The Family Moskat (30 page)

She must have fallen asleep again, because when she was next aware of her surroundings the room was in total blackness. She could not remember where she was. She sat up in bed, putting both her hands to her forehead. "Yes, I'm in prison. Everything is lost!" She held her breath and listened intently. Where had all the other women gone? She could not hear a single sound. Had they died or had they all been set free? She put her hand out. Her fingers touched a glass. She lifted it and brought it to her lips. It was tea, cold and sweetened, with some lemon in it. She drank down the cool smoothness of the liquid, her dry palate sucking in the taste of the lemon. All at once every detail of what had happened came flooding back to her: how she had met Asa Heshel at the Muranover railroad station; the trip in the third-class car to Reivitz; the night in the cold station among the Ukrainian peasants; the ride in a cart to Krasnostav; the inn crowded with coachmen, commissionaires, Chassidim; the long journey to Kreshev and the wait at the water-mill for the gentile, the dark one, who was to take them across the border to Austria.

The name of the village was Boyari, she remembered. Asa Heshel had not shaved. He had climbed to the hayloft and read. A peasant had brought the news that the guard had been changed at the border and it would be necessary to bribe the new one all over again. Then the long walk in the dead of night to the frozen river San. The man who led them told them it was only half a mile, but the journey had taken weary hours of plodding. They -189— had crawled through frozen fields, forests, marshes. It had rained and she had become soaked. The wind had blown Asa Heshel's hat away. She had lost one of her galoshes. Dogs barked. Someone had flashed a lantern and then it had become pitch dark again. Then suddenly they had heard shouts and shots. They had thrown themselves down on the ground. Asa Heshel had called her name. A soldier had grabbed her and hauled her off to a sentry booth, where another soldier was waiting with a bayonet. She had wept and pleaded with them to let her go, but they had stared stonily at her and said: "The law is the law."

She had been taken under guard to Yanov, then to Zamosc, Izbitsa, Lublin, Piask, Pulavy, Ivangorod, Zhelabov, and Garvolin.

In Yanov she had shared a cell with a murderess. The woman told her that she had cut her mother-in-law's head off with a sickle. In other towns she had been thrown into cells with thieves and prostitutes. She had made the acquaintance of a political prisoner, a girl from Zamosc. In Warsaw she had been kept for a night in the Seventh Commissariat. The next morning they had brought her to the Fourth Commissariat, and from there the police officer had brought her home.

Now, in the darkness, she remembered everything. Their plan to flee to Switzerland had failed. Asa Heshel was lost somewhere.

She was dangerously sick, she was disgraced. No, there was no point in staying alive. She had only one prayer to God: to take her quickly, now. She relaxed her limbs and tried to imagine her life slipping away from her. In her mind she said good-by to her mother, her father, Abram, and Asa Heshel. Was he alive or dead?

She did not know.

-190-

IT WAS the Moskat family custom to celebrate the Purim festival at Meshulam's home, where sons, daughters, in-laws, and grandchildren would gather for the feast. This year, although the old man lay ill, the custom was not broken. Naomi and Manya busied themselves baking cookies, tarts, and strudel, as well as preparing the traditional holiday chick peas and flat cakes.

Nathan read the Book of Esther out loud. For the feast, which came in the late afternoon, Rosa Frumetl lit two stubby candles.

Manya lowered the large chandelier from the ceiling and put a flame to the wick. It was at first expected that Meshulam would keep to his bed throughout the celebration, but the old man let it be known by unmistakable gestures that he intended to preside at the family feast. He was dressed and brought into the dining-room in a wheelchair. In the candlelight his face was as yellow as the saffron sprinkled on the pleated Purim loaf. The sick man was wearing an embroidered silk sleeping-robe. There was a velvet skullcap on his head. A shawl covered his lap to protect him from a chill. He rested his slippered feet on a small hassock. Nathan brought over a basin of water and a copper dipper; Joel poured the water over his father's hands and dried them with a towel.

Naomi and Manya served carp in sweet-and-sour sauce, soup, meatballs with a raisin sauce, and a compote of apricots. There were hamantashn, the triangular, poppy-seed-filled pastries, almonds, walnuts, and preserves. There were wine, vishniak, and mead. Starting at noon, messengers began to come, bearing Purim gifts from relatives, kinsfolk, and friends. Rosa Frumetl and Naomi watched to see that each received a suitable reward and that appropriate gifts were returned to each sender.

