(Extract from Alexander Granach: There Goes an Actor, Doubleday, Dorian and Co, Inc., Garden City 1945, ASIN B0007DSBEM )

Chapter XX.  Curiosity

. . . And suddenly I was in Horodenka and I saw the town and the market place and the church with its onion-shaped dome in which the two bricks were still missing, and I saw familiar faces. And everyone we passed gave me a friendly greeting, and my heart pounded, and suddenly I was standing in our room, and I held back my tears, because I was thirteen now and a grown man. And the neighbors came in, and my little brothers and sisters showed them my beautiful new chest, and I was their big brother now. And I unpacked my presents, and I had nice things for each of my five little brothers and sisters. My two little sisters, Matele and Lubitschka, were particularly demonstrative and hugged me and were delighted with their dresses and beads and admired everything about me and everything I had brought. And there stood my elder brother, Leibzi, in his brown artilleryman's uniform with shiny brass buttons. He was taller and broader than Father now. And the two of us, who were not only brothers but real friends, were especially happy, and he told me that he had already found a job for me at a bakery in Stanislau, and when his furlough was over, I could go right back with him. And Father interrupted and said that I must first begin to put on tfillin, and he wanted to take me to the wonder rabbi from Czortkow, who would be in Horodenka for the second half of Passover. And I could go to Stanislau afterward by myself.

Meanwhile I handed out my presents. Mother wept for joy over her Bible and said that I must read aloud to her out of it. Father immediately rolled and smoked a cigarette of the yellow Turkish tobacco I had brought him, and said that it tasted so good that he understood now how pleasant it must be to be rich. "Or," said a neighbor, "to have children like yours!"

But when I unpacked the elegant little top boots for my eight-year-old brother, Senderl, faces were suddenly turned away. And Mama sobbed aloud, and I looked around and saw no Senderl. And Father quieted little Mama and said, "Children, please, let us not desecrate the holidays!" Then he turned to me. "My son," he said, "it has pleased God to take your brother Senderl to heaven, only a few days before I went to visit you in Zaleszczyki. But I did not want to make your heart heavy with the news while you were far from home."

Later I was told the whole story.

In our district there lived an old man named Lazar Kukuck. A remarkable, jolly old fellow. No one ever knew from where he appeared or whither he vanished. He was respected, almost feared. He talked to everyone with great familiarity and went around in the district searching for poor old spinsters who had been left on the shelf, in order to make marriages for them.

He lived on soup and milk and grits, was always cheerful, smiling with his birdlike face and toothless mouth, and always carried a knotted sack on his back, which he never opened. He used to say playfully that he had become a child again, because his hundredth year was already far behind him, and every day he continued to live was a gift from God Himself. For the Lord allowed him to stay on earth only in order to straighten things out a bit, as it was not right that poor old maids should not find men. He was always smiling happily and contentedly, and you could hardly see any of his toothless, birdlike face — his thin tobacco-yellow beard began right under his eyes, and his bushy eyebrows hung down to his beard, and between them his cheerful little mouse eyes shone through.

When he discovered a poor old spinster he would first talk to her as if he were her father and find out whether she wanted to marry and what kind of husband she would like him to find for her. Then he went from town to town in the vicinity, collecting money from the rich and prosperous. He did not beg. He demanded specific amounts, he laid assessments. To some big grain dealer he would say, "Listen, you, didn't you just ship five hundred sacks of wheat to Vienna?" If the answer was "yes," he demanded a hundred kronen. If the man said "no," Lazar Kukuck would say, "Well, you'll soon be selling a shipment that size," and insisted on his hundred kronen. People liked him and bargained with him. He usually received half or a third of the sum he demanded, and in this way scraped together a few hundred kronen. Then he looked around for an old bachelor, or a divorced man, or a widower with children, and thus found a husband for a poor old spinster.

One day he came to us and said to Father, "Aaron, I have married off my last spinster and I should like to die in your house." He sent for the head of the congregation, the gravedigger, the joiner, the stone mason, paid for a plot in the cemetery, ordered a coffin made to fit him, arranged for four pallbearers, which duty the head of the congregation, my father, and two other pious men took upon themselves, and at last opened the sack which he always carried, and there were his grave clothes with a prayer shawl and even a bag of earth from Palestine. He arranged everything seriously and cheerfully and took leave of everyone as if he were going on a long journey. And he got into bed, and three days later he was dead.

