Page 29 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Pneumonia and pessimism

stuffed me with food, especially chicken soup. A friend of my father
advised him to feed me chocolate, which possesses fat from the
cocoa bean. Every day he brought home a bar of chocolate to fatten
me up. Chocolate bars had no wrapping like they do today. My sisters
Hannah and Chaia were very hungry for a piece of chocolate, an
article the ordinary man’s child did not often get in that poor country.
So my father would put the chocolate bars on top of the old carved
mahogany clothes closet; it was a tall piece of furniture with two
doors and a lower drawer for linens. But it was not far from the
stove, and one time the heat melted the chocolate and it oozed down
the polished walls of the closet. My sisters, who had envied me
getting such fine things to eat, finally got some chocolate by licking it
off the doors of the clothes closet. I can still see that oozing
chocolate today.
I was kept in the house until spring came and it became warmer.
My father would come home when it was still light; in the northern
countries sunset lasts until nine o’clock in the evening. He would take
me in his arms and carry me all the way to the emperor’s garden and
back for a breath of fresh air. It was a couple of miles away, a park
called the Lazsenka at Belvedere, a place where the Russian czar
stayed when visiting Poland. It had a palace in the center; one could
look in the window and see the bed where Alexander slept. There
were hothouses with all kinds of tropical trees, including orange trees
planted in big wooden half-barrels painted green.
An incident occurred there which I record because it shows how
our mature behavior can be observed in us during childhood. I was
always shy toward women. I do not say that as a credit to my morals
or ethics, just that certain incidents will impress a child of four and
remain clear in his memory for a lifetime. My father had one sister
who was not married at that time, Rachel. One day she came out to
where we lived to see the family and me, the sick boy. When my
father carried me to the park she came, too. Seeing my father become
tired out from having me in his arms, she took me from him and
tried to carry me. I was shy and bashful, and pulled her hair and
scratched her face until she had to give me back to my father.
Well, the chicken soup and the Lazsenka Garden—and probably
some of my mother’s prayers—put me back on my feet. Later, at age
25