A Strange Climate

Sholom Asch

Dr. Lazarovitch came home from the hospital in the evening, locked himself in his cabinet, as his custom was of late, and remained alone till supper. The servant had already knocked at the door several times, calling him to eat. The doctor gave vent to the usual grunt that meant he would soon come out, and remained locked in his cabinet. But this time he was not let alone as usual. From the next room was heard his wife, Anna Isakovna’s, soft, weak voice, saying: “Boris, we are waiting.” The voice woke the doctor from his day-dream. He felt as if he heard a strange, unusual sound.

For more than a year, ever since his oldest son, Mikhail, had gone to Moscow, and had been admitted to the faculty of medicine in the university, Dr. Lazarovitch tried to avoid his family. The family consisted, besides his oldest son, of his wife Anna Isakovna, who was always sick (and whom he saw seldom, anyhow), of a daughter, Jeyna, and of a boy, Solomon, who attended the fifth grade of Gymnasium, and whom he loved very much. The doctor avoided his home, trying to be there as little as possible. And when he did come home from the hospital, he always locked himself in his cabinet, as if he were working. But to tell the truth, he did not work. He had not held a book in his hands since he left the University. He thought of his oldest son, who had gone to Moscow, and had entered the University through the good offices of the doctor’s good friend, Vasili Ivanovitch, the president of a District Court. Dr. Lazarovitch knew, as well as the rest of the family, that his son had not been admitted through any good offices. The “good offices” were mentioned only before other people. Mikhail had adopted Christianity. Though no one spoke of it, and the family never mentioned it, yet Dr. Lazarovitch had begun to feel lonely since that time, and used to sit whole nights locked up in his cabinet. And when, after two hours he left his room, he would find the table deserted, and laid for one. His whole family had become very serious, each being occupied with his own concerns, and Ana Isakovna went to bed very early, as was her custom. The doctor would thoughtfully and hurriedly finish his meal, go back to his cabinet, take up an old “Ryech,” and bury himself in a year-old speech of a Constitutional Democrat regarding the Budget.

It was his custom to fall asleep over the speech. Sometimes he would not awake until morning. Sometimes the old servant who had been with him many years would come in and wake him. Then he would undress and throw himself on a lounge that stood in the corner, on which he examined patients in the daytime, and above which hung an old magazine reproduction of Rembrandt’s “School of Anatomy.”

Because of this, the doctor was so much surprised when he heard his wife calling him. He understood that something new must have happened, and he was afraid of this new thing. When he came out of his cabinet he found his family waiting for him at the table. This was so new to him that he grew glad and thought to himself that it was a very good thing to eat together with his children. But in his heart of hearts he was afraid of the sudden innovation. He was too nervous to wait long, so he asked as soon as he sat down: “What has happened?”

The children looked at each other, and remained silent. Anna Isakovna, who felt better than usually, answered: “Nothing has happened.”

At the silence that reigned at the table, the doctor became still more excited. He cried that something must have happened; that they ought not torture him, but tell him at once. Anna Isakovna answered him as if imparting a great sorrow: “Mikhail writes that he is coming home for Passover.”

The doctor grew silent. The rest were silent also, as if a dead man were in the house.

That night the doctor did not fall asleep over the “Ryech.” He was thinking of himself and his son. Truth to say, he did not understand why Mikhail’s apostasy had made such an impression on him. Neither he nor his had ever been religious Jews. He himself remembered very little of his religion. Passover and Yom Kippur were to him merely vague memories of childhood. His father, a storekeeper in a little town, had been a pious Jew. But since he had left the town in his youth going to study in Moscow, he had not seen his father and had lost track of the holidays. Anna Isakovna, with whom he had become acquainted in Moscow, and whom he had married there, also knew nothing of Jewish holidays. And his children were reared like the children of so many parents in his circumstances, without any traditions. They lived according to customs and holidays of his Gentile neighbors. And naturally, Mikhail grew up ripe for Christianity. He was able, and from the fifth grade on he began to show an exceptional faculty for mathematics. When he began to study in earnest, no one of the family had the slightest doubt that Mikhail, in order to avoid the obstacles that lay between himself and his career, would have to adopt Christianity. The father, the mother, and Mikhail himself, had always thought so, though they never said a word about it. Then, why did it torture him so, now that Mikhail had already done it? What new thing was it that was waking in him, making him a stranger in his own house?

