"House burned. Daughter taken. Child injured. Horse let loose. They’re not politics. They’re people”

I

n this cold, cold winter, a newspaper off the press is not just something fresh to read. The hot pages are a joy for his fingers, and the ripe smell of drying ink is strangely pleasant. Felix inserts his hands between the pages and spreads his fingers, the better to warm them, as he scans the headlines.

Just an ordinary week’s news. A train in Moravia crashed into a herd of cows, crossing the line. Five people sustained minor injuries, one of them a badchan on his way to a chasunah. A replacement was quickly found, to the delight of the chassan and kallah.

In Germany, Adolph Stoeker is planning a conference. Lunatic. The journalist revives — why, just to sow discomfort? — one of Stoeker’s speeches: If modern Jewry continues to use the power of capital and the power of the press to bring misfortune to the nation, a final catastrophe is unavoidable. Israel must renounce its ambition to become master of Germany. It should renounce its arrogant claim that Judaism is the religion of the future, when it is so clearly of the past.

The Crown Prince of Prussia himself said that the man is a lunatic. Trust a newspaper to give space to sensational stories, just to make people sit up — and buy next week’s edition. He sighs and turns the page.

The Czec language is undergoing a rebirth….

He allows his mind to wander. Why doesn’t Wolf get better fitted windows? Does Wolf not feel the cold?

“Wolf?” he suddenly asks.

“Mmm.”

The man is standing, arms folded, above the printer, a look of triumph on his face. This is his favorite moment of the week: watching all the words he has composed, corrected, and confirmed spew out. Black and white, on paper, waiting to be read.

“Why is there no mention here of what is going on in Russia?”

“There is. Look at the editorial.”

Felix flips through the pages. Page 11, the editorial. He reads.

The za’am of the East requires all of us to extend our hands to our brethren and practice that Biblical precept that the Christians have all but adopted as their own: “And thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself.”

He scans through, puzzled, then disturbed. “It is a moralistic piece.”

“Of course. It’s the only place where people will listen to me. If I said it at home, the wife would say, oh you and your mussar. And the children would vanish into thin air. This is my captive audience. Behind every newspaper man is a wife who talks too much.”

He gives a chuckle, and Felix forces himself to laugh along, politely. His own mother does not talk too much. He wishes she would talk more.