Bertha Kalich [Kalish], My Life: An Autobiography, pt. II
Read Part I here.
Published in Der tog (the day) – March 7-Nov. 14, 1925
Translated by Amanda (Miryem-Khaye) Seigel
PART II: EARLY CAREER
May 27, 1925
“Actress and Wife”
I, from my side, must confess to you that I was not among the most famous housewives… Believe me, it was easier for me to perform four acts of Shulamis1 than to cook up a borscht.
My mother-in-law used to indeed complain to me, and she was correct, that a young wife of my age should be able to prepare a meal that should be a delight to eat, but what could I do, since my talent took me in another direction…
I can’t tell you how strongly my husband’s parents were opposed to my performing onstage. They wanted me to remain a wife to my husband and nothing more. Leopold would take care of our livelihood, you stay at home, raise children and cook dinner. A woman has no other task in life, and I must not be otherwise.
…
Several of my colleagues used to come up sometimes and ask me to come back to the stage. Goldfaden, too, was among the visitors to our house, and he, more than everyone, was constantly trying to convince me to go back onto the stage…and Wilensky,2 after a long struggle, after dozens of visits, finally prevailed that I would be allowed to do at least the one performance. I performed and once again it was a holiday in the town and a holiday in my heart… the most prominent people in Lviv came to see the young wife perform. They received me like a dear guest and men—ah, the men!—began surrounding me, like in the good old days.
After this performance, they convinced my folks that I should perform again, and although I was pregnant, I performed and performed until several hours before I went into labor.
Note: In the early 1890’s, Kalich was performing at the Jignitsa, a ramshackle garden theatre in Bucharest managed by Moritz Liblikh. 3Her husband, Leopold Spachner, and infant daughter Lillian, remained in Lviv with Spachner’s parents. Although she had countless admirers, for the first time she reciprocated, if only internally, the romantic feelings of her co-star, Itsikl Goldenberg. He was a young Romanian Yiddish actor who had actually lived with her family in Lviv, and had even been at her wedding, apparently pining all the while for her. She describes here what happens when rumors spread about a supposed offstage romance between her and Goldenberg, and Spachner finds out.
June 13, 1925
Loy sakhmoyd!4
His name was Itsikl Goldenberg.5 I speak his name freely and with this I immortalize a love of two people that was tender, beautiful, loyal, heartfelt, holy… Itsikl Goldenberg loved me, and I him, too. Itsikl knew that I was a married woman, and he understood the obligations that I had to my husband. He went around dreaming of a beautiful time that would, that must come, when Bertha would divorce her husband and become his wife… Goldenberg entrusted his great secret to several of his friends… And remarkable!—He did not entrust me with the same secret.
He did not dare…
He only raised his voice when he performed with me on the stage and it came to a love scene. One could think that the hero of an operetta speaks passionately of love to his heroine, but in truth Itsikl Goldenberg made his declaration of love to Bertha Kalich on the stage.
But although Goldenberg did not tell me that he loved me, his eyes screamed it to me a thousand times. In his eyes lay a deep loneliness and boundless pain of a person who suffers and suffers… Different feelings stormed in my heart. I had given my love and my life away to Spachner. He was good to me and I appreciated him. I was his legal wife, and I understood my obligations. I longed for my child and yearned to see her and embrace her, and at the same time, a spark burned in my heart for Goldenberg…
June 20, 1925
In the net
Spachner wanted to know the truth. He kept his ear to the ground and on the first day he knew of the Goldenberg romance.
As soon as he met the people around the theater, he deduced from them that something was cooking here, although one one said a bad word to him about me. He went around for an entire day with pursed lips, in a stormy mood, and I was nearly ashamed before my colleagues when he showed his angry face when I introduced him.
He displayed a special wrath when Goldenberg came to greet him. He didn’t even answer Goldenberg’s questions about the news from Lviv. He immediately showed him how much he hated him.
When Liblikh called Spachner aside, Goldenberg took advantage of the opportunity to give me a letter. I put the letter in my pocket, so that no one noticed, and while Goldenberg was still standing near me, Spachner was back and threw us such an angry glance that I felt a shiver down my spine… .