The doctor had thought much about this in the last days, trying to revive the memories of his own lost years to the utmost of his powers. But it was hard. When he began to think of them he would grow tired. His broad-boned body grew heavy and he became sleepy, for in the twenty-three years that he had spent in the provincial town within the Pale, he had forgotten how to think. Once upon a time, like other students of his age, he had been an idealist. He would finish his studies, he then thought, and go to the people. He would establish himself in some out-of-the-way village, there to heal the peasants and their wives and teach the little boys to read and write, for many students talked of that at the time. But when Dr. Lazarovitch was graduated he did not go to any out-of-the-way village. He fell in love with Anna Isakovna, a daughter of Director Solomon. Solomon, an old, worked-out factory invalid, who had four daughters, was often visited by the Jewish students in Moscow. The girls played the piano, and the Director’s home was aristocratic. The lackey, an old Gentile, served at the table in gloves, though there was not much to serve. The gloved lackey and the piano-playing made a deep impression on Dr. Lazarovitch, and to his share fell the weakest and ugliest of the Director’s daughters, Anna.

But as soon as he married the aristocrat he forgot all his ideals. He went with his wife, who began to ail shortly after the wedding, to a town in the Jewish Pale, where Director Solomon had many relatives and acquaintances. Here he began to build up a practice. This partly meant that even in the Pale one could do much, that ideals are necessary not only in the village, but also in the town. But soon the doctor became acquainted with the intellectuals of the town, with the druggist and the President of the Court, and spent most of his nights at the club, with them, playing cards. He tried to avoid being at home. He did not love his wife over much after she began to ail, but this did not prevent his having five children with her, two of which had been still-born; the other three had grown up almost without his knowledge, till his card-playing had been interrupted by the apostasy of Mikhail.

Dr. Lazarovitch became more and more restless as the time of his son’s arrival from Moscow approached. The entire house lapsed into silence. All seemed afraid of something. The doctor began to feel like a stranger in his own house, and could not find a place for himself anywhere. He ceased to go to the club, and could no longer sit over the “Ryech” in his cabinet. First it seemed to him that he was restless because he was unused to things, and was afraid of the new event in his home life. As soon as he would get used to the fact that his son was a Christian, and the town would know of it, and all would cease to talk of it at last, he too, would become quiet, and his life would resume its natural course. But soon he realized that his restlessness was not due to any strange circumstances, but lay much deeper. He was afraid of something, and did not know the cause. He said a thousand times to himself that nothing had happened, that his son’s apostasy had changed neither himself nor his son. He himself was not so religious and fanatical as to believe that his son’s change of religion should have a deeper meaning, because, in truth, neither he nor his son believed in God. So how could his son’s outer metamorphosis change his inner psychological condition? And again, would it pay the able young man to give up his career, his abilities, his future, all for the sake of a religious superstition? Had not Mikhail acted logically when he removed once and for all the obstacles that barricaded the path of his future? But all these explanations could bring the doctor no rest. He felt that something more than a mere outward change had taken place; that a wall stood between him and his son; that it divided one generation from the other; that his son was not a continuation of himself, but that something ended in his own self, and something new had begun in his son; that they already belonged to two different worlds. And he was afraid and restless when he contemplated the wall that stood between them.

Two days before Passover, Mikhail came home. The doctor could not see him. He was afraid to meet him face to face. He would run about among his patients and come home late at night, and when in the mornings he heard his son’s voice in the next room he would tremble. He would look through a crack in the door and try to see how the boy looked. But his son had not changed at all. The same childish face with its familiar childish eyes which always touched the doctor’s fathering heart. The doctor wondered that his son had not at all changed after baptism. He still looked exactly the same. But the doctor was afraid of him.

