In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (18 page)

“Fore!” he yelled.

The refugees didn’t have a whole lot of experience with golf in Poland and Russia, so it took a number of summers for them to realize that the avalanche of dimpled white balls—preceded by the number “four”—was not an air raid, just conspicuous recreation.

The other half of the field was occupied by Abe. He was wearing a pair of white tennis shorts and a white undershirt. At first glance, the features of his face seemed to be getting away from him. He had a fleshy nose, prominent ears, and heavy eyelids.

Abe was holding fast to a spool of cord. A kite flew above him, scattering in the wind, looping in the airy currents.

“Get that kite out of here!” Artie yelled. “I’ll punch a hole right through it! Fore!”

The launching of a retaliatory golf ball did not deter Abe.

“How much of the field do you need for that stupid game?” he asked.

Artie paused and contemplated just how valuable breathing room was to everyone at Cohen’s Summer Cottages. Once imprisoned, they all now longed for space. Before coming to any conclusions on the matter, Adam, wearing blue short pants with matching suspenders and a striped blue polo shirt, circled up to him. He was pedaling a bright red fire engine, and pulling on a string that sounded a bell.

“Hey kid, come here,” Artie said, his tanned face taking on a soft and tender glow.

Adam wore a red helmet that was much too large for his head. It tipped over his face like a catcher’s mask.

“How’s your dad?”

“He’s on the porch,” he replied, removing the helmet.

Artie strained his eyes and caught sight of Morris sitting on the porch of the bungalow. Artie liked Morris, considered him a real scholar, a refined and decent man, but emotionally tortured—worse even than the rest. Adam’s father had survived two camps, fought in the forest as a partisan, almost died of typhus. And now a heart condition, the poor guy. Artie reached for another club—a wood this time, to satisfy his anger—and before sending the ball into fuming orbit, wondered why a man like Morris, who had suffered so much senseless pain, should not be allowed some kind of immunity from ordinary diseases, at least for a while.

“Is he feeling better?”

“Don’t know,” Adam said. “He can’t come down from the porch.”

“What do you mean?”

“Doctor said he’s got to stay on the porch, or inside the bungalow. Too many steps to go up and down.”

“I see…. Tell him I’ll come by and see him later.”

“Okay,” and with motoring feet, the red fire engine sped away down the walking path.

Adam was the only child at Cohen’s Summer Cottages. One generation removed from the awful legacy, he was their uncorrupted hope, the promise of a life unburdened by nightmare and guilt. Such a delicate compromise they were all forced to accept; all so aware of life’s cruelest impulses, and yet they so desperately wanted to trust in the possibility of their renewal. But Adam gave them an alarming sense of the future. Everyone feared that something bad might one day happen to him, forcing them to recast all their hopes and dreams, start all over, amend their expectations.

The men of the colony—most of whom wished someday to have children of their own, or mourned the murdered children they left behind—took it upon themselves to act as surrogates for the Posners. The child was born and lived for most of the year in Brooklyn, but the refugees—many of whom lived in Brooklyn as well—committed themselves to year-round sentry duty. Even before Morris’s illness, they undertook a shared communal responsibility to raise the boy.

Adam’s actual father was never the kind of man well suited for the task, anyway. All the consolidated anguish of his life left him empty, distant, and cold.

Artie played catch with Adam. He even bought him his first baseball glove—a smooth black leather one with gold stitching and a Mickey Mantle signature. They would go out to the field and toss a pink Spalding back and forth. Artie was patient with some of Adam’s erratic throws and his insistence on keeping the mitt sealed.

“Adam, open the glove,” Artie would say. “You want to catch it, not knock it down!”

Morris watched from the porch, smiling and nodding occasionally—never once defying his doctor’s orders. He had seen so much in his life—a great deal unspeakable and unknowable, particularly for those who existed outside the shared nightmare of Cohen’s Summer Cottages. And he had come so far—as a boy in Germany; his early manhood in a concentration camp, and now, a withered and fading creature, unrecognizable to himself, spending his summers in the mountains of upstate New York, recuperating from a lifetime of distress.

Artie also taught Adam not to be afraid coming down on the slide.

“Just kick your legs through and slide.”

“It’s hot. I’ll fall!”

“Come on, son, we’ve all been through worse than this, you can do it.”

The bickering between Artie and Abe always came to a halt on account of Adam. On the days when Abe helped Adam build a kite from brown-paper wrapper, Artie refrained from polluting the otherwise buoyant air with lethal golf balls. In the end it didn’t matter. Many a fruitless summer day passed without that reconstituted grocery bag ever getting off the ground.

Even Hyman Cohen himself helped out with the boy from time to time.

“Adam, follow me,
kind
, to the shed,” he said, limping about. “We should find out the temperature for everybody.”

Only five years of age, but Adam already knew the answer. He followed Cohen, and then obligingly emerged to announce: “It’s eighty-five degrees!”

The last time anyone saw Morris was when Adam came running home from Krause’s Cottages, crying and blowing on his wrist. Adam had been playing ball with the older boys. But they weren’t throwing a soft Spalding. Adam must have been confused by the speed of their throws, or the weight of the ball. Artie’s lessons didn’t prepare him for life outside the colony. The children from the other edge of the forest didn’t care about the
lager
, didn’t reserve any special compassion for the boy with the sick father. The ball came too fast. Artie’s glove didn’t work.

