Lond-on-Line Diary0203.1996 One day Michael Rodinsky disappeared from his attic rooms in Princelet Street, Spitalfields, where he had lived for years, alone, buried in his books. All that was known about this Polish Jew was that he had fled from the Nazis and that he studied languages fanatically; day-in, day-out he sank into dictionaries in Hebrew, Russian, French and some ancient dialects. After some weeks the Rabbi once enquired as to the whereabouts of Rodinsky, who was not exactly a zealous guest in the Synagogue, in whose top floor he had been living as far as man could remember and then his existence was forgotton again. 20 years later workers found his rooms untouched, even his spectacles were still laying on his table beneath a thick layer of dust, as well as the remainders of his breakfast and the ticket of a weighing machine, which he had used as a bookmark, showing the weight being 12 Stone 12 pounds. The bed was not made, clothes hung over a chair, bottles stood around and books, books, books. The the rumours of the past were remembered. Rodinsky suffered a stroke on the street and was buried in a nameless grave in a Jewish cemetery, a man that, after being banished from his homeland, was already living half in this and half in the next world. Perhaps he had lost a family, wife and children in the gas chambers, lived now alone and lost, a pawnbroker, with books, with words in foreign tongues and with terrible memories. The books, a respectable collection, were handed over to the Museum of London, his clothes and personal effects were thrown away by the building workers. The house, a solid brickwork building, was built in Georgian style in 1710 as many in the East End. In the centre a solid door with carved frame and canopy, left and right regular high windows, on the upper floors as well. The roof had been designed by the Huguenot silk weavers who had settled in the East End after their banishment from France and continued with their original craftwork. Afterwards came the Jewish tailors, the textile profession is still dominant today in the East End. 1810 the house was transformed into a synagogue. And now its owner, Dominic Dyson, sold it to an international Moslem organisation, which converted it into a Mosque. The Jews have moved out to the better areas such as Hampstead and have made room for the new refugees, the Moslems from Bangladesh. Even the streets are named in two languages, English and Bengali. Bengali children are sitting in the schools. What happened to Michael Rodinsky, only God knows. |
Translated by Pat Gerber |