where else? Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re flaky as Greek pastry, these artist types. The pigs’ll have no trouble cooking up a motive.’ ‘My God, what have you done?’ But he knew. Somehow, Sender knew. The brute had never met his son, didn’t know Jonas from Adam. He didn’t wait for Menachem’s reply. He fled his office, ran straight to his coachman, ordered him to speed to his son’s home. His corpse was hanging from a cord in the drawing room. A sheet from a recently penned score with the words ‘Forgive me’ written across it in an over-deliberate hand had been placed just-so beneath his dangling feet. 
A maelstrom howled in his head as he turned his back on his son as he plodded out of the house as he instructed his coachman to summon the police as he awaited their arrival; as he watched them lower his son like an overthrown occupier’s flag as they covered his boy in a blanket; as they searched the house as they opened chests and drawers as they riffled closets as they tore pages from notebooks as they read private letters as they fished out smutty pamphlets, forbidden books, dirty postcards and bespoke sexual paraphernalia from their hiding places as they asked him question (What possessed you to rush over like you did? Was it a premonition or did you have concerns about his state of mind?) upon question (How do you suppose Jonas received those fresh bruises on his arm? Are they marks of love or violence, do you think?) upon question (Did you know about your son’s, er, proclivities? Where is the other young man who lives here—Lukas? Had he and Jonas had a falling out, a fight? When did you last see this Lukas?) and suddenly the howling was not in his head alone. It was coming from outside the house, coming from the street. And he knew. Again, he knew. Knew what the wailing was. His wife. He ran. Ran careless of consequence from his interrogator, a sour plainclothes inspector. But by the time he reached the street outside the howling had stopped. She was on the ground. She’d collapsed from emotion and could not be revived. A doctor was sent for. There was nothing to do, he said, but wait. And hope. 
Lukas they found early the following morning hanging from a tree in Rasos Cemetery. He had a note in his pocket. The note read, simply: ‘Forgive me.’ Nu, it happened that it was convenient for the Authorities involved to close the case and call it a murder-suicide. So they did just that. 
Abba paid Sender a call on his third night sitting shiva. It was long after Maariv, long after the last visitor had left that he turned up at Sender’s front door. He came alone. ‘I know everything,’ he said to Sender. ‘And I’ve taken care of everything.’ He pulled a cheque from his pocket. ‘This isn’t for what was done. The guilty party has had more than a taste of the world-to-come. You needn’t worry about that. No one will ever hear from him again. No. This is for Pearl—she should have a refuah sheleimah. Take it, use it to bring her back to health.’ The cheque was considerable. Sender spent it all. Down to the last rouble. He spent it on doctors, specialists, wonder rabbis, folk healers, mavens of every sort and stripe, quacks and charlatans of every colour. Nothing worked. Pearl remained as she was. She ate, she drank, she performed her body’s functions. But she wouldn’t open her eyes. 
A year passed and on the night of Jonas’s first yahrzeit, the first anniversary of his death, there came in the dead of night a knocking on Sender’s front door. Half-asleep, he rose from his bed and shuffled to the door. He hadn’t seen his visitor for a year, and he almost didn’t recognise him from the way his flesh had rotted since. ‘This,’ said Menachem, handing Sender a letter written on parchment, ‘is for Pearl. Take it, use it.’ Sender read the letter. The characters were Hebrew, but the words made no sense to him. They were not Hebrew nor Yiddish nor Aramaic nor any language he understood. When he looked up from them the shrivelled corpse wrapped in a shroud of shadows was gone. The letter, however, remained. 
