See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

learned from him that he wore the same pair of shoes for seventeen years and kept them in excellent condition. And when I asked in amazement how, he replied with a smile of modest pride, “I step lightly, Shleimeleh …” and he also never had his fill of telling me about the used-book stores on Scweintokshiska Street, where all the dealers knew him and where he never missed anold edition. In short, we may conclude from the above that Grandfather Anshel was not a great adventurer. His gambling urge, for instance, was satisfied by grabbing a number from the sausage seller’s basket in the street. Only twice in his life did he win a free sausage this way, but he deeply appreciated the two wins and saw them as signs that he was not a “complete shlimazel.”

I watch him hoeing and weeding three furrows in front of Neigel’s barracks, and later bandaging his sore hands with bits of torn sacking, resigned in pain and silence to the criticisms addressed to him by Neigel from the window (“Try to make them a little straighter, Scheissemeister, otherwise I’ll be the laughingstock of the camp”). Crossly he picks up hoe and rake, and sets them in place under the wooden ladder. Later I see him eating, grabbing and gulping (he always ate like that, even when he came to live with us), and I ignore a small potato he has pilfered, unnoticed by the surly cook.

When it grows dark, I accompany him to Neigel, who is amazed that the first chapter is not yet written (“Judging by your other stories, I would have thought you pulled them out of your sleeve!”), and in answer Wasserman delivers an impassioned speech about the hardships of creative endeavor (“One must delve, your honor, one must quarry from the depths of the soul!”), and the only reason I mention this is that by the end of the speech, Wasserman is so deeply moved and persuaded by his own words that he makes Neigel an unexpected and very generous offer (“And I would also like to consult your honor, about the stories, that is”), and immediately regrets his hasty words, too late, however, for Neigel, taken by surprise and smiling broadly, declares, “But of course, of course! It would be a great honor for me, Scheherazade!”

Wasserman exploits (with shocking alacrity) Neigel’s gratitude, to sit down on a chair for the first time in his presence and say, “I will discuss my difficulties with you,” in the impertinent second person, though wonder of wonders, Neigel does not fly into a rage, but merely gets up to shut the heavy curtains and locks the door, while Wasserman looks on, a wan preliminary smile taking shape in his heart.

And when Neigel goes round the back to send the cook home, Wasserman daringly turns the desk photograph around and sees “Frau Neigel there, Shleimeleh! With two tender babes in her arms! The big one, Neigel, feature for feature, and the little one a replica of her mother.And the woman, you ask? Ai, beautiful she was not. Feeble and sickly she was, almost bowed under the weight of a healthy baby. I cannot deny it: I was furious, but I knew not why. Perhaps because my Sarah and I had never been the beau ideals. I have known other Jews less than beautifully formed, et! So it was decreed by the Creator. Nor did old father Mendeleh Mocher Sephorim, who in his writings depicts us in all our uncomeliness, paint us out of the fancies of his heart. Nu, and here I had always thought Chaimkeh, Ivan, and Esau were all finely turned by the Creator’s hands. Perhaps it was easier for me to think so—that they are different from ourselves. And now here was this frail little thing! My heart went out to her. Of its own accord, my mouth dripped honeyed words … and I asked myself if she knew what her amiable husband was doing here, in this place. Et! Pretty thoughts filled my heart, and she was one of them, she and her two bouncing babes. But were my loved ones frolicking, eating, and drinking and cracking nuts that I should take pity on a daughter of the infidels? Nu, quiet, sha sha.”

Neigel returns. They discuss the setting of the story. Neigel in his ignorance suggests, “Write about the moon again, as you did in the story of the Indians.” And Wasserman gently reprimands him, explaining the preferability of a familiar setting, where the writer feels more comfortable, because “we will need sundry facts and piquant details to create an atmosphere. Accuracy, Herr Neigel, ac-cu-ra-cy!” he tells him, with a strange note of vengeance.

And to illustrate this he makes clear that if he should decide (!) that the Children of the Heart go to Moscow this time, Neigel would be expected to supply him with many hundreds of facts—what, for instance, men’s boots are made of in Russia, and how women wear their hair, and whether there are trams or buses in the streets; but when he goes too far and hints that he may also need maps and photographs, Neigel laughs indignantly (“Tell me, Scheissemeister, have you gone mad? They’ll arrest me for contacting Communist agents! It’s 1943, don’t forget! Try to find a more logical location for our story, is that clear?”). And Wasserman hangs his head and chews the dirty, brittle wisps of his beard, but again waxes courageous (“Nu, well, I suddenly remembered that things between Neigel and myself were not so simple, and I must not make myself a doormat here”), and he takes a deep breath and says that this time—and this time only!—he would comply withNeigel’s request, but it would be positively the last time Neigel would be allowed to give orders with regard to the story, and the German hisses at him with a freezing glance, “Stop puffing yourself up, Scheissemeister, and start telling the story!”

And Wasserman says, “Nu, surely you