Father's Stories

We children always liked listening to our parents' stories, with mother usually fulfilling our "demands". I also managed to "pull" a few small stories out of my father, with these leaving a long-lasting influence on me.

One of the stories I nudged out of him relates to a pious Jew who was walking by the mansion of a gentile "lord". The gentile stopped him and asked him where he was going. The Jews simple answer, "I don't know", angered the gentile, who ordered his servants to put the Jew in prison. After a while, the gentile's anger subsided, and he ordered the Jew be brought before him. "Why did you give me that answer", he asked the Jew. "I intended to go to the house of prayer," answered the Jew, "and I wound up being thrown in prison instead - one never knows where he is going." The answer placated the gentile lord, who set the pious Jew free.

My father's second story tells about the souls that belong to each other, or rather, marriages written from above even before we are born. The Almighty set an order as to who should marry whom. Sometimes, my father added, one of the two betrothed souls enters the body of a non-Jew. In such cases, they may not marry each other, but must wait to be born again into new bodies. Then, as Jews, they should marry, as they truly belong to each other. This story left me with strange feelings and thoughts for years to come.

The third story I remember talks about a king and his three daughters. One day, the king asked his daughters how much they loved him. The oldest daughter likened her love to something she loved very much, candy. The second daughter liked chocolate more than anything else, so she likened her love to chocolate. The youngest daughter thought about what was most important thing in food, so she likened her love to salt. This humiliating comparison infuriated her father the king, who ordered her out of the palace. He did not even give her a chance to defend herself. As time passed, her suffering intensified. In desperation, she asked her father's friends to help her. One day, they put candy in the king's soup instead of salt; the next day, they put chocolate. The trick worked, with the king realizing how important salt is in his daily life and understanding how much his youngest daughter loved him. He ordered her back in the palace and admired her more than her sisters.

My father also told me that our forefathers were Jews from Russia who escaped Russian tyranny against the Jewish faith about four generations back and settled in Hungary.

One more little saying from my father: an imperfect human body has inside it a bad soul.

Close by our dwelling place ran a small riverbed, where during the summer ducks, ducklings and geese swam playfully all day long. I liked to sit by the river edge, put my legs inside the river and enjoy myself by watching nature, meditating and weaving my far-reaching dreams that I never ran out of.

© David Muskal, 2001