Throughout the time Mikhail was at home the house seemed dead. The usual noise of the children on their arrival from school was heard no longer. The children, who always walked on tiptoe now, could not be heard in the next room. They sat reading, each in a different corner, as if they were ashamed to look at each other. The silence strained the doctor’s nerves still more. He wanted to go to the children many times, and play with them, as he used to do when they were small. But as soon as he saw Mikhail through the keyhole, he grew frightened and restrained himself.

And yet the apostate touched his heart more than the others. It seemed to him that the boy looked weaker and sadder since he had become a Christian, and the doctor began to pity him. He had never felt so near to any of his children before. He was glad and yet sorry that he felt so toward his son. Once he saw him through a window reading in a corner of the room, dressed in the blue uniform that fitted him but poorly. The boy felt strange in the house, and was afraid to talk loud. His face was pale. In his eyes and about his lips lay the shadow of a great grief like that which lingers about a girl who has lost her innocence. The doctor noticed it and a wave of pity swept over him for the child who was inaugurating his career in such a sin. He could not restrain himself, walked into the room, approached the boy, laid his wide, thick hand on the weak, childish shoulders, and looked into Mikhail’s eyes.

“Mikhail, how do you feel?”

The boy trembled. At sight of his father he grew pale, and confusedly and involuntarily pressing himself to his father, cried: “Papa.” But he soon reminded himself of something, and remained standing, silent and shamefaced. “How did you enter the University?” Dr. Lazarovitch asked roughly, and wiped his thick face with a broad hand.

The boy was silent for a moment. At last he viciously bit his thin pale lips and answered: “I didn’t know you would take it like this.”

The father was silent.

In a minute the boy again said:

“If you want me to, I will leave the University, and become a Jew again. Do you think I liked to do it?”

“It is unnecessary,” the father sternly answered.

“Why?” the boy asked.

The doctor moved closer to the boy, looked straight in his eyes, with a moody, sinister glance, and said: “We aren’t talking of religion. You know I am not religious. We are discussing a principle. And you have denied that principle once. What would the good be in your becoming a Jew again? You can’t change what you have done. Just like a girl who has lost her honor⁠—she can’t regain it. Understand?”

The doctor seized the boy’s head and kissed him, perhaps for the first time in his life. Then he left the room.

A few days later the doctor heard another bit of news: Joseph Kalmanovitch, Mikhail’s schoolmate, had also turned Christian. It was an open secret that Joseph was in love with Jenya. The town considered them already engaged. The doctor waited till the young man came to his house to see how his daughter would treat him. In a few days the doctor found the young man in his house, and Jenya went out with him as if nothing had happened. Joseph had been treated as usual. The doctor began to wonder and it occurred to him that after all, it was only he who was so reactionary and superstitious that apostasy made too deep an impression on him. Yet the doctor could not understand how his daughter could receive the young man after Mikhail’s apostasy, and how Anna Isakovna bore the thing so patiently. He promised himself to talk to his daughter. She told him clearly that she did not care whether her husband was a Jew or a Christian. She loved the man. If her father objected to a marriage between them, she would live with Joseph anyway. It was only then that his situation grew clear in the doctor’s eyes. His children were leaving his house and his religion, and he himself would remain in his old age lost among strange beliefs and perhaps be supported by his children, and bring up strange grandchildren. And maybe his children would baptize him before death so that he should lie in the graveyard together with them. This woke the doctor from his apathetic condition, and he resolved to take action.

At the same time the doctor persuaded himself that he had become religious, and he would seek out small groups that congregated to pray at certain places and visit them between evening prayers. But he could not deceive himself. The prayers of the common, every-day Jews who ran into the small synagogue to free themselves for an hour from a day’s work, and to give God His due, desirous of getting through with their duties as soon as they could, made no impression on him at all. He did not understand the prayers. He did not understand the grimaces they made, and their continued whining and shaking struck him as being wild. Yet he did not lose hope, and was inwardly sure that somewhere there did exist a great, strong Judaism, a Judaism that repaid the burdens borne for its sake, a Judaism that gave Jews strength to bear suffering and still remain Jews⁠—and it was his to seek out that Judaism which would repay him for the happiness lost in his children.

