The Family Moskat (34 page)

My dearest daughter, as I sit now and write to you, it seems to me that you are sitting next to me, and that we are talking face to face. There has been a big and noisy wedding here. Hadassah was married to Fishel on Friday, and on the evening following the Sabbath there was a reception. I did not have the desire to go, as you can understand, but it was not befitting that I should refuse and give rise to who knows what gossip. It was necessary, too, that I give her a wedding gift--a jewelry box that I had lying around for many years, from the Brody days. The wedding was noisy and vulgar, probably to drown out the truth that the bride had brought scandal on the family. I can imagine how the bile rose in her when she heard the news of your marriage. All Warsaw was talking about it.

-215-Fishel comes

from a family of wealth, but he is a fool. It is easy to see that after Asa Heshel he can find no favor in her eyes. People say that the bride kept up a constant wailing, and that she had to be watched to see that she did not run away; and that the marriage came off only because of Koppel--so that he might have another fortune to control. No one dares to say a word against him, except Abram Shapiro. Abram didn't attend the wedding; you can imagine what a turmoil that created. Not long ago he saw me on the street, and he turned his face away. The whole world's his enemy, the way he runs around with his women.

The wedding took place in your late stepfather's flat. The bride had fasted all day, and believe me she looked like a corpse. She wouldn't be so bad-looking, but she was as white as chalk. The women who led her to the canopy practically had to drag her. And the girls who were there wept bitterly. The whole thing was more like a funeral. The wedding march they played was different from the kind we used to have in Brody; all the customs here in Poland are different. For instance, they don't have the dance where the old women hop up and down in front of the bride with a loaf of bread. They didn't serve cake and brandy, because it was getting so close to the Sabbath and the women had to go home to light the candles. Even so, it lasted so long that it turned out to be almost a desecration of the Sabbath. The rabbi was one of those government rabbis, in a high silk hat. The Bialodrevna rabbi was supposed to come to officiate, but he didn't. It was a real slap in the face for them.

For the Friday evening only the family stayed. I went home, because to me the Sabbath is the Sabbath. But on Saturday night I had to go. The place was so crowded it was impossible to move, and the heat was so great that the perspiration was dripping off everyone. The people who were doing the serving pushed their way through as though they were frantic. Some of the guests got double portions and others got nothing. The food wasn't the best either. The fish wasn't fresh and the soup was watery. If you could have seen what went on! There were a lot of wedding presents, but all cheap stuff. You should have seen "QueenEsther" and Saltsha. They were behung with so many pieces of finery that they were almost hidden.

Joel and Nathan danced a
kozak
, both of them with their enormous bellies, like a couple of elephants. The Chassidim started to yell out against the men and women dancing together, -216-but nobody paid

any attention to them. Koppel came to the wedding without his wife, and I heard that he danced a waltz with Leah; but I didn't see it. Moshe Gabriel, a saintly man, left the place early; he couldn't abide the goings-on. And the bridegroom's grandfather protested too. Never in my life have I seen such a madhouse. It was more like a wedding at some peasant's. The musicians were playing military marches. Hannah, Pinnie's wife, lost a brooch in all the excitement--or someone stole it-and she fainted. I tell you with all my heart, my dear daughter, that before having any part of a wedding like that a quiet wedding like yours is a thousand times better. And I understand it cost a fortune.

And now, my dearest daughter, I want to remind you that you are the pure daughter of a distinguished Jewish house. In worldly matters I cannot counsel you; but I pray that you do not forget that a Jewish daughter must give constant heed to the ablutions that are required of her. It is written that it is because of three sins that a woman dies in childbirth--may God forbid--and one is when she doesn't heed the ritual laws of purification. The children of such a union are likened to those illegit-imately born. Do not be angry if I remind you of these things; it is only because the world of today takes them too lightly. I am sending you a copy of
The Pure Well
, where you will be able to find all the laws of ablution, and I pray that you heed them. I know that it will not be easy in a strange country like Switzerland, but if a person really wants it, then she can manage to find a ritual bath, and a rabbi of whom to ask questions, because there are pious Jews everywhere.

Write to me and tell me when and how much money to send you.

