Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (41 page)

I felt that I would never be able to approach her again. What could Janinka and I talk about? I knew little more than some bits of Bible with the Rashi commentary, and in Lenive I had forgotten even that much. It was a good thing, therefore, that the High Holidays were coming. This wasn’t a time for thinking about practical matters.

Our house was brightly lit in honor of the holidays. Mother had bought grapes, honey, and large, braided
hallahs
resembling birds. A live carp flopped about in a basin of water. The smell of boiled chicken filled the air. It was only a pity that this Rosh Hashanah there were no guests, neither from Warsaw nor from Lodz. Even Toybe was absent.

Despite all the cleaning and straightening up, and despite the tasty food, the house was cheerless. There were only the three of us at table. We ate in silence. We kept looking out the freshly washed windowpanes, as if awaiting someone’s arrival.

I consoled myself with the thought that in Lenive it must be even sadder now. There, long after the harvest, the fields lay deserted and the forest wrapped in darkness. There, in our former hut, a kerosene lamp or a candle must be burning with a dim light. Here, on the other hand, the room was brightly lit and an aroma of grapes and honey rose from the table. If you really thought about it, maybe things weren’t so cheerless after all.

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Father brought home a guest from the synagogue, a young soldier from Russia, short, with a little black mustache and red cheeks. Had his head not been closely cropped, like that of a thief, one might easily have taken him for my late brother, Moyshe. He spoke in a deep Litvak accent, rolling his r’s, and whenever he lacked the Yiddish word he helped himself to a Russian one.

Mother was happy to have someone to talk to. She asked where he came from, what he was doing here, and how long he still had to serve in the army. In the course of the conversation, her double chin swelled in its rich-lady way.

The young soldier said that he came from Kiev, where his father was a wealthy merchant, his sister a dentist, and an older brother an
aptekar
.

“A what?” said Father, wrinkling his face.

“An
aptekar
.”

“What’s that?”

“An
aptekar
,” the young soldier explained, “is someone who mixes medicines.”

“Maybe he means an ap-tey-
ker
?” Mother interjected.

“
Da, da
, yes, yes, an
aptekar
.”

The different accents were finally sorted out and it was determined that what was being referred to was a “pharmacist.”

“Can a Jew in Russia be a pharmacist?” Father asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, what do you know?” Father was surprised. “By us in Poland, such a thing is unthinkable.”

“Even in Warsaw there aren’t any Jewish pharmacists,” Mother added.

“How is that possible?” said the young soldier in Russian, stroking his mustache.

“Da, da,” said mother, also in Russian, and explained that she had once had some connection with pharmacists herself, since her former, late husband had been a
feldsher
, a barber-surgeon, and that an older son of hers was now studying to become a
feldsher
himself.

Father hung on every word, as the young soldier continued to speak, relating more about Kiev, and about a street called Kreshchatik. He said that Jews were forbidden to live in Kiev, but that the ban could be waived by obtaining special permission, which cost a fortune.

Father kept listening attentively, and then, rather hesitantly, interrupted him in the middle.

“Ekaterinoslav, is it far from Kiev?”

“Very far.”

“Really?” Father sounded let down. “I thought that it wasn’t.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I have a son in Ekaterinoslav.”

“Is he in military service there?”

“Yes, he’s a soldier.”

“A long time?”

“He should have been out by now.”

“When was his duty up?”

“By my reckoning, he should have been back by now.”

“He’ll probably come home after the holidays. The Russian army discharges soldiers only in October.”

“Is that so?”

“Da, that should be some time next month, in Heshvan.”

The Russian army, however, released Father’s son earlier, apparently to ensure that he be home in time for the Yom Kippur solemnities.

It was late afternoon, the eve of Yom Kippur. A long, withered candle, stuck into a mortar filled with sand, stood on the table. A cool, blue shadow stretched across the upper windowpanes. We were eating our meal of soup with noodles, boiled chicken, and baked apples. Father tasted only a bit of each course.

“The less one eats, the easier it is to fast,” he said.

Mother had already pinned the white jabot to her black taffeta blouse. I was helping clear the table. The long, dead-looking candle burned with a yellow flame against the mirror. In the reflection, the flame appeared whiter, the whole mirror yellow.

