Free East of Time by Jacob Rosenberg Page A

sarcasm.
    â€˜Are we to take only the good, without the bad?’ the other man retorted.
    â€˜Ah, Reb Eliahu, you are talking with Job’s tongue. Yet is it not the very book you’re quoting which casts the longest shadow on divine justice?’
    Eliahu fell silent, his face reddened. He was a refined man, perhaps he felt he had gone too far. Burying his eyes in the steaming cup, he regained his composure. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there is a school of thought which upholds a theory that the sages consciously placed the Tav, the first letter in the word Torah , at the very end of the alphabet — meaning by this to remind us that a man may have a world of knowledge at his fingertips, but without immersing himself in the depths of the Torah he still remains unlearned.’
    Father smiled; obviously he loved this fable. For a good while the two men searched one another’s eyes. Then my melamed stood up. As father stretched out his hand to him, Reb Eliahu said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and with the footfall of a shy child he stepped toward the door and gently closed it behind him.

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    Â  The Legend  
    On 18 July 1936, Fascist insurgents who would later be led by General Franco rose up against the legally elected government of the Spanish Republic. Although Spain was a thousand kilometres from our town — where unemployment was a way of life, where little folk were pressed into holes in dilapidated houses by a system that mocked their misery — the temerity of the insurgents threw our neighbourhood into a state of great ferment.
    Almost overnight there were demonstrations, meetings, protests, fundraising drives; people greeted each other with clenched fists, shouting Red Front! And everywhere, our neighbours’ son Lucjan was to be found: tall, dark, handsome Lucjan, reliable Lucjan — alias Luzer, who, forever on the lookout for answers to the intractable question of the wretchedness in our midst, had discovered the Soviet Union. Sitting on the shoulders of two comrades, a red flag in his hand, above a tumultuous, ebullient throng that heaved like a stormy sea, Lucjan sang at the top of his sonorous voice:
    In smoke sinks Barcelona,
    Flames engulf Madrid,
    And sailing over Aragon
    A golden moon does bleed.
    Madrid is a tower of light,
    In the dark a shining beam;
    But Italy sends its bombers
    And poison sends Berlin.
    Some two months later, as the papers brought grim news from the front, we heard that Lucjan, in the company of others like himself, tailors who had never held a gun in their hands, was off to join the International Brigade to fight for Spain’s freedom. Lucjan’s mother cried. ‘Please, son, don’t do this to your old mother.’ His father pleaded. ‘Why, Luzer? Why lay down your young life for Spain, what is Spain to you? Have you forgotten what they did to your ancestors, how they murdered us in the tens of thousands, burned us alive in the bonfires?”
    But Lucjan was immovable. ‘Yes, father, I do remember. But remembering and dwelling on the past are two different things. Dwelling on past tragedies is self-destructive,’ said the young party man, ‘and I, your son, am going to make sure that Spain never reverts to the those shameful times of the Inquisition.’
    On 19 May 1939, as General Franco was taking the salute at his victory parade in Madrid, Lucjan, his right arm in a black sling, limped into our neighbourhood and was greeted by the general acclaim of its inhabitants. His head was bowed in sorrow. It was clear that his inner anguish was far more painful than his physical injuries — the knowledge of defeat, and of the Soviet betrayal.
    Two years later we heard him speak, perhaps for the first time since his return; and although we were still teenagers we could tell that the words he wanted evaded him, while those that did come seemed inadequate to express the feelings that filled his heart. But the