The Family Moskat (16 page)

"Mamma, you may as well forget it. I won't marry him."

"At least let me finish what I've got to say. I suppose you have the idea that you're the child of a rich home. Unfortunately, you're mistaken. Your father has a few rubles--just enough for a rainy day, if one should come. He wouldn't touch that money for any other purpose. You're a girl without a dowry, and a sick girl, too.

That's the way it is. That's the whole truth."

"I don't understand what you want of me, Mamma."

"Your grandfather's decided to be as stubborn as a mule. He's already given Koppel orders to stop paying our weekly allowance.

-95-He swears he

won't leave us a grosz in his will. And you can believe him. We'll all be left helpless. Your father--I don't have to tell you--is useless when it comes to making a living. All he can do is eat and sleep.

And I'm a sick woman--sicker than you imagine. God knows how long I can keep on driving myself."

"Mamma!"

"Don't interrupt me. I don't want to say anything about your Uncle Abram. So far as I'm concerned he's all right, and I'm devoted to him. But he's nobody to be depended on. He's made his own wife miserable and he's been no blessing to that other one--

what's her name?--Ida Prager. His daughters are penniless. And now he's attached himself to us. He wants to use us to spite your grandfather."

"I won't let you say anything about him. I love him."

"I feel for him too. But what good does it do? The man's a key that's turned the wrong way, a busybody mixing into other people's business. And that new one--whatever-you-call-him--Asa Heshel--doesn't make such a hit with me. I won't have him in this house, do you hear? I'll throw him out."

"He doesn't come here any more."

"You're a poor girl. Don't forget it. It's true you're not so ugly --may no evil befall you. But a person's not always young and not always beautiful. Fishel will be grabbed up before you can turn around, and what'll you be left with?"

"Let them grab him. Today for all I care."

"And where'll you be? Especially without a dowry. Your grandfather won't give you a copper."

"I don't need his money."

"You'll change your mind, my child. There've been plenty of others like you. When you were in the sanatorium--God grant you health from now on--it cost hundreds and hundreds of rubles. God knows I don't want to frighten you, but when it's a question of weak lungs a person can never be sure."

"Then I'll die!"

"Ah, Hadassah, you're sticking a knife into my heart! Don't think I haven't thought things over. Night after night I lie awake thinking. What closer friend have you than me! You're in danger, I'm telling you. Great danger."

"Oh, Mamma, stop wailing over me. I'm not dead yet. I'm telling you finally, once and for all, I'll not marry Fishel."

"And that's your last word?"

-

96-"Yes."

"Well, may God stretch out his arms of mercy to you! Yes, what they say is right--a child is an enemy. Your father wasn't to my taste either, when I was young. But when my mother--God rest her soul--wept and pleaded, I said: 'So be it; lead me to the canopy.' No, the children of today have no hearts, only stones.

Well, let it be. I'll be quiet. But your father won't. We'll be without a piece of bread."

"I'll work."

"Sure, my fine lady'll go to work! Simpleton, you can't lift a finger! It's a miracle you're alive. If I didn't wait on you hand and foot you couldn't stand on your own legs. You need comforts. You need money. If I die your father'll bring home a stepmother for you before I'm cold in my grave."

"Let me alone!" Hadassah covered her face with her hands.

"All right. I'm going. Some day you'll remember my words. But then it'll be too late."

She went out and closed the door behind her. The moment she was gone, Hadassah flung herself out of bed. She went to the table, picked up the diary, thought for a moment, and then put it away in the drawer. She turned out the light and stood quietly in the darkness. Through the window she could see a heavy snow falling, the wind driving the flakes against the window pane.

FOR SOMETIME Asa Heshel had give up his triweekly visits to Hadassah. Meshulam Moskat's announcement that the girl was to be betrothed and that tutoring was unbecoming to her frightened him off. Several times he had thought of telephoning her, but the complexities of the instrument, so new to him, were too -97-much for him.

He lay in bed in his room at Gina's until late in the afternoon.

