Jewish Mothers Never Die: A Novel (7 page)

“Speak for yourself!”

Minnie Marx had just entered the garden, wearing a loose black dress.

“To think I have to come outside if I want to join in this conversation, when you know how much I hate gardens. I only feel good with my feet on the asphalt, breathing in the smells of the big city. I love the company of men, their freedom and spontaneity when they go after a woman, and I love in particular that they don’t sit around analyzing everything all the time.”

“In that case, don’t let us keep you,” Mina shot at her, insulted.

“No, I like you all too much. Can’t I admit that men amuse me? My husband especially.”

“That’s because you took him for one of your sons.”

“It’s true he behaved just like them, which only made me love him more. He was a tailor, his clients sarcastically called him ‘the ace of spades’ because he didn’t know his way around a needle and thread. He used to say that only amateurs used a tape measure; professionals like him could take a measurement just by looking. The results were lamentable. You could always pick out Samuel’s clients by their too short sleeves and the uneven hemline on their trousers. Once was enough though; they never came back after that. Samuel wasn’t bothered, though. He only had to go a little further from home to find new clients. He was an optimist above all else. He refused to worry and tried to make the most of every day. It was a wonderful philosophy for life and he passed it on to Harpo.”

“Was he much involved in his sons’ upbringing?” Rebecca asked.

“He helped the most by doing the cooking. When even I couldn’t convince a theater director to book the boys, he could always win him over with one of his dishes. He could turn a few ingredients into a mouthwatering meal. But there were always too many of us and too little to eat.”

“Did he realize that you loved your sons better than him?”

“Well, he could see who was the toast of Broadway and it wasn’t him.”

Minnie blinked a few times then suggested that they all go in.

“We’ll be more comfortable inside, don’t you think?”

Back in the living room, Minnie poured herself a glass of scotch and threw herself into the story of her life with her husband. The German neighborhood where they lived on New York’s Upper East Side was teaming with immigrants just like them, looking for a better life in the city’s bustling streets. Simon Marrix had come from Alsace, but once in America he decided he would be Samuel Marx.

“How did you meet?”

“You can’t guess, can you, how a Frenchman ended up with a German woman? He had to cross the whole Atlantic to find himself surrounded by Germans!”

“Did you catch sight of each other on the boat that brought you to Ellis Island?”

“Not at all,” sighed Minnie, nostalgic now. “I did arrive by boat, of course, but with my parents. I was sixteen years old, and it was 1880. We’ve all heard the stories about Ellis Island: the confusion, the dirt, the humiliation . . . I was mesmerized by the ship’s wake. I thought it was tracing the line of my destiny in the water. I was young, strong and absolutely determined to succeed. I loved watching the sun dance on the waves so I told myself that, whenever I doubted myself, whatever might happen to me, I only had to see the sun sparkle, even in a puddle, and I’d get my courage back. It was a glorious day. I was so sure of myself. It was just a superstition of mine, but it proved useful. It helped me find Samuel, on a ferry one bright sunny day when the sea shone like all the constellations in the summer sky. It was the winter of 1882. I could hardly see my future husband’s face under the wool cap he wore, but he got my attention. He helped me into the boat, and we were together from that day forward.”

She was moved by the memory and reached for her handkerchief.

“Is everyone here an exile?” Rebecca asked.

“There’s Jeanne Proust, who never left Paris, and Amalia Freud, who stayed in Vienna. But the rest of us all know what it’s like to live at the whim of politics.”

4

Exile

A child’s first experience of civilization is his relationship with his mother.

Romain Gary,
La nuit sera calme

Thinking about Minnie’s arrival in New York, Rebecca started to draw a mental picture of what life would have been like for the Cohen’s and the Kacew’s. Albert came to Marseille in 1900 and Romain Gary to Nice in 1928. Greek and Russian, respectively, both were from poor Jewish families who had left their native countries behind. Theirs was a world that no longer existed, and they had known the horrors of the 20th century. Both mothers had only their sons, to whom they were devoted, and the sons had only their mothers. And Rebecca? She hadn’t experienced any tragedies in her life. The fall of the Berlin Wall? She had watched it on television. War, massacres? She’d seen pictures in newspapers. And yet, she had protected Nathan much like these other women had protected their sons, with the same undying hope that they had put in their sons’ futures. If they had made something of themselves, if they had proven themselves to be exceptional, it was because these women had breathed so much energy into them.

