Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (21 page)

“Listen to him, making fun of everything!”

Mother stormed into the kitchen. Father’s eyes followed her, with a quiet, questioning look.

All that evening, Mother never said another word. Silently, her brow furrowed with worry, she served us supper.

Several flies were asleep on the ceiling. The clock ticked quietly, monotonously … today hay, tomorrow hay. Its weights almost dropped to the top of the dresser. Father slowly pushed them up. Something inside the works gave out a groan, just like in Mother’s heart.

After supper, Mother sat down beside the open window, staring out into the night. A stifling blast of heat wafted over from the opposite house. Upstairs, on the small porch, someone was crawling around in the cubicles. The clock softly chimed the hours, one after another. Mother remained at the window. I could have sworn that in her mind’s eye she saw the brass door handles in the house of her first husband, the
feldsher
. She was probably comparing her former life with her present one. Or maybe she was envying Aunt Khane, now living on her new estate, amid wheat fields and lindens, under a beautiful, wide sky.

My mother, my dear mother, to her very end, never forgot those brass door handles.

It was really true. Mordkhe-Mendl, the total pauper, had become an estate-owner.

“How could that be?” people asked. “Did he rob a church?”

“Maybe he did.”

“And what about Fleischer, the German? Did Mordkhe-Mendl push him out?”

“He must have.”

It was a puzzle and a mystery. The whole town was in an uproar. It wasn’t just strangers who couldn’t make heads or tails of the matter; even the family was at a loss to explain what was going on. People ran out, in the middle of the week, to see the estate for themselves, to make sure that it wasn’t a dream or a delusion.

Even Mordkhe-Mendl’s worst enemies had to admit that it wasn’t a dream. The entire Wyszufka estate, its forests and its meadows, its cattle and its fowl, all now belonged to Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl.

Mother and Father, however, were in no great hurry to join the sightseers. Mother was offended by the fact that neither Mordkhe-Mendl nor Khane had personally come to tell her the good news. Father still refused to believe it, though people continued to congratulate him and a few even began to address him with the honorific
Reb
, mister, calling him “Reb Leyzer, the estate-owner’s brother-in-law.” But he was in no hurry to take a look for himself. Hadn’t he seen an estate before? Didn’t he already know what the Wyszufka place looked like?

We kept putting off our visit from one Sabbath to the next, from one Sunday to the next, until one day a messenger showed up at our house, a tall Gentile, carrying a whip, who asked if
Pan kupiec
—Mr. merchant—was at home.

“Why do you want
Pan kupiec
?”

“Because
Pan
Dziedzic from Wyszufka requests that
Pan kupiec
, his wife, and son come visit.”

“
Pan
Dziedzic?” Father squinted with both eyes. “Who is this Dziedzic?”

“The new owner … what’s his name?”

“Don’t you know the name of your new landlord?”

“I know,” the peasant waved his hand. “What do they call him? Mendl, something like that …”

“Is he the one who just bought the Wyszufka property?”

“That’s him.”

“Some fine Dziedzic, that one.” Father was having his bit of fun. “Are you sure it’s not a mistake?”

“No mistake.”

“But I have no idea who that Dziedzic of yours is.”

“Eh, … you’re pulling my leg. Who doesn’t know Mendl, black Mendl!”

“Oh … that Mendl. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

I had never seen Father in such a jocular mood. Whom was he making fun of? The peasant? Mordkhe-Mendl? Why was he playing dumb?

“Why are you joking?” Mother jumped in. “Your brother-in-law isn’t good enough for you?”

“And what makes you think that he is?” Father shot back.

“So, don’t go see him. Nobody’s begging you.”

Mother’s face was flushed. She put down the dishes with a clatter, and not in their proper place either. She was obviously upset with Father’s contempt for Mordkhe-Mendl.

I also had my quibbles with Father. Why did he begrudge Mordkhe-Mendl his estate? My own father, behaving like this? This was all new to me, and it hurt. After all, I thought, Father never had any brass door handles, so why should he be jealous of others? But in the end, he did go to pay his respects to Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, successor to Dziedzic, a one-time owner of the estate. We all went, including Ite.