-191-Meshulam sat

at the head of the table, staring before him. He heard and understood everything, but his tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he felt a reluctance to emit unintelligible sounds or make motions with his head. He could see that Pinnie had his sleeve in the fish gravy, and that Joel's grandson, a boy of four, was stuffing himself with fruit and candy. He would overeat and spoil his little stomach, the old man thought. He would have liked to be able to say: "Hey, you, you rogue, enough!"

There was a constant procession of beggars, poor folk, and youngsters in holiday masks. Rosa Frumetl had provided twenty-five rubles in small coins. She had stacked the piles of change on a plate in front of her. She doled the money out to the young boys from the near-by yeshivah, the emissaries from the charitable organizations, soup kitchens, and orphanages, and the mendicants "in business for themselves." These came in arrogantly, ready to argue vehemently if the gift was below their expecta-tions. They would throw Meshulam a contemptuous glance, which seemed to say he was meeting the just end of those who denied the humble their due. The Purim players came in singing. They wore cotton beards and tall paper hats with Stars of David pasted on them.

Their excited eyes gleamed behind the slits of their masks. Some were girded with swords and daggers of cardboard. They sang, shuffled about in awkward dance steps, and made thrusts at each other with their sabers. One group of youngsters enacted a play about King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther. When Meshulam had been well, he had paid the players their fee and chased them out; he had had no patience with these carryings-on. Besides there were petty thieves among these Purim invaders. But now there was no one to protest. Ahasuerus stood with his long black beard, a paper crown on his head. He waved his golden scepter toward Queen Esther. Two executioners went through the motions of beheading Queen Vashti, who wore horns and from beneath whose dress a pair of boy's boots stuck out.

Haman, with enormous black mustaches and a triangular hat, paid homage to Mordecai, while Zeresh, his wife, emptied a chamberpot over his head. Meshulam could hear the voices of the players, but could not make any sense out of their babblings. The others were laughing, giggling, and clapping their hands. Nathan was howling in glee, his belly heaving up and down, coughing -192-and spluttering in ecstasy. Saltsha ran over to shake him and thump his back.

Meshulam's eyes looked at them all contemptuously.

"A pack of fools! Idiots!" he thought.

He regretted everything now: that he had twice married daughters of undistinguished families and spawned children of no accomplishments; that he had not been more discriminating in the choice of sons-in-law; that he had made such a fool of himself as to marry for a third time; and especially that he had not made out a detailed will, with an executor and a seal, leaving a substantial part of his wealth to charity. Now it was too late.

They would dissipate his fortune, every grosz of it. They would quarrel and tear at one another. Koppel would steal all he could.

Abram would swindle the lot of them. Hama would be left penniless. They had told him that Hadassah had come back, but he didn't understand the whole thing clearly. Where had she come back from? What had happened to the one she had gone away with? How would they be able to marry her off, now that she had disgraced herself? He remembered a passage from Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." He raised his eyes and looked toward the window. The sun had gone down, but the sky was still bright with sun-drenched clouds. They looked like fiery sailing ships, flaming brooms, purple windows, strange creatures.

A wide patch of luminescence seethed and bubbled in the center, yellow and green, like boiling sulphur, reminding him of the fiery river in which his own soul would have to be cleansed. A hand made out of light, mist, and space was weaving and darting, making intricate patterns, writing some secret message. But what it all meant no ordinary son of man could hope to understand. Would he, Meshulam Moskat, at least find the truth of things at the other side?

"Your health, Father! May it soon be restored to you!" It was Joel speaking, raising a glass of wine to his lips.

Meshulam made no movement. What was he sopping it up for, the glutton? Wasn't his belly big enough?

Meshulam grimaced and made motions with his head, Naomi and Pinnie wheeled him back into the bedroom. They lifted him onto the bed and pulled the blanket over him. He lay awake for a long time, watching the twilight deepening. The clouds had scattered; only small puffs remained in the sky. Stars began to -193-appear. From

behind the spires of the church on the other side of the street, which still reflected the glow of the setting sun, a yellow moon swam into the heavens. Meshulam, as when he was a boy, still saw in the moon's pale face the features of Joshua. What did the affairs of the world mean to him now? He had only one desire, to see the splendors of the higher worlds that, iridescent with secret illumination, hovered over the roofs of the Gzhybov.

