East of Time by Jacob Rosenberg

life of Dr Igor Alekseyevich, who befriended my father, reads like an outlandish piece of fiction. His own father had been conscripted into the Tsar’s army at the age of ten, and celebrated his twentieth birthday in 1877, while marching under the leadership of Duke Nikolai against the Turks. After a fierce battle, for which he was later decorated, Igor’s father was taken prisoner; he escaped, but was quickly caught and condemned to be shot. Standing blindfolded before the firingsquad, begging God for a miracle, he suddenly heard the gallop of hoofs. It was said that a beautiful maiden named Emilia, of the noble Sephardic lineage of Gracia Nasi, arrived on a white horse, freed the condemned man for a pot of gold, and became his wife and Igor’s mother.
    At the time of his barmitzvah Igor’s family emigrated to Germany, where the boy completed his medical studies with great distinction and (having become a Bismarckian true believer) was quickly catapulted to the pinnacle of his profession, with the highest circles seeking his services. However, as the 1930s advanced — a time when God’s bank went into voluntary receivership and all promissory notes lost their validity — Igor found himself prohibited from practising, andeventually was dispatched with thousands of other Jews to the muddy Polish border town of Zb ą szyn. Soon afterwards he turned up in the city of the waterless river.
    Every Sunday afternoon at exactly four o’clock, Dr Igor would appear with Germanic punctuality at our doorstep, to play a game of chess with my father and talk about Judaism, which to him meant ‘ Die Bibel ’. Igor could not accept father’s premise that we Jews were a nation: ‘This, Herr Gershon,’ he would say, ‘ ist ein grosser Irrtum , a great mistake. We are no more than a religious community, that’s all.’
    â€˜Well,’ father would counter, making his next move on the chessboard between them, ‘the Bible will resolutely disagree with you.’
    If the doctor was taken aback he was not inclined to contradict father, who had studied for years in a yeshiva. But after a tactical sip of the fresh tea that mother served, he responded at last. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that may be so. But how then do you explain Lev Tolstoy’s dictum that the Jew — not the Jewish nation! — is “that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world”?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Igor, I haven’t come across Tolstoy’s dictum,’ father replied. ‘But maybe what this great thinker meant was that our father Abraham was the first to proclaim the idea of Achad , the One, the harmony of our universe. This became the fundamental principle of all the sciences, both known and as yet unknown — and of all art, literature, and sane theology.’
    â€˜And what may be the essence of your sane theology , Herr Gershon?’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ said father with a spark in his eye, ‘that this world of ours will have a meaning, and a secure future, only when all people learn to be in love with Achad . When that day comes, the practice of religion will be regarded as an offence...’
    And concluding his next move with a flourish of his wrist, father announced: ‘By the way, Herr Doctor, it’s checkmate.’

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    Â  A Scandal  
    After leaving school and spending a few unsatisfactory months with a furrier, I was apprenticed to a tailor, a certain Mr Henry Brawerbaum. He was a stocky, droop-shouldered man in his early fifties, with long arms that appeared to hang limp at his sides, and in his sallow face rested a pair of eyes like two razor slits. Yet Henry — who could easily have played the role of Hugo’s famous hunchback, Quasimodo — was a noble human being who enjoyed a reputation as one of the best tailors in town.
    His wife, Marieta, was a