Burt Rashbaum – ‘Candleflame’

It was a quiet night in the neighborhood. No moon; the sky black, streetlights illuminating only a small patch of sidewalk below their shining, the air crisp with autumn. Leaves blew around Meyer’s feet, swirling into the streets with the passing of buses. Meyer walked home slower than usual. A rare night of peace in Brooklyn: no children in the streets, no sirens, no calling down from tenement windows, no arguments on street corners. The kind of Shabbos that brought memories of the old country. He thought of Budapest for the first time in years, and the Danube River he had loved. Then he remembered that he would never see it again, and his mood darkened.

Now he sat in his small kitchen, one bare bulb giving a faint yellowed light. He set the candles into the holders and prepared to say the prayer. He glanced out passed the fire escape across the alley: a young mother coaxing food into an infant’s mouth while she listened intensely to her radio. He heard the new Mercury Theatre show, “Although it is 1936, tonight for us it is 1889…” Such foolishness, he thought, to be glued to a radio. He lit a match and got a strong taste of the sulfur. Why do I bother, he thought. There was no God to hear him. He’d realized that long ago.

He stood before the candles and noticed how tarnished the bronze of the candleholders had become. He’d promised his Mama he would polish them every week. When had he broken that promise? He felt the searing pain in his fingers and dropped the match. Foolish man, he thought, as he took up another match. He lit this one and began to say the prayer.

His voice filled the empty kitchen, this room as bare as the rest of his apartment. Only a small Jewish calendar was pinned to the wall by the sink. He knew what day this was, he’d known since the morning, and that made it all the harder for him to sing praises to the Lord Our God on this Sabbath eve.

“L’had Leek Nair Shel…”

He couldn’t finish. Meyer froze, the match at the second candle.

“Shel…”

The words stuck in his throat. This had never happened before. He quickly brought the match to his face and blew out its flame before he was burned again. Yes, I may be damned for leaving God’s prayer unfinished, but so be it. He watched the flames dancing on the candles. That was why his walk home had been so slow, so meditative. Perhaps that was why the streets were empty, to allow him time to think with no distractions.

Maybe I should be lighting a Yahrzeit candle, he thought. But he knew he wouldn’t, because Golda was not his family. He thought of her parents. Were they still living here in Flatbush?

1921

Dear Mama and Papa,

How can I begin? My trip to America was long and lonely. It was good to finally walk on land, after seeing the ocean for twelve days. I found my way to Brooklyn, where I was to meet Rabbi Goldstein and present him with my letter. This is a new synagogue, such beauty that you cannot believe. There are not many houses around it, because this is East Flatbush, mostly wilderness. One day there will be a full neighborhood of Jewish families. They are thinking ahead to the future.

The synagogue had beautiful stained-glass windows on its two long sides. The door facing the street was of heavy wood and carved extensively with intricate designs.

I began the ascent up the stairs, almost dizzy with fear and anticipation. I opened the great door. I stood in the lobby, facing four doors going in different directions. A young woman appeared through a window I hadn’t seen.

“Yes, can I help you, please?” she asked.

“Help me, yes. Please,” I took out the letter, now crumpled and torn from its long journey, “for Rabbi Goldstein.”

“Let me see,” she said, taking the letter. She opened the envelope, breaking the wax seal, and read silently. “Actually,” she said, smiling at me, “I don’t read Yiddish.” A Jew in America who doesn’t read Yiddish! She led me to another door across the way, knocked, and when a distant voice answered, she opened it.

“Rabbi,” she said, “I have a young man here.” She turned to face me. “You may go in,” and she handed me back my letter.

I stepped into a large book-filled study. In one corner of the room was a rolltop desk and sitting at this desk was a man perhaps Papa’s age.

“You must be Meyer. See? I knew you were coming. Surprised, no?”

“No, I mean, yes,” I faltered in my struggling English.

“Let me see what my friend Pinchus has to say about you.”

I sat and looked around the study while Rabbi Goldstein read. So many beautiful books! In Budapest, in our synagogue, the books are old and dusty. Here they were made of shiny leather with gold on the bindings. I thought, this is a rich synagogue!