Is some kind of trauma a precondition of future success?

Rebecca was curled up in a large leather armchair, leafing though a photo album with Mina. She lingered over a portrait of Romain Gary when he must have been no more than fifteen years old; he had a thoughtful look, fine features and wore his hair combed back. He was remarkably handsome and elegant, with his tie carefully knotted around the collar of his starched shirt.

“Even when he was little, Romain was as serious as any adult,” Mina remarked.

Smiling to herself, she got up to find a shoebox in a cupboard, then returned to her spot next to Rebecca and began to shuffle through more photos until she came to one in particular. It was Romain again, this time buckled into a leather jacket, an aviator’s cap down low over his forehead, a sly smile under his thin mustache, hands in his pockets and a swaggering look in his eyes.

“This was taken when he joined General de Gaulle. After that he was made a Compagnon de la Libération and became French, too,” Mina declared proudly.

Rebecca fished around in the box as well. It was full of Kacew family photos.

“When did you leave Russia?” she asked.

“Right after the fall of the tzar, in March, 1917. We weren’t the only ones to leave, you can imagine. People were in a panic. We were lucky to find a spot in a cattle car.”

Mina’s voice never wavered as she talked about this most dangerous moment of her life. She might have been talking about moving from one house to another in the same street. She was strong, sure of herself and of her rights.

“I never had a thought for anything other than Romain’s well being. So many things could have gone wrong. I made him wear camphor around his neck to keep away Typhoid fever but, above all, I never took my eyes off him. He was incontestably the most beautiful person in the whole car, and I convinced myself that, with eyes like his, he would make it out of there.”

“It’s true he had beautiful eyes.”

“You think so, too! Deep and blue, intelligent and sad at the same time. Romain knew how to melt you with just one look. Seeing him reassured me through that whole exhausting trip across the European continent in flames.”

“Where did you get off?”

“At Wilno, where the train stopped. I had intended to go all the way to France so Romain could grow up and study and become someone, but it was impossible to go any farther.”

“Are Wilno and Vilnius the same city?”

“Oh yes, just like Vilne and Vilna. The city has four names, which gives you an idea of its complicated history.”

Mina explained that she was so traumatized by this uprooting that she found herself hating History itself. Human relations, love, friendship: these became the only things she cared to think about. Political theory bored her stiff. But it was difficult to ignore what was happening all around her; politics defined the age in which she lived. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to go into some detail with Rebecca.

“Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire until its independence in 1918, before it was invaded by Poland in 1920. With Jews making up almost forty percent of the population, Vilnius was
the
capital of Yiddish intellectual life. They came from Poland mostly, a few from Belarus and there were Lithuanians, of course. It was one of the busiest cultural centers in the Jewish world. It lived up to its reputation as the Jerusalem of the North. We could have stayed but I was obsessed by France.”

“How long did you live there?”

“Five years,” she answered curtly.

“It must be difficult to talk about your life there,” Rebecca acknowledged. “I’m sorry if my curiosity has seemed indiscreet.”

“Not at all. It’s just that I’ve almost forgotten our life in Wilno and Warsaw, wherever we were before we arrived in France: I was so determined to get there. Even back then, I could pass for being French and I was raising my Romouchka to be both a diplomat and a French writer. I taught him Russian, Polish and German, Jewish stories and Lithuanian folktales, but above all I taught him French history. There was a book that I read to him again and again:
Lives of Famous French People
: Louis Pasteur, Joan of Arc, Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux. I wanted Romain to be in that book, too. I was full of hope and affection for the man he would become. I would tell him over and over that he had the soul of a hero. I believed in him.”