He tried to observe the Jewish holidays in his home. He himself did not know much about them. He remembered nothing about them, and appeared comical in his own eyes when he went out on the street to buy Kosher meat, or bread, or matzoth and bring it home. Yet the people in the house had taken it all very seriously; on Passover the matzoth were placed on a serving dish, put on the table, and all were afraid even to touch it. They all tried to be as serious about it as was he himself⁠—but he knew that it was a farce. No one in the house knew anything about the holidays. The holidays they kept were the holidays of their neighbors. Where any part of the town celebrated, the doctor’s house celebrated with it⁠—Easter with the Russians, Christmas with the Catholics, but of their own holidays they knew nothing. Because of this it was rather comical that he should all of a sudden try to celebrate their “own” holidays.

Mainly he did it for his fourteen-year-old son, Solomon, who caused him more unrest than all the others. He knew that the boy suffered, that he was of a different make-up than the other children. It had been very hard to make it possible for the boy to enter the gymnasium. It was at a time when hate toward Jews was already raging among their Gentile neighbors, and was more than ever in style. The boy was forced to suffer much at the hands of his Gentile schoolmates. Often, when he came home from school, his wet, frightened eyes seemed to ask the terrible question: “Why?” In the beginning, when he was yet a child, he asked his father: “Why did the Jews do that?” He was tortured so at school, but when the doctor was unable to give him a clear, true answer, he ceased to ask the question. Soon the child knew the full taste of being a Jew; he grew used to it, and bore it like a grown-up, with humility and patience. He asked no more questions, and it was seen that he withdrew further and further into himself. He had grown very much in the few years he spent in the gymnasium. He read serious books, and his forehead was already wrinkled. He was quiet, and a sneering smile towards everything and everybody lingered about his lips⁠—the smile of the suffering Jew towards the rest of the world. The doctor was more ashamed of himself before the boy than before his other children, and felt that he must do something to change the situation. He knew the responsibility he carried in the eyes of the child: that it was his to take care that this boy too did not become an apostate. This drove him to think of some practical remedy. He often wanted to speak to the youngest son about the older one’s apostasy, but he could not. He was afraid to hear the truth from him⁠—a thing he had heard from none heretofore⁠—that the fact that Mikhail turned Christian was due more to himself than to Mikhail. He did nothing to prevent his son from changing faith. He already read the answer in the sneering smile that hung on the boy’s lips, and even more, in that the boy avoided the house more than he himself did. He spent most of his time at a schoolmate’s and was rarely seen in the house. Since the oldest brother had become a Christian he had avoided the house still more.

In this avoidance of the house the doctor saw a personal insult to himself. “The child avoids me,” he said to himself. This made him feel still worse and he would think: “Why does he avoid me?” And once when he was told that Solomon had not come home for two nights (those were the first nights after the arrival of the apostate), the doctor sought the boy out at his friend’s and spoke to him:

“Why don’t you come home? Why do you run from the house?”

“I run from the house? It is you, father, who runs from the house,” the boy answered boldly.

In the answer the doctor heard the whole inner truth⁠—that he was lonely and avoided the house which he had built up; in this answer he heard the whole poverty, the whole forlornness of the situation in which he found himself, and he ceased to trouble his son with further questions.