The wrist was badly disfigured. A fleshy spike now occupied the place normally reserved for a pulse check. Panting away at the exposed bone, Adam thought only of how one soothes a burn.

“Phew, phew …”

He started to run, away from Krause’s, in the direction of the rival colony that was his summer home. Dashing underneath the pines, through the woods, stopping every few steps to blow on the broken bone. As he got closer to the colony, he could make out the sight of his father sitting on the white porch, neat rows of picket columns off to each side. A watchtower connected to a bungalow, the only freedom Morris’s doctor would allow.

Morris was sitting on an aqua beach chair, a crumpled German newspaper rested on the floorboards below him. He was perpetually on guard, expecting the worst—even here, so close to the otherwise calming influences of Kiamisha Lake. Adam reached the porch with a face filled with tears. Morris forgot all that his doctor had told him about stairs and the dangers of overexcitement. He pushed off the armrests, grabbed the railing, and then, as though he were a vital, solid man, raced down to his son.

“What happened to you,
mein sohn
?” he said, and hugged the boy as he had never done before. Adam held out his wrist—showing his father—staring down at it as though he had just brought home a wounded bird. “Oh,
mein Gott
—look at you …” And then, reflexively, with immediate regret, he let out, “Where can we be safe?”

Adam’s lips trembled, and then, steeling himself, said, “Papa, you shouldn’t have come down the stairs.”

Morris embraced his son again, sobbing uncontrollably into the boy’s small chest.

Moments later, a cavalry of refugees rushed to the Posner bungalow. Card games broke up suddenly. Wet laundry soaked in open baskets. A fishing pole lay dropped by the shore. No alarm had sounded, and yet somehow they knew to come. There was an intuitive sense that something was not right at bungalow 7. A people so sensitive to rescue, and the urgency to protect one of their fragile own.

“What happened?” old man Berman said.

“We came as soon as we saw the others start to run,” one of the Jaffe brothers said, heaving desperately for air.

“Who is the sick one here?” Mrs. Kaplan wondered aloud. “Adam or Morris?”

Both father and son were taken to the hospital in Monticello, each in need of medical attention.

For weeks Morris lay in the hospital, connected to all sorts of life-sustaining machinery that couldn’t possibly begin to heal what really ailed him. Rosa went off each day to Monticello to visit her husband. Adam, with his powdery white cast, was left in the care of one or several of the refugees, who were more than happy to do their part. There were rules at the hospital about not allowing visits by children. And after his experience with blanking out in that cold place—only to awaken with his arm fully recast in plaster—he had his own reservations about returning to the hospital as well. He wished to see his father, but only on the porch.

The bus edged up to the curb near the drugstore on Route 17, across the street from the bowling alley, just down the road from Cohen’s. Up the other hill was the Concord Hotel. The door to the bus was open, the engine was running; the driver waited patiently for Rosa to get on.

“You be a good boy,” Rosa said, brushing Adam’s hair to one side. “Don’t throw any more balls.”

“I don’t throw with my left arm.”

“Then don’t catch any more balls, and don’t cause any more trouble.”

She boarded, paid the fare, and slipped into the first seat. She then turned to the window to look back at her son. The bus pulled away. The roar and heavy exhaust seemed to smother the small boy. Adam remained behind, waving his heavy wrist.

With each afternoon return from Monticello, Rosa seemed different. She was edgier, more nervous than usual. Gradually she was saying good-bye to her husband—so unceremoniously, the awful finality so unjust. Each day Morris looked as though more of him had surrendered. There would be no going back to the bungalow.

Rosa would return, but never in the same way again. In sympathy with her husband’s deterioration, her sanity began to leave her. She was losing her memory, her sense of place, her essential bearings, her grip on reality. Physically she was still strong, but the psychic toll had now become insurmountable—even for someone so seasoned in survival. Morris was leaving and ghosts were arriving. They took over her mind, ambushed her reason.

In what became an almost daily ritual, Rosa would retrieve her son and take him inside bungalow 7. Then the interrogation would begin:

“What did you tell the neighbors today?”

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

More forcefully. “What did you tell them?”

“Let go of my arm….”

“Did you tell them about the box?”

“What box?”

“And the bullets?”

“What …?”

“You told them about the bread, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! … Mama, you’re scaring me!”

“Tell me what you told them!”

She slapped Adam, who fell against the kitchen cabinet; the door panel slammed shut by the white cast. The crash caused a loud thud.

The child was too young to understand; the parent too mortified to concede the injury—to both of them.

Overwhelmed with grief, fatigue, and persevering nightmare.

It seemed like all those living near Kiamisha Lake descended on Cohen’s Summer Cottages for the annual Labor Day bingo game. It started off as a bright and cloudless day. The temperature was cooling, fall was a few short weeks away. By then all the refugees would be gone, back to their respective boroughs, grateful that they had lived through another summer. Perhaps by next year, their memories of Europe would grow dimmer. But nobody actually believed that.

The bingo game was held outdoors on the grassy field. Long tables were set out. A sound system was installed to announce the numbers. People who had spent their summer traipsing from colony to colony in search of bingo by now felt fully practiced for the final game of the season—the World Series of bingo, the one with the biggest prizes.