“So,” Rabbi Goldstein said, “you finished your studies and now want to work?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am ready to do anything.”

“We need a teacher for our youngest boys. Their teacher passed away last month. I have been teaching them but they don’t like it, I’ll tell you, having their head rabbi as their teacher!”

Rabbi Goldstein laughed long and hard. I smiled, trying to follow the English.

“I’ll be honest, the pay is only six dollars a month, but there is a room in my home that I have rented to newcomers in our community. The rent would be part of your salary, and you can share our dinner meal with my wife and I. Well?”

Yes, Mama and Papa, it is real. I have a room in a house in this wonderful place called Brooklyn, and in these quiet moments I can write you with good paper and a nice pen. You will hear from me again soon. Until then, please give my love to my sisters and all my love to you. Your loving son.

He remembered the boat occasionally. He could never tell his parents what he had experienced. The horrors infiltrated his dreams. He knew that he had lost his God somewhere on that trip. He had seen men killed for no reason, he had seen disease and death in the bowels of the ship. And he had done nothing. His cowardice came to haunt him. It seemed to grow while his faith grew smaller until it was like a faint smell on his clothes. He tried to put these memories to rest. There was one image from his journey, however, that was not ugly. A Jewish family who kept to themselves. The parents younger than his own, a small son, who clutched his mama’s dress and never left her sight, and a daughter, a young girl with deep brown eyes who occasionally stole glances at him when he stood on the deck.

He tried not to look at them, but his eyes continued to wander their way. He was always embarrassed when the mother caught his stare. He would flip open his prayer book, or look out to the sea. He got in the habit of watching the horizon, and keeping them in his peripheral vision. This way he could watch the girl, and he knew that she watched him.

One morning, standing in line waiting to wash his face, he noticed that she was ahead of him. She clutched a rag for a towel. He studied her. Her hair was thick and so dark as to be almost black. It was pinned up and he was able to see small fine hairs on her neck. Her ears were small, round, and smooth. She wore no jewelry. Her skin was pale, ivory, almost clear. Her nose was prominent, aquiline, offset by her large dark eyes. He was suddenly embarrassed to be staring at her with such intensity, so he looked away.

When they departed at Ellis Island, he searched for them, looking everywhere, but his entrance to America was so sudden and chaotic, that he didn’t see them again. And he thought he never would.

Dear Mama and Papa,

Greetings from your son! Today was my first day teaching at the Hebrew school. The boys are unruly, unkempt, and show little interest in learning their heritage and their religion. But now I am a teacher! They call me Rabbi Meyers. I would write you more but my eyes are tired from my first hectic day. I am sending you some money, for when you can all come and join me here. It will be soon, I hope! And until I write you next, please know how much I miss you all. 

I will write again soon.

He knew the boys were testing him. Some had paper straws, and they shot spitballs at him when he faced the blackboard. He tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t working. He took their abuse, and tried to figure out the trajectory the spitballs had taken. If he could determine their direction, he would know their source.

He heard them laughing behind his back, as the small thuds of the balls hit him. It was only one boy, he finally deduced, as he was repeatedly struck from the same point of origin.

Then he was hit in the neck. He whirled around, chalk in his hand. His eyes zeroed in on three boys in the front. He knew only one was the culprit. They looked innocent, taunting him with smiles. But when he threw the chalk across the room, hitting the opposite wall, the smiles left their faces.

“I will not have this,” he said, staring at these three.

One was obviously an immigrant boy; he could not be the one. He seemed more afraid than the other two. So Meyer ignored him. The other two exchanged glances. Conspirators.

“This is not a playground. You play outside.”

He studied their desks. Their notebooks were closed. Their pencils were out, sharpened. Which one? Meyer reached into his pocket and took out a shiny silver coin.

“I have this dime,” he said. “I can call up your mother. I can call up your mother, but I will speak to your father!”

He reached for one of the two boys’ notebooks, and flipped it open. It was brand new, not a page had been written in, nor even touched. The boy flinched, and dropped his pencil. Without a second lapsing, he reached for the other boy’s notebook. There was one page, half gone, with a ragged edge. The source of the spitballs.

