The Family Moskat (26 page)

Warsaw, dear city of mine, how sad I am! Already, before I have left you, I long for you. I look at your crooked roofs, your factory chimneys, your thickly clouded skies, and I realize how deeply rooted you are in my heart. I know it will be good to live in a strange country, but when my time comes to die I want to lie in the cemetery on the Gensha, near my beloved grandmother.

-162-

The Gzhybov section had plenty to talk about: Reb Meshulam

Moskat had suddenly been taken ill, and his granddaughter Hadassah had run away from home with some raw youth from the provinces. Warsaw's Jews put two and two together: the girl's flight was responsible for the old man's illness. In the Chassidic prayer and study houses confusion piled on confusion. Tongues buzzed everywhere--in the food stores, the market stalls, at tailors'

tables and cobblers' benches, in the furniture shops on the Bagno, even as far away as the Nalevki. In the homes of Meshulam's sons and daughters the telephones started ringing early in the morning.

In front of the old man's house Dr. Mintz's carriage waited, and there was a constant stream of droshkies. Meshulam's oldest son, Joel, and his wife, Queen Esther, both of them heavy-weights, puffed up the steps that led to the Moskat flat. Nathan, the younger son, had been ordered to keep to his bed; in addition to his diabetes he had a bad heart. But he persuaded Saltsha to go with him to his father's house. She carried with her a bagful of medicines and pills. Pearl, Meshulam's oldest daughter, the widow, was out of the city; she had gone to Lodz on business, and the others sent her a telegram to return. Pinnie came dashing on foot. At the door he ran into his sister, Leah. The crowd gathered on the sidewalk made way for them. They heard Pinnie ask: "What happened? What happened?" and saw Leah -163-wring her hands as she answered: "What's the difference what happened? What he needs now is God's mercy."

A crowd of the curious gathered around Dr. Mintz's carriage, peering through the shiny windows at the cushioned seats and back rests. They gawked at the gentile coachman in his high silk hat and silver-buttoned uniform, and at the horses with bobbed tails, shiny pelts, and heads held high. Another coach wheeled up, the carriage of Dr. Frankl, and immediately there was a murmur that the situation was critical and that a consultation was being held. Naomi appeared in the doorway, red and excited, shouting at the top of her lungs: "What the black year goes on here! It's impossible for people to get in the door!"

"How's the boss?"

"Go on, go home! We'll send a messenger to give you a report.

Standing around like dummies." She made a threatening gesture.

"She's stolen plenty from them, the old witch," the baker's girl said. "A fire in her guts."

"What's happened to Koppel, the bailiff?" one woman asked.

She was holding a basket of groceries against her pregnant belly.

"Here he comes now."

Koppel was getting out of a droshky. He tossed a few coins to the driver, and before anyone had a chance to say a word to him he was up the steps and the door had closed behind him. Porters, draymen, laborers, and idlers stood around on the opposite sidewalk, rolling cigarettes, looking curiously toward the windows of the Moskat apartment, and talking in loud voices.

"Just let him close his eyes for good and the scramble'll start for fair."

"I should have the money this business is going to cost."

"There'll be plenty left."

"And he had to find himself a third wife, the old goat."

"Don't worry your head about it. She'll have a good juicy bone to gnaw at."

"They say that Nyunie's daughter ran off with someone," a man remarked.

"What! Mamma darling! I'll die!" the baker's girl hugged herself in an ecstasy of excitement.

"Which one? What's her name?"

"Hadassah."

-164-"God's curse!

Punishment from heaven! The Almighty takes His time, but when He hands it out, it's a double portion!" the pregnant woman said piously. "They stuff themselves and cram it into their bellies, and the poor people--they throw 'em out with their lousy few sticks of furniture--may their bones be thrown about in Gehenna."

"Hey, loose-mouth! Reb Meshulam never threw anybody out into the street."

