A Wedding in Brownsville by Isaac Bashevis Singer
A word about the author .. Polish by birth, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) grew up in a family of rabbis (Orthodox Jews). After passing out from Warsaw Rabbinical Seminary, he left for the United States and made it his homeland. He flourished as a journalist, a writer on Jewish issues, and a fiction writer. He chose to write in Yaddish. After his fictions were translated to English, his literary talent camre to the fore. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978. Among his very widely-read fictions are ‘A Friend of Kafka’, and ‘The
Seance and Other Stories’.
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The story explained part by part ..
1st Paragraph …..The wedding had been a burden to Dr Solomon Margolin from the very beginning. True, it was to take place on a
Sunday, but Gretl had been right when she said that was the only evening in the week they could spend together. Italways turned out that way. His responsibilities to thecommunity made him give away the evenings that belonged to her. The Zionists had appointed him to a committee; he was a board member of a Jewish scholastic society; he had become co-editor of an academic Jewish quarterly. And though he often referred to himself as an agnostic and even an atheist, nevertheless for years he had been dragging Gretl to Seders at Abraham Mekheles’, a Landsman from Sencimin. Dr Margolin treated rabbis, refugees, anJewish writers without charge, supplying them with
medicines and, if necessary, a hospital bed. There had been a time when he had gone regularly to the meetings of the Senciminer Society, had accepted positions in their ranks, and had attended all the parties. Now Abraham Mekheles was marrying off his youngest daughter, Sylvia.
The minute the invitation arrived, Gretl had announced her decision: she was not going to let herself be carted off to a wedding somewhere out in the wilds of Brownsville. If he, Solomon, wanted to go and gorge himself on all kinds of greasy food, coming home at three o’clock in the morning, that was his prerogative.
Explainatory note … Dr Solomon Margolin was a dedicated doctor of Jewish descent. His wife, Gretl, was a nurse by training. She was of Christian origin. Both the husband and wife had lost many members during the Nazi onslaught on Jews and communists. Their minds bore the scars of those brutal deaths, and they tried relentlessly to wipe them off their minds in the new environment in the United States. Dr. Margolin worked in a hospital very dutifully and devoted his spare time to social and cultural activities related to the Jewish community in their city. He lived a life thzat kept him busy all through the day, leaving little time to spend with his loving wife Gretl. The couple had received a wedding invitation from another prominent Jew whose daughter was getting married. The wedding was scheduled on a Sunday. As it happens in such events, guests indulge in drinking, eating, dancing and merrymaking late into the night. They splurge on fat-rich foods and drinks.
Gretl didn’t want to attend the wedding because it would rob her of her weekend free time with her husband. Dr. Mangolin had shunned fatty foods on health grounds, and had to go the hospital early morning on Monday. So, spending late-night hours in the wedding was not a good idea for him. Nevertheless, he had decided to attend the wedding as the closeness with his host Abraham Merkheles weighed in his mind. After all, he was a Senciminer, whose daughter Sylvia was getting married. Dr. Mangolin was an office bearer of the Senciminer Society.
Dr. Mangolin, as a person, was a bundle of contradictions. From his early years in life, he showed great interest in Jewish religious texts and even translated a few of them. Quite strangely, he declared himself to be an agnostic and even an atheist. He was a kind-hearted, principled person who served his patients and fellow Senciminers with dedication.
Sencimin is a town in Poland that had seen Jewish refugees throng it in the wake of Hiter’s Holocaust campaign to exterminate them. Quite naturally, Jews of the town Sencimin shared an emotional bond with one another. Quite reluctantly, Dr. Mangolin decided to attend the wedding and arranged for a gift to be sent there.
Gretl was not reconciled to the idea of seeing her husband among the boisterous crowd in the wedding hall in the distant Brownsville. She frowned at her husband’s stance and stoutly refused to go there.
2nd paragraph .. Dr Margolin admitted to himself that his wife was right. When would he get a chance to sleep? He had to be at thehospital early Monday morning. Moreover he was on a strict fat-free diet. A wedding like this one would be a feast of poisons. Everything about such celebrations irritated him now: the Anglicised Yiddish, the Yiddishised English, the ear-splitting music and unruly dances. Jewish laws and
customs were completely distorted; men who had no regard for Jewishness wore skullcaps; and the reverend rabbis and cantors aped the Christian ministers. Whenever he took Gretl to a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, he was ashamed. Even she, born a Christian, could see that American Judaism was a mess. At least this time he would be spared the trouble of making apologies to her.