“Your name?” he asked, holding the book open for the whole class to see.

“Reuven.”

“So, Reuven, give me the straw, please.”

The boy didn’t move. To hand over the straw was to admit his guilt. To maintain innocence, and try to bluff his way through, seemed the better choice. He sat, unmoving.

“So, very well. I will hold your notebook until the end of class. If the spitballs continue, you are innocent, I am mistaken. But, Master Reuven, if the spitballs stop, then I will assume you are the jokester, and you will face my anger.”

Meyer was sweating. He was not used to this kind of discipline. Shaking with fear himself, he could not show his anxiety to the class, or he would lose them for good. He put the book on his desk, returned to the board, and continued writing the alphabet.

“Everyone write the letters I am writing. Now!” He heard the scratching of pencils behind him. He was slow in his writing, loving the letters he knew so well. He felt a tug on his coat. Reuven stood there, holding a straw.

“Rabbi Meyers, if I don’t have a first lesson to show my pa, I’m going to get it good. Can I have my notebook back?”

“You stop with the games, and play in your schoolyard?”

“Yes,” it was almost a whisper.

Meyer reached for the notebook. As the boy turned, Meyer took him sternly by the shoulders and stood him before the class.

“There are no bad boys in my classrooms,” he said, “only bad things that boys do. Do you understand?”

Some nodded, others just looked at him. He patted Reuven on the head and sent him back to his seat. Meyer faced the board and continued writing. He suddenly had to go to the bathroom. He took a deep breath and hoped none of the boys had seen his fear. He turned to his students and was about to begin the recitation of the aleph-bet, when the door opened. Rabbi Goldstein stood there, with a small boy in tow.

“Rabbi Meyers, may I disrupt? This is Yitzhak Mendesohn. He is new in the area and his parents wanted him in Hebrew school so he could learn what it means to be a Jew. Class, say hello to Yitzhak.”

The rabbi waited while the roomful of boys made small noises, giggled, and whispered to each other. The new boy squirmed, twisted his fingers, looking at the ceiling, the floor.

Goldstein winked at Meyer, and pushed the boy towards him. “His sister will pick him up after class. Be sure he waits for her.” He left the room and Meyer faced his new student.

“Yitzhak, you can take a seat in the back.”

Meyer continued writing. He instructed the class to copy the letters. Then it occurred to him: he’d seen that boy before. Yes. He was sure of it.

This was the boy from the ship. The Jewish family. And then he thought of the Rabbi’s words. “His sister will pick up him after class.” She would be here.

Dear Mama and Papa,

Mama, you will be pleased to learn that I have met a wonderful girl! In fact, we were on the boat together. She is a Jewish girl from Warsaw. Her little brother goes to our school, and he is one of my students. I think she may be as shy as I am, and when we first met we could only speak a few words. But at the Oneg Shabbat last night, we talked, and I met her parents. They are pleased their daughter has met a rabbi and they are even more pleased I am teaching their son.

I must go now. Oh, and did I mention? Her name is Golda. Isn’t that a beautiful name?

I remain your loving son.

He knew he lived in the shadow of God now, and not in His light. He wondered if meeting Golda was his chance to find what he had lost somewhere on the way to America. They saw each other on Friday nights, during the Oneg Shabbat service and the coffee-and-cake afterwards. Their talk was tentative, halting, insecure in their new language. He was always the gentleman, never even touching her to help her to a seat. He had never kissed a woman except for his mother, and never a girl except for his sisters. When he thought of possibly kissing her, his neck got hot and his cheeks felt flushed. He would need to sit down from dizziness.

She teased him about his clothes, which were drab and ordinary. He laughed at her opinions about the new world. She wanted so much from this America, where she thought that anything was possible! Her parents were not Orthodox, and belonged to the synagogue only because it was a center of their new community. Her parents he saw only on an occasional Sabbath. When she told him that her father had to work one Saturday, he gasped, and she laughed. She had whispered it, and told him it was a secret. Then he knew that her father worked for Gentiles, and his Judaism was not something he took seriously.

