The last volume of this enormous work appeared in 1754, and since Ascherbach puts the books on his shelves not according to series, title, or author’s last name, but rather according to the date when it was published, that volume now stands next to the New Athens they brought from Podolia, which Gitla used to learn to read in Polish. An effort that proved to be in vain. That language won’t be necessary for them now. Asher sometimes picks it up and looks it over, although his Polish is getting weaker by the day. This is always when he recollects Rohatyn, which seems to him now like a long-ago, faraway dream, one in which he was totally unlike himself but rather an old, embittered person, as though time worked in the opposite direction for him.
The Ascherbachs, sitting in a café per their weekly Sunday-afternoon ritual, decide to join in the debate that has been going on for some time now in the pages of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, which they read regularly. It is Gertruda’s idea for them to try it, and she is the one who starts to write, but Ascherbach believes she has a poor style, too ornamental, and so he starts to correct her, and in this way, he, too, joins in the writing. The debate is about how to define this fashionable idea, intruding ever more frequently into ordinary conversations, of an “Enlightenment.” Everyone makes use of it as they can, but everyone also understands it somewhat differently. It started with a man named Johann Friedrich Z?llner, who, in one of his articles, defending the institution of church marriage, posed in a footnote the question: “Was ist Aufkl?rung?” This unexpectedly invited a flood of responses, including from famous people. Moses Mendelssohn was the first to respond to it, and with time an article on enlightenment was published in the journal by the well-known philosopher from K?nigsberg, Immanuel Kant.
The Ascherbachs don’t care about getting paid for their writing, of course—they are doing perfectly well as it is. It is more of a need, a kind of calling—to polish words so that it will be possible to see through them clearly. Gertruda, who always smokes a pipe in the café, causing quite a stir among the sober-minded Viennese burghers, takes notes. They agree only on the point that the most important aspect is reason. For one entire evening they play around with the metaphor of the light of reason that illuminates everything equally and dispassionately. Gertruda remarks immediately and intelligently that wherever something’s brightly lit, there is also a shadow, a darkening. The more powerful the light, the deeper, the more intense the shadow. That’s true, that’s a little bit disturbing; they stop talking for a while.
And then, since people should make use of that which is most valuable, i.e., reason, skin color is invalidated, as is the family one comes from, the religion one practices—even gender. Ascherbach adds, quoting Mendelssohn, whom he has been reading passionately lately (on the table lies Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, or Phaedon, or on the Im? mortality of the Soul; the title is printed in a red font) that Aufkl?rung’s relationship to culture is the same as theory’s to practice. Enlightenment has more to do with scholarly work, with abstractions, while culture is the perfection of interpersonal contacts through the intercession of the word, literature, the image, fine arts. They agree with each other about this. When Ascherbach reads Mendelssohn, he feels, for the first time in his whole life, proud that he’s a Jew.
Gitla-Gertruda is forty years old now; she has gone gray and gained weight, but she is a beautiful woman still. Now, before going to bed, she braids her hair and covers it with a cap. They sleep together, but they are physically intimate less and less often, even though Asher, when he looks at her, at her raised, full shoulders, at her profile, still feels desire. He thinks that no one in the whole world is as close to him as she is. None of the children. No one. His life began when, in Lwów, a pregnant girl came to him, when she stood at his door, freezing, hungry, and impertinent. Now, as it happens, Ascherbach is living a new life that has nothing in common with Podolia or the low, starry sky over the market square in Rohatyn. He would have forgotten all of that completely were it not for a certain day when he encountered a familiar face on the street in front of his favorite café, a young man, modestly dressed and walking briskly, carrying sheets of music under his arm. Ascherbach, as he passes, looks at him so intrusively that the other man slows. They pass each other almost reluctantly, looking back over their shoulders; in the end, they stop and walk back up to each other, more surprised than pleased by this unexpected meeting. Asher recognizes this young man, but he cannot quite match the names he remembers to time, or time to the places with which he associates them:
“Are you Shlomo Shorr?” he asks in German.
A shadow runs over the young man’s face, and he makes a motion as if wanting to leave. Ascherbach understands now that he has made a mistake. He doffs his hat, embarrassed.
“No, my name is Wo?owski. Franciszek. You mistake me for my father, Mr. . . . ,” the other man responds in a Polish accent.
Ascherbach apologizes, understanding the man’s embarrassment at once.
“I was a doctor in Rohatyn. Asher Rubin.” It has been a long time since he has pronounced his old name, he wants to embolden this boy with it now. It does make him uncomfortable, as if he had slipped his feet into old, trampled shoes.
The young man is silent for a moment, his face betraying no emotion, and only now does the difference between him and his father become clear. This father had very lively facial expressions.
“I remember you, Mr. Asher,” he says after a little while in Polish. “You used to treat my aunt Hayah, right? You came to our home. You pulled a nail out of my heel, I still have a scar there.”
“You can’t remember me, son. You were too little,” says Ascherbach, suddenly feeling emotional, whether because he has been remembered, or because he is speaking in Polish.
“I remember. I remember a great deal.”
They smile, each man to himself, thinking of those days gone by.
“Yes . . . ,” Ascherbach says with a sigh.
They walk for some time in the same direction.
“What are you doing here?” Asher asks at last.
“I am visiting my family,” ?ukasz Franciszek says calmly. “It is time for me to get married.”
Ascherbach isn’t sure what to ask in order to avoid hitting a sensitive spot. He can tell that there are many of them.
“Do you have a fiancée already?”
“In my mind. I want to choose myself.”
This response makes Ascherbach happy, although he doesn’t know why.
“Yes, that is very important. May you make a good choice.”