At the
Depot is story written by
Soviet Yiddish writer
David Bergelson who is notable for writing in an impressionistic psychological style that penetrates the consciousness of his protagonists, exposing their yearnings, doubts, and frustrations to the prurient eyes of the reader. The mind so exposed in this story belongs to Benish, a young man resides and works in Jewish settlement of grain dealers near a train depot in the Ukraine.
While the reader has no choice but to open himself up to Bernish's thoughts that repeatedly circle around various
frustrations,
disappointments, and futile longings, the characters within the story have no desire to hear him complain about his
marriage, his
financial difficulties, and the
cruelty of his associates in grain dealing. Nevertheless, Bernish is determined to find someone who's willing to listen. Ever on the prowl for open ears, Bernish stands and gazes into a window of a house, looking at beautiful young
woman staring outwards. He wants to come in and unburden his thoughts to her under the pretext of wanting to talk
business with her husband. He, himself is married but lives apart from his
wife, not even bothering to see her at all. Just like everyone else, she is not open to hearing him recount his trials and tribulations. Finding her repellingly green faced and stub
nosed, Bernish believes her to be cold-hearted and indifferent to him. He recalls being once shocked by her lack of
emotion regarding a
sensitive matter. Finding the shreds of a torn
picture of Benish's first wife who suddenly died from an illness, his current wife, Frumke, asks her husband to tell her who is potrayed in the
photo. After he tells her that it is his first wife whose image is captured in the photo, he becomes shocked by her indifference to his answer. Shouldn't she inquire about why he ripped up the picture, if he still misses the
deceased, or even burst out in
anger at his insistence on preserving memory of his old wife while neglecting her, the new spouse? Bernish cynically believes that her lack of emotional insight into him comes from her disinterest in him alltogether. He is convinced that she does not love him because during the time that he has lived apart from her, renting a separate
room in a
farmhouse near the
train depot to conduct business, she would not visit him or even send a letter. Thus, dissatisfied with his wife, Bernish is stoked by his luck in meeting the other young woman. Unlike his wife, he relishes talking to her because she seems to connect and sympathize with his
plight of being stuck in in the company of hateful
grain dealers.
For Bernish, these men are even more hateful than his wife, because they are so
derisive and
mocking of anyone who has gotten in a bad
financial strait. Bernish knows that he is bound to provoke their
scorn sooner or later, since he cannot turn a
profit from any of his
trades and the money inherited from his father and from the marriage dowry is slowly dwindling. He imagines that he will soon become as much maligned as the other unlucky business failure Pinye Lisak, who's become the butt of everybody's
jokes. It is especially two men, Avromchik and Levi Pivniak, who are fond of laughing at the poor Pinye. They mischievously offer to help Lisak get back in the trading business by selling off his raccoon
coat. The suggestion of selling of one's coat can only be interpreted as a cruel joke because one would freeze to death without it in the bitter cold of the
Ukrainian winter. Humor, even if injurious, can be sometimes excused because the
joker may intend to be funny rather than simply insulting. But Pivniak does actually mean to be insulting and offensive, desiring to mock Lisak's
misfortune for its own sake rather than for the value of humor. That's evident because he disdainfully draws attention to Piney's
financial failure even when no humor is involved. Thus, Pivniak offends Lisak with a humorless insult which nevertheless elicits others to laugh at Lisak's misfortune. Watching Lisak desperately trying to collect some money by propositioning sales of his belongings to visiting
grain purchasers, Pivniak brings the nearby assembled crowd of prosperous grain dealers to laughter by ponting towards Lisak and calling him a pauper. " 'He looks like a
pauper already.' ".. swore Levi Pivniak, with (his) noticeable stoop and bulging, mischievous eyes.. The grain dealers, salesmen, and brokers who clustered around him, bared their their tobacco-stained teeth in a hearty laugh that resounded solidly across the empty depot."
Benish certainly guessed correctly that he would likewise become a subject of cruel contemptous joking when
poverty would come to affect him. The young man suffered a financial loss after buying a large stock of
sunflower but being unable to interest the daily arriving wholesale purchasers to buy it from him. He also incurred another loss due to a forfeited loan. One of the men he lent 500 rubles
bankrupted and would likely never repay the sum. These unsuccessful transactions, judging from what previously occured to Lisak, predictably made Benish the subject of
gossip and contempt by fellow grain dealers. Some of them said that Benish should be avoided him because his
propensity for losing
money was contagious and threatened to pass on to them via contact, like an airborn
disease such as the
flu. Ever the joker, Pevniak humorously hinted to the others that Benish caused his own
ruin by implying that statement through a funny
metaphor: "Everyone knows that Benish slapped his own face." Benish is outraged by the comment and, taking the
joke's words into account, vengefully
slaps Pevniak on the face. Later he ruminates over the
humiliation of being mocked by sleeplessly turning and tossing at night. Wishing to at least temporarily get away from being the butt of jokes, Benish dreams of leaving the brood of taunting grain
sellers for a day to visit his hometown so that he can bask in the memories of his
childhood and of the happy times from his first
marriage. Ironically, when he does get to leave his ordinary surroundings, it happens because he has to spend two weeks in
jail for slapping Pevniak in the face.
This review is not meant to be exhaustive in any sense. For those interested in reading the story, you can find it in Ruth Wisse's anthology, The Shtetl and Other Novellas. It may also be worthwhile to read
The Nation's recent article about David Bergelson at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050829/hoberman
Note: David Bergelson's name is often alternately spelled as Dovid Bergelson