The Family Moskat (51 page)

But for my money you're worth the finest diamond pin money can buy.' I was scared she'd have my head and throw me down the steps. Instead she opens up those enormous eyes of hers--I tell you my limbs began to quiver--and she says: 'For my children I'm ready for any sacrifice.' If I didn't get a stroke on the spot, then I've got the strength of a lion."

Motie the Red slapped his hand on the table. "Well," he said, "did you get what you wanted?"

"And if I did, you don't think I'd tell you."

Koppel folded his hands behind him. "Go on with your inventions. We're listening."

"Where've you been?" asked Itchele Peltsevisner. "Chasing after Mrs. Goldsober?"

"I don't chase after anyone."

"Sit down and take a hand."

"I've got to go." Koppel went out into the corridor and put on his hat and coat. He went out into the street and turned to-ward the bridge. He was used to having good luck with women, but Leah's coming to him at the office and Mrs. Goldsober's sud-den yielding surprised him for all that. He stood at a street lamp and lighted a cigarette. "I've got everything," he thought, "money, women, property. What else do I need? What's the sense of moving away from where I am?"

At the junction of Mala, Stalova, and Mlinarska Streets he stepped into a restaurant and, after some hesitation, telephoned Leah.

"Leah, it's me."

"Koppell" Leah cried. "Here I've been sitting and thinking about you all day. The whole thing seems like a dream to me."

"Can I see you?"

"Where are you? Come over here. No one's in the house but the children."

-329-Koppel got into

the number-five streetcar. Leah lived on Tshepla Street. He climbed out of the car after it had passed the City Market. He still had a short distance to go by foot. He passed the barracks and a military bakery. Farther on was the gendarmerie. Lights flickered in the dark courtyard. An armed guard stood in a sentry box. In the quiet of the night the sounds of the cannon fire on the battlefront came clearer. A thin rain began to fall. Everything was hanging by a thread, Koppel thought. He suddenly recalled what, as a child, he had heard said in school: that the earth was supported by Leviathan, the monster creature of the seas, and if Leviathan were to take its tail out of its mouth, the whole world would collapse. On the stairway in Leah's house he took out a handkerchief and wiped his wet face.

He rang the bell and heard Leah's footsteps. He opened his eyes wide; never before had he seen her so elaborately dressed. There was a silk scarf over her hair. She wore an embroidered satin lounging-robe and slippers with pompons. A diamond ring glittered on her finger. She took his arm and drew him into Moshe Gabriel's room. It was the first time Koppel had been there. He saw bookcases, a reading-stand with a volume of the Talmud on it. Had it not been for the couch, Koppel could have imagined he had stumbled into a Chassidic study house. A mood of embarrassment swept over him. "She looks like a rabbi's wife,"

he thought. He sat down with some hesitation. It seemed to him now as though he had not seen Leah for a long time.

"Would you like a glass of vishniak?"

She went out and came back with a tray on which were a flask of brandy, two glasses, and some honey cake. Her hands were unsteady; the tray trembled as she walked. "Help yourself, Koppel."

Leah put the tray down. "Why are you so pale? Has something happened?"

"No, Leah. Nothing's happened," he answered. "It's only that I love you."

"Go on. Drink. I've been thinking everything over. Ah, Koppel. I'm afraid. What'll happen to the children? Zlatele and Meyerl still need a mother. How can I leave such swallows alone--perhaps I should take them with me."

"It's not impossible."

"But how? In the midst of all this shooting? Koppel, I--I -330-just don't

know what to say. Here, come closer to me, you're not a Chassid."

He moved closer to her and took her hand.

"Tell me," he asked, "do you regret what's happened?"

"Regret? No, Koppel. What is there to regret? What I've got here is no life. And the children are all on my side--except Aaron, of course. Only the other day Meyerl said to me: 'Mamusha, you're always alone.' Masha, too, knows my troubles, but she never says a word. Zlatele is soft as silk. She plays the baby, but she's got mature understanding. Tell me what to do, Koppel. What did you call me for? Were you longing for me?"

"Yes, Leah."

"I wanted us to be alone. That's why I brought you in here.

Wait a minute. I'll get some tea."

She got up. As she did so, her knee brushed against his, and the fold of her robe parted. Koppel saw the smooth length of her leg.

