Jupiter the Stupider

The Legend of Gideon Marx-1

Once upon a time there was a Jewish physician, named Pavel Marx. He was the most talented doctor in the Ukraine and Russia, perhaps the world, and travelled between shtetls treating people who were very sick. When another doctor was unable to cure a patient, Pavel was summoned for a second opinion. More often than not he found a cure. Some patients he treated were so close to death their families had already built caskets and dug holes in the ground. Pavel saw things other doctors didn’t, symptoms that were almost invisible. Unlike them, he examined every inch of every patient he saw. It wasn’t unusual to find Pavel examining the toes of a patient suffering from head pain. And he asked many questions. If the patient could still speak, he questioned the patient and those who cared for him about things seemingly unrelated to the patient’s aliment. And if the patient couldn’t speak, he questioned only those who cared for him. The people in the shtetls thought Pavel was a sorcerer, a man with unexplained magical powers. But he wasn’t gifted that way. Pavel’s gift was that he could quickly take in dozens of pieces of information and put them together in his mind to solve a problem—a problem other doctors thought was an unsolvable mystery. In truth, he was a gifted problem-solver. Today he would be known as a gifted diagnostician.

One day the daughter of a wealthy man in St. Petersburg, a cousin of the Czar, became very sick. So sick she couldn’t eat or drink or lift her head off her pillow. The wealthy man summoned his family doctor who came to examine her. The doctor spent an hour with her, doing all the regular things doctors do, but afterward told the wealthy man he had no idea what was making her sick. The wealthy man summoned another doctor who reexamined the girl. He also said he was puzzled by her symptoms and had no idea how to treat her. The wealthy man summoned three more doctors. All of them admitted they too were stumped. Meanwhile the girl was getting worse. Her skin was turning grey. Her lips were turning blue. Her breathing was shallow and weak. The wealthy man was becoming desperate. He summoned all the doctors in St. Petersburg, including the five who had already seen his daughter. There were eleven of them. He sent them into her room to examine her together. Every hypothesis one of them came up with, another discredited. After eight hours they told the wealthy man they were no closer to discovering what was wrong with his daughter than they were when they first laid eyes on her. The wealthy man was angry and distraught. As the doctors prepared to leave his house, he wondered aloud about their abilities and qualifications. He didn’t care if his words were insulting. He wanted them to feel his pain. One of them, the youngest and bravest, lingered for a moment after his colleagues had left. He approached the wealthy man and said, “There’s another doctor you might try. A fish salesman told me about him. Though I haven’t actually met him. He’s a Jew who lives in a shtetl called Derazhnia. He has a wife and young son. Apparently he’s so talented he can cure a patient who already has his foot in a grave.”

With no time to waste, the wealthy man sent two soldiers in a carriage to fetch this miracle worker. It was normally a six-day return trip, but they travelled at incredible speed from the moment the sun rose to the moment it set, exhausting the horses, which twice they had to trade for rested ones. They reached the shtetl and fetched Pavel and brought him to St. Petersburg in only three days.

The wealthy man was waiting in the doorway when they arrived. Without introducing himself, he rushed Pavel upstairs to the girl’s bedroom. She had the appearance of a skeleton. Pavel bent over her and put his ear to her mouth to listen to her breathe. He put his hand on her chest. Just as he was about to tell the wealthy man there was nothing he could do to save her because her illness was incurable, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she stopped breathing. Pavel straightened up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She had cancer. In her lungs.” He expected to see inconsolable grief in the wealthy man’s eyes. Instead, he saw them fill with rage.

“You put your hand on my daughter and a second later she’s dead!” The wealthy man shouted. “I suppose you only cure Jews and kill everyone else!”

Because of his work, Pavel had met men who expressed their grief in anger. Though it was God, not him, they’d expressed it at. He wanted to defend himself but couldn’t think of the right words—words that in his mind wouldn’t further enrage the wealthy man.

“You have nothing to say for yourself? Has the angel of death lost his tongue?”

“I know how—”

“You know how to kill people! That’s what you know!”

The wealthy man picked up a marble statue of a ballerina from the dresser and smashed it against Pavel’s head, knocking him to the floor. A second later Pavel felt a heavy weight on his stomach and hands around his neck. They were the last things he felt.

Now one might assume the wealthy man was worried about getting arrested by the police. But back then relatives of the Czar didn’t get arrested. And they especially didn’t get arrested for killing Jews. The police would have been happy to accept any story the wealthy man told them, for example that Pavel accidentally slipped and banged his head.

Now one might also assume that that was the end of the wealthy man’s anger. After all, he’d just killed a man with his bare hands. But in his mind he still wasn’t even. Pavel had taken the life of his child. In return, he was going to take the life of Pavel’s child.

The next day he sent two soldiers—the same ones who’d originally fetched the doctor—back to the shtetl. Though this time with very different orders—to break into the doctor’s home at nightfall and murder his only child, Gideon, who had just turned two.

Those orders, of course, were never carried out. If they were, there would be no legend to speak of. Gideon’s story would have ended before it began.

