The Family Moskat (56 page)

"Well, never mind, Leah. Everybody sees the other person's defects. So far as I'm concerned, I've got enough troubles. I'll tell you the honest truth--I envy you. You're acting like a crazy -363-woman, but at

least you've got courage. Me? I'm a stinker in everything I do."

Leah shook her head. "As I live, Abram," she said, "I'm beginning to think you don't know what you're saying."

"Well, what of it? The mood I'm in today, don't be surprised at anything I do. What you see before you is a walking corpse."

"What are you? A comedian, or drunk, or something?"

"I'm anything you like. If you have the courage to divorce Moshe Gabriel and marry Koppel, why didn't a blockhead like me have the courage to divorce Hama and marry Ida? She's a great artist. She loved me and I loved her. I can't live without her. That's the honest truth."

"The old story all over again. So far as I know, Ida's back in Lodz with her husband."

"Yes, Leah. Everything's my fault. I'm a worthless coward. I suffocate without her. I'm so lost I could bang my head against the wall."

"You really deserved everything you got."

"If it weren't for the war I'd know what to do. But we're stuck where we are, she with the Germans and me here. I can hear her calling me--at night. We have a way of knowing--"

"What sort of way? What are you babbling about?"

"Aah, never mind. I don't know what I'm saying. I had a glass of wine too much. Nyunie took me to Fuker's wine cellar. He's a bridegroom all over again. With Bronya Gritzhendler. There's a couple for you. You could fracture your sides laughing. She twists him around her finger." He paused for a moment. "As for this actress of mine, she's driving me insane. Aah, did I get dragged in! Aah, am I a fool! Listen to what I'm telling you, Leah; I'm in a jam. I have to have a hundred rubles. Otherwise I'll have to throw myself off the top floor."

Leah stared at him with wide-open eyes. "So that's why you came to see me?"

"Idiot! Certainly not."

"What do you need the money for? A doctor?"

"Not for a rabbi."

Leah sighed heavily. "A man of your age."

"It's all her fault. First she starts to make speeches that she wants a child. It makes no difference to her what people say. Gets drunk on all those crazy books.
Artzybashev. Kollontai
. And -364-now she's

ready to kill herself ten times a day. It's the fifth month."

"The fifth month? She might die."

"I'll be the one that will die. She'll be the death of me."

"I haven't got a girosz. I thought you were a smart man, but instead you're a fool. A man of your age should know better."

"Yes, Leah. You're right. I'm a beaten dog. Well, good night."

"Wait, you lunatic! Where are you running away to? I can give you a ring. Go and pawn it. But please, no matter what happens, you've got to redeem it before I go away. You'll bring me the ticket from the pawnbroker. It was left to me by my mother, God rest her."

Leah went into the other room, leaving Abram alone. He put his hand to his head and began to sway from side to side. There was a stabbing pain in his heart. He felt a cold wave shoot up his spine. He was hungry, thirsty, tired, ashamed, full of longing for Ida, full of the fear of dying, everything, all at the same time.

"Maybe this is the last night for me," he thought. "She's right. I'm a fool."

Leah came back with a small red box. Inside, on the cotton padding, lay a ring, its diamond reflecting the colors of the rainbow in the dim light.

"A beautiful stone," Abram said.

"But please don't squander it."

"No, Leah. No. Let me kiss you."

He spat the cigar butt from his lip. He put his arms around her and kissed her fervently on the forehead, cheeks, nose. Leah pushed him away. "Drunk as Lot!"

"No, Leah, no! I love you. You're a noble person. I want to make up with Koppel. I want to be at the wedding."

Leah's eyes filled with tears. "Ah, dear God, that I should live to see this day." Her voice trailed off.

3

Everyone knew the story of Abram's new affair. Since Ida had returned to her husband in Lodz, Abram had been going around with an actress from Odessa, Ninotchka. Ninotchka had been brought to Warsaw by a man who was part owner of a -365-theater. This

man boasted that Ninotchka was his mistress and that he had taken her away from a wealthy pawnbroker. Ninotchka behaved like a lady. She made it a point to let it be known that she had graduated from a Gymnasium. She quoted Pushkin and Lermontov by heart.

She insinuated that she was mixed up with the revolutionary movement. She had brought with her a suitcase full of play manuscripts--mostly translations of the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, and Andreyev. The Jewish actresses in Warsaw had immediately taken a dislike to her. They began to spread all kinds of rumors--that she was converted, that she had deserted her two small children, that she had stolen from the theater, and that she sold herself for money. She appeared in a melodrama in Warsaw, and got good notices, but she was forced to withdraw from the play because of backstage intrigue. The director of an American Jewish theater was supposed to have offered her a contract to appear in New York at a salary of two hundred dollars a week, but again her enemies had interfered, and at the last minute the whole thing had come to nothing. By the time Abram met her, she was no longer on the stage. She suffered from palpitations of the heart. She had taken an attic room in the home of a gentile woman in the summer resort of Mrozy, where Ida had an apartment. Ida and she became friends.