Believe me, my dear daughter, when I realize that with God's blessings you are at last a wife, it is as though new health were poured into my body. I only hope that your dear husband will understand and appreciate the treasure that has come into his keeping, and that he will be good to you as is your desert. Write to me at once, and a long letter, because now that you are away, there is nothing left for me but your letters. This from me, your mother, who yearns to hear nothing but good news from you--

Rosa Frumetl Moskat

-217-

THIS YEAR, two years after Hadassah's marriage, the Moskat clan, as in all the previous summers, left Warsaw for the cool countryside. Joel, Nathan, and Pinnie took up their quarters in their father's villa in Otwostk. Hama, with her older daughter, Bella, moved in with them. Pearl, Meshulam's oldest daughter, the widow, had a house of her own in Falenitz. Nyunie and Leah shared a villa in common in Shvider. Before his marriage to Hadassah, Fishel had acquired a house with thirty acres of ground near Usefov. The year before, Rosa Frumetl had spent the summer in Meshulam's villa. At that time her stepdaughters Queen Esther and Saltsha had done everything they could to spite her, making fun of the way she chanted out of her prayerbook, the way she poked her bony fingers into the flesh of a chicken, the way she put on her matron's wig, the way she washed her hands and made the appropriate benediction after leaving the bathroom. Rosa Frumetl had so much anguish that instead of gaining weight that summer, she lost five pounds. This year, however, Rosa Frumetl did not have to depend on the Moskats. Now she had a new husband, Wolf Hendlers, a man of means, and learned besides. He had a cottage of his own in Shvider. Now in the letters she wrote to her daughter in Switzerland Rosa Frumetl could sign herself "Rosa Frumetl Hendlers," and she made a proud flourish at the end of her new name.

The first one to leave Warsaw for the summer was Queen Esther.

Directly after the Passover holidays she began to complain that her tapeworm was drawing the life out of her. The Warsaw air was too thick--you could cut it with a knife. The clothes she had had made for herself during the winter were already miles too big, she had lost so much weight. Her daughters, too --Minna, Nesha, and Gutsha--had become nothing but skin and -218-bone; her son Mannes as well. Joel made a face. He could not bear staying in Warsaw all alone, and at the same time he could not abide this business of fresh air, and trees and fields--and a flock of babbling women all around him. Joel used to say that going off to the country for the summer was a lot of nonsense.

When it's hot, you sweat no matter where you are, he said, and the cold night winds only give you catarrh. But Queen Esther generally had her own way. Early in the summer two wagons rolled up in front of Joel's house; there was a bustle of loading huge quantities of bedclothing, apparel, pots and pans, dishes, stocks of foods. The draymen pleaded that the load be lightened, because the horses were scrawny old nags. Besides there was always the danger that everything would tumble off along the roads.

But Queen Esther kept on adding to the load--a bowl, a clothespress, or a sack of old potatoes that had already begun to sprout. It always turned out that the samovar was the last thing to be piled on the heap, tied on with a rope so that it would not fall off. The janitor's one-eyed dog barked. Children pulled hairs out of the tails of the horses. Less prosperous housewives looked out of their windows, their bewigged heads bobbing, murder in their envious looks.

"Out to the green pastures already! They go crazy with too much prosperity."

Nathan had to leave Warsaw early because of his diabetes, Saltsha insisted. It was a warm day when they left, but Saltsha made him put on a heavy vest and saw to it that his overcoat was buttoned tight. Queen Esther accused Saltsha of going for her own pleasure more than for Nathan's, for the sharp country air only stimulated his appetite and there was hardly anything he was allowed to eat.

Pinnie's chief reason for going was that not one of his four daughters was yet bespoken. Everyone knew that it was easier for a girl to catch a man "along the line" than in Warsaw, where the girls stayed at home most of the time and a prospective husband never got a real chance to have a look at them. It was the same reason that prompted Hama to hurry off, too. Bella was getting along in years. Stepha was going around with some student, but it didn't look to Hama as though he was much of a bargain. Besides, what was the point of sweating in Warsaw? It was little enough they saw of Abram. Day and night he was with that woman of his, Ida Prager, although Hama had heard rumors that -219-he was getting tired of his old flame and was looking for a new conquest.

