Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (10 page)

I wasn’t eager to leave the warm house, nor Grandpa’s songs, nor my newly returned Mother. Mother must have sensed this, too, and while I was pulling on my coat she called out from her bed, “Let him stay home one more day. He won’t miss anything.”

There were no objections.

I looked out the window with fresh eyes. It was blue and bright. Grandpa must have already gladdened his heart with a drop of aquavit. He was walking around the house, very pleased with himself, and regaled us with his selections of wordless melodies, everyday songs, and festival tunes. Grandma shuffled softly about in her red nightcap, lit the stove, and started fixing breakfast.

Mother was the last to get up. Now, in the bluish-white light coming through the windowpanes, her face looked young and serene. Not until this morning had I noticed Mother’s warm, soft double chin and her pale blue eyes. She was wearing a thin, black petticoat with pointed edges, which rustled as she moved.

“Did you buy that?” Grandma bent down and fingered the garment.

“Do you think I can afford such things?” Mother replied with a quiet bitterness that was at odds with her serene face. “It’s a gift from Gitl-Hodes.”

“Silk?”

“What else? Cotton?”

Grandma wiped the corners of her mouth with two fingers. Grandpa cast a sideways glance at the garment and asked casually, “How much did a thing like that cost?”

Nobody answered.

Mother sat down with her back to the room and began combing out her wig.

I wasn’t sure why, but that black silk garment, that was given to Mother by Aunt Gitl-Hodes in Warsaw, somehow didn’t appeal to me. In it, she seemed to be someone else, not the same Mother who had burst into the house one morning at dawn, arms outstretched, crying, “Moyshe’s gone!”

At home I’d never seen Mother like that. Her arms were never so bare. At home she never washed with scented soap or preened before the mirror the way she did now.

“Frimet, what’s taking you so long?” Grandma called out. “Breakfast’s already on the table.”

“Never mind,” said Mother, patting the curl on her wig. “That’s how they do things in Warsaw.”

“But this isn’t Warsaw.”

It was a while before Mother was ready to come to the table. She walked stiffly, puffed out like a peacock.

We all sat down, Mother opposite me, her warm, little double chin quivering slightly. Only now did I notice that Mother had brought back with her from Warsaw two dimples on either side of her cheeks. She took dainty bites, sipped her coffee through slightly opened lips, and, in the middle of all this, turned to me and said, “Mendlshi, is that how you eat?”

“How’s he supposed to eat?” Grandpa asked.

“In Warsaw they don’t eat like that.”

“Enough already with your Warsaw! So, she doesn’t like how he eats. And do I eat any better?”

“You don’t eat nicely either, Father.”

“Rokhl, listen to what your daughter is telling me. I’ve lived sixty-two years and never knew that I don’t eat nicely. Pray tell me, how do you eat nicely?”

“You don’t gulp your food. You take small bites.”

“How wonderful!”

Mother didn’t respond. I tried to take small bites and not gulp my food. But I felt a tightening in my throat and my eyes started tearing. Grandma set down her cup of coffee and called out, louder than usual, “Mendl, are you crying?”

Mother, too, set down her cup. Her double chin became slightly distorted. “Hush, Mendlshi, don’t cry,” she said, stroking me. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you eat.”

“That’s Warsaw for you! Who’d have ever thought of it! N-n-a!” Grandpa growled.

Mother finally calmed me down, but I was left with a heavy heart.

“See, what a beautiful day it is,” said Grandpa, back at his worktable. “Mendl, why don’t you go outside and get some fresh air?”

“I don’t know.” Mother hesitated. “I’m still a bit worried about him.”

“It won’t hurt him,” said Grandma, “so long as the sun is shining.” They wrapped me and bundled me and I went out into the street, feeling like someone who had just surfaced from a submersion in deep waters.

“Be careful of the sleighs!” Grandma called after me. “Don’t stay out too long, you hear, Mendl?”

Outside, the street was so white and still that, for a moment, I had to close my eyes. It seemed as if I’d blundered into some strange town. Everyone looked as if they were deaf, walking with muffled treads.

Snow lay between the iron spikes of the fence around the church and upon the eaves above the windows. On the road itself, the snow was piled high and soft. A small sleigh glided by merrily with a soft tinkling of bells. Students, let out from the gymnasium, were pelting one another with snowballs, yelling as they raced by.

