The sun was still low in the sky when I left my parents’ home, a sack thrown over my shoulder and Avshalom my only ally. A gift from my parents, I detected a glimmer of intransigence in his eyes from the start, and bestowed upon my horse this unflattering name. No one then imagined — least of all my father — that Avshalom would aid and abet me in my own disobedience, carrying me away, never to return.

We set out with a determined trot and segued into a steady canter as we fell into our stride. I still feel the wind that skimmed my cheeks as we sped along; the misguided air of rightness that pushed me to proceed without a single look back. When I finally felt the urge, there was nothing left to see.

Home had been a sprawling log cabin on the edge of a vast, dense forest. Lording over an elevated knoll one could often see, on a cloudless day, right to the edge of the distant horizon. In between lay my father’s bustling lumberyard, sprawled at the foot of the hill. It was the lumberyard that drove me away.

As a child, I loved the yard’s frenetic energy. Its pressing sense of purpose. When my Polish cousin, Sochi, came to visit, leaving stuffy city summers behind for our Lithuanian country air, we would spend long pleasant days playing tag beneath the log piles, getting underfoot and generally making a nuisance of ourselves.

“Gai aveck! Go do nothing somewhere else!” my father’s foreman would bark. At the sight of his scowl we would retreat far into the forest betting who could climb the highest tree the fastest. Who could stay up there longest? I had the lumberyard’s timbre in my blood, whether I wished it there or not.

And yet, as I strung out the distance between my future and my past, Avshalom’s hooves pounding the earth and the scent of freshly sawn timber tickling my nostrils, I felt no regret. I was heading where I wanted to be more than anywhere, or anything. Even if it meant leaving my parents’ home.

My father was a diligent man. He valued an honest day’s work. As long as I kept vaulting over planks in the yard, grasping the pulse of his enterprise through play, we enjoyed an easy, if distant, rapport. But once my ruggedly patched breeches began to rise above my knees as my growing height propelled me into manhood, hostility quickly took hold as my father made his aspirations clear.

“You are my one and only son, Izak,” he’d stated one day in his study. “And one day, you will take my place around here.” Sticking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, he leaned back. “Starting next month, on your sixteenth birthday, you are expected to begin pulling weight in earnest.” Turning his attention back to his thick accounting ledger, it was clear I was free to go.

“Wait… Papa,” I stammered. All I wished to do in earnest was to sit and study Gemara. “What if… what if I don’t want to work in the yard?”

He raised his eyes. His face was as rigid as a tree trunk. His eyes baffled. “What do you mean, ‘not work in the yard’? What else would you do?” I stared at his desk. The pages of his open ledger ruffled in the summer breeze.

So many unspent words huddled in a heap beneath a brick in my heart. My father would never understand. Learn to learn a decent blatt Gemara, son! He would say. Stay true to halachah, of course! I’m counting on it! That he wanted me to be the best Yid I could be went without saying. It was my father, after all, who had spent a packet — and then some — to bring in a private melamed all the way from Vilna. But once you passed a certain age, he maintained, learning was an indulgence to be reserved for the early hours of the morning, and a little more at night — before, or after, one worked up a sweat to earn one’s daily bread. How could I argue with that? He had given me all I had. His hard work had provided me with the clothes on my back and the very tutor who had instilled in me an unquenchable thirst for more. More iyun. More bren. More than I would ever find at the lumberyard, I was certain.

The sun was high above my head when Avshalom’s canter slacked into a tired trot. He needed a rest. So did I. I had sneaked into the kitchen at dawn and foraged around our pantry. Pulling a loaf of yesterday’s rye out of my cheesecloth sack, a slab of my mother’s pungent cheese, and a parcel of raisin gvikeltz for good measure, I prayed my petty pilfering would be forgiven. My teeth bore down on my lower lip with stoic resignation. To distract myself I conjured up images of the crowded streets of Lublin that Sochi had painted in such colorful terms. I could almost feel the city folk jostling my elbows as I munched my morning bread.

Sochi Schwartz had gone on and on about the yeshivah.