Anyway, in the summer he would come out to the country for the weekend, like most Warsaw householders, and sometimes even bring a gift with him.

Dacha went because Dr. Mintz told her to, and because Nyunie, fool that he was, made her life miserable at home. There was nothing better for Dacha's ailments than to settle back in a hammock, a pillow under her head, a pair of glasses on her nose, and read the Yiddish newspaper. She read everything: the news items, the feature articles, the serial stories. There was so much a person could find out: what the officials in Petersburg were say-ing; what manner of life the Rothschilds lived in London, Paris, and Vienna; who had died lately in Warsaw and who had got married or become engaged; how Jews lived in far-away places like Yemen, Ethiopia, and India; and what was the favorite food of the Czar's uncle, Nikolai Nikolaievich.

Rebecca, her maid ever since Shifra had gone to work for Hadassah, would bring out a cup of cocoa, some cookies, and a dish of preserved fruit. Dacha would wash her hands from a jug of water that she always had by her, recite the appropriate blessing, and refresh her spirits with the food. Then she would set the tray down and stretch out comfortably. Dacha's back and limbs did not ache so much here in the country. Her gall bladder bothered her less. The only thing she did not like about the place was that she had to put up with Leah as her neighbor. This summer Leah's husband, Moshe Gabriel, was staying with his son, Aaron, in Bialodrevna. It was an open secret that matters were rapidly approaching a divorce between husband and wife, and evil tongues wagged rumors that the moment the divorce took place Koppel would leave his wife and he and Leah would marry. A shudder shook Dacha's spine whenever she heard these reports. That was all she needed--to have Koppel for a brother-in-law! Even after all these years Dacha had never been able to accustom herself to Leah's strident voice, which carried all the way over from her cottage; to the phonograph that Leah had brought up from Warsaw, which she kept going day and night, grinding out theater music and cantorial arias; to Leah's short-sleeved blouses and the short dresses she wore, with her bare legs showing beneath them, like an unbeliever. That sort of thing might be all right for a young girl; a person could understand -220-that. But what madness did Leah have in her mind? Did she think she was much younger than Dacha?

Dacha would close her eyes and fall into a doze. All through the years she had had complaints against her father-in-law, considered him arrogant and callous. Now that he was dead she could understand the troubles he had had. The estate had not yet been divided. Koppel the bailiff still held all of them in the palm of his hand. Leah was behaving scandalously. Queen Esther and Saltsha were acting the great ladies. Abram had lost every bit of decency. Even her own husband, Nyunie, had not shown so much ill will toward her as long as the old man had been alive.

And what of her child, her Hadassah? Dacha preferred not even to think about that. She was a sick woman. Every day she lived was a gift from heaven. What was the sense of eating herself up alive?

That was all Nyunie was waiting for, for her to close her eyes for good.

2

A Letter from Hadassah to Asa Heshel
Dear Asa Heshel
: I came across your address today quite by accident. You probably know all about us. I really don't know why I'm writing this letter.

It's silly and I frankly don't expect an an-swer. You have a wife and I a husband. I've learned that you have settled down, and it makes me happy to think that at least one of us has reached his goal. I'm certain that you have not completely put me out of your mind. You are a philosopher and you are aware of the fact that the past cannot be eradicated. I picture to myself your astonishment at learning that I was going to be married. This must have proved to you once again that women are indeed frivolous creatures. I was always aware of your feeling of contempt and it was this that pained me most. I was sick for weeks. I looked forward to death, to an end to all this pain. But you remained silent and it was your silence that drove me to despair. I admit that my parents are not responsible for what happened. It is all my fault. When I saw the road to happiness would forever be closed to me, I chose the opposite. Even -221-as a child I

knew that at the crucial moment I would fail.

How are you? How are you getting along? Are you studying at the university? Did you meet any interesting people? Is Switzerland really so beautiful as you imagined it? When I re-call our trip it becomes almost dreamlike. I had the opportunity to observe great human suffering on my way back. I never foresaw during my strolls on the Pavia and Dluga that one day I too would be behind bars. It gives me satisfaction that I know how it feels.