He got up and went over to the reading-stand. He opened the volume. On the page lay a fringe from a prayer shawl and a reddish hair. Probably from Moshe Gabriel's beard. A humbleness overtook Koppel. A rabbi--and she was his wife, he thought. She is Meshulam Moskat's daughter--and I am Koppel the overseer.

When the door opened again and Leah came in with a tray of tea things, cakes, and lemon, Koppel experienced an anguished desire to fall at her feet and kiss the hem of her robe, the way he'd seen the characters do at the Polish theaters. He went to-ward her and put his arm around her waist. The tray in Leah's hand shook.

"Koppel, what's the matter? You'll be scalded."

"Leah, you've got to belong to me," Koppel quavered. "I love you.

I've loved you ever since that day you came into the office and your father called you
shikse
."

She put the tray down. Koppel put his arms around her and kissed her. Leah's full lips pressed ardently against his own. Her face was suffused with a girlish flush and her eyes seemed to grow wider and more intensely blue. Koppel glanced toward the sofa, but Leah broke away from his embrace.

"No, Koppel. God willing, well be married. There'll be enough time for that."

When Koppel left, the rain had stopped, but the sidewalks -331-were still wet

and glassy. The street lights were wreathed in mist. Koppel looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. "The devil with the Goldsober woman," he thought. "All I need is to get mixed up with that creature." But he had no desire to go home. He was too much aroused. Yet something was missing. "What," he wondered, "am I hesitating about? Bashele won't be the only woman in the world who's been divorced. She'll be all right. I'll see that she doesn't want for anything. About God I'm certainly not going to worry. Who says there's a God, anyway? Squeeze a man's throat, and he's through."

Suddenly Koppel knew what it was he wanted. He had to confide in someone about the events of the day, to find an ear to listen to him. Not the way that damn fool Leon the Peddler babbled on about his conquests, but in his own way, with some understanding pal over a glass of beer. There was a time when he had had friends. David Krupnick had been a bosom pal. And in those days a man could exchange some intimate talk with Isador Oxenburg, with Motie the Red, or with some of Meshulam Moskat's people.

But the years had changed everything. Krupnick was now his enemy, for all that his enmity was concealed. Motie the Red had a wife who led him by the nose, and he was no longer interested in bachelors' gossip. Isador Oxenburg had become a drunkard.

Koppel stood still for a moment and listened to the distant rumble of artillery. No, the old days would never come back. Right before his eyes a whole generation had passed.

He took the streetcar back to Praga and alighted on Mlinarska Street. He had decided not to walk past Mala Street, but to go directly home. The street, however, seemed to draw him. It was too early to go to sleep. The gate to the courtyard of the Oxenburgs' house was already closed, but the janitor opened it at once.

Koppel was a generous tipper. Koppel looked up and saw a light in Mrs. Goldsober's flat. He ascended the stairs and tapped lightly on the door.

"Who is it?" came a whispered voice.

"Me."

The door opened. Mrs. Goldsober was in a pink robe and red slippers. Her hair hung loose behind her. She had powdered and made up her face carefully. Koppel smelled the soft odor of carnation perfume. She took him by both hands and drew him inside. She giggled softly. "What a man!"

-332-

At exactly eleven o'clock at night the train wheels began to

move. Dinah, Asa Heshel's sister, ran along the platform, waving her hand. Half of her face was lighted in the glow of the moving cars, the other half was in shadow. Adele stood where she was, waving her handkerchief. Rosa Frumetl and Asa Heshel's mother were a few paces behind her. The train rolled along the dimly lit platform. The sky was tinted with a red and violet glow. The clouds hung low. Only when the train had crossed the bridge did Asa Heshel turn his gaze away from the window. A single candle glowed in the dim interior. The car was crowded with soldiers and civilians, men and women. The few Jews sat close together.

All the seats were occupied. Asa Heshel put his valise down and sat on it. The floor was filthy, strewn with sawdust. The car stank of cheap tobacco. A cold wind from the open fields blew in.