No one could tell him what it said. Oh, plenty people claimed they knew what the words were. They claimed that they were written in the language of the Chaldeans or the language of demons or that it was in a code they could crack or some other tall story. But nothing of what they told him ever rang true. He paid them their consulting fee and he sent them on their way. And then he consulted the next maven, and the next, and the next, and the next … 
And then one day, quite by chance, he happened to be riding on a train and sitting opposite him, head stuck in a volume of Talmud, was Rabbi Kalman Spektor, the famous Dokshitzer Chochem. ‘Excuse me, rabbi,’ said Sender, ‘but might I bother you for your opinion on a matter of life and death?’ ‘You put it like that—I can say no? Nu, how can I help?’ Sender handed him the revenant’s letter, saying nothing of the circumstances under which it had come into his possession. Rabbi Spektor read the letter from beginning to end. ‘It’s no language I know or recognise. But it’s not entirely meaningless.’ The letter, he explained, was written in several cryptic codes and the keys to these codes were contained in the body of the letter. These keys—acrostics, transposed letters, puns (in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic), allusions, quotations, and so on—were all drawn from the book of Kohelet. He cited examples but, lacking an intimate knowledge of Solomon’s book of wisdom, Sender could make neither head nor tail of the rabbi’s methodology. (And quite frankly neither can I, your narrator, no matter how many times it is explained to me.) ‘If I paid you for your time, rabbi, would you be able to tell me what it says?’ Three days later the rabbi summoned Sender to his home. ‘It’s a hoax,’ he declared. ‘Are you absolutely certain, rabbi?’ ‘Nu, what else could it be? For a start, it claims to be written by a demon.’ ‘A demon?’ ‘For want of a better word. Claims to be an agent of temptation with the power to influence the world of men. Claims to be able to cure your wife’s sleeping sickness if you follow his list of instructions.’ ‘And what are his instructions?’ ‘Superstitious nonsense.’ ‘Please, rabbi. You must tell me exactly what the letter says.’ ‘Here,’ said Rabbi Spektor, handing over his notes, ‘read for yourself.’ ‘If I do as it says here,’ said Sender, ‘he’ll reveal himself to me?’ ‘If you do as it says,’ the rabbi prophesied, ‘you will do nothing to improve your wife’s situation.’ 
Sender did exactly as the letter asked. He obtained the required incense. He picked and plucked the required plants, and he desiccated them in the required manner. He purchased the required animals. And he killed them all himself in the required manner. And he turned their skin to parchment. And he wrote the required names in the required ink on the parchments. And he burned the parchments and the dried plants and the pungent incense in a specified vessel in a specified manner at a specified time saying certain words. And the demon gave him a sign: footprints in the ash he sprinkled at the foot of Pearl’s bed, rooster-like claw marks that meandered across the carpet … He followed where they led—a door opposite the bed. A door that had never been there before. The door was closed. Sender knocked. ‘Come in, come in,’ said the demon. 
He was only terrible to look at if you weren’t looking directly at him. When you were looking directly at him, he was a gentleman of nondescript features in a crisp business suit with a few peculiarities (thumbless hands, talon-like fingers, rooster-like feet, pupilless smudges where his eyes ought to be) that marked him as not of this world. But when you caught a glimpse from the corner of your eye … well, then he was a roiling of maggots in meat, squamous lesions turning black and splitting, bones splintering, wounds suppurating, entrails spilling, tumours blossoming, flesh suffering and expiring. He was the nausea in the pit of your stomach when the doctor delivers his prognosis. In a velvet-on-skin voice he thanked Sender for the offering and its pleasing aroma. ‘Thank you for granting me an audience, my lord,’ said Sender. ‘Thank you for—’ ‘Yes, yes,’ said the demon. ‘Our time on this plane, Sender, is limited. Let’s get straight to tachlis. You have something I need.’ ‘Whatever I have is yours, my lord.’ ‘Remorse. Do you think I could have that?’ ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ ‘It’s like this, Sender. Do you know what my tafkid is?’ ‘You purpose in Creation? It’s to … it’s to … you, you’re a manifestation of the Evil Inclination … your purpose is, er …’ ‘Sender, I am a Son of Lilith and we, the Sons of Lilith, are the Tutors of Souls. ‘Our work is complex and difficult. And grotesquely misunderstood by the Sons of Adam. They loathe and abhor us, fear and disdain us. But it is us they should honour. Us they should praise and credit. Because without us their free will would remain untested—a stallion that never left the barn a day in his life. ‘Nu, now is it our fault that the Sons of Adam are so easily misdirected by nonsense and stupidity, by selfishness, immorality and, yes, evil? Is it a demon’s fault that a refined soul is as susceptible to refined temptation as a course soul is to schmutz? Is it our fault that humanity prefers wickedness and illusion to righteousness and holiness? ‘Well, just between you and me, I’m beginning to think that maybe it is. Maybe we, the Sons of Lilith, are more blameworthy than we like to think. Maybe we’ve misunderstood our tafkid. Maybe we aren’t here to school the Sons of Adam; maybe we’re here to learn from them … from their passion. ‘You see, we demons are an equanimous lot. We do what the Ribono Shel Olam tasked us to do and if a soul prefers Gehenna to Heaven, well, since we lack remorse—or, rather, I should say we lack passionate remorse—it’s all the same to us. And you Sender … your remorse burns brighter than most. It drives you to extraordinary measures. And it’s your remorse that will drive me to extraordinary measures. ‘Sender, I offer you this: I will take from you the anguish of remorse and in exchange I will return your wife to the waking world. What do you say?’ Sender’s answer was immediate and emphatic: ‘No.’ The demon was flabbergasted. ‘Think about your wife, Sender.’ ‘I am. That’s why my answer will always be no. I beg you, make me another offer. Ask for my possessions, my good name, my freedom, ask me to transgress a commandment, ask me to commit sins, atrocities, abominations, anything—but not that.’ ‘There is no other offer on the table. Your wife will sleep until she dies. Unless you relinquish your remorse to me.’ Sender would not be swayed. ‘Let her sleep then,’ hissed the demon, nettled. And he turned his back on Sender and Sender found himself alone in an icy field far from home. 
