The Lehman Trilogy Read online

  Dedication

  in memory of Luca Ronconi

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Family Tree

  Book One—Three Brothers

  1Luftmensch

  2Gefilte fish

  3Chametz

  4Schmuck!

  5Shammash

  6Süsser

  7Bulbe

  8Hanukkah

  9Shpan dem loshek!

  10Shiva

  11Kish Kish

  12Sugarland

  13Libe in New York

  14Kiddushin

  15Schmaltz

  16A glaz biker

  17Yom Kippur

  18Hasele

  19Shvarts zup

  20Der boykhreder

  Book Two—Fathers and Sons

  1The Black Hole

  2Der bankir bruder

  3Henry’s Boys

  4Oklahoma

  5Familie-Lehmann

  6Der terbyalant David

  7Studebaker

  8Tsu fil rash!

  9Stock Exchange

  10Shavuot

  11Bar Mitzvah

  12United Railways

  13Wall Street

  14Der kartyozhnik

  15Der stille Pakt

  16Eine Schule für Sigmund

  17Looking for Eva

  18Tsvantsinger

  19Olympic Games

  20Golden Philip

  21Shiva

  22Horses

  23Pineapple Juice

  24Babes in Toyland

  25Model T

  26Battlefield

  27A Lot of Words

  Book Three—Immortal

  1Czar Lehman

  2The Arthur Method

  3NOT

  4One William Street

  5Roaring Twenties

  6Peloponnesus

  7A Flying Acrobat

  8Business in Soho

  9The Fall

  10Ruth

  11Yitzchak

  12The Universal Flood

  13Noach

  14King Kong

  15Melancholy Song

  16Einstein or the Genius

  17Golyat

  18Technicolor

  19Shiva

  20Enemies Within

  21Yonah

  22Saturday Game Show

  23Migdol Bavel

  24I Have a Dream

  25Egel haZahav

  26Twist

  27Squash

  Epilogue

  Glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish Words

  A Note From the Translator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “We walk along the sheer ridge

  where History becomes Legend

  and News dwindles into Myth.

  We don’t look for truth in fairy tales,

  nor do we look for it in dreams.

  And while all human beings can one day say

  they were born, they lived, they died,

  not all can say they’ve become a metaphor.

  Transformation is everything.”

  Family Tree

  Book One

  Three Brothers

  1

  Luftmensch

  Son of a cattle dealer

  circumcised Jew

  with just one suitcase at his side

  standing stock-still

  like a telegraph pole

  on jetty number four at New York harbor

  Thank God for having arrived:

  Baruch HaShem!

  Thank God for having left:

  Baruch HaShem!

  Thank God for being here, now, at last,

  in America:

  Baruch HaShem!

  Baruch HaShem!

  Baruch HaShem!

  Children shouting

  porters weighed down with baggage

  screeching of iron and squeaking pulleys

  in the midst of it all

  he

  standing still

  straight off the boat

  wearing his best shoes

  never yet worn

  kept in store for the moment “when I reach America.”

  And now this is it.

  The moment “when I reach America”

  is writ large on a cast-iron clock

  high up there

  on the tower of New York harbor:

  seven twenty-five in the morning.

  He takes a pencil from his pocket

  and on the edge of a scrap of paper

  notes down the seven and the twenty-five

  just long enough to see

  his hand is shaking

  maybe the excitement

  or maybe the fact that

  after a month and a half at sea

  standing on dry land

  —“hah! Stop swaying!”—

  feels strange.

  Eight kilos

  lost in the month and a half at sea.

  A thick beard

  thicker than the rabbi’s

  grown, untrimmed

  in forty-five days of up and down

  between hammock berth deck

  deck berth hammock.

  He left Le Havre a teetotaler

  landed at New York a skilled drinker

  practiced in recognizing at the first taste

  brandy from rum

  gin from cognac

  Italian wine and Irish beer.

  He left Le Havre knowing nothing about cards

  landed at New York champion of gaming and dice.

  He left shy, reserved, pensive

  landed convinced he knew the world:

  French irony

  Spanish joy

  the nervous pride of Italian cabin boys.

  He left with America fixed in his head

  landed now with America in front of him

  but not just in his thoughts: before his eyes.

  Baruch HaShem!