Old Jews, idlers who knew everybody's business and followed everybody's funeral, declared that it was Abram Shapiro, the heretic and loose liver, who was responsible for Nyunie's daughter's fall from grace. Though all of them acted as though they were privy to everything that went on in Warsaw's wealthy Jewish households, the truth was that none of them knew anything at all about the troubles that had struck the Moskat family. It was only toward the evening, when Zeinvele Srotsker, the
shadchan
, arrived at the Bialodrevna prayerhouse, that some details were forthcoming. Hadassah had a friend, a gentile girl; early on Mon-day morning she had told her mother that she was going with this friend to a party in Praga and would remain at her house overnight. It wasn't the first time Hadassah had spent the night with the
shikse
, and Dacha had raised no objection. As it turned out, instead of going to Praga the girl had gone to the railroad station, where this man was waiting for her--some student from Tereshpol Minor, the grandson of a rabbi, but an apostate. Everything was so carefully planned that Hadassah's mother and father discovered their misfortune only the next day. When the news reached
Meshulam
, the old man had fainted. His power of speech was gone and his face was contorted. The girl's mother was sick, too; they were putting ice packs to her head. The police had been informed, but the pair had disappeared into thin air.

Zeinvele's listeners heard and were silent in amazement. True, the Bialodrevna faithful were used to sensations. Had not their own rabbi's daughter departed from the paths of righteousness? What things had not happened in Warsaw since the Revolution of 19051

Chassidic youth had cast off their gaberdines, shaved their faces, become strikers, Zionists. Daughters of respectable homes had fallen in love with university students and had run off with them to New York, Buenos Aires, or Palestine. Mothers of children had discarded their matron's wigs and let the wide world see their naked hair. It was these worldly books, printed in Yid--165-dish so that anyone could understand, that had poisoned decent people's minds. And these "reformed" schools, where parents were sending their daughters lately, were nothing but nests of paganism and wantonness. Nevertheless, who could have expected that a thing like this would happen to Nyunie's daughter, Meshulam Moskat's own grandchild! It was a sign that no one could be sure of his own children any more. And the way Meshulam had reacted only went to prove that with all his faults he still remained a Jew of the old school, a Chassid.

"A-ah, world's end," they sighed.

Almost every one of the worshippers had a son or daughter at home who was falling victim to the new ways. They brought home novels from the libraries. They went to all sorts of meetings.

Speakers were thundering that Jews should not wait for Messiah to come, but build the Jewish homeland with their own hands. Boys and girls met in secret in cellars and attics and conspired against the Czar. The truth was that the Jews were being persecuted more and more. Day by day it became harder to earn a living. What would be the end of it all? There was only one hope left--for Messiah to come, to come quickly while there were still a few pious Jews left.

Zeinvele Srotsker sat on a bench, his hands on his knees, his head bowed down. Hadassah's flight meant a serious loss to him. He was to have received five hundred rubles as his fee. The Passover season was approaching--and he had a daughter of his own to marry off.

2

In the sickroom where Meshulam lay, the lamp was turned low.

Beside the bed sat a nurse from the Jewish hospital. The patient was propped up against two pillows. His eyes were closed. His sunken face was like parchment. From time to time his thin beard and mustaches quivered. Once in a while a flush appeared on the pads of his cheeks.

Rosa Frumetl opened the door and looked in. In a whisper she asked the nurse whether the sick man had awakened. The nurse shook her head, and Rosa Frumetl closed the door again.

The other rooms were crowded with the Moskat sons, daughters, in-laws, and grandchildren. There were, besides, a handful of people whom nobody seemed to know, who had managed to make -166-their way into

the flat. Joel and Nathan, the old man's sons by his first wife, were sitting in armchairs in the living-room. Joel was combing his amber-colored Franz-Josef-style beard with his fingers. Every once in a while he took a large gold watch out of his vest pocket, carefully released the three spring-covers, and looked at the dial.

There was nothing he could do here; he had his own affairs to attend to. He kept on suggesting to Queen Esther that maybe they ought to go. But each time she whispered back that it would be unfitting to leave. She murmured something about the will, but he could not for the life of him figure out what difference their staying would make so far as the inheritance was concerned. He smoked one cigar after another. He calculated idly that if he were to live to be as old as his father was now, he would have to last another twenty years, whereas if he were to die in his seventies, he would have to wander about in the land of the living for a matter of only ten years or so more. What then, he reflected philosophically, was all this mad chase after money? Unless it were for the children--and who could say that they wouldn't wait around his deathbed the same way he and the others were now waiting around their father's? He coughed out a cloud of smoke and said to his brother Nathan: "It's all vanity. Vanity of vanities."