Explainatory note … Dr. Mangolin knew his wife’s resistance was justified. He shuddered at the thought that he wou;d lose sleep for the best part of night and had to leave for hospital duty the next morning. Apart from this, he abhored the deviant culture of his community who had adopted the Anglicised culture at the expense of their rich Yiddish culture. He had grown too old to revel among the crowd most of whom he didn’t know or remember. The full blast music, the pile of fat-rich dishes and the array of drinks repulsed him. Gretl was a Christian by birth, yet she too disapproved of the cultural decay of the Jewish community in the city.
3rd paragraph .. Usually after breakfast on Sunday, he and his wife took a walk in Central Park, or, when the weather was mild, went to the Palisades. But today Solomon Margolin lingered in bed. During the years, he had stopped attending functions of the Senciminer Society; meanwhile the town of Sencimin had been destroyed. His family there had been tortured, burned, gassed. Many Senciminers had survived, and, later, come to America from the camps, but most of them were younger people whom he, Solomon, had not known in the old country. Tonight everyone would be there; the Senciminers belonging to the bride’s family and the Tereshpolers belonging to the groom’s. He knew how they would pester him, reproach him for growing aloof, drop hints that he was a snob. They would address him
familiarly, slap him on the back, drag him off to dance. Well, even so, he had to go to Sylvia’s wedding. He had already sent out the present.
Explainatory note … Dr. Mangolin normally went for a stroll in the nearby garden after having their brekfast on Sunday mornings. The saunter in the Central Park offered them relief and joy. But, on that Sunday, he lay on the bed lazily. He had stopped going to functions of the Senciminer Socety. His advancing age and his tight work schedule forced him to curtail his social activities. The historin Polish town of Sencimin had been razed to the ground by the Nazi invadors. None of his dear family members survived the killing spree of the Nazi soldiers. They all perished after enduring unspeakable torture at the hands of the Nazis. These memories haunted him all along.
On that Sunday night, the bride’s party who had their roots in Sencimin would be there. Joining the function, the groom’s party, hailing from Terespolers would be there in strength. He knew people will not take kindly to his decision to avoid the ceremony. If he went there, he would be virtually mobbed by friends, fellow Jews and many in his community. The possible jostle and bustle drove some anxiety into his mind.
4th paragraph …The day had dawned, grey and dreary as dusk. Overnight, a heavy snow had fallen. Solomon Margolin had hoped to make up for the sleep he was going to lose, but unfortunately he had woken even earlier than usual. Finally he got up. He shaved himself meticulously at the bathroom mirror and also trimmed the grey hair at his temples. Today of all days he looked his age: there were bags under his eyes, and his face was lined. Exhaustion showed in his features. His nose appeared longer and sharper than usual; there were deep folds at the sides of his mouth. After breakfast he stretched out on the living-room sofa. From there he could see Gretl, who was standing in the kitchen, ironing—blonde, faded, middle-aged. She had on a skimpy petticoat, and her calves were as muscular as a dancer’s. Gretl had been a nurse in the Berlin hospital where he had been a member of the staff. Of her family, one brother, a Nazi, had died of typhus in a Russian prison camp. A second, who was a Communist, had been shot by the Nazis. Her aged father vegetated at the home of his other daughter in Hamburg, and Gretl sent him money regularly. She herself had become almost Jewish in New York. She had made friends with Jewish women, joined Hadassah, learned to cook Jewish dishes. Even her sigh was Jewish. And she lamented continually over the Nazi catastrophe. She had her plot waiting for her beside his in that part of the cemetery that the Senciminers had reserved for themselves.
Explainatory note ……… Dr. Mangolin knew he would have to lose sleep on the Sunday night, because such weddings alaways drag on to the early hours of the morning. He had hoped to have a deep sleep in the Saturday night, so that his body could endure the trauma of a noisy gettogether that would surely spill over to the next day, but, to his dismay, he got up much earlier in the Sunday early morning. It was snowing heavily, and the environment looked so lifeless and quiet. He did his best in the bathroom to erase the marks of ageing that was so palpable in his face and body. He ate his breakfast and lay on the sofa to stretch his limbs. His eyes fell on Gretl standing in the kitchen and ironing clothes. She had reached her middle age and her youthful look was getting dimmer.