  Seen from close up

  on this cold September morning

  seen standing stock-still

  like a telegraph pole

  on jetty number four at New York harbor

  America seemed more like a music box:

  for each window that opened

  there was one that closed;

  for each handcart that turned a corner

  there was one that appeared at the next;

  for each customer that got up from a table

  there was one that sat down

  “even before it was all prepared,” he thought

  and for a moment

  —inside that head that had been waiting for months to see it—

  America

  the real America

  was no more nor less than a flea circus

  not at all impressive

  indeed, if anything, comic.

  Amusing.

  It was then

  that someone tugged his arm.

  A port official

  dark uniform

  gray whiskers, large hat.

  He was writing in a register

  names and numbers of those getting off

  asking simple questions in basic English:

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Rimpar.”

  “Rimpar? Where is Rimpar?”

  “Bayern, Germany.”

  “And your name?”

  “Heyum Lehmann.”

  “I don’t understand. Name?”

  “Heyum . . .”

  “What is Heyum?”

  “My name is . . . Hey . . . Henry!”

  “Henry, okay! And your surname?”

  “Lehmann . . .”

  “Lehman! Henry Lehman!”

  “Henry Lehman
.”

  “Okay, Henry Lehman:

  welcome to America.

  And good luck!”

  And he stamped the date:

  September 11, 1844

  gave him a pat on the shoulder

  and went off to stop someone else.

  Henry Lehman looked about him:

  the ship on which he had landed

  looked like a sleeping giant.

  But another ship was maneuvering into port

  ready to berth at jetty number four

  dozens more like him:

  maybe Jews

  maybe Germans

  maybe wearing their best shoes

  and just one suitcase at their side

  they too surprised that they are shaking

  partly with excitement

  partly because of the dry land

  partly because America

  —the real America—

  seen from up close

  like a gigantic music box

  has a certain effect.

  He took a deep breath

  gripped his suitcase

  and with a firm step

  —though still not knowing where to go—

  he entered

  he too

  the music box

  called America.

  2

  Gefilte fish

  Rabbi Kassowitz

  —so Henry had been told—

  is not the best acquaintance

  you might hope to make

  after a forty-five-day crossing,

  having just set foot

  on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Partly because he has

  a decidedly irritating sneer

  fixed on his face

  glued to his lips

  as if from a deep-down contempt

  for anyone who came to speak to him.

  And then there are his eyes:

  how can you avoid feeling uneasy

  when faced with a stubborn old man

  swamped in his dark suit

  whose only sign of life comes from that pair of squinting,

  anarchic, crazed eyes

  that are always glancing elsewhere

  unpredictably

  bouncing like billiard balls unpredictably

  and, though never stopping to look at you,

  they never miss a detail?

  “Prepare yourself: go to Rab Kassowitz

  it’s always an experience.

  You’ll be sorry you’ve been,

  but you cannot avoid it,

  so summon your courage and knock on that door.”

  That’s what Henry Lehman has been told

  by German Jewish friends

  who’ve been here in New York for a while,

  for such a while that they know the streets

  and talk an odd kind of language

  where Yiddish is dressed up with English,

  they say frau darling to girls

  and the children ask for der ice-cream.

  Henry Lehman

  son of a cattle dealer

  has not yet been three days in America

  but pretends to understand everything

  and even makes himself say yes

  when German Jewish friends

  grin and ask if he can smell

  the stench of New York on his clothing:

  “Remember, Henry: at first we all smell it.

  Then one day you stop,

  you no longer notice it,

  and then you can really say

  you’ve arrived in America,

  and that you’re really here.”

  Yes.

  Henry nods.

  Yes.

  Henry smiles.

  Yes, yes.

  Henry, in fact, can smell the stench of New York

  all over him:

  a nauseating mix of fodder, smoke, and every kind of mold,

  such that, to the nostrils at least,

  this New York so much dreamed about

  seems worse than his father’s cattle shed,

  over there in Germany, in Rimpar, Bavaria.

  Yes.

  But in his letter home

  —the first from American soil—

  Henry hasn’t mentioned the stench.

  He has written about German Jewish friends

  of course

  and how they had kindly given him a bed

  for several days

  offering him a splendid fish-ball soup

  made with leftovers from their fish stall,

  seeing that they too are in the trade

  yes sir

  but animals with fins, bones, and scales.

  “And are you earning well?”

  asked Henry, not mincing words,

  just like that, to get some idea

  to begin to understand

  seeing that he’s come to America for the money

  and will have to start somewhere.

