Free East of Time by Jacob Rosenberg Page B

fact that he had fought in the battles we all dreamt of joining created an extraordinary aura around the young Lucjan, an aura which embraced him like a mantle and lent a special credence to his nickname — for after his return, we rarely referred to him other than as ‘The Legend’.

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    Â  As the Days Darkened  
    No one knew what had come over Szymon, our consumptive mystic-turned-Cassandra. Out of the blue he started running through the city, waving his hands about, shouting: ‘People, good people! O hear me, you sinners! Our years will be shortened by months, our months by weeks, our weeks by days — and all because the mezuzahs on our doorposts are tarnished. The demon is on his way, he is coming, coming! He’ll attack out of lust, with great brutality...’ And thus screaming, Szymon would dart like a fiery arrow from house to house, inspecting the Shema — the prayer nestled within the mezuzah — at the door of every home in our community.
    Szymon’s neighbour, Sonek the cartman, who lived in a shed with his wife and little girl, was a man of steel. People believed that Sonek could do with one hand what Samson had done to the Philistines with two. It was reputed that one rainy night, when his horse tripped and broke a leg, Sonek had picked up the beloved mare without blinking, brought her home to the stable, covered her with his own blanket and nursed the animal back to health. Since then he had never sat atop the cart.
    Every day Sonek got up before the first spark of dawn, thanked God for his life of plenty and went off to the bakery where he worked as a delivery man. But on the night, the horrible night when the Almighty took his little girl away, Sonek ran out naked into the yard and, throwing his fists at the heavens, shouted: ‘Murderer, murderer! What have You done? What have You done?’ From that moment, he became a mocker of religion, a morbid man impossible to be with. Before long, his wife had to leave him and go back to her parents.
    Well, to say that Sonek’s blasphemous outpourings made him Szymon’s mortal enemy would be an understatement.And the feeling was mutual. Not surprisingly, when Szymon approached Sonek’s doorstep, the cartman chased him away with his horsewhip. ‘Sonek!’ yelled the fanatical mystic. ‘You’ll burn in hell, I promise you!’ ‘Then at least,’ the other shot back, ‘after my bitter cold life, I’ll be warm for a change!’ At this, Szymon spat upon the ground, in the general direction of Sonek’s feet, and ran off to find another doorstep.
    Across from Szymon lived our caretaker, Stasiek, a small, bald, frisky man, with a pair of eyes as vacant as two muddy puddles, and a big yellow Franz Josef moustache under his red nose. Every Sunday after church Stasiek got drunk, cursed the Jews, beat his wife and dragged her back into his dwelling; after a half-hour of pleading for mercy, she would emerge with a satisfied smirk creasing her sharp features.
    One Easter Sunday, when the sky was a blue, unblemished expanse and the snow was already thawing — though here and there the odd patch still fought for a few more minutes of white life — Stasiek entered the yard looking sombre and confused. He couldn’t work out how it was possible for a pathetic consumptive like Szymon to have crucified the Son of his God. In any case, after downing half a bottle of vodka he decided that the criminal had to pay. Abruptly if unsteadily he burst into the evangelist’s abode and, all the while shrieking ‘Where is God’s killer?’, gave Szymon’s terrified wife Doba and their two children a severe beating. She tried to plead with him: ‘Stasiek, stop it, please, stop it. We haven’t eaten for three days, Szymon is not here, he went out to try to borrow a few groshen to buy us a piece of bread.’ But the caretaker had clearly taken leave of his senses;