How the town had changed during the time I lay sick in bed! On Lublin Street there were tall, snow-covered, carved wooden posts, supported by smaller posts, looking like legs set wide apart. The street led uphill. It seemed longer and wider. The blue-nosed Polish guard was gone from the sentry box. On Warsaw Street, where Motl Straw’s wife ran a store, there were no displays of bales of cloth or wicker baskets. Everything was white and silent.

On the promenade I glanced up at the snow-covered cross of the German church. I remembered that it was around here that I had wandered on my way to Aunt Miriam’s in search of Mother. Now all was quiet, not a soul in sight. Suddenly, a figure loomed before me, a Jew wearing a tall, plush hat.

“Mendl! Where are you going?” I heard a familiar voice call out.

“Father!” I cried out, momentarily frightened and feeling a constriction in my throat.

“Where are you going? Are you well again?”

“Yes, Father, I am.”

The man in the tall, plush hat was my father alright. He’d turned grayer, his eyes had a more dreamy, quieter look.

“I was at your teacher’s today to find out about you.”

“I was supposed to go back to the
kheyder
today.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Mother’s come back.”

“Hah?” Father lifted his face halfway, and his dreamy eyes narrowed. “Your mother, you say? When did she come back?”

“Last night.”

“Last night? So why don’t we see her?”

“She’s at Grandma’s.”

“Is that so? At Grandma’s?”

Both of us fell silent. Father’s eyes opened wide. His mustache seemed to have grown larger and appeared greenish-yellow.

“I didn’t come to see you while you were sick,” he said, speaking not to me but to the German church, “because I don’t like your grandmother. But don’t think … I knew … I knew everything that was going on with you. Who do you think sent for the special doctor?”

Father’s voice became quieter, more halting.

“So she’s back …” he said, as if reminding himself anew. “And she went straight to them …” He sighed heavily. “How does she look?”

“Fine, just fine.”

More silence. We walked together. The soldier who guarded the prison came toward us, carrying a rifle.

“Have you eaten anything yet?” Father broke the silence.

“Yes, I’ve eaten.”

“Are you cold? Come with me to Mordkhe’s soup kitchen. You’ll warm up a bit.”

“No, Father, I’m alright.”

“What are you doing out here in the street?”

“I just went out for some fresh air.”

“That’s good. Come, I’ll bring you back.”

He took me by the hand. I don’t remember ever walking with Father like that, and I didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or happy. I only knew that it felt good.

“I was at your teacher’s today,” Father repeated, “and he told me … your teacher …”

He stopped right in the middle of his sentence, turned thoughtful, and gazed into space. His large, fleshy nose looked as if it had separated from his face. Very slowly he unbuttoned his shabby winter coat, reached into one of the deep pockets of his trousers, pulled out a soft, flat, leather purse, and pushed something into my hand.

“Here,” he said, “take this and go buy yourself something.”

This was also the first time that Father had ever given me any money. But what good did it do me? What could one buy with all that money?

“Buy something for Mother,” Father said softly, as he led me to my grandparents’ house.

“Go in,” he said, “you might catch another chill, God forbid.”

I wanted to kiss Father’s hand, that, too, I think for the first time. But he snatched it away and stammered, “There, that’s that. Go inside … go …”

I was just about to go in, when he called me back.

“Mendl, what else did I want to say? Yes … Don’t tell them that I don’t like your grandmother … that I just don’t like her.”

That same evening Crazy Wladek turned up earlier than usual. His face was flushed, his yellow beard matted and damp.

“Why are you so early today, Wladek?” asked Grandpa.

Wladek growled into his matted beard, chewing on a full mouth of food. “The devil take her, that Magda! She should drop dead right now, damn her!”

“Who’s Magda? And why are you cursing?”

“Why not! She slapped me across the face with a fish!”

Grandpa let loose a high-pitched, drawn-out laugh. Grandma picked up her spectacles from a pile of nightcaps and shook her little head.

“Serves you right!” she said. “Who asked you to fool around with girls, who?”

“I didn’t fool around. A pox on her!”

“The less said the better.” Grandma all but swallowed her words.