Rebecca looked at Mina’s souvenir box: It was full of photographs of Romain. For her part, she didn’t like taking pictures; the innumerable questions of light, perspective and distance got in the way of seeing, and then the instant was gone. She wondered now, though, if photos didn’t in fact help you remember. Without them, would the faces of loved ones fade? Would the details of life dissolve? No, Nathan’s features would remain forever engraved on her memory: the chubby-cheeked baby who had become a skinny little boy before transforming into a handsome young man. She could remember clearly every moment of his life. But what would Nathan remember of her? Would her expressions gradually vanish from his memory, until only a halo remained? Do we ever truly see anyone, even the people we love? Her gaze paused on a picture of a young Mina: a green-eyed, pale-skinned, high-cheeked brunette. She was wearing a white dress, a string of pearls and her hair was caught back by a headband. She was stretched out in a field, smiling and relaxed, holding a cigarette.

“I smoked to beat the band,” Mina remembered. “Even after I got old. I thought that having a cigarette in my hand made me look young and healthy but the truth is I was overworked and diabetic.”

Rebecca was fascinated. Where did this little Russian woman find such willpower? Alone and penniless, how did she manage to get herself to France when all of Europe was heading for war? Why did she have such faith in her son’s future?

“That’s just how it was. I always knew. And so did Romain. France was where he would make a name for himself. And that’s what happened. Didn’t he say himself that there were only two people who had the best interests of the country in mind: me and General de Gaulle? When De Gaulle rallied his countrymen to join the French Free Forces in 1940, Romain didn’t hesitate, but it was my own urging he responded to as much as the General’s.”

Louise Cohen burst in, looking like a Greek shepherdess in a long skirt of rough cloth and carrying a tray of fruit juice.

“You’re talking so much, Mina, I thought you must be thirsty.”

“Do I detect a note of irony?” Mina asked.

“No, but you’re telling Rebecca a lot of nonsense, whereas I think she ought to have a clear idea of what things were really like at the time.”

Rebecca steadied herself for Mina’s inevitable outburst, but, unexpectedly, she only sighed.

“I suppose you know everything that happened to me even better than I do,” she said to Louise. “It’s one thing to live through important events; knowing how to tell a story about them is another.”

While Mina poured herself a glass of juice, Louise took Rebecca aside.

“What Mina has forgotten to mention is that Wilno was a living hell for her. She was boasting of the intellectual life there, but the Jewish quarter was filthy and its narrow streets were canals of stagnant sewer water. She lived in a building called ‘Le Petit Versailles’ but she barely earned enough to pay the rent. Eventually, she had to leave, like so many others, but Warsaw was no nicer. What with the famine and Pilsudski’s dictatorship, it became impossible to live in Poland.”

Mina, who had heard everything, suddenly piped up:

“What did we care? We were headed for France in any case.”

“If Warsaw had been welcoming and comfortable, you never would have left and Romain wouldn’t have become Romain Gary, World War II Hero. He would have stayed Roman Kacew. Your son’s destiny was to collide with history: you had no choice but to leave.”

“Think whatever you want,” replied Mina. “It’s all the same to me.”

“Don’t get so angry,” Louise retorted. “Go ahead and fool yourself that it had always been your decision to emigrate to France, that you had always planned to stop over in Vilnius and Warsaw. You can embellish the past all you want.”

“But it’s the truth, Miss Know-It-All!”

“Do you really think you can just rewrite history like that?” Louise insisted.

Trying to create a diversion, Rebecca interjected: “How did you get a visa to enter France?”

“You could always get a fake visa,” Louise answered before Mina could say a word. “But in that case it was best to enter through Italy.”

“So, you did have a fake?” Rebecca asked Mina.

“That’s none of your business. All I’ll say is that the police captain who processed our papers was adorable. I told him that I had been forced to come to the Mediterranean climate for my health and he told me where the best places were to go. He had fallen under Romain’s spell.”

She stood up with the air of an actress delivering the last lines of a tragedy.

Never able to let anyone else have the last word, Louise Cohen also got to her feet and turned to face Mina.