“There’s never been a makom Torah like it, Izak. The place is magnificent. It’s huge! A geshmacke garden out back and a dormitory! Bochurim sleep in the yeshivah. Can you imagine?!”

I shook my head. It was hard to imagine awaking to the sounds of a humming beis medrash and simply climbing a staircase once you closed your Gemara.

“They have indoor plumbing… and electrik. Bochurim can study through the night!”

“Moiradig!” I enthused. “I bet they shteig like anything.”

“Bet they do.” Sochi knew things firsthand. His older brother Binyumin had already been there five zemanim.

“Oh, and have you heard about the oitzar seforim?”

I rolled my eyes. “Who would I hear from, Sochi? I’m counting on you, bruder!”

“Listen here! Rav Meir Shapiro collected the most gevaldige oitzar seforim. Guess how many seforim?”

I shrugged. “Nu?”

Sochi mouthed the numbers like he was popping marbles.

“Twenty. Thousand. Books.”

I couldn’t get my mind around such quantities.

“Good meals, too,” he continued. “No rumbling stomachs. A bochur can totally get lost in the sugya, y’know?”

To my good fortune, I had never known much about such problems (though I knew plenty talmidim went hungry for days). All I knew is the yeshivah’s reputation had spread far — even my father had good things to say — while my tutor praised the Rosh Yeshivah with open admiration. But offering a begrudged good word was one thing. Endorsing a whole different shitah was another.

“Your way is not our way!” I’d heard my father pour his ire over a traveling chassid on more than one occasion. “Go, enjoy your farbrengen but leave me be!” As a staunch misnagid, he would have rather seen me defect to the ranks of the secular bund than let me join Chachmei Lublin — or so I was convinced. In retrospect, that was probably a lie I told myself to assuage my growing guilt.

*

A tinkle of wind chimes informs me of a client at the front of the store. I walk through an archway to the counter, where a bald-headed man with a graying Vandyke fixes me with a bold stare. His hands are clasped sagely behind his back. Professor. The designation flashes through my mind. He clears his throat.

“Sir!” I greet him as I shake my mental cobwebs away. “How can I help you?”

“We spoke on the phone yesterday?” Familiar East European undertones highlight his question.

“You are the owner of the Jaquet Droz?”

He nods.

“It is exquisite,” I say, and I watch the corners of his eyes crinkle as he savors the endorsement.

“Sha’on yefei-feh, nachon?” he counters in perfectly polished Hebrew, and expounds on the virtues of the watch; though, regrettably, it needs to sell. We discuss its market value and the chances of me finding a good buyer.

Our conversation slips into the personal.

“Savi, menuchato eden, hayah chai v’noshem she’onim!” he injects. And as he reminisces about his grandfather, the quintessential watchman, the contours of his face soften visibly and his eyes grow suspiciously bleary.

“You are from Poland, huh?” It isn’t a hard guess.

He hesitates. “Varsha.”

A tiny bubble gets caught in my windpipe. I swallow.

“Warsaw! I knew Warsaw well…”

“Ha’omnam? Is that so?” He is puzzled. My accent bears a Lithuanian inflection — not typical Warsaw.

“My chavrusa was from Warsaw. We studied in Lublin, but between semesters — what we call ‘bein hazmanin’ — I stayed with him at his parents’ house.”

My customer gives a wry smile and teeters backward on his burnished gentleman’s heels. He tugs at his Vandyke. I have seen that gesture before.

“I know what bein hazmanim means.”

He doesn’t offer an explanation and I don’t ask. Instead I say, “My chavrusa was like a brother. We were separated in the war. Err… Just one moment, sir” — I pause mid-ramble — “I’ll bring the watch so you can see what’s been done to it.” I’m back with the timepiece in under a minute.

“You know… I was a yeshiva bucher, too, before the war.” The surprising admission bursts into the air between us, a shooting cork releasing five decades of stifled effervescence. I wonder about the memories that line his youth, but still, I do not ask.

“So,” he changes tack, “who was your chavrusa?”

I hesitate. His eyes probe mine.