2

In the earlier years Abram had been in the habit of celebrating the Purim evening at Meshulam's house. Since his quarrel with his father-in-law Abram had held the holiday observance in his own home. Hama and. Bella would bake honey cake and hamantashn.

His in-laws would come late in the evening after the celebration at the old man's house, half-drunk and singing, and would stay until late in the night. The women and girls danced with one another.

The men drank beer. Abram would put on an old dress of Hama's, a discarded matron's wig, and a blouse stuffed with a pillow, and would make believe he was a wife who had come to the rabbi to settle a dispute with her husband. He would squeak in a high falsetto voice that Nyunie, the husband, the good-for-nothing, did not make a living and spent all his time in the Chassidic prayerhouse. Besides he was always sticking his fingers into the pots on the stove. Abram would pull up his sleeves.

"Rabbi! I'm the mother of eight children! Just look at the way he's pinched me black and blue!"

"Feh! Shame on you. Cover your arms! Wanton!" Pinnie, in the role of the rabbi, would shout.

"Rabbi, my crown! Go on, take a look, it won't harm you.

You're too old anyway."

They would go through the same masquerade every Purim, year after year, but it never failed to send the women into peals of laughter. They would fall into one another's arms, shrieking with delight. And the next month the tenant on the floor below would refuse to pay rent on the grounds that all the jumping about had broken the plaster on the ceiling.

Or there would be another performance. Abram would be pos--

194-sessed of a dybbuk and would be brought to Pinnie, the rabbi, to be exorcized. Pinnie would ask him what sins he had committed in his lifetime. And Abram would answer mournfully:

"Ai, rabbi, what sins have I not committed?"

"Did you eat forbidden meat?" Pinnie would ask sternly.

"Only when it was tasty."

"Did you carry on with women?"

"What else? With men?"

"Did you fast on Yom Kippur?"

"All I had was some pork between meals."

"And after that?"

"I took a ride over to the rabbi's married daughter's."

"What did you do there?"

"The rabbi was in shul, so I blew out the candles and we recited the Psalms."

"In the dark?"

"I knew them by heart."

The women would blush and giggle. Joel's face would become as red as a beet. He would emit one loud "Ha!" and the cigar would fall from his open mouth.

Year in, year out, Pinnie preached the same mock sermon. He demonstrated that the Biblical Mordecai was in reality a Warsaw Chassid. Haman was really Rasputin, Vashti was the Czarina, Esther was an opera singer and Abram's protégé. With nimble casuistry he so twisted the Biblical passages as to prove that Mordecai must have been a herring dealer. The women howled at Pinnie's gesticulations and his thin piping voice. Late at night they would sit down to another feast of chick peas, mead, cold meats, and horseradish. Then they would go home, laughing and talking noisily, knocking at the doors of neighboring apartments and waking up children. In the courtyard Nathan would sing a Purim song, and dance with the janitor. It had once happened that Nyunie had gone out on the balcony and emptied a jug of beer. A passing policeman had got his hat drenched. He had come upstairs ready to arrest the lot of them. They had had to slip something into his palm to quiet him.

But this year, with Hama gone, Abram's flat was deserted. Late in the afternoon he went down, bought a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers, and then took a droshky to Ida's. The daughter of a pious and well-to-do family, Ida had been used -195-to joyous

Purim celebrations. But now she, too, was alone. Zosia had gone to visit a friend. Ida sat reading a book. When Abram came in she did not raise her head.

"A good Purim to you," Abram said. "Why are you so gloomy? It's a holiday."

"A fat lot the holiday means to us," Ida answered.

During the years since Ida had left her husband she and Abram had separated more than once. Her friends had warned her that the man was a fraud. Leon Prager, her husband, had never given up hope that Abram would disappear from the picture and that Ida would come back to him. The child, Pepi, who had been three years old when her parents separated, had no real place to call home. Sometimes she was with her mother in Warsaw, sometimes with her father in Lodz, or with her grandmother, or in a boarding-school. There had been times when Ida had left Warsaw, sending Abram long letters of farewell and pleading with him to leave her alone. But he always managed to get her back. Abram would dispatch letters and telegrams or fol-low her to the resorts where she had fled for refuge. Ida swore that Abram had cast a spell over her. There was no peace for them either together or apart.