One Friday night she came alone to the synagogue and he was surprised to see her wearing lipstick. She looked like someone in a magazine. He sang the Sabbath songs with gusto that night, his voice rising above the others, hoping she would hear him harmonizing with the congregation. For the first time since he left Budapest, he was filled with joy. This was what he should have felt when he came off the boat, instead of terror. Maybe God would embrace him again. Maybe he could be saved from the damnation he was sure awaited him.

Afterwards, she noticed him watching her. Golda took a piece of cake and bit off a small piece very slowly, her tongue licking icing off her lips. Meyer’s face flushed, and he turned away. He stared at the wall, at the pictures hanging, at the carpet. He sipped his coffee and burned his tongue. And when she tapped him on the shoulder, he whirled around, and their noses almost bumped.

“Golda,” he whispered, “you are standing so close. Where is your mother?”

“Sick,” she laughed, “nothing serious. She said I could come to the Oneg Shabbat only if you promised to escort me home. She didn’t want me walking home in the dark.”

When the service ended, she waited until they were the last ones left. It was his job to lock up the synagogue. She sat, her hands in her lap, while he put things away. He felt proud having her watch him. He knew it was sinful, but he liked the feeling anyway. He was an important member of the community.

They walked slowly, making small talk. She asked about her brother, and how he was doing in class. He told her how much he loved teaching. He could smell her hair, her clean skin. He felt the blood rush to his head. He didn’t tell her how he had abandoned God, how he felt lost in his new life. She seemed so at ease on the street, in the night. What gave her such strength? He once thought his faith would make him strong, but then he learned it was an idea only, made up of nothing but thought. And thoughts, he learned on the boat, stay in one’s head, bouncing around.

They came to a street that seemed especially dark. Meyer noticed a streetlight was out. She took his hand. Her fingers were warm, soft. They walked past the new hardware store, and she pulled him into the small alcove, away from the street. Then she threw her arms around him and kissed him. He knew what they were doing was wrong, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted her to know the power she had over him. He pressed into her and they kissed in the darkness.

“Golda,” he said, breathless, as she kissed his face, “what are we doing?”

“I think, my dear Meyer,” she said, “that we are getting married. Yes?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, looked in her eyes. There was fire in her eyes, he could see, even in the dark. He wanted to kiss her so hard that she would melt like ice cream in the sun.

“Yes, my Golda,” he whispered, “we are getting married.”

He looked forward to Friday night with the giddiness of a young boy. Her parents never came anymore, and she stopped making excuses for them. Their walks home became long extravagant affairs. They would saunter up one block and down the next, always stopping in the hardware store alcove for sweet embraces and delicious kisses. Their breath would be hot on their faces, and he would feel drunk all the way home after he left her at her house.

He believed his life was blessed. He knew it was sinful to think of himself as having been so generously looked upon by God, the God he felt had abandoned him (and who he had abandoned).  He woke each morning with a smile on his face, thinking about his Golda. He danced through the days with energy, and every night he thanked God again for bringing him such a wonderful woman who loved him, even in his ordinary clothes.

He decided to confront her parents, boldly like a man, and declare his love for their daughter, then ask for her hand in marriage. Since the two of them had talked of such a happy day, he knew it was expected of him. He would mention it to her at the next Oneg Shabbat.

Friday wouldn’t come fast enough for Meyer. The week seemed to drag. Finally, it arrived. He rushed home, ate a quick dinner in his small apartment, and dressed hurriedly. He even shined his shoes. He brushed his coat and combed his beard and set off for the synagogue.

She wasn’t there when he arrived, and she didn’t show up the whole evening. He kept looking towards the door, continuously distracted from the service, hoping she would appear. But as the congregation sang its last songs welcoming in the Sabbath, he knew she was not coming.

He knew it was improper to call her house. So he waited until Monday, and decided to ask her brother if anything had occurred to keep her away. It had been the first Friday night they were not together in months, and he ached for her touch, her kiss, for her eyes to look at him with such love.

When her brother was absent from class on Monday, his curiosity turned to concern. The class read aloud from the prayer book, yet he hardly heard their voices. When the boys realized that their rabbi was lost in a dream, they tried to take advantage, but he had no desire to fight with them today, threatening to call up their mothers and speak to their fathers. At the end of class, they left the room slowly, each boy looking at him with wonder. What was wrong with their rabbi today?