Every night the flat was crowded with lodgers and visitors. He could hear doors opening and closing, long conversations on the telephone, Broide and Lapidus at their eternal arguments, girls singing Russian songs, applause. Gina had asked him several times to join them in the living-room, but he always managed to make some excuse. What sort of appearance would he make among these sophisticated people in his Chassidic clothing? He had bought a soft collar and a black silk tie, but they seemed only to add to his provincial look. The noisy phonograph music that came from the living-room, the shouting and laughter, the silhouettes passing back and forth on the other side of the glass-paned door of his room, embarrassed him, making him think that all of them knew he was waiting only for Hadassah. That's what they must be giggling about.

He started up in bed. What was happening to him? Why was he wasting his time in idle fantasies? He had come to Warsaw to study, not to moon about love. Ah, how he envied those ancient philosophers, the Stoics, whose determination no amount of suffering could disturb; or the Epicureans, who, even when their house was in flames, ate their bread and drank their wine! But he would never be able to achieve such heights. His emotions were constantly returning to plague him. All he could do was think about Hadassah, her room, her books, her father and mother, even about Shifra, the maid. If only he knew whether she ever thought about him! Or had she forgotten him altogether? He would make an attempt to telephone her--or maybe he would write her a letter.

He got off the bed, turned on the lamp, and sat down to write to Hadassah. After the first few lines he dropped the pen. What was the sense of it? He would plead with no one; he would sooner die. When he fell asleep, the gray dawn already showed through the window. He got up late, his head aching. He dressed and went out to the food store to buy a couple of rolls and some cheese and then went back to his room.

He leafed through a geography, a Russian grammar, a world history. His eye caught a sentence about Charlemagne, founder of the Holy Roman Empire. The author described Charlemagne as a great man, defender of the Church, a reformer. Asa Heshel shook his head.

"The crueler the tyrant, the greater the world's praise," he said to himself. "Mankind loves the murderer."

-98-He tried to

clear his mind and go on with his reading. But his thoughts would not be dismissed. What sort of world was this, where the order of things was continual murdering, looting, and persecution and where at the same time the air was filled with phrases about justice, freedom, love? And what was he do-ing? Poring over children's primers, hoping that some day, maybe in ten years, he would manage to earn a diploma. Is this what had become of his youthful dreams? What was he but an inconsequential nobody, with inconsequential and futile notions?

He got up and walked over to the window. He took the nickel-covered watch from his vest pocket; it was half past three, but the winter dusk was already beginning to fall. There was a deep quiet in the courtyard that the window overlooked. A thin snow fell from the rectangle of sky he could see above the surrounding roofs. A crow had perched atop a weathervane on the opposite rooftop; against the pale white sky it took on a bluish color. It seemed to be peering into the vast distances of another world. At the roofs edge, along its gutter, a cat carefully paced.

Down below in the courtyard a beggar woman bent over a box, a sack on her shoulders, poking with a hook among the refuse. She pulled out a couple of rags and stuffed them into the sack. She lifted a shrunken, worn face toward the upper windows and sang out in a thin voice: "I buy bones, I buy rags. Bones, bones."

Asa Heshel leaned his forehead against the pane. Once, he thought, she too was young, and the ox whose bones she now sought to buy was a calf leaping about the meadows. Time makes refuse of all things. No philosophy could alter that.

He stretched himself out on the bed and closed his eyes.

Hadassah would grow old, too. She would die and they would carry her corpse in the funeral procession along the Gensha to the cemetery. And if time did not exist, then she was a corpse already. Then what was the sense of love? Why should he yearn for her? Why should it grieve him that she was to be the bride of Fishel? He must acquire the indifference of the Hindu yogis.

Enter Nirvana while he was yet alive.

He fell into a half doze. The sharp ringing of the outside doorbell woke him. It stopped and then after a moment began anew. Again there was silence, then he heard a knocking at his own door. He got off the bed. He must have fallen into a heavy sleep. His limbs were numb. The ceiling seemed to rise up and the walls recede. He could see two silhouettes against the -99-glass door pane. He knew that there was something he should say, but he could not think of the words. Finally he called out: "I'm here."

