In school I felt the unaccustomed novelty of being uninterested in my studies. For the first time I could relax my great wish for learning. What was the sense of applying myself to the lessons, of sharpening my mind, of attempting to absorb bit by bit the accumulated wisdom of the sages, if in a matter of days I would be gravely ill?
I looked eagerly for a first sign of illness as a heavenly response to my prayer, but several weeks passed, and I began to wonder whether my special prayer for sickness availed me no more than my previously leaving out the health-passages from the daily prayers.
The late fall skies hung low and heavy over the shtetl. It rained for several days and nights, and howling winds tore wildly at roofs and window shutters. Streets and alleys, most of them unpaved, became impassable. Decrepit sidewalks of long wooden boards responded to every step with mud oozing through the many cracks. The air was dense with a chilling, bone-penetrating dampness.
One evening I went early to bed, but tossed about all night long, unable to fall asleep. All during the night a mournful wind and rain knocked blindly on the roof-top and window panes, as if in search of shelter. Only at dawn was I able to fall asleep for a couple of hours.
When I awoke, I could not raise my head. The two Yeshi've students who shared the room with me had already left. After a while my landlady came in and in a low tone of voice said: "Little boy, how come you are not up yet? You will be late for the morning prayer!"
My mouth and lips were dry, my neck aching. I slowly turned my head without saying a word. But my eyes and the pallor of my face apparently told her enough, because she promptly put her hand on my forehead and exclaimed, "God! the boy is on fire!"
In response to this exclamation her daughter rushed in. She, too, gave me the forehead test, and agreed with her mother's diagnosis that, indeed, I was "on fire." She hurriedly finished combing her hair and dashed several blocks up the street to bring the news to my "foster mother."
After a short while Esther came into my room, trailed by my landlady and her daughter. She, too, put her palm on my forehead, took my pulse, and without saying a word, motioned to the two women to follow her to the other room.
After a minute or two she came back and told me that she had sent for the doctor.
My dry, burning lips smiled faintly. To me my illness was verily an inordinate and signal relief: my very special prayer had been answered.
Esther, not knowing of my scheme, may have taken my feeble smile as an expression of gratitude. She asked me whether I would like a glass of tea, adjusted my pillow and tucked me in. It reminded me of night rituals at home when the two youngest children—myself and my sister—would be the first to go to bed. Mother or one of my older sisters tucked us in, and it always meant comforting and assuring warmth for the night.
The doctor examined me thoroughly, and before announcing the nature of my illness inquired whether there was a possibility of moving me to another room or place. He then demanded from the landlady that she remove the curtain that covered the entry to my room. "That so-called curtain of yours has more ancient dust in it then thread," he diagnosed with authority in his voice. "The boy needs air! Air!"
He looked at me again, and smiled in a fatherly fashion. Then he addressed himself to no one in particular: "The young man is down with double pneumonia!"
His pronouncement was music to my ears. That his prescription could not be obtained in the local apothecary, but had to be ordered from the next large town, forty-odd miles away, was to me further verification that my illness was the "real" thing.
The doctor also prescribed swaddling my chest with wet towels or linen. The first lengths of swaddling, coming in direct contact with my skin, were cold and alien. But the next layers round and round my chest were pleasant and warm. I was again swaddled like a baby, again a helpless little child.
Every couple of hours there was a change of swaddling.
Between changes I tried to sleep, but my coughing did not let up. I felt
extremely weak and was most of the time in a state of half-wakefulness.
In my feverish mind I saw people standing over my bed—students from my class, teachers, Esther, my landlady and her daughter, the dray-man's wife from downstairs—talking in whispers, keeping vigil over me. I had vague, disconnected thought fragments that all this bode well for me. My fever brought me frequently the image of my mother. I saw her behind all the other people, straining her head to get a glimpse of me. She wanted to get close to me, to sit down at my bedside, to cry.
In my dreams I saw the moon floating in the sky, looking for me.
Now the moon suddenly turns sideways, to a flat, horizontal plane, and glides aimlessly. But—behold!—it is not the moon anymore—it is a plate of the Heavenly Scales . . .
. . . Question marks looped into one another form the links of a chain, of three chains, and cone-like they hold the moon in the air, like a plate of the baker's scales of my Thursdays...
. . . I stand frightened on one of the plates of the scale . . . In my right hand I hold the Talmudic Treatise of the Vows. In my left hand I clutch the book of Genesis. From among its pages single letters alight. They float and align themselves into words, like a streamer in the air. It is Joseph's lament in his dungeon: "For indeed I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews . . ."
. . . Suddenly the crossbeam of the scale tilts violently, joins the upright, and together plunge earthward. The scales sink rapidly. I try to drop the Talmudic tractate, but cannot move my hand. I am helpless, breathless, frozen in panic...
. . . The scales now shoot downward with immense speed. One instant and they hit the ground. I leap and run with my last strength, hugging to my heart the book of Genesis . . .