“Yissucher Schwartz. Sochi, we called him.” The name sears my tongue.

Leaning forward, he unlocks his hands from behind his back and brings them down firmly onto my countertop.

“Sochi Schwartz?” He slaps a furrowed temple. “Ani lo ma’amin!” And with an animated smile, he tugs again at his Vandyke. “I was his brother’s best friend!” he adds.

I take a step back and look at him. Really look at him. Recognition creeps in on me slowly, a clenched fist waiting to punch.

“Wait. No! You can’t be… you must be… you must… Yossel from Próżna Street?!”

He grins apologetically.

“Atah mezaheh? Recognize me?”

He gazes downward as he sways on his feet. “Nu. Shoin. I’ve changed a little.…”

I may not have recognized him the way he looks today, but I well recall our days of checking out arba minim in the Lubomirski Palace market.

I remain silent. What is there to say?

Congenially escorting Yossel — now Yosef Bar-Lev — to the door with promises of a fast sell, I retreat to the back where I can tinker around and ruminate to the ticking sound of my meticulously wound watches.

Yossel Levine and Sochi Schwartz’s older brother, Binyumin, boasted two of the sharpest minds in Warsaw. Watching them explore a sugya on a long Succos afternoon was like seeing steel honing steel. Ach. Encountering him here like this is painful. But I hold judgment. Who am I to criticize anyone, anyway? I… who have barely completed one full masechta since escaping the ghetto, let alone mastered the gantze Shas of my youthful dreams. Neither had I become the devoted chassid I had aspired to be. Where is my coveted spodik now? My fleetingly worn hoize socken? The driving conviction of yesteryear? I have not even visited a rebbe — any rebbe — since the war. The awakening chords of a youthful heart petered into faint whisperings of survival. The passionate song I pursued at my father’s displeasure has been silenced through years of contrition.

Of my classmates from Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, few survived the war, and Sochi, my friend, was killed in the Warsaw ghetto uprising just days after I made my own tenuous escape to the other side of the wall. It was in the DP camp, while waiting for my certificate to Palestine, that I learned of my father’s fate. When the Soviets had invaded the Baltics, they had exiled my father faster than one could raze down a tree. Enemy of the state, they called him. It was his lumber they were after. My robust father, who had never suffered from so much as a sneeze, succumbed to his very first Siberian winter. This numbed me more than anything. I couldn’t dispel the uneasy feeling that it wasn’t icy weather that had done my father in, but the ice in his heart.

I shake my head at nothing in particular, and sense — more than see — the darkening skies outside. Time to close up shop. My wife will be waiting. Having never had children to keep her busy, I have always made a point of arriving home on time. She deserves that much from me; it is all I have to offer, really.

I am back on the morrow at 10 a.m., sharp, on the sidewalk outside my shop. I don’t expect to see Mr. Bar-Lev standing sheepishly under the awning. Yet, here he is.

“There is no way I could have sold your watch this fast, Mr. Bar-Lev!” A tinge of frustration colors my greeting. But he brushes away my protest with a courteous hand. Tipping his gray straw fedora, he bows ever so slightly and says in his wonderfully cultured tone: “Achen. Indeed. I hadn’t thought so.”

He senses my bewilderment, for he immediately adds, “I came by, actually, to invite you for a coffee. There is a place on Jabotinsky that must be kosher enough for the both of us” — he throws me his wry smile again — “and I would love to hear more about Binyumin and Sochi.”

My left hand ruffles the whitening tufts at the nape of my neck even as I shuffle my shop keys in my right. I don’t have anything too pressing calling me in my workshop, unless you count the myriad phone calls I need to make and the strings I need to tug in order to close a deal on this gentleman’s watch. I am not particularly eager to follow him, either. Since landing on the shores of this Holy Land, an orphaned refugee, bereft and destitute, my father’s work ethic has fueled my success. I don’t think I have been late to work a dozen times in four times as many years. I raise an eyebrow in his direction. My wife always laughs when I do that. She calls it my “Should I? or Shouldn’t I?” look. But this man doesn’t know how to read me like she does. He just gazes in anticipation. I don’t like the idea of pursuing past memories this sunny morning, and yet his baleful stare is hard to ignore. Returning my shop keys to my waistcoat pocket, I give my side a gentle pat and stretch my palm out to Mr. Bar-Lev.