Gideon and his mother, whose name was Sofia, were fortunate in one regard—many people felt deeply indebted to the doctor. One of those people happened to be the wealthy man’s groundskeeper. He was half-Jewish and had a nephew living in Kiev who was cured by Pavel of a near-fatal skin disease. After learning of the wealthy man’s plan for vengeance, the groundskeeper risked his own life and stole a horse and set out for Derazhnia. It was dark and the paths were hard to see but he travelled all night and got a head start on the soldiers. When he arrived at the shtetl he told Sofia and all the townspeople what had happened to Pavel and what was going to happen to Gideon if the wealthy man had his way. Waves of overwhelming grief washed over Sofia. Her knees buckled under her, and she fell to the ground sobbing. The townspeople, most of whom knew someone who was cured by the doctor, hid her and Gideon in a covered wagon and transported them in the middle of the night to a neighboring shtetl, where the townspeople also knew and revered the doctor. They too hid the pair in a covered wagon and transported them to the next westernmost shtetl. And the two kept moving like this, from shtetl to shtetl, until they were in Poland. But still Sofia feared the wealthy man’s quest for vengeance. It was possible he’d put a bounty on Gideon’s head. And it was possible he had friends and business associates in all the countries of Europe who would happily take the child’s life not just for the bounty but also to win favor with the wealthy man, which, if you were a trader or importer and exporter, could prove quite lucrative.

So they kept moving westward, sometimes by carriage and sometimes by train, all the way to England. And because she still didn’t feel safe, she spent all her remaining money and purchased a cabin aboard a ship to Canada.

It was a slow and tedious journey. Sofia and Gideon were both seasick the whole time. The food was the same every day, lukewarm porridge in the morning, stew and potatoes in the evening. Neither could eat more than a few bites without becoming nauseous. The cabin had enough room for only one narrow bed. Gideon slept against his mother’s side and woke up crying every couple hours. She gave him sips of water and comforted him until he fell asleep again. She hardly slept at all and cried silently most of the night thinking about Pavel. “Your father was a great doctor,” she whispered to Gideon, wiping tears from her eyes. “One day you will be too. You’ll solve the most difficult medical mysteries. Other doctors will marvel at you.”

When the ship reached Canada they were thin and pale. The port they docked at was in Halifax. They went into a big stone building. Their suitcase and coats were taken from them. The first person they met was a nurse. She was wearing a white uniform and had four interpreters with her and was surprised to hear Sofia speak English. It was in fact one of many languages Sofia spoke. She was raised speaking Ukrainian, Russian, Yiddish and German. Pavel had taught her English and French. Gideon was being raised in a house of six languages and spoke in sentences that mixed two or more together. The nurse looked in Sofia and Gideon’s mouths and ears, took their temperatures and put on white gloves and checked their hair for lice. Afterward she gave Sofia two oranges and told her to eat one and feed one to Gideon. Both had never tasted anything so sweet and wished they could have eaten twenty more. The next person they met was an old woman in a blue jacket and skirt. She also had four interpreters with her. She too was surprised to hear English spoken back to her. “Do you have a passport or birth certificate or any official papers?” she asked Sofia, who had none of these things. The old woman asked Sofia her full name and religion and Gideon’s full name and why they had come to Canada and many other questions. She wrote down Sofia’s answers on long sheets of paper. Despite how harrowing Sofia’s story was, the old woman didn’t express any emotion. Sofia was afraid she would be sent back to Europe and asked the old woman if this was a possibility. “It’s unlikely,” the old woman said. “The Jews sponsor everyone.” Sofia wasn’t sure what that meant but felt some relief in hearing there were other Jews in Canada. After the interview, Sofia was handed a thick rectangular card, with the words Border Inspection across the top, with her and Gideon’s full names and a red circular stamp on one side and an unrecognizable signature on the other and the words Jewish Person on the bottom.

Border InspectionJewish Person“This isn’t a visa,” the old woman said. “You have to apply for one in the next six months.”

She waved her hand in the air and a man appeared carrying the suitcase and coats that belonged to Sofia and Gideon. They followed the man into a small room with wooden benches against two of the walls and a door to a washroom in the other. He set down the suitcase and coats and left and came back with two glasses of water and handed them to Sofia and left again. They were the only passengers in the room. They waited an hour. During that time, Gideon slept on one of the benches. While he slept, Sofia noticed that the door to the washroom had a sliding lock on it about three-quarters of the way up. She locked the door and placed one of the chairs directly beside the frame. After Gideon woke, she told him to go use the washroom. He went over to the door and pulled and pushed the handle. The lock prevented it from moving. He pulled and pushed again. He looked back at Sofia. She told him she wasn’t going to help him. “You have to figure it out yourself,” she said. “There’s only one way.” He pulled and pushed the handle with more force and for a longer time. The door wouldn’t budge. “For God’s sake, look around you.” Sofia’s voice had a hint of anger in it. Gideon did what he was told but still had no idea how to open the door. He started to cry. “Use your brain,” Sofia said. He didn’t understand. “Your brain,” she repeated. He still didn’t understand and cried louder. She walked over to him and lifted him onto the chair. “Now open it.” He bent down and grabbed hold of the handle. “No,” she said. He let go and his crying grew even louder. She took his hand and lifted it over his head and placed it on the lock and told him to look up. His body was shaking. When she released her grip his hand fell to his side. She took hold of it again and using his fingers slid the metal bar to the right unlocking the door. “If you want to solve great mysteries like your father,” she said, lifting him in her arms and wiping tears from his eyes, “you have to use your brain.”