  His German Jewish friends

  laughed at him

  since nobody in New York

  goes without earning something

  —not even beggars:

  “With food there’s always money to be made,

  people are always hungry, Henry.”

  “And so? What makes good money?”

  he asked them

  amid the crates of cod and barrels of herrings,

  where the stench of New York

  is pretty difficult to beat.

  “But what questions you ask.

  Money is made from what you cannot avoid buying.”

  They’re clever folk, his German friends:

  money is made from what you cannot avoid buying . . .

  that’s pretty good advice after all.

  For it’s true that if you don’t eat, you die.

  But honestly, can a Lehman

  who has left his father’s cattle sheds

  come all the way to America

  to trade here, too, in animals,

  whether fish, chickens, ducks, or cattle?

  Change, Henry, change.

  But choosing something that you cannot avoid buying.

  This is the point.

  There.

  And while Henry is thinking what to do

  his German friends give him a bed to sleep on

  and fish-balls in broth for supper,

  always fish

  to make the greatest saving.

  But Henry doesn’t want to abuse their hospitality.

  Just enough time to work things out.

  Just enough time to get his legs back

  his legs are sluggish

  incredibly sluggish

  for having been so long at sea

  hammock berth deck

  deck berth hammock

  it’s not so simple

  to order your lower limbs

  —the locomotive division—

  to get back on the trot,

  all the more if this music box called America

  has ten thousand streets,

  not like Rimpar where the only streets are those,

  and you count them on the fingers of one hand.

  That’s right. Legs.

  But the point is not just this.

  If only.

  To live in America, to live properly,

  you need something else.

  You need to turn a key in a lock,

  you need to push open a door.

  And all three—key, lock, and door—

  are found not in New York

  but inside your brain.

  That’s why—they told him amid the cod and the herrings—

  whoever comes ashore

  sometime or other

  sooner or later

  needs Rab Kassowitz:

  he knows.

  And we’re not talking about Scriptures, or Prophets,

  which for a rabbi is normal:

  Rab Kassowitz

  is famous for being an oracl
e

  for those who have sailed from there to here,

  for those who come from Europe

  for transoceanic Jews

  for the sons of cattle dealers

  or, well

  in other words

  for immigrants.

  “You see, Henry: anyone coming to America

  is looking for something not even he knows.

  We’ve all been there.

  That old rabbi, for all his squinting eyes,

  manages to look where you cannot see,

  and to tell you where you’ll be in this other life.

  Take my word: go and find him.”

  And once again Henry said yes.

  He arrived at eight in the morning,

  clutching in his right hand a respectable example of a fish

  a gift for the old man,

  but having thought long about it

  he concluded that to arrive holding a large fish

  didn’t give a particularly decent impression,

  so he slipped the creature into a hedge

  for the shameless joy of the New York cats

  and after a deep breath he knocked on the door.

  Yes.

  It was a November day,

  with an icy chill, like over there in Bavaria,

  and a vague hint of snow.

  As he waited, Henry brushed the first flakes from his hat.

  He was wearing his best shoes,

  those he had kept aside for the moment “when I reach America”:

  he thought it was maybe a good idea to wear them again

  for this strange visit

  in which—he felt—

  he’d really see America face-to-face,

  for all it was, immense and boundless,

  and would hold it in the palm of his hand.

  He sincerely hoped so.

  For until now he felt he was in a mist.

  He was so wrapped in these thoughts

  that he didn’t hear the click of the door handle,

  nor the voice coming almost from another world

  that told him the door was already open.

  The wait, in short,

  lasted some while,

  enough to irritate the old man,

  causing him eventually to shout from inside

  an eloquent “I am waiting.”

  And Henry went in.

  Rab Kassowitz

  was sitting at the far end of the room,

  a dark figure on a dark wooden chair

  all at one with its many angles,

  as if he were almost a geographic sum of cheekbones, knees, elbows

  and parched wrinkles.

  The son of a cattle dealer

  asked and did not obtain

  express permission to step forward.

  When he asked

  —and with great deference—

  he was simply told: “Stop there: I want to look at you”

  followed by a whirl of eyes.

  Yet Henry Lehman didn’t flinch.

  He stood stock-still like a telegraph pole

  remained ten steps away,

  holding his hat,

  in an eternal silence