I was very friendly to my husband… but the more tender I was, the more strongly an ugly suspicion drilled into his mind and tortured his heart.
“Bertha, I want to know the truth!”
“The truth?” I asked him quietly and calmly, as though I didn’t clearly understand what he meant by that.
“Yes. The truth! The whole sad truth!” he boomed even louder from his entire chest, and scared me so much that I began shaking like a fish.
In his eyes burned an infernal fire: he paced up and down the room, and didn’t even look in the direction where I was sitting…
“You want to know the truth?” I asked my husband even more quietly, and measured him with my eyes from head to toe.
I felt deeply insulted. It seemed to me that a coarse hand had smacked me across the face. I rebelled, and my heart began beating like a bandit.
Right at that moment I decided not to let myself be terrorized, even by my own husband… I understood the situation and acted like a mature, detached person.
…I looked into his eyes, and put both of my hands on his shoulders and spoke to him in a serious, but friendly, manner:
“Who told you a story about something that never happened?”
I asked him. “Who embittered your heart and who disturbed your rest?”
Spachner stood silently with his head bowed.
“Tell me, Leopold”, I began again. “What did the bad people tell you? Tell me, who spread rumors about your wife? Who tricked you so bitterly and gruesomely? And who threw the poison of jealousy in your heart?”
And when Spachner remained silent, I wanted in the first moment to tell him everything that had happened in the three months that I had been in Romania… but I did not. I knew Spachner and I knew that he would not understand and would not believe. As soon as I confessed my sympathy for Goldenberg, he would interpret it in the most brutal way, and I decided to wait for a more favorable opportunity to tell him about my innocent relationship with Goldenberg.
…When he told me that people assured him that there was an intimate love relationship between me and Goldenberg, I denied it absolutely and was successful in calming him down by degrees.
“Did you meet him often?” asked Spachner, beginning to interrogate me pleasantly.
“No!” I answered. “Did he express love for you at this or that opportunity?” he asked further.
“No” I answered again, consciously lying, in order to calm my husband’s nerves.
Spachner gave the impression that he believed me, but I knew that he didn’t believe me. He was cunning and smart, and evil tongues had probably babbled to him and his agitated imagination supplied the rest.
I hoped that shortly, when Spachner would cool down from his first, foolish and vulgar suspicion, that I would be able to tell him about my childish play at romance with Goldenberg and then he would understand.
…In the early hours…lying in bed with my eyes half-closed, I saw how Spachner got up…and noticed the letter that Goldenberg had given me the day before as it fell out of the pocket [of my dress].
His hands trembled as he read, read, one page after another, until he finished all four pages of the letter. Then he put the letter back in the pocket of my dress and sat down by the window, rubbed his forehead and sighed such a heavy sigh that echoed in all four corners of the room.
June 24, 1925
The Third Act
…Now that he had found Goldenberg’s letter in the pocket of my dress, and read there of the great love that Goldenberg poured out to me, my situation was quite desperate. I didn’t know how to extricate myself from the troubling blunder… And the most difficult moment of my life arrived. I had to play out the strongest scene of the third act of my own drama. I had to deal with it, not according to a text of an author, who had thought up some kind of a wild story, but according to my own impulse.
For the first time, I thought about realism on the stage. For the first time, I realized that things don’t happen only in a theater play, but really in life itself. The phrase that “theater is the mirror of life” suddenly acquired flesh and blood in my mind, and I felt in myself the suffering of all of the heroines that I had until that time played onstage.
Just one sweet thought delighted my troubled heart, the thought that I was pure and innocent. [This was] the thought that I was just the victim of a blunder, and because I believed that in the end, truth would reign, my soul became lighter.
Spachner…stood for a while, as though considering what to do, and a second later, grabbed my hand and yelled out loud so that the walls nearly shook,
“Get up!”
I opened my eyes, supposedly sleepy and supposedly very frightened. I looked around the room and then stopped my eyes upon Spachner. His face was as dark as coal, his eyes – two burning lamps. His whole body trembled.
“What happened, Leopold?”
I asked him calmly, and suppressed my upset and fear for what must come now, in the next moment.
“Nothing!” he answered. “Nothing! I just want you to get up.”
…Spachner…sat down across from me without any pretense and began to interrogate me.