"A pinch of snuff," Nathan answered, and swallowed one of his pills.

Nathan followed his routine as though he were in his own home.

Saltsha had taken off his shoes, put a pair of slippers on his feet, and then propped them on a hassock. She kept on bringing him things--tea with saccharine--he couldn't take sugar because of his diabetes--a slice of orange, a chicken liver, a small glass of brandy.

Instead of letting his thoughts dwell on unpleasant matters he looked through an almanac that contained a perpetual Jewish calendar and gave dates for the market fairs held in Russian towns.

It had descriptions, too, of China, Siam, India, and other far-away countries, and accounts of the intense cold in the regions near the North Pole, where night and day were six months long. How did the Jews up there manage to observe the Sabbath, Nathan wondered--"unless they go by the clock," he decided. He had an impulse to tell Saltsha about it, but he was ashamed to say anything in front of Joel. A complicated world, he thought. To be able to figure out such a thing!

Pinnie wandered aimlessly from room to room, his hat on the -167-side of his head

and his coat unbuttoned. He had had nothing to eat since early morning. Hannah had telephoned him twice to come home to dinner, but he stayed on. He talked to everyone --the relatives, his brothers, the servants, and even the strangers. "I should be doing something," he said to himself. "The place can't be left upside down." But he couldn't think of anything he ought to do. Finally he wandered into his father's study and looked through the papers in a drawer of the writing-table--torn notes, letters from rabbis, merchants, kinsfolk; long-expired contracts, stamped receipts from yeshivahs and Talmud torahs; columns of figures whose purpose was unclear. How could Papa keep all this in his mind, Pinnie wondered. Koppel must have fleeced him from head to foot. Pinnie tried to open the iron safe that stood against a wall, but it was locked.

Leah, Meshulam's youngest daughter, was sitting in the kitchen talking with Naomi about Hadassah. Naomi was saying that the young man Rosa Frumetl had engaged to revise the manuscript had made a bad impression on her from the beginning. She never trusted these provincials; they wormed their way in everywhere and then walked off with anything they could pick up. Every once in a while Koppel came into the kitchen, to light a cigarette from the glowing coals in the stove and to exchange a few words with Leah. Naomi knew that Koppel was still in love with Leah.

Whenever he came in she left the two to themselves, going over to join Manya, who was at her eternal occupation of laying out a deck of cards. Manya still could not be sure whether her destined lover would be light or dark.

It was Hama who was most upset by Meshulam's illness. Nothing was going right for her. First she had left Abram, now her father was deathly sick. Her brothers and sisters would get their hands on everything and there would not be a copper left for her. She was afraid that the old man had written not only Abram out of his will but her and her daughters as well. Most of all, in the last few days she had begun to feel the old love for her father. Now she sat in a room with Rosa Frumetl, feeling that her new stepmother was in somewhat the same position as herself, uncertain whether Meshulam had made some provision for her. Both women wept, blew their noses, and urged each other to eat something.

Adele had locked herself in her room. Her stepfather was a man well along in years, and it was only to be expected that -168-some day the

end would come. But that that provincial Asa Heshel should pick himself up and run off with Hadassah--that was something she could not accept. She wasn't jealous, no; she wished them both luck. But just the same--what was the good of denying it?--it was like a slap in the face. She regretted bitterly that she had agreed to have him work on her father's commentary. She was ashamed that she had spoken to him the way she had, and had volunteered to tutor him. She had degraded herself, and all he had done was jeer at her. That's the way it had always been with her--in Brody, in Vienna, and now here in Warsaw. When it came to men she was simply an unfortunate. Was she really so ugly, or did she have faults she was not aware of?

She lay down on the bed. Let it be so; she would make peace with her destiny. She would reconcile herself to never having a husband, children, a home of her own. She would live alone. She suddenly thought of her father, whose body was turning to dust in the Brody cemetery.