. . . It is the marketplace of my home town, empty, and I am all alone. I run and run, but each time I cover some distance; the same distance appears anew before me . . .
. . . On the far horizon a statue towers threateningly. But look! It is Ba'she, of my Fridays. I run towards her and can hear my heavy breathing. She holds in her hands a length of fabric she had bought for a dress, with large printed flowers. It is folded in two and she measures it against her body. She motions to me with her head, winks at me to hide behind her, and, to cover my escape, she unfolds the halves of her dress material and spreads it like a curtain . . .
. . . I run faster and faster, my heart races tempestuously and my whole
body dissolves itself into untold streamlets.
One morning—it must have been the seventh or eighth day after I took sick—I woke up with a surprising clarity in my head. I looked around me in slow motion. Everything in my windowless room appeared new, affording a striking, unaccustomed visual experience. A strange sense of joy was in me, in my heart. My lips, still parched, spelled out a pale but happy smile.
After a short while my landlady came in. Upon finding me awake, she bent over my bed and said warmly: "Now that the crisis is over, you will be up again in a matter of days, and the first thing you will do—you will go to the synagogue and give a prayer of thanksgiving. Yin'gele (little boy) we almost lost you!"
And so it was. In another five or six days I was back on my feet and slowly returned to health.
There is no denying that I was happy with the outcome of my illness. Still I could not understand what had happened. Since my special prayer was answered, why not all the way to the bitter, grave end? Was there a change of mind in the Upper Courts of Justice?
The reason, I soon learned, was quite simple: on the third day of my illness, when I had taken a turn for the worse, my teachers had arranged for a special prayer service for my recovery. The steady chant of learning was interrupted, dozens of candles were lit, and special prayers said for my recovery. My whole class of thirty-odd boys had joined the students of the yeshi've in an appeal for my body and soul.
There was a tradition in such events to give the sick one a new name, customarily the Hebrew Kha'yim for a man, or Kha'ye for a woman, in both instances the new name meaning life. This change of name had a dual purpose: On the one hand, a symbolic rebirth of the afflicted one; on the other hand, the hopeful evasion of the Angel of Death, since his "calling" papers would not be "in order" during his fatal and final visit, and he could legitimately be told: "Sorry, there is no one here by such a name..."
For good reason I was not given a new name. My name, Zellig, linked to the name Bo'ruch, its literal translation in Hebrew, took on the meaning "twice blessed," and the pious assembly implored the All-Merciful to grant me perfect healing, to allow me to live up to my name, and to be blessed with a quick recovery, and with many years of a fruitful, long life. The Lord was also reminded that He stood to gain nothing by my demise, for in death there is no thought of God. Reference was further made to historical events, and the intercessors asked God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob to heal me as He did Miriam the prophetess from her leprosy and Hezekiah, King of Judah, from his sickness.
The special session ended with the reading of the twenty-third Psalm. One of my teachers and the congregation read it aloud alternately, the teacher stopping after each sentence and the congregation responding: ". . . blessed art Thou, O Lord, who healest the sick among Thy people."
Was it any wonder that my own special prayer was outweighed by the massive appeal mobilized for my recovery, and that the answer to my prayer was ultimately countermanded?
But I later discovered that it may very well have been my own fault. After my special prayer some weeks before, when, totally frightened, I came to my room late that night. I had undressed quickly in the dark, and automatically said in silence my night prayer. And in so doing I myself had unwittingly nullified my very special supplication for death, uttered but ten minutes before under the open sky and in a moment I believed so singularly propitious. Because in saying my night prayer, which I knew by heart, hadn't I asked the four angels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael to guard me during my sleep—to my right and to my left, before me and behind me? And hadn't I said, "May it be Thy will, Lord my God and God of my Fathers, to grant that I lie down in peace and that I rise up in peace... Grant me light, lest I sleep the sleep of death?" Without thinking, and contrary to everything I implored in my special prayer, I had asked that God bless and protect me, and countenance me, and give me peace, and that His favor might rest on me. And while I had committed my soul into His hands overnight, I had asked that He return it to me so that I might rise again to life.
And thus, like a criminal who makes minute preparations for the performance of a perfect crime, but in the final act makes a detectable slip, so did I, after weeks of deliberations concerning each detail and timing, commit a gross oversight the moment I relaxed my attention, and failed to see that my night prayer would undo my pathetic quest for an end to my suffering.
Everything seemed clear now, and for a while there were no more questions in my heart. New energies flowed in me. The world looked fresh and new. People smiled, and in my own heart I knew the joy of a welcome sign to myself, of new, undefinable hopes.
But very soon, even before I had had sufficient time to enjoy fully the great and overwhelming sense of newness in my life, an inner voice told me in no uncertain terms:
"Back to school, old man!"
I was not yet ten years old. And as I reflected upon this call, there seemed to be no other choice.