Father was searching for his special High Holiday skullcap, the one with the silver threads that had turned yellow over time.

Who would have imagined that just then the door would open and a stranger appear, carrying a small suitcase and wearing a short, black coat and a stiff, black hat? He looked like he might be a doctor.

On further inspection, it seemed to me that his coat hung too loosely on him and might not even have been his, and that his hat didn’t suit his face.

Father was still hunting for his skullcap. The stranger slowly put down his suitcase, looked at Father, who was still busy searching, and called out, a smile spreading across the sharp ends of his trimmed mustache: “
Gut yontev!
… Happy holiday!”

Father took a step back. He looked terrified. His voice, too, took on a frightened tone.

“Leybke?” he cried out with a half-suppressed groan.

“Yes, it’s me, Father,” said Leybke, as he took a bold step into the room.

Father wanted to say more, but grew short of breath. He just wiped his hand across his forehead, and groaned again, “Leybke?”

Mother, too, couldn’t believe her eyes. She stopped in her tracks, in total bewilderment. Only after hearing Father repeat his son’s name twice, did she herself speak, as if in echo.

“Leybke?” she said. “Come in, welcome. Look, we have a guest!”

Without thinking, and not even aware that I was doing so, I also let out a cry, “Leybke!”

The whole room resounded with Leybke’s name.

Father’s thick beard became entangled in Leybke’s trimmed mustache.

“Can you believe it?” Leybke’s voice quivered. “It was all so unexpected. And how are you, Father? Let’s take a look at you.”

Mother stood to a side, waiting for Father to let go of his son so that she, too, could rejoice in his return.

I didn’t know what to do, whether I should go over to Leybke and embrace him or kiss him. But Leybke himself took notice of Mother and me.

“
Mume
… Aunt,” he said, drawing out the
m
’s. “How are you,
Mume
?”

“Thank you for asking. And how are you?”

He kissed Mother’s hand. And even though I was already a grown boy, he folded me in his arms and planted a kiss right on my mouth, leaving a lingering smell of tobacco under my nose.

“Mendl!” he exclaimed. “How you’ve grown! You’re almost ready to get married.”

Leybke’s embrace filled me with warmth. I felt him to be a true brother, far more so than Yoyne, that one time he had come for Passover.

“You must be hungry,” Mother only now remembered to ask. “Sit down and have something to eat. It’s almost time to go to the synagogue for the Kol Nidre service.”

“Don’t bother,
Mume
. I’ve already eaten.”

“Where could you have eaten? You’ve only just arrived!”

“Actually, I’ve been here a few hours already. I went first to an inn, where I washed up and ate, and now I’m all ready for Yom Kippur.”

“Why did you do that? You don’t have a home?”

“Never mind,
Mume
. It was easier that way.”

“You’ll probably want to change clothes,” Father said. “So, hurry up, it’s getting late.”

“No, I don’t have to change.”

“Is that how you’re going to Kol Nidre?”

“Why not? This isn’t nice enough?”

Father thought Leybke’s dress improper. Before he left to serve in the Russian army, Leybke still wore a long
kapote
and the same soft cap all Jews wore. Now here he was, back from the army, in a black, stiff hat, looking, for all the world, like a German. How could Father show up in the
besmedresh
, with his son looking like that?

Nevertheless, Father walked with Leybke in the street, arm in arm. I myself snuggled up against Leybke’s black coat. After all, he had just returned from Ekaterinoslav, and I wanted everybody to see what my brother looked like.

On the way, Father stopped every so often to greet this one and that with the holiday salutation—“May you be sealed in the Book of Life”—and to show off his son.

“This is my Leybke, just released from the Russian army,” he kept repeating.

“Is that so?” came the reply. “Welcome home. What’s new there?”

Everybody shook his hand, looked him in the face, looked him over, and looked all of us over, too.

Even at the
besmedresh
, which was packed to overflowing, all eyes were on Leybke. He was the only one, among all the white robes and prayer shawls, who was wearing a stiff, black hat.