The estate lay along the same road where the wooden hovel that once housed Mordkhe-Mendl stood. Only now did we get a good look at it. It was dark and ramshackle, its walls lopsided. Clumps of cracked, yellow clay, applied to keep out the cold, hung from the small, single window. Two bedraggled children, in shirts too short to cover their little bellies, sat on the doorstep, holding empty tin bowls, scraping hard to get at the last clot of grits stuck to the bottom.

They were strangers, blond children, Gentiles. Not too long ago, Mordkhe-Mendl’s own children used to sit on the same doorstep, themselves scraping the bottoms of their empty bowls. Now they lived on their own estate. How unknowable are the ways of the Lord! And there, just beyond the Russian cemetery, it lay, Mordkhe-Mendl’s estate.

We, his close relatives, were visiting Mordkhe-Mendl for the very first time.

The road we were on was also observing its Sabbath rest, empty of the usual jumble of traffic. Now and then a lone peasant cart would rumble by, either going into, or returning from, town. The peasants watched us as we strolled leisurely along, looking refreshed after the Sabbath afternoon nap. Several of them knew Father and touched the peaks of their caps.

“
Niech bendzie Pochwalony
… May God bless you.”

“
Na wieki wiekow
… Forever and ever after.”

The sun looked blankly down, positioned in the sky smack over the middle of the field. Under a poplar tree, in the shade, someone was sitting, head bent, wrapping his leggings. Someone else lay asleep on the grass, warming his backside in the sun. A peasant woman, with two empty baskets at her side, was kneeling in front of an image of the Holy Mother, black and faceless, that dangled from a branch of the poplar. This meant that soon we would be seeing the low, gray wall of the Russian cemetery, its stone surface perpetually wet. It was a strange and cold place. Its crosses were terrifying.

“Over there,” Father stretched out an arm and pointed in the direction of the field. “That’s the place.”

A dark mass loomed in the distance, a forest, perhaps, or an orchard. Every now and then the dark shape opened to reveal a patch of white, flashing in the sun.

“The farmyard’s over there,” said Father, “and that square of white, that’s the palace.”

A palace! That word … it struck a blow to my temples. I had never seen a palace before. I only knew from storybooks that kings and princesses lived in palaces. That my Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, with his tattered coat, should also be living in a palace boggled the mind. Mother couldn’t believe it, either. Now, at the last minute, she was beginning to have her doubts.

“Mordkhe-Mendl lives in that palace over there?” she asked, obviously bewildered, raising a hand to her forehead.

“Must be. If he’s a Dziedzic, then it stands to reason that he should live in a palace,” Father smiled into his beard.

Well, Father could smile to his heart’s content, but here we were, about to go into an estate with an actual palace.

Is this what a palace looks like? The storybooks tell us that palaces are made of gold and crystal. But for Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, a palace like this was fine, too. I saw a wide, white-brick structure with tall, shiny windows. The roof was covered with red tiles, and its eaves had a slight, upward tilt, like the brim of a hat.

Lining the way to the white palace, arrayed like soldiers, was a row of tall linden trees, each trimmed to the same height. This is what the fir trees mentioned in the Bible must have looked like. But all that paled beside the magnificent walk leading to the white palace. It was wide and straight, paved with pebbles that crunched underfoot like crusted, hardened snow.

Father strode over the crunching pebbles with a confident step, he was accustomed to such things. Mother walked stiffly, her head slightly raised. It was hard to tell whether this was out of arrogance or astonishment, or simply because she wasn’t used to walking on lordly paths. My sister Ite hung back, sidling along the edge, taking one step forward, two steps back.

Inside the lovely, white house, they must have caught sight of us, for suddenly a door with wide glass panes swung open with easy grace, majestically. There, standing alone on the outdoor stone steps, was Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, his hands outstretched, dressed in an unbuttoned, flowered dressing gown, his thick, black beard unkempt. He seemed to have grown taller and broader, and he no longer spoke in the tortured tones that always brought to mind chilly rooms and mildewed walls. Now he approached us, speaking in a voice that was not only expansive, but also somewhat pompous.

“A good Sabbath! Look who’s here! Such welcome guests!”

He stuck out his round, little belly, the very model of a man of property. When did he learn to walk with such measured, patrician steps?