At the funeral the bag of earth from Palestine was missing. Someone ran home to bring it and, to his great horror, found little Senderl playing with it. Now there was a superstition that anyone who played with any of the things that belonged to a corpse would very soon have to follow the dead person into the Beyond. Even in the cemetery people began whispering that little Senderl had played with the bag of earth. And the rumor spread through the whole town. Neighbors came in to sympathize with poor, frightened, superstitious Mama, who watched her little boy nervously, full of forebodings. The other children suddenly became distant and frightened and stopped playing with him and told him why. Everyone regarded him as the next victim, who would soon have to follow Lazar Kukuck into the Beyond.

The boy became melancholy, and wept and cried in his sleep, and sat in a corner all day without speaking, and refused to eat and began to grow thin. After a few weeks he sickened, developed a high fever, and died.

So my homecoming was completely ruined. No one noticed my blue striped suit, my red Windsor tie with black dots. Even the rubber heels on my kid shoes made no impression, for rubber heels were now for sale in Horodenka too, and most people wore them.

Among the many soldiers who had come home on furlough was Srul Kune Gloger. He was serving in the Kaiser jaeger and wore a tight-fitting dark uniform with green facings and a stiff hat with blue-black feathers like a gendarme. There were about twenty soldiers home on furlough, and they created a sensation, because they all looked wonderful and they served in different regiments and were always meeting and telling one another funny soldiers' tales, and they bought wine and barrels of beer together and drank each day in a different house.

Then suddenly one day we heard that the wonder rabbi from Czortkow was coming. There were two big synagogues named for him in

Horodenka, and his followers, young and old, put on bright soldiers' uniforms and hired horses and carts, and everything was gaily decorated — even the horses had red and green and yellow and white wool braided into their manes and tails, and bells were hung round their necks and on the shafts, and the children had rattles and trumpets and whips, and the colorful, noisy masquerade set out to meet the rabbi. Funniest of all were the old men with their long white beards and their bright hussars' uniforms. The workaday world was forgotten, all were in pious ecstasy, their cares banished. The rabbi was met and conducted into town amid dancing and singing. He took lodgings at the largest inn, Herr Kugelmass's, and from then on the place was packed within and besieged without, day and night.

Finally, one day Father and I were received together. I was already in the room, where the delicate, pale rabbi with his sparse, silky, blond beard was sitting. I can still see his small, long thin hands resting on the table. And before him stood the rich wood dealer, Srul Dicker, after whom it was to be our turn.

And Herr Dicker said: "Rabbi, a week ago I was the rich Srul Dicker, with the biggest lumberyard in the district, and then there was a fire that burned everything, and it all went up in smoke. Now I have nothing left but the shirt on my back." And tears came into the eyes of the big man with the thick red beard, and he said, "Rabbi, I could not bring you even a small gift today, I am poorer than anyone!"

And the rabbi smiled and said softly: "Listen, Srul Ben Hersch, fire comes from God, and water comes from God, and His ways are hidden, and we must take everything as it comes. But where there was once a spring, it always returns." And he put his small white hand into a silver bowl which stood before him, full of coins and bank notes that the previous visitors had brought. He took as many of the bank notes as he could hold, without counting them, and said, "Take it, Srul Ben Hersch, take it, it is blessed, and it will reestablish you."

Herr Dicker took the money, and he had hardly left the table before Jungermann the banker and the other rich merchants rushed at him, and each one asked him for a single bank note from his blessed money as a first payment on the big credits they were going to grant him for large deals in the future . . . and in a very short time Herr Dicker was even richer than before.

Then Father and I were received. Father laid on the table a note which explained the reasons for his visit. The rabbi read it slowly and from time to time looked at me searchingly and somewhat worriedly; then he said, "So, Isaiah Ben Aaron, you were named after that friendly man, Shaiko Wisdom?"

"Yes," said Father, "hasn't he his eyes, Rabbi?"

"Yes, he has just his expression," said the rabbi, and stared at me rather skeptically, but with a little more inquisitiveness. "You are just thirteen, my son, and you have already spent a year away from home, and you are going to another town again," he said, glancing at the note that Father had laid before him. "Isaiah Ben Aaron," he sighed, rather solemnly, "may the Lord bless you and guard you from curiosity. You see, my child," said he, "the Creator of the world keeps every secret locked in His eternity, and men can come to know and understand only what pleases Him. And He does not like it when men are too curious. It happened even to Moses that, when he was to choose between fire and gold and inquisitively reached out for the gold, an angel pushed him into the fire and he burned his tongue, and he lisped all his life. Let it be a lesson to you, my son, that even great men burn their tongues when they are too curious, and may the Creator guard you from it and bless you, so that your father may have great joy in you!" And he touched my head with his cool, delicate hand, murmured a blessing and said, "Amen," and Father and I repeated, "Amen," and were dismissed.

But the rabbi's blessing was never fulfilled. ...