The Origin of Sorrow by Robert Mayer

poor, they doted on their little bundle of smiles. Often they went without to make sure the robust boy had milk and bread. Two years later another child arrived. Hiram at first appeared to be as healthy as his brother, but in time they realized to their terrible distress that the boy could not hear, and could not speak. The doctors at the hospital said nothing could be done. The baby would grow up a deaf mute.
    The Liebmanns felt like ancient sinners from the Torah. Yahweh had punished them for the sin of being greedy, for not being satisfied with their first born, for having another child when Yetta was past her forty-seventh year. For months they could hardly eat; they shriveled.
    At first, Hersch welcomed the birth of his brother. He accepted with his usual smiles the attention the new baby required. Unlike most children his age, Hersch was patient. He was awaiting the day when he and his brother could romp together, could wrestle, could run, shouting, up and down the stairs and along the lane, could share secrets. What a good boy Hersch was, the neighbors said. Until one day, when he was four years old, or five, he changed. He began hitting his little brother, shoving him across the floor. His smiles were replaced by wails of anguish. When Yetta sat him down and sought an explanation, his words erupted through wrenching sobs. Hiram wouldn’t play with him. Hiram wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t speak to him. Yetta thought they had explained the situation to him long ago, to prepare him for this. But clearly they had not done a good job. Now, as his mother tried to calm him, and stroked his hair, he understood for the first time that Hiram would never change: would never listen, would never speak. It was as if he had no brother at all. It was worse than having no brother at all.
    Inconsolable, Hersch became uncontrollable. He became like an animal, people said. He would run from the house at night and hide. He would scream for no reason, embarrassing Leo and Yetta, irritating the neighbors. At heder, when he started there, he would suddenly shove his books to the floor and run from the room. Often the place they found him hiding was the cemetery. He was always in the oldest section, where the lettering on the tombstones had been worn flat across the centuries by wind and rain that sometimes whipped across the river below and swirled inside the gate. The cemetery, too, was the one place where the sun wasn’t blocked by gabled houses. Perhaps here, hugging himself, he was finding warmth. The parents encouraged the brothers to be friends. But when little Hiram tried to hug his big brother, or kiss him on the cheek, Hersch pushed him away. The other children shunned the silent boy altogether.
    The Rabbis saw this from afar and pitied the Liebmanns. Hersch, that precious little boy, once always smiling, became known as the wild one. The deaf mute — no one seemed to know his name — was assumed to be mentally slow.
    In time, however, as the boys grew older, their relationship changed. Hersch began to understand and accept that Hiram’s shortcomings were beyond his or anyone’s control. He began to reach out. Alone together in the small bedroom they shared, they began to communicate. Hiram did not go to heder because of his deafness; he could neither read nor write. But little by little the boys worked out simple hand motions with which to converse. Hersch did not understand that his former rage at his brother’s infirmities had been misplaced love. Hiram seemed to have known it all along.
    The changes at first were hardly noticed in the lane. But now the two strong young men who looked so much alike were as close to one another as any brothers in the Judengasse. The aging of their parents, who were nearing seventy, was bringing them even closer.
    Yetta squeezed her handkerchief into her hand. “How could he think such a stupid thing? To be the Schul-Klopper?”
    “When you think about it, Mama, it’s not so stupid.