“Does it mean that you are carrying on a love affair with Goldenberg?”
I sat in silence.
“Why don’t you answer?” Spachner became angry.
I didn’t dare to say a word.
Spachner took my hand, squeezed it tightly, and yelled out angrily.
“Why don’t you answer?”
In my head, demons were leading a devilish dance; my blood boiled in me. One moment I felt hot, the next I felt cold. I was powerless, and besides that, I had thought all morning about what to tell Spachner, but nonetheless my tongue was paralyzed from saying a word.
Despite that, I soon regained control of myself, lifted my head, freed my hand from Spachner’s hand, and explained to him precisely and exactly what had happened between me and Goldenberg.
“Goldenberg loves me”. These were the first words I said, and after that, I told him that since I had come to Romania, Goldenberg had explained to me that he couldn’t live without me, and that he longed for me, and if I also loved him, I should divorce my husband and marry him.
“How often did you meet with Goldenberg?”
Spachner interrupted…
“Quite often!”
“Did you promise him that you would divorce your husband?”
“No!” was my answer.
“You’re telling a lie!” Spachner shouted out.
I could not tolerate the tone in which Spachner spoke to me, so I lifted my finger to him and warned him:
“Don’t speak to me in that tone. Don’t forget who I am! Your words insult and disgust me. You are treating me brutally and I will not allow it!”
“Is that so?”
Spachner answered with a disparaging grimace. “You don’t like my speech, you don’t like my tone? I know, I know! You like Goldenberg’s speech, Goldenberg’s tone! I am only your husband, he is your lover!”
My blood began to boil even more strongly. I shuddered with emotion and before I could think about what to do, I screamed, as dramatically as I could, “I want a divorce!”
I wanted to take back the words immediately, but it was not appropriate, my pride would have suffered too much.
Spachner grasped the situation.
And as it appeared, he understood from my speech that I had resolved to leave him. He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room, wrung his hands, and his silence was so gruesome, that my heart seized.
That’s how it continued for several minutes, and it seemed to me that my heart would burst from sorrow. Spachner had not expected such a tragedy, and I regretted greatly the words I had said, that I wanted a divorce.
And I went to Spachner, stopped him in the middle of the room, and with a bowed head began to weep like a small child…
I lifted my tearful eyes to Spachner and said,
“No, no, Leopold. I don’t want a divorce from you. It’s only you that I love.”
Now, Spachner was silent. No author had written prose for him, and he too stammered.
Instead of words, Spachner utilized a dramatic effect. He went to the chair upon which my dress lay, removed the letter and gave it to me.
“Have you read what’s written in the letter?” he asked.
“No”, I answered. “Yesterday, Goldenberg gave me the letter and I didn’t have time to read it yet.”
Spachner took the letter out of the envelope, and began reading for me in a trembling voice.
“Beloved of my heart, Bertha. And now that your husband is here, what will become of our love? The time has come, dear Bertha, when you must take a position…
You will have to say your word. I await your word with great impatience, and let it be as soon as possible…”
Spachner… leapt towards me with a wild fury. He grabbed me around the throat with both hands and began strangling me. I fell onto the bed and wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. “Help me!” I barely stammered out. But I had lost my voice. Only God in heaven heard.
June 27, 1925
Have you ever watched the river near your town after a summer storm? Have you noticed how calm and placid it becomes, when the weather clears up, and the sun appears in the sky?…I will always remember the image of the river after a storm, when I think about my mood after that difficult scene with Spachner …Not only me, but also Spachner suddenly became mild, soft, tender, as though nothing had just happened between us.
We made up and became close friends. We decided never to make any mutual accusations.
Forgetting the past, and thinking about the future—that became our motto, and we kept strictly to our decision.
Only one person suffered greatly in this family drama, and that person was Goldenberg… Spachner gave Liblikh an ultimatum: either Bertha Kalich stays in the theater, or Goldenberg. And Liblikh was forced to unwillingly fire Goldenberg from his position…
July 27, 1925
I have not seen Goldenberg since then. He did see me, he watched my movements, and wherever I went, he contrived to at least glance at me.