“Fine. Just show me the way.”

*

The coffee shop is crowded. Not my favorite kind of haunt. The noise doesn’t really lend itself to a meaningful conversation, but perhaps that will work in my favor. He orders a rich Brazilian brew, while I content myself with a piping hot glass of tea and a plate of Old World mandelbrot. Funny how every hip Tel Avivian café serves mandelbrot these days.

“What is it you want to know?” I venture and dip a slice into my tea. I don’t do small talk very well.

He swivels his mug to the right. Then to the left.

“Eineni yodei’a,” he drawls, giving a noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t sleep well last night, you know. All I could see was Binyumin’s face peering at me from every angle on the wall. I haven’t given him much thought since… you know. Now I can’t get him out of my mind.”

I can relate. I have had horses for company for well over a week, but I don’t share that information.

“As far as I know, Binyumin was trapped in the same burning building as Sochi was. They both died in the uprising.”

Yosef Bar-Lev shuts his eyes. His lips are pursed. My gaze drops to my tea.

He laughs a brief, bitter chuckle.

“What would he say if he saw me like this? Today? Hmmm? What do you think?”

I raise my eyebrow again.

“I don’t know, Yosef. But I’m sure he would be glad to see you alive.”

He shuts his eyes again, and as an unbidden wetness creeps into my eyes, I shut mine, too. Once, twice. Split-second squints.

I divert the subject to cheerier grounds. The playgrounds of our childhood. The Nożyk shul on Twarda Street where we used to speculate which balabos would end up with maftir Yonah. The leafy clearing at the far end of Próżna Street where Sochi and I used to chazer on an uprooted tree trunk while Binyumin and Yossel shteigened indefatigably in front of our eyes. And the seudos Yom Tov I enjoyed on so many occasions at the Schwartzes’ table, with Yossel often crashing for dessert.

“Ach. They were… they were something else,” I recap with a sigh.

Yossel’s silent acquiescence says it all.

“Do you realize, Yossel, I was only a distant cousin and yet Reb Schwartz would hand me a wad of notes every Erev Tom Tov and send me shopping with Sochi so I would have something new for Yom Tov? And then… before the zeman began, he would hand me the Gemara I needed, and his wife would send me off to yeshivah with as much of everything as they sent with Sochi. Funds included!” I still savored the warmth of the Schwartzes’ largesse. “They provided me with this wonderful home — Reb Schwartz was like a second father to me — and on top of it all they made sure I lacked for nothing.”

Yossel is giving me a weird look. I can’t quite figure it out.

“What?”

He puts down his coffee and folds his hands on his lap. But his lidded eyes are as mystifying as they are relentless.

“Have I said something wrong? What is it?”

He cradles his face with his hands, and then chooses his words carefully.

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“It wasn’t the Schwartzes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The new kapoteh you bought for that last Succos. The Bava Kamma. The money you took to yeshivah… that wasn’t from Reb Schwartz.”

I’m floundering.

“It was your father who sent it all,” said Yossel softly. “He didn’t want you to know. He wanted you to be well cared for, but he didn’t want you to know it was him.”

My father. It figures. I see his stoic face before me, staring wordlessly. His pride holds him back; not a gesture, not even a smile. And yet… now I know his secret, a ton of weighted sorrow seeps down and out, leaving me strangely floating.

*

The beis medrash is alive with learning, and the maggid shiur has my full attention. I haven’t closed up shop a full four hours early in order to squander time on a daydream. But even as I breathe in the daf, feeling the exhilaration of rediscovering Abaye and Rava, I imagine Avshalom, my stallion, coming along for the ride. I am charging, charging ahead in my mind, circumventing the lumberyard and heading straight for Lublin.

His silky mane is flying, flying in the wind.

(Originally featured in Calligraphy, Pesach 5776)