“With a fish, you say?” said Grandpa, breaking into a fit of laughter. “Oy, I’m holding my sides … So tell us, how did it happen?”

“I beg your pardon,” Grandma sniffed. “That’s just the sort of news you would want to hear!”

Wladek remained furious and kept on chewing with his mouth closed. Mother took no part in the conversation. She was sitting at Grandpa’s worktable, wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, looking down into a book.

Wladek sat down at his accustomed place near the kitchen. He pulled off his shoes with a groan, undid the strings of the sack which held his provisions, and began pulling out big handfuls of straw.

It was now quiet in the room. Everybody was occupied. The lamp on Grandpa’s worktable cast its light into the corner where he was sewing, and Mother reading. The rest of the room lay in deep shadow.

Grandpa was rushing to finish up a piece of work. Every now and then his shoulders gave a shudder, as if he had the hiccups. Nobody paid any attention to what Wladek was doing in his corner by the kitchen. Presumably he was chomping on the crusts of bread that he’d picked up on his rounds.

But that’s not what Wladek was doing at the moment. He’d been busy making a big pile of straw that was heaped around his feet.

Now Wladek was rummaging in his pockets, and at last he came up with a box of matches. I saw all that Wladek was doing. I thought he was going to light his pipe, but then, I remembered that Wladek didn’t smoke. He struck a match and held the small flame to the heap of straw spread around his feet.

Wisps of smoke began to rise from the heap. Wladek stretched out his feet to the smoke. There was no question about it, Wladek was about to burn himself.

“Grandma! Look what Wladek’s doing!” I called out.

Everybody stopped in their tracks. Grandpa swung one shoulder around and squinted. Mother removed her golden glasses, and Grandma was the first to leap up.

“God Almighty! What have you done, you crazy
goy
!” she screamed, and began pivoting in place like a churn.

The lit straw started to blaze.

“Dovid!” Grandma threw up her hands. “We’re going to die from the smoke. Look what he’s done! Woe is us!”

Grandpa flung down his sewing. His glasses slipped down to his mouth. The peak of his cap fell almost to his ear. He tried to push the threaded needle into a lapel but it wouldn’t go in. He threw the needle onto the table, leaped onto the smoldering straw, and began hopping up and down. Grandpa seemed to have gone crazy, Grandma too. Why did she grab a pillow from the bed and hurl it at Grandpa’s dancing feet?

“Crazy one! What are you doing?” he shouted at her, his face trembling, as he kicked the pillow back into the room.

Mother grabbed Grandma’s shawl, and ran to the door.

Only Wladek remained in the same spot, with his red, frozen feet, chewing methodically, and shaking his nose and chin.

“Blockhead! What have you done!” Grandpa shouted at Wladek, all the while continuing to dance on the smoldering straw.

“What have I done?” Wladek snorted with a full nose. “Why is
Pan krawiec
shouting like that? It’s winter. I only wanted to get warm. Damn that Magda, she should drop dead this minute! Why didn’t she let me into her bed? Why?”

“May you break all your bones, Magda too!” Grandma pronounced her blessing over Wladek. “Did you come here to set fire to us?”

“I didn’t want to make a fire. What’s
Pan krawiec
talking about?”

“What are you doing then, you fool? Is that how you warm your feet?”

Grandpa meanwhile had managed to put out the fire with his dancing, and was now gasping for breath, like a consumptive.

Somebody opened a window and the smoke drifted out in a blue, near-invisible haze. Mother wrapped a kerchief around her head and tried to shield me from the open window. Only Grandpa remained still, standing in his vest and tapping his lapels.

“Where did I put that needle? Where is it?”

At that moment, while we were still distraught, the door opened very slowly and there, on the threshold, stood my father.

“Father’s here!” I called out, the first to catch sight of him.

I took a step toward the door.

“Good evening.” Father looked with amazement around the disordered room.

“And a good evening to you!” Grandpa responded. “Well, hello. How are you?”

Grandma quickly closed the window. Mother’s golden spectacles dropped to the floor.

“Take out all that rubbish, you hear?” Grandma bent over Wladek. “And then go, you good-for-nothing!”

Wladek lumbered to his feet. He gathered up the scorched bunches of straw and, grumbling under his breath, carried them outside.

“Why are you standing there like that? Sit down,” Grandpa said.