Pearl slept. Sender prayed and he gave to charity and he made repentance. But that did no good. He even confessed to his sleeping wife. Told her of his failings. Told her of Jonas and Lukas and his dread of the scandal they would stir. Told her of Abba and of Menachem. Told her of his encounter with the demon. Spared neither detail nor himself. But that did no good either. She slept and slept and died one night in her sleep. 
He waited until after her stone setting ceremony before he called on the Angel of Death. He was lying in his nightclothes in the bed in which his wife had slumbered for so many years. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know you’re coming, but would it kill you to hurry?’ And such was the intensity of his kavona—a miracle! The Angel of Death appeared to him as a bewildering agglomeration of eyes bearing a sword tipped in poison. But the angel would not take his life. He pointed out that on the Day of Atonement it was sealed how many shall pass away and how many will be born, who shall live and who shall die, who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not. ‘That’s wonderful,’ said Sender, ‘but right now—my children and my grandchildren never see me and without Pearl I have nothing in this world. So my remaining days? Give them to someone else. Someone who might actually do a little good in this world. Don’t tell me it hasn’t been done before.’ ‘Oy, don’t remind me,’ said the Angel of Death. ‘Nu?’ The Angel of Death’s bewildering agglomeration of eyes softened, and he said: ‘I’ll shuffle some paperwork and you can have your death. Naturally you get some say in who gets your remaining years. I’ll narrow down the likely candidates for you. There’s—’ ‘I don’t care. Give them to anyone. Give them to someone useful, a gabbai, a washerwoman, a seamstress. Give them to the Tsar or Pobedonostsev, for all I care. I’m happy to leave the decision with you. I’m sure you have a worthy candidate in mind. Now can we please get on with it.’ ‘There’s no point rushing a premature death. The unforeseen consequences from the slightest misstep … well, you wouldn’t believe how they reverberate from generation unto generation.’ ‘Fine, fine.’ ‘I tell you what, why don’t I light you a final cigar and we can schmooze a little while we wait for the pieces to fall into place. If I might, there’s something … a little personal, perhaps, I’d like to ask you. That is, if you don’t mind …’ ‘Go ahead. I can’t promise to answer—but you can certainly ask.’ The Angel of Death produced a cigar, lit it for Sender, and said: ‘Why did you refuse his offer?’ ‘In all honesty,’ said Sender drawing on the cigar, ‘probably fear.’ ‘If you were so afraid of the demon, why did you summon him in the first place?’ ‘Oh, I wasn’t afraid of the demon. And I never doubted his sincerity. I do believe he hoped to do some good with my remorse.’ ‘Well, then what were you afraid of?’ ‘Myself. I was afraid of myself. I thought of what my concern with propriety, my cravenness, my stupidity had cost Jonas and Pearl … and that was when I was capable of remorse! Without remorse … God knows what I might do—for whatever meshuggener reason!’ ‘And you’ve never regretted your decision?’ ‘Regretted it? I regretted it every time I stepped into Pearl’s bedroom, every time I looked at her lying there so still and lifeless, every minute, every hour, every second of the day. But do you know what I never had regarding it, not for a moment?’ ‘No.’ ‘Remorse.’ Sender smiled an impish smile and the Angel of Death chuckled. The pair fell into a contemplative and companiable silence and after a while the Angel of Death said, ‘It won’t be long now.’ But Sender did not hear him. He had fallen asleep, letting his lit cigar fall on his cotton bedspread where it began to smoulder and then to blaze. |
|
Sean Shapiro
Sean Shapiro was born in Belgium, spent his formative years in South Africa, and now lives in Borehamwood, England. The story which you have (hopefully) just read was inspired by his love of classic supernatural fiction and his abiding interest in Yiddish folklore and Yiddish writers of imaginative fiction like Der Nister, IL Peretz, S. Ansky and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
|
|
Baubles From Bones © 2024
|