The wig-maker, Mrs. Frankel, who used to supply wigs for our theater, also had a sort of “boarding house” where Goldenberg lived. More than once, I ended up going to Mrs. Frankel’s to get a wig. But I never went alone. Every time, Miss Finkelstein, or some chorus girl, would accompany me, not to allow an opportunity for people to talk. How many times I was at Mrs. Frankel’s house, I never saw Goldenberg there. He used to hide in the next room and look at me through the crack in the door. He was too polite to put me in an uncomfortable situation.
And one time it happened that I did meet Goldenberg, but luckily, I was in the company of Spachner and several friends. At that time, it almost came to bloodshed, and it was only thanks to my understanding of the situation that a scandal was avoided.
On a certain evening, I was with Spachner and other people from the theater in a steakhouse to eat a meal. This place was a kind of theater hangout, and as soon as we entered we noticed Goldenberg with a whole group of his fans sitting at a long table, set with perhaps twenty bottles of wine.
My first advice to Spachner was that we should immediately leave that place, but Spachner did not want to leave. “There’s nothing to fear,” he said, and expansively made himself comfortable at a table immediately opposite Goldenberg’s table.
When our group was already seated, and the restaurateur began to serve the food, an arrogant shouting was heard in the entire hall.
“Blood will flow like water tonight,” someone shouted in the restaurant, and it suddenly became so quiet, that one could hear the beating of my heart.
Our table was silent. The restaurateur remained standing with a plate of eggplant salad on his palm, unable to move. He was probably thinking about what to do—he didn’t want a scandal at his place.
It was a tense situation. I’ll be damned if I know what kind of expression was on my face then, but I felt like something bad was about to happen.
The silence was broken by a happy and feverish “Lekhayim!” (Cheers) at their table. The group there apparently wanted to give themselves courage, and they filled their glasses one after another. The air became heavy, and the word “blood” reached our ears.
“We want to bathe in dog’s blood tonight,” shouted the same voice again, and this time it seems that any moment now, the entire group would rise from their seats and unleash themselves upon us. But Goldenberg forced the shouter back into his seat and quietly warned him not to create a scandal.
The group didn’t calm down and when we rose from our seats to leave the restaurant, they also stood up and followed us. On the street, several of them came at us and wanted to grab Liblikh and Spachner, but Goldenberg was so swift that he stopped his patriots in time, and in the meantime, we vanished.
That was the last time I saw Goldenberg in Bucharest. Intrigues surrounding him continued in the Jignitsa for a long time yet, but finally, everything quieted down, and Bucharest forgot the romance between him and myself.
The curtain had fallen on an interesting period of my life, and period that I always recall with great respect for its hero, Itsikl Goldenberg.6
- Abraham Goldfaden’s major play was considered a proving ground for Yiddish actresses of the time.
↩︎ - Bernard Wilensky (1866-1922). See Zalmen Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun Yidishn teater, vol. 1, p. 719.
↩︎ - Moritz (Yitskhok-Leyb) Liblikh (d. 1913), owner of the Jignitsa Theatre and relative of Itsikl Goldenberg. See Zalman Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun Yidishn teater, vol. 2, p. 1038. ↩︎
- “Thou shalt not covet,” the title of a Goldfaden play, also known as Dos tsenter gebot (the tenth commandment). ↩︎
- See Zalman Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun Yidishn teater, vol. 1, p. 273.
↩︎ - When Goldenberg made his first American tour, Kalich was already performing on Broadway. Goldenberg performed at the Windsor Theatre in an October 1908 production of Zaraya, or, the beautiful Jewess as “Henrike” alongside Rosa Karp. Leopold Spachner is listed as the manager in the printed program for this production. Goldenberg also toured with Jacob P. Adler, Boris Thomashefsky, and Kalich’s old friend Regina Prager. He was billed as Isidor Goldenberg, the “beloved singer who will sing and declaim” at a concert and literary evening at the New Clinton Hall in 1910. That same year, he played the lead in Uriel Acosta at a benefit evening; A 1910 census record shows Goldenberg as an underemployed actor living with his younger wife, Lena, infant daughter, Mary, brother-in-law, and a boarder on 7th Street in Manhattan. He later returned to Romania to run the Jignitsa, although records of his life and work after about 1930 are unclear. ↩︎