The doctor began to take great interest in what was going on among the Jews. He read Russo-Jewish newspapers, thought much of Jewish interests, and found that a new Jewish life was beginning in Palestine, that Jews were emigrating there, and becoming farmers; that there was hope of a Jewish state being founded, where Judaism could develop freely and frankly to a strong and rich fruition. Palestine awoke in the doctor the memories of his childhood years, of his father, the storekeeper in a little town. He began to remember the Jewish holidays that his mother had always kept;⁠—the Jewish Sabbath, when she lit candles; the congregation in which he had prayed; the Jewish Passover, when all in the house was so clean, and the family gathered at the Seder. It seemed to him that all this was closely related to Palestine; that it came from Palestine. And there, in the new Palestine this all would show itself stronger and freer, and the greater Judaism would begin to develop. His eyes were suddenly opened and he beheld in Palestine the great Jewish hope, so great, so holy, that repaid Jews for their suffering, that gave Jews the courage and the strength to bear all pain and insult for its sake. Palestine gave compensation for all. He remembered, as in a dream, the Bible and the pictures in the Bible, and his father. The pious storekeeper’s life suddenly grew more interesting to him. He saw a certain relationship between his father, the poor, forlorn Jew in his little home town, and the heroes of the Bible. It was Palestine that bound them together. His father, the storekeeper, came from the same land that knew Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He loved the same life they loved, and had the same duties and customs they had. But here, in exile, where he was oppressed he could not live like the patriarchs, the tillers of the soil, the shepherds. Here he had but the Sabbath and the Passover that the Patriarchs had; but there, in the land of the patriarchs, the Jews lead a patriarchal life; they till the soil themselves; they guard the sheep themselves, and live in godly piety. There Judaism shows itself in its full richness and greatness, only there can one understand what a moral, religious people the Jews are and how clean and simple is the life they lead⁠—there the Jewish holidays are celebrated in all their holiness. There he would see with the same eyes and feel with the same emotions the Jewish Passover, the Jewish Sabbath, the Jewish holiday, as long ago, when he was a child and lived in the house of his father and mother.

The doctor hid deep in his heart the secret that he had found Palestine as one hides a great treasure. He was afraid to confide it to his family. He became more restful and sure of himself. He no longer sat locked up in his cabinet whole nights long. He went no longer to the club; he began to eat together with his children; he even became very kind to his wife. A sort of hidden joy smiled out of his eyes, and no one knew what it was, just as no one knew the cause of the doctor’s sudden change of habits.

He wanted to share his secret with Solomon⁠—the boy would understand the happiness the doctor had found, and he needed it as much as the doctor himself. This would be good for the child, even heal him, the doctor thought⁠—and why not go there with the child after all? He resolved to speak to Solomon about it. And as his custom was not to leave anything undone till tomorrow, he wanted to speak at once, and entered the room where the boy sat over a book preparing his lesson. Without much ado, he patted the boy on the shoulder and said to him:

“Solomon, what do you think of Palestine?”

The boy opened wide his eyes and looked at the doctor in wonder.

“What made you think of this, papa?”

“Why not?”

It was soon seen that the boy had been interested in Palestine for a long time. He was organizing a student’s Zionist Circle and knew of all that was going on in Palestine, even to the name of all the Jewish colonies. The father was beside himself with joy, and continued to pat the boy’s shoulders.

“Would you like to go with me to Palestine?”

The boy looked at him in wonder.

“Do you really mean it, papa?”

“Of course, Solomon, of course. Don’t you see that I am being stifled here? What have I got here?”⁠—The doctor wanted to get rid of all that had tortured him of late. He soon restrained himself, however, and ended his words, half-laughingly:

“Of course, of course, Solomon. The Jews there are great, fine⁠—That is the place for Jewish life.” The doctor grew excited. “And you will go with me?”

“Of course I will go with you,” the child answered.

“Even if mama and the older children remain here?”

“Let them remain if they like this place better,” the child replied. “I want to be there where Jews are equal to others; where Jews are free.”

“Where Jews are free!” The doctor muttered as if to himself. “Good, good, Solomon. Let them remain, let them remain, if they feel at ease here.” The doctor was struggling with something in himself. He swiftly disengaged himself from the boy and left the house, fearing that tears would gush from his eyes,⁠—his old, weary eyes, which sat in a heavy, sleepy body overgrown with so much fat that it seemed his heart could never be reached,⁠—and yet....

