Cafe Scheherazade Read Free

ignores Masha's comments. His mind is fixed upon the distant past like a man obsessed. He takes up the narrative where he left off, in 1905, the year of the first revolution, the year in which fifteen-year-old Yankel, Alter the lumberjack's son, was drawn into the secret cells of the Bund in Pinsk.
    Yankel joined his elder brother, Shlomo, the commander of a band of vigilantes whose task it was to defend the Jewish quarters from anti-Semitic attacks. The year of rebellion was drawing to an end. The revolutionaries were a spent force. Tsarist troops crushed the lingering resistance with ruthless ease. Jews were singled out as ‘enemies of Christ’ and fomenters of civil unrest. Another wave of pogroms engulfed the townlets of White Russia and the Ukraine.
    Uncle Shlomo fled for his life across a succession of borders to the port of Marseilles and, weeks later, sailed into New York harbour. He gazed with longing at the Statue of Liberty, stared in awe at the city's skyline, negotiated his way through the turnstiles of Ellis Island, and emerged into the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, where a job in a run-down sweatshop set him on the road to wealth and pride.
    As for Yankel, he could flee only as far as the outskirts of Pinsk, where he took refuge in a hideout, a forest retreat. And waited, marking time, as he prepared for the next swelling of the revolutionary tide.
    I glance round the cafe. A waitress tends the late-night guests. She is middle-aged, dressed in a black mini-skirt, black stockings, and a white blouse. Her perfume hovers in the air as she hurries by. A couple, bound within an aura of intimacy, gaze into each other's eyes. Several old men are ebbing towards sleep. A young man sits alone, and reads A Treatise on Boredom . He bites into a slice of cheesecake, washes it down with coffee, and all the while he is engrossed in his treatise on boredom.
    I glance back at the ever-present Masha. On the table stand our stale teas, and half-eaten pastries.
    â€˜It is a miracle how couples meet,’ Avram says, as if awakening from a trance. ‘We are the children of accidents. Of random encounters. Take Yankel and Etta. It is a marvel how they met.’
    Avram pours another glass of red. Pauses. And resumes his chronicle in 1908, the year in which Etta Stock journeyed on a mission, 250 kilometres north, from her native Tulchin to Berdichev: a city celebrated for its cantors and scribes, Hasidic dynasties and spiritual guides. A city where biblical Hebrew flowed from eighty prayer houses, the enduring language of a wandering tribe. A city where Yiddish coursed through the courtyards and market places, and emerged as the language of daily life. A city of trade workers and hired labour, where the Bund was able to regroup after the debacle of 1905.
    Etta approached the seasoned leaders of the Berdichev Bund. She required their support in her efforts to kindle the flame of revolution back home in Tulchin. In response to Etta's request the party sent Yankel Zeleznikow. A good ten years younger than Etta, at eighteen Yankel was already a seasoned cadre and union organiser. In Tulchin Yankel boarded with Etta's family. In time, they became lovers. And by 1910 Etta was expecting a child.
    Avram tells the tale matter-of-factly. And he is moving fast. I would like to know more about the romance. But Avram is concerned with data, with documenting his parents' heroic deeds in the erratic ebb and flow of history; and he is well prepared for the task. He reaches into his satchel. He covers the table with pamphlets and letters, journals and books, and photocopies of the Yiddish Folkszeitung , the Bund newspaper, announcing the marriage of party comrades Yankel Zeleznikow and Etta Stock.
    Neither marriage nor pregnancy slowed the pace of the couple's work for a revolution they believed was pre-ordained. Yankel resumed his activity in the factories of the Ukraine. He urged workers to strike for better conditions,