In her earlier career, Gretl had worked as a nurse in a hospital in Berlin, where Dr. Mangolin also worked as a doctor. She had lost two brothers in the War. One brother, curiously, was a Nazi who was taken prisoner by the Russian army. He succombed to an attack of Typhus while in Russian captivity. The other brother was a Communist whom the Nazis loathed. He was shot dead by them. Gretl’s other sister lived in Hamburg. She was taking care of her bed-ridden father. Gretl remitted money from time to time to cover hder ailing father’s medical expenses. Although a Christan by birth, Gretl’s long association with her husband had instilled Judaism’s values in her. She had made friends with Jewish women around her and had learned Jewish culinary practices. She had joined Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organisation in the United States. The memories of Nazi brutality refused to leave her inner self. Dr. Mangolin and Grtl had reserved two cremetaion slots side by side in the cremetion ground.
5th paragraph ………… Dr Margolin yawned, reached for the cigarette that lay in an ashtray on the coffee table beside him, and began to think about himself. His career had gone well. Ostensibly he was a success. He had an office on West End Avenue and wealthy patients. His colleagues respected him, and he was an important figure in Jewish circles in New York. What more could a boy from Sencimin expect? A self-taught man, the son of a poor teacher of Talmud? In person he was tall and quite handsome, and he had always had away with women. He still pursued them—more than was good for him at his age and with his high blood pressure. But secretly Solomon Margolin had always felt that henwas a failure. As a child he had been acclaimed a prodigy, reciting long passages of the Bible and studying the Talmud and Commentaries on his own. When he was a boy of eleven, he had sent for a Responsum to the rabbi of Tarnow who had referred to him in his reply as ‘great and illustrious’. In his teens he had become a master in the Guide for the Perplexed and the Kuzari. He had taughthimself algebra and geometry. At seventeen he had attempted a translation of Spinoza’s Ethics from Latin into Hebrew, unaware that it had been done before. Everyone predicted he would turn out to be a genius. But he had squandered his talents, continually changing his field of
study; and he had wasted years in learning languages, in wandering from country to country. Nor had he had any luck with his one great love, Raizel, the daughter of Melekh the watchmaker. Raizel had married someone else and later had been shot by the Nazis. All his life Solomon Margolin had been plagued by the eternal questions. He still lay awake at night trying to solve the mysteries of the universe.He suffered from hypochondria and the fear of death haunted even his dreams. Hitler’s carnage and theextinction of his family had rooted out his last hope for
better days, had destroyed all his faith in humanity. He had begun to despise the matrons who came to him with their petty ills while millions were devising horrible deaths for one another.
Gretl came in from the kitchen.
‘What shirt are you going to put on?’
Explainatory note … Dr. Mangolin had built his career the hard way. With no one to hold his hands, he educatedhimself through self study. Now, he was a well known figure in the Jewish community. He had his office in the posh West End Avenue where rich people came to him with minor health issues. His personal wealth had increased contunuously. A boy of Sancimin couldn’t have done better in life. He had a tall frame and a handsome look. Girls fell for him, and he enjoyed romancing with them. However, he never felt that he had achieved a lot in life. Instead, he reckoned that he had been a failure. In his childhood, he had exhibitted humongous talent by delving deep into judaism’s religious books and translating a few of them. Later, he wavered from his intellectual path and got lost in mundane activities. He fell in love with a girl named Raizel, but she abanoned him to marry someone else. Sadly, she was later shot dead by the Nazis. Such developments tormented his mind and he began to veer towards philosophical introspection. He dreaded the prospect of dying one day.
Gretl came in to ask him what shirt he would wear for the wedding gettogether.
6th paragraph …Solomon Margolin regarded her quietly. She had had her own share of troubles. She had suffered in silence for her two brothers, even for Hans, the Nazi. She had gone through a prolonged change of life. Now her face was flushed and covered with beads of sweat. He earned more than enough to pay for a maid, yet Gretl insisted on doingall the housework herself, even the laundry. It had become
a mania with her. Every day she scoured the oven. She was forever polishing the windows of their apartment on the sixteenth floor and without using a safety belt. All the other housewives in the building ordered their groceries delivered, but Gretl lugged the heavy bags from the supermarket herself.
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