Maybe it wasn’t right for Leybke to have come to the besmedresh dressed like a German. He would have been better off across the way, in the main synagogue, the
shul
, where there were many such stiff, black hats. But how could Father deny himself the great pleasure of showing off his only son from his first wife, the son who, this very day, had returned from Ekaterinoslav?

Reb Aron, the head of the religious court, summoned the worshipers to prayer. In the solemn spirit of the occasion, he intoned in a tremulous, fear-filled voice: “By the authority of the heavenly court, and by the authority of the earthly court … we declare it lawful to pray with sinners.” Then, as the congregation stood, Moshke the cantor began to chant the Kol Nidre, and the service proceeded apace. Leybke’s stiff, black hat didn’t stop Moshke from losing his place in the many-versed
ya’ale
hymn—“O let our prayer ascend at sunset”—and veering off into a sidetrack.

Leybke smiled into his mustache and said that in the synagogue in Ekaterinoslav a mistake like Moshke’s couldn’t have happened.

“
Nyevozmozhno
… impossible,” Leybke later pronounced. “In the synagogue in Ekaterinoslav everything was like in the army. Everybody marched in step, nobody went off on his own. You couldn’t lose your place. You prayed like you were taking orders from the sergeant major. Yes, the prayers were different there, life was different there.”

Leybke was telling us all this after we had returned home from the service, as he talked late into the night.

Father had taken off his shirt and was sitting on the edge of the bed in his fringed undergarment, treating his sick leg. Mother was on the other bed, wearing a white, ruffled nightcap. I was sitting next to Leybke. We all learned that in Ekaterinoslav there were many landowners, men and women, and that Jews could be landowners, too. They wore big fur coats and Persian-lamb hats. Their stores were open on the Sabbath and they prayed only on the High Holidays.

“And what about you? You didn’t pray, either?” Father asked, raising his head from his sick foot.

“When there was time, we prayed.”

Father sighed deeply. “A wild country that, a swinish land.”

“It’s not wild at all, Father. The people there are rich merchants, upper crust, high society.”

“And how did you manage there?”

“
Khorosho
… just fine,” Leybke said in a self-satisfied tone. “The battalion commander couldn’t have gotten along without me. ‘Lyovka,’ he’d say, ‘run and fetch me another bottle of vodka.’ That commander was sure fond of his glass. And I was especially pals with the field sergeant major. All you had to do was slip him ten groshen and you could get him to do anything for you.”

“And did you eat from the common cauldron?” Father asked, with sorrow in his voice.

“What cauldron? The Russian soldiers gorged themselves from the cauldron. I took my meals in town.”

“Did you at least make any money in the army?”

“Who needed money? Of what use would money have been?”

Leybke kept up his boasting even after Mother had turned toward the wall and Father was done with his treatment. He was still talking when he lay down next to me on the iron cot that we shared. His body gave off an odor of wagon grease, the same odor as the soldier who had been our guest on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.

I slept badly. The grease smell settled in my mouth. Leybke’s commander, the landowners, all whirled around in my imagination and got mixed up with Leybke and with Mother and Father.

The next morning my head felt as if it was made of glass. In the
besmedresh
, the air was heavy with the close, hot smell of burnt-out candles. The hunchbacked Gentile attendant was crawling around the tables, scraping off the wax drippings and straightening the candles, deaf to all the sobbing and supplication the worshipers were pouring into their prayer books.

Fishl, the son of the ritual slaughterer, who was already studying the Talmud with advanced commentaries, led the morning service. He sang more beautifully than Mendl, Aunt Naomi’s son, and with greater feeling.

But then Moshke the cantor took over and I lost interest. He hacked away at the Hebrew, like a Gentile. I wanted to go over to the main synagogue, the
shul
, and listen to the old Lithuanian cantor. Above all, I wanted to be with Leybke, for that was where he had gone to pray.

When the Torah scrolls were being taken out of the ark, I ran over to the
shul
. They were reading from the Torah there, too, but I didn’t see Leybke. Outside, sweat-drenched Jews, all in white, sat groaning. Others went to relieve themselves against the opposite wall. Children were eating large hunks of
hallah
dipped in honey. But there was no sign of Leybke.