From then on the father and the son found themselves in the strange house. They felt themselves richer and freer than the others, and looked at the mother, the sister, and the apostate, with pity. They would sit till midnight over a map of Palestine. Solomon would show where the Jewish colonies lay and what they were called; they had even begun to study Hebrew. The doctor gave it up after the second lesson⁠—his head was too old to learn anything now. But not Solomon. When Solomon spoke of the new life, when father and son dreamed of Palestine, the old doctor’s heart grew glad, his great body became lighter, and he felt that things were as once upon a time, when he lived with his father, the storekeeper⁠—once, in his childhood years....

One fine evening the doctor called together his family, and tried to deliver a long speech. He did not succeed. At the last moment, when all were solemnly assembled, he entered the room, struck the table with his fist and cried in a voice not altogether calm, “Who will go with me to Palestine?” When they looked at him in wonder, he turned to his sick wife whom he almost killed with his loud voice and his swift, unusual movements. “Do you want to go to Palestine with me, or to remain with your Gentile children?” The wife looked at him with fear in her eyes, and stammered: “I don’t know what you want of me. Where my children stay, I will stay also.”

“Good, good,” the doctor roared. “Stay wherever you want to. I will sell my property and separate from you. I and Solomon go to Palestine.”

At first they thought that it was a fit of anger on his part,⁠—a thing that had taken place often during the last days,⁠—and that he would quiet down. But they soon realized that he was in earnest. He ceased to occupy himself with his practice, and visited the brokers trying to sell the house. He succeeded in selling it for a very small sum.

Bidding farewell to none but Solomon, he left for Palestine to seek rest for them both in the new home of the Jews.

A few weeks later, on a fine morning, Dr. Lazarovitch came back home. Shamefacedly he stole into his house, ashamed to show himself to his wife and children. They thought that he had come to take Solomon and go away again. But they saw him resume his old practice. He was very quiet and even more reserved than before. They did not ask him where he had been nor what he had done.

He felt the questioning gaze of Solomon directed at him. The boy asked him nothing, but seeing that his father was practising again, he lost heart, and began to avoid the house as he had done after the apostasy of Mikhail. The doctor felt guilty in respect to the boy, and avoided all conversation with him. Each day the boy became paler and more self-centered.

Once the doctor suddenly called him into his cabinet. The boy was ghastly, and one could hear his heart beat. He was ashamed to look his father straight in the eyes.

“I couldn’t remain there. You understand, Solomon?” The father began quietly. “It was not what I expected. I thought it altogether different, altogether different. But it was not what I expected.”

The boy lifted his eyes, and looked at his father. His look made the doctor nervous. He forgot what he wanted to say to the boy regarding his return, and began talking in a shrill, nervous voice.

“It is too hot there. Not our climate. I couldn’t acclimatize myself there. I’m too old. You⁠—perhaps⁠—you are young, you might do it.”

The boy lifted his eyes again, and now it seemed to the doctor that he saw a vague smile on the pale, cracked lips of his son, as if an older, experienced man were looking at a boy. The doctor cried still more angrily.

“What are you smiling at? Understand, I could not. Understand? I thought Palestine a Jewish kingdom. I would find there what I had when I was a child. A Sabbath. Holiday. In one word, a Jewish kingdom. With a great Jewish life. Perhaps one is growing there. But I’m too old to grow with it. I needed ripe fruit. Understand? Ripe fruit. And there is none there. Everything is green, poor. I felt like a stranger, a man from another climate. Understand? Another climate. You feel like a strange plant in another climate.”

“Papa, it is not the climate that is to blame, but the plant.”

“Perhaps the plant. Too old. But there is nothing to laugh at.”

The boy pitied the man and said: “But papa, I’m not laughing. Who says I’m laughing?”

“You aren’t laughing? Thanks. And I tell you that I gave up my ideal because it is too hot there. And if you want to, go ahead and laugh at it, laugh at a sixty-five-year-old jackass who is your father, who could not acclimatize himself in a strange climate because it was too warm. Laugh at it if you want to,” Dr. Lazarovitch yelled.

Two large tears shone in the boy’s eyes, and swiftly, without a single word, he left the room.

Since then both father and son avoid each other, and when they meet they are ashamed to look into each other’s eyes.

⁠—Translated by Jacob Robbins.