The door opened and Gina put her head in. "A young lady's asking for you," she said. "Can she come in?"

She stepped back and Hadassah entered. She was wearing a jacket fastened with loops, a velvet beret, and woolen socks over her stockings. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold. Scattered flakes of snow clung to her shoulders. She was carrying a black handbag and a thin book with red covers. She waited at the threshold until Gina closed the door.

In Polish she said: "You stare at me as though you don't recognize me."

"Of course, Hadassah."

"You were sleeping--I waked you."

"No, no--it's only that I didn't expect--"

"Why haven't you come to see me? I thought you were sick."

"No, I wasn't sick. Please sit down."

"I expected you for your lessons, but you disappeared. My Uncle Abram gave me your address."

They were both silent. He knew that Hadassah's visit was something out of the ordinary, but he could not yet grasp its meaning.

"I thought maybe I'd offended you or something," he heard her say.

"Oh, no, how could you offend me?"

"Because you didn't even telephone."

"I was forbidden to visit you," Asa Heshel said.

"Who forbade you?"

"Your grandfather. Not really forbade, but he said you were going to be betrothed."

"Oh, it's not true!" She sat down on the edge of a chair, pulled off one of her gloves, and put it on again. "Maybe you're busy now," she said after a silence. "I'd better go."

"Please stay."

"I thought that apart from the lessons I could consider you a friend. Every day I asked Shifra if you'd telephoned. My Uncle Abram asked for you too."

"What is that book?" Asa Heshel asked, as though deliberately changing the subject.

" Knut Hamsun's
Victoria
."

-100-"A

novel?" "Yes."

Again there was silence. Then Hadassah said: "You're studying alone, I see."

"What else can I do? But I'm afraid I won't be able to manage it--the examinations, the textbooks. I'm too old."

"But you can't give up."

"Why not? What's the use of it all? There's such a thing as being resigned."

"You're too pessimistic. I know, because I'm very melancholy too. Everyone is against me--my grandfather, Papa, even Mamma."

"What do they want of you?"

"You know. But I can't."

She started to say something else, but suddenly stopped. She walked to the window. Asa Heshel went after her and stood be-side her. There was a twilight blueness outside. The snow fell slowly, broodingly. Lights gleamed from the opposite windows.

There was a faint rumble of noise, which sounded at one moment like the sighing of the wind and again like the rustling of the forest. Asa Heshel held his breath and let his eyelids close.

If only the sun were to stand still in the skies, as it had stood still for Joshua, and the twilight last forever, and the two of them, he and Hadassah, to stand there at the window, close to each other, for eternity!

He glanced toward her and met her own eyes turned toward him. Her features were hidden in the dimness. Her eyes, deep in pools of shadow, were opened wide. It seemed to Asa Heshel that he had experienced all this before. He heard himself say: "I longed for you very much."

The girl quivered. There was a movement in her throat, as though she were swallowing something.

"I too," she answered. "From the beginning."

2

Hadassah had left. It was dark, but Asa Heshel had not turned on the light. He was lying fully dressed on the bed, his eyes staring straight in front of him into the darkness, broken from time to time by passing reflections of light moving over the ceiling and losing themselves in the corners of the room.

-101-Could what

had happened be true? Was it real or was it a dream? What difference did that make? Was not all of reality, according to Berkeley, a perception of the divine mind? Ah, what nonsense!

They were two people, a man and a woman, and they were in love with each other. She would marry him, and they would kiss and embrace and have children. No, the whole thing was madness. Her grandfather would never permit it. Maybe she regretted already what had happened? But the words she had said could never be taken back. They were already a part of the history of the cosmos.

There was a knock at the door, then another. Gina looked in.

By the light in the corridor he could see her hairdress, the braids wound like a coronet and studded with combs. Her long earrings sparkled and glittered.

"Asa Heshel, are you asleep?"

"No."

"What's the matter? Why didn't you answer when I knocked?