Cafe Scheherazade Read Free Page B

visions. Fatigued villagers streamed in from the provinces lured by the promise of better days.
    But it was short-lived, this interlude of utopian fantasies. The White Armies were on the march throughout the Ukraine. In August 1919, the Red Army retreated from Kiev. Battles raged on the banks of the River Dnieper. Thugs and bandits gained control of the streets.
    Events seemed to be careering out of control. The Red Army regained the city in December. Typhus and famine engulfed the land. Revolution gave way to repression. The Red dictatorship took hold, the all-powerful party seized total control; and in 1922 the Bund was banned. Avram's father became a wanted man.
    Yankel farewelled his wife and daughter, and fled Kiev in a horse-drawn wagon crowded with books. Russian novelists, French philosophers, Yiddish poets and socialist pamphleteers kept him company as he travelled west, through Poland, in search of yet another home. Wherever he went he was feted by Bund comrades and put up in the homes of fellow cadres. Wherever he journeyed he was assigned urgent missions.
    Yankel's life became one extended detour that did not end until he arrived in Vilna. It was in the Jerusalem of Lithuania that Etta and Yankel were reunited, and finally set up a permanent home. And it was in this fabled city where, in 1924, their second child, Avram, was born.

II
    L ike a magnet Scheherazade draws them, cynics and idealists, ageing schemers and dreamers. One by one they enter on a Sunday morning. A typical Sunday. Each newcomer is greeted with a wave of the hand, a raised eyebrow, a familiar routine.
    â€˜Sholem Aleichem!’
    â€˜Aleichem Sholem!’
    â€˜Well? How is it going?’
    â€˜As you can see, I am still alive.’
    â€˜And how are the children?’
    â€˜They are so busy I have to make an appointment to see them.’
    â€˜And the business?’
    â€˜The business? It's deep in the ground.’
    â€˜So? That is where we will all be soon enough.’
    Rapid-fire conversations echo from all corners of the cafe. Caffeine courses through the veins. The talk becomes louder, more animated. The chairs extend outwards as the circles expand.
    Listen, and you will hear four, five, six voices at a time. Perhaps you think this impolite, lacking in manners, in style. But for those who participate this is a weekly simkhe , a celebration, a communal gathering. The babble of voices is an aria to their ears. A full-blown opera, first heard in the towns of their youth, in shtetl cottages, in crowded apartments with whole families packed together in one room.
    To be heard was to learn to leap into a discussion, to dart in and out of an argument, to know when to deliver a punchline, an aphorism, a retort, while at the same time keeping an ear upon two, three, four simultaneous conversations, lest a crucial piece of gossip should pass one by.
    They are like a chorus in a Greek drama, those who frequent Scheherazade on this winter morning. They fill in the gaps. They echo the central text. Each one has a story aching to be told: tales of townlets and cities now vanished from the earth, of journeys in search of refuge, a shelter from a curse.
    Yossel Bartnowski enters the cafe with slow, measured steps. A man in his late eighties, he is well dressed for his Sunday promenade. He wears a pin-striped suit, double-breasted. A green umbrella dangles on his left arm. The umbrella matches his green shirt studs and emerald bow tie. His body is short and stocky, and suggests a tenacious will. His ample face falls away into a succession of chins. A red pullover highlights his red complexion; his braised cheeks are on fire with age. Yet, as he seats himself beside me, I am startled when I see that his eyes are an unblemished blue.
    â€˜My foolish child, age does not matter. Willpower can defeat it,’ he tells me. ‘I can still lift fifty kilos. I walk fifteen kilometres a day. I do not take short cuts. I do not waste time. I