Go figure, when even Aunt Khane, who all her life slunk along walls in the same faded tam, was now coming down the stone stairs with mincing, dainty steps, almost a little hop, not unlike Aunt Naomi. Now Aunt Khane was wearing a new wig, black and shiny, with a curl down the front. Her silk dress, with its ruffled sleeves, rustled, like the crunch of the pebbled path to the palace. She called out, “Make way, children, here I come—Khane the estate-owner!”

Mother’s face seemed to lengthen. I didn’t like how she looked. I knew that Mother had decided to make an entrance, to walk in proudly, holding high her soft Warsaw chin. She had expected they would greet her with trumpets and drums, that they would be overjoyed to see her.

Aunt Khane certainly looked the lady, dressed up as she was in a black dress, with a gold brooch at her throat. Where did she find all these fancy things so quickly? And how did she know to wear them with such style?

Mother’s little double chin shrank and a tiny crease flitted across her fair face. Nobody else noticed. But my eyes were ever on the alert. No one knew Mother’s facial expressions better than I.

However, I was mistaken. Aunt Khane was still the same quiet, kindhearted woman she always was, who used to drop by our house early in the morning and sit down on the edge of Mother’s bed as though she were her own sister.

There was nothing rich-lady about her at all. She didn’t come down the stairs with the mincing, dainty steps reminiscent of Aunt Naomi. That only seemed so at first glance. On the contrary. No sooner did she get to the bottom of the stairs than she immediately regained her everyday, poor-woman’s walk. She ran toward Mother with a radiant face, fell around her neck, and kissed her over and over.

“Frimetshi!” she sobbed with joy. “Dearest one! You should live and be well! So, what do you say to all this, hah? Isn’t Mordkhe-Mendl something?”

“I always told you so, didn’t I?” Mother wiped the corner of her right eye.

“Long life to you, my dear sister-in-law. First comes God, then you.”

“May you grow old in wealth and honor,” Mother wiped her other eye.

“Amen, dear God in heaven! And may the Almighty bless you, too, and bring you great wealth and whatever else you wish for. You always said,” Aunt Khane’s voice shook tearfully, “that Mordkhe-Mendl would shake up all of Poland.”

“I know him better than you do, Khane, even though he’s your husband,” Mother replied, with the assurance of the wise.

Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl was walking with Father, arm in arm, like brothers. Indeed, the two brothers-in-law seemed to have reconciled. Mordkhe-Mendl’s business affairs no longer stank. In fact, they now smelled as sweet as Father’s hay. Hearing his name mentioned, Mordkhe-Mendl left Father standing alone and slid over to the women.

“Let’s embrace and kiss, dearest Frimet,” he spread out his arms. “May God bless you, my clever sister-in-law.”

Mother displayed a face full of dimples and Mordkhe-Mendl flashed his white teeth. And though Father was standing nearby, in full view of everyone, Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl locked arms with Mother, as if he were about to dance with her. Mother broke into a trill of laughter. Aunt Khane smiled shyly, piously, somewhat embarrassed. Father’s teeth were clearly visible under his whiskers.

From the way Mother stepped lightly alongside Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl, and from the way she lifted her face proudly to the sun, it was easy to see that she had once actually lived in a house with brass handles on every door.

Father was walking beside his sister Khane. Ite and I brought up the rear, surrounded on all sides by our cousins. There was Borekh, the eldest son, swarthy like his father and with the same pointed eyebrows. There were his younger sisters and brothers, all wearing long velvet jackets, all with shocks of black hair. And then there was Reyzl, Mordkhe- Mendl’s prettiest daughter. Reyzl was fair-skinned, pale, and with a thin blue vein down her forehead. Her face was as round and flat as a plate. She resembled neither Uncle Mordkhe-Mendl nor Aunt Khane. Her real beauty, however, lay in her hair. It was soft and blond, and gleamed like golden ears of corn.

Reyzl and I were the same age. It seemed that her parents were so busy with settling into the estate that they forgot to buy her shoes. She was skipping barefoot across the sharp pebbles, now and then lifting a foot and wincing. Reyzl talked like her mother, slowly, straight from the heart, and with a quiet humility that was, no doubt, due to the earthen floor on which Mordkhe-Mendl and his household had trod all those years.

Now all the children were standing on the broad stone steps leading up to the white palace, where blue glass panes glittered in the doors. Reyzl’s younger brothers and sisters were the first to go in, Ite and Borekh after them. Only Reyzl and I remained outside.