The Empire of Kalman the Cripple, and: Ship of the Hunted (review)

150 SHOFAR Spring 1998 Vol. 16, No.3 In the last section about the fatal illness of his sister Beth, he recalls their grandmother, whose many infirmities revealed to him early in life that the body could betray one as it now had his sister. Their parents, living far away near their older son, still have a strained relationship with Beth, her black husband and their daughter, and Shapiro becomes the chief family member to be with Beth during her courageous but unsuccessful fight against cancer. In the postscript written after her death, he claims he cannot yet write to transform her suffering and his own grief into art, but the book belies his assertion. His reader feels for Beth, her husband and her child; for the umesolved issues with her parents; and for the loving relationship she shared with her younger brother, which Shapiro succeeds in painting with poignancy and tenderness. Elizabeth Klein UniversityofIllinois atUrbana-Champaign The Empire of Kalman the Cripple, by Yehuda Elberg, translated from the Yiddish by Barbara Ellen Galli. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. 330 pp. $26.95. Ship ofthe Hunted, by Yehuda Elberg, translated from the Yiddish by Barbara Ellen Galli. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. 304 pp. $26.95. Born in Poland in 1912, Yehuda Elberg comes from a rabbinical family and is himself an ordained rabbi. More important, however, he brings to his fiction the same authenticity of detail we recognize in the work of Yiddish writers such as I. J. Singer and Chaim Grade-that is, a feeling for place and people that give Elberg's thickly textured family chronicles both heft and interest. Syracuse University Press-and its editor, Robert Mandell-are to be commended, first, for launching its impressive Library of Modem Jewish Literature and thus publishing such formerly out-of-print contemporary Jewish-American classics as Cynthia Ozick's The Cannibal Galaxy, Steve Stem's Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven, and Johanna Kaplan's 0 My America! and, now, for bringing Elberg to the attention of English-speaking readers. No library with ambitions ofhaving a Jewish collection worth being taken seriously can avoid purchasing the entire series; and I would say the same for general readers out to know about the various directions Jewish fiction is currently taking. Which brings me to Elberg. His work will surely strike many as decidedly oldfashioned -that is, if one is looking for postrnodernist experimentation or other forms of literary razzle-dazzle. But ifone simply turns Elberg's pages and allows his particular brand of magic to work, the result is an altogether satisfying read. Of the two novels Book Reviews 151 now available in English translation, I prefer The Empire ofKalman the Cripple, a psychological case study ofan impish boy-and then a malicious adult-who ruthlessly makes his way up the shtetlladder in early twentieth-century Poland. His dreams ofbeet refineries and electric power plants (the stuff of "empire" in that time, that place) are balanced against the human cost such ambition exacts, as well as the large cast of vividly drawn characters who surround him. Ultimately, Kalman is more, much more, than a mere villain, however much he seems to relish the role: He was pushing the workmen to have his house finished for Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year. Why the rush? Damn ifhe knew what he needed such a big house for. When he first started making plans for the house he still had this fantasy about moving that whole tribe into his house. Now he was bored with them, just as he was bored with the sugar factory he had bought at such a big bargain, and his mounting losses now made it no bargain at all. The mill he was building would run on electricity, but it was really a windmill-it was born in his hot head. Along the way, Kalman ends up with a soul every bit as crippled as is his body. Moreover, he comes to understand this every bit as much as his author does. Indeed, what makes the tale worthwhile are the ways that Elberg dramatizes the condition I've just sketched in very broad outline. Moreover, Elberg knows...