Meyer decided to go straight to her house. He grabbed his coat and ran all the way. Out of breath he stood at the front door, trying to compose himself. Finally he rang the doorbell. The door opened slowly, tentatively. Standing before Meyer was an old woman he had never seen before. Who was this?

“I am inquiring about Golda?” he asked.

“They are at the hospital,” the woman said.

“Who is sick?”

“There was an accident in the street,” she said, “very bad.”

It was the first time he rode a taxi. He had to give the driver almost all his money, but he didn’t care. He approached the desk and spoke to a receptionist. He asked about her family, mentioning their names, and the woman directed him to an elevator and told him what room. It was the first time he rode in an elevator. When the door opened, he stepped into a white hallway. He saw Yitzhak, her brother, standing alone in the hall. The boy looked lost. Meyer walked over. They stood together, outside the door. Meyer didn’t know what to say.

“Why are you here alone, Yitzhak?” he finally asked.

“My papa told me to wait. Is she going to die, Rabbi?”

He touched the boy’s head. He reached for the door, slowly opening it. There were many beds in a large room, most of them surrounded by families. He heard soft whispering as he walked in. No one turned to look his way. He scanned the room and then he saw them. Her parents were sitting beside a bed, and Golda was lying there, her eyes closed. Meyer tried to swallow and couldn’t. He approached the bed.

Her mother saw him, then her father turned. The two of them looked grief-stricken. Golda’s head was wrapped in bandages, her eye was blackened, her arm was in a cast. There were tubes going into her arms. Her beautiful lips were bruised and cracked with dryness. He stood there, tears in his eyes, looking at his beautiful Golda, broken and weary in sleep. He felt the tears run into his beard. He tasted salt on his tongue. The mother looked at the father, and then she looked back at Meyer.

“We’ll let you be alone with her,” she said.

So, he thought, they know.

He sat on a chair, watching her. He looked up at the ceiling of the large room, as the tears ran down his face, and tried to think he was calling out to God. But he knew: he was only looking at the ceiling. If God was anywhere, He was inside the girl lying on the bed. He sank his face into her bedsheets, and cried. He didn’t care who heard him. He felt a hand on his head, and looked up to see her watching him with sleepy eyes. She tried to smile but he could see the pain on her face.

“Golda?” he asked. Her eyes were like glass marbles.

“I think,” she said, the words coming slowly, barely audible. He took her beautiful hand in his and leaned closer, until his ear was next to her lips and he could feel her warm breath on his skin. “I think,” she repeated, and he heard every word, “that we are getting married, Meyer, yes?”

He tried to answer her, but she closed her eyes before he could get a word out.

He stopped writing his parents. A letter he started lay in his bureau drawer. He’d tried to explain how he was alone now, how God had left him, how he had known love and it had deserted him, but he was no scholar. He continued sending money to his family, but he knew that they would never come. It was getting harder for Jews to leave Europe as the war raged there. He knew he would not see them again in this life. He could not bring himself to tell them of his misfortune. For all they knew he was now an important teacher making lots of money, and that was why he wrote so little. For all they knew, he had married his Golda.

As the years went by he saw less of her family. Then her brother was taken out of the Hebrew school. Now, as he sat and watched the candles burning down to stubs of wax, he wondered if they were even still in Brooklyn. It had been fifteen years since Golda’s death, Meyer was 33 years old, but he felt like an old man.

Next week, he thought, I will finish the prayer over the Sabbath candles. And I will polish Mama’s candleholders. And another year will have begun.

But for now, he only thought of his Golda. She would always be young and beautiful, and she would always be in his dreams. And every year at this time he would have a quiet night alone in his apartment, and he would remember every minute they spent together. Every kiss, every laugh. Every step of their walks home after the Oneg Shabbat services. This is what it is like, he thought, when God turns His back on you.

She would always be his Golda. Beautiful, loving, holding his hand.

He blew the last embers of the candles out, turned out the light in the kitchen, and went to his cold bed, to sleep.

________