Page 104 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

A marriage proposition
and gave in in all disputes, walked gazing downwards, his upper lip
and bushy mustache quivering like he was going through deep
emotions. Like every parent, he felt partial to his son and hated losing
him to a woman. I knew he didn’t like the idea, but, being poor, he
felt it was necessary to better my condition economically. All of
Mottel’s family was in the cattle business, and his wife’s in the dairy
business; one seldom goes hungry around a table full of meat and
butter and milk.
After a little silence as we tramped along, my father lifted his eyes
to mine and said, “What do you say, Abraham? We have to meet
Mottel, his wife, her father and mother, and an uncle, tomorrow
morning in Warsaw in a coffee house so they can see you and talk
with you.” Those people were ordinary Jews, dairymen with no
education, who only talk about cows. I burst out with a tirade against
cattle and dairymen and angrily told my father that I would not go to
the “seeing,” as they called the first meeting of the machtonim. Then
my father got angry too and began to threaten and cajole me. He
walked faster and faster, every once in a while waving his right hand
in the air without uttering another word until we got home.
My mother then applied balsam to my mind, soft words: not to be
afraid of those people, not to make a fool of Father who agreed to
come to the meeting—and besides, it was not compulsory for me to
marry the girl if I didn’t like her; after all, it was up to me. My father
was grouchy, but my mother begged in supplication, so my heart
softened and, to save her grief, I finally burst out with a mad “yes!”
The next morning I did not dress up in my “best clothes” for the
meeting, as I had a very limited line of extra apparel in my wardrobe.
I wore the same clothes and carried my regular bamboo cane à la
Chaplin; during my trips to Warsaw, I always leaned on it, or hung it
on my arm like a lady’s hand when reading the daily paper. As I
walked the six miles to the meeting place, I repeated to myself what
to say and how to act. It would not be good to antagonize my father
and act rudely with strangers in a public place. But just one word, yes
or no, would make a change affecting the rest of my life. That caused
my heart to beat fast and become feverish. I had been reading
Hebrew books, translations, some novels and romances, and had
begun to understand what marriage means.

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