Some of the passengers had already composed themselves for sleep. Others talked and smoked. The conductor came through, calling for tickets. He lowered his lamp, paned in red and white, and peered below the benches to make sure that no one was hiding under them. A gendarme came in, demanding identification papers. He stared for a long time at Asa Heshel's birth certificate. When the train stopped in Otwotsk one of the passengers brought in a kettle of tea. Asa Heshel unwrapped the pack--

333-age Hadassah had given him. There were cakes, chocolates, and preserves. A wave of love for Hadassah swept over him. He had been with her the previous night, but now that seemed long ago. No day before had ever been so crowded for him: their wanderings through the streets; the hotel; their leave-taking before the dawn; and then being at his mother's house, with Dinah, his grandfather, his grandmother, his uncles and aunts, his cousins. Dinah was now in the last month of her pregnancy.

Some news had come from her husband, Menassah David; he was again on the Russian side of the border.

Now every minute, every second, was taking him farther away from all of them. The train rushed along. The night flew past the windows. Houses rose up and sank back. Trees danced by. The searchlight of the locomotive lit up a scarecrow. Against the gray sky the tattered figure with its straw hat and bedraggled coat took on a demoniacal appearance.

Asa Hesbel closed his eyes, but he could not fall asleep. A Russian soldier grumbled something or other about all Jews being spies. He told a long story about a rabbi who concealed Russian plans in his phylacteries and took them to the Germans. The Russians had caught him and hanged him. A Pole recounted a tale about a murder committed in his village by recruits. The Jews in the car talked to one another in subdued voices. At Ivangorod the train halted for several hours. The soldiers went out to drink tea.

A young Jew with a light beard, in a ragged and patched coat, loaded sacks onto the train. The candle in the car had burned itself out and the conductor had not come to re-new it. A soldier started to paw a Polish girl. The girl shrieked: "Keep your hands off me!"

It was well into the dawn when the train approached Lublin. In peasant huts on the outskirts of the city, smoke already rose from chimneys. The sky lightened and the earth grew gray. The puddles of water along the edges of the fields took on a bluish color. Steam rose from piles of refuse, as though the very soil were aflame somewhere in its inner depths. On a ragged piece of pasture land a lone cow stood, its face turned upward in an attitude of pre-dawn sadness.

At Lublin all the Jewish passengers except Asa Heshel got off.

The car filled with soldiers carrying guns, cartridges, mess kits.

The train halted for a long time. On a parallel track a long train rumbled slowly along. The cattle cars were filled with sol--334-diers. A tall soldier in a coat reaching to his ankles, and with spurred boots, engaged Asa Heshel in conversation. "Where are you traveling to?"

"To the conscription offices."

The soldier laughed. "You don't look like material for a fighter."

"If they take me, then I'll be one."

"Nonsensel You'll never find a Jew in uniform. They hide themselves under their grandmothers' skirts." He let out a roar.

"Hey, brother, give him a piece of pork," a small soldier suggested.

"A good idea." The soldier took a sausage out of his pocket, cut off a slice, and handed it to Asa Heshel.

"Here, eat this."

"Thank you, I'm not hungry."

"You see, you're afraid." He guffawed.

"They don't eat pig, because it squeals," the other soldier announced.

"Even when it's dead?"

"Yes, in a Jew's belly."

"Ah, a comic rascal!"

Asa Heshel got up and went over to another seat, in a corner. He put up his collar and pulled his hat low over his forehead. He sat half dozing, half brooding. "They'll kill me here, before we get to Reivitz," he thought. "Maybe the best thing to do would be to jump off while there's time." At that moment the train jerked forward. The farther it went from Lublin, the noisier it became.

The soldiers were quarreling, shrieking at one another, and making gestures with their bayonets. One tried to throw another's baggage through the window, the owner holding on to it for dear life. Then a group began to play games. One was chosen to bend over a bench while the others swatted his posterior. The small soldier pointed toward Asa Heshel.

"Turn him over."

"Hey, you, Jew, do you want to play?"

"No."

"Why not? Are your pants full?"

"Boy, leave him alone," the tall soldier called out.

He whispered something to the others and they burst into laughter. Asa Heshel looked toward them and saw they were eat--

335-ing the cakes Hadassah had given him. He sank deeper into his seat and pulled his hat farther down over his face. The chill seemed to penetrate to his bones. The hair prickled on his scalp.