Ida painted her portrait. Ninotchka spent whole evenings talking to Ida and Abram about her plans for an art theater to be endowed by Jewish organizations, about her successes in Druskenik, where her mother had had a first-class hotel, and about her acquaintances among famous Russian pro-ducers, actors, writers, and directors. She went to sleep at two o'clock in the morning; she opened her shutters at noon. While she was still an intimate of Ida's, eating frequently at her apartment and scolding Abram because he did not sufficiently appreciate Ida's talent and idealism, she took him to her attic room, supposedly to read him a drama she had adapted from a Gorki story, and she stealthily began to carry on an affair with him. It was largely because of Ninotchka that Ida had packed her bags and left for Lodz. At the railroad station Ida had said to Abram: "Adieu forever, you dirty beast!"

Abram immediately bombarded her with special-delivery letters and telegrams, but Ida did not answer them. She had left Lodz and lived somewhere in a resort town near by. Meanwhile the war began. The Germans occupied Lodz. Ninotchka had rented a -366-room on

Ogrodova Street in Warsaw and began to take singing lessons from a professor. Whenever Abram was to visit her, she would phone him in advance to tell him what to bring--rolls, smoked salmon, cheese, wine, chocolate, even floor wax. Although she was his mistress, she would not address him with the familiar second-person singular. She constantly reminded him that he was old enough to be her father. Abram spoke Russian well, but she continually criticized his grammar. In the evening she liked to put a candle in the candlestick, sit down on the floor, and recite her grievances: the wrongs done to her at home, in school, in the dramatic groups, and in the Odessa theaters. She talked and wept.

She smoked cigarettes and nibbled at raisins, nuts, and caramels from a paper bag. In bed she sighed, cried, quoted poems, pointed out to Abram that he was a grandfather and had a weak heart, and spoke about her lovers in Odessa, calling them by pet names.

Abram swore at her in Hebrew, which she did not understand: "Ugly pest! Stinking carcass!"

Now Ninotchka waited for Abram outside Leah's house, under a balcony. She was wearing a fur jacket, a broad-brimmed hat, a green skirt, and high snow boots. Her hands were hidden in a muff.

She hopped from one foot to the other to keep warm. She looked at Abram with a large, angry eye. "I thought you were going to be there all night."

"I got the hundred rubles."

The pair walked in silence, at a distance from each other. Abram dragged the point of his umbrella behind him on the pavement and shook his head. Koppel, the overseer, the son-in-law of Reb Meshulam Moskat! His, Abram's, brother-in-law! What an ugly end!

On Ogrodova Street Abram went up to Ninotchka's room, which opened directly from the hall of the building. He stopped frequently to rest as he climbed the steps. His heart was thumping. He recalled Ida's words: "Adieu forever." Ninotchka walked ahead of him. At the threshold she reminded him angrily to wipe his feet.

The room was cold and in disorder. Near the cold stove stood a pail containing a few lumps of coal On the piano there were pots, glasses, cups, and a bowl of rice. An iron stove lid, half wrapped in a towel, lay on the unmade bed. Ninotchka used it at night to keep her stomach warm; she suffered from cramps.

-367-Abram sat

down on the edge of the bed. "Ninotchka, make something to eat. I'm dying of hunger."

"Well, go ahead."

Nevertheless, she began to prepare the oil stove. She trimmed the wick, pumped, cursed. Abram closed his eyes. Suddenly he burst out laughing.

"Have you gone crazy, or what?"

"I got myself into the nobility. Koppel the overseer is going to become my brother-in-law. If the old dog had only lived to see it!"

DURING the first few days in the barracks Asa Heshel was sure that he would not be able to stand the sufferings he was going through. Every night when he lay down on his bunk he was terrified that he would never again get up. Because of the urgency of the situation the general staff was trying to drill the new recruits in military techniques in record time. Instead of sending them deep into the Russian interior for the training period, as was the usual procedure, they kept them in barracks not far from the front Asa Heshel's very bones ached from the constant drilling.

His stomach rebelled at the noisome soldier's fare. In the middle of the night the officers would sound an alarm, and Asa Heshel would have to dash out of his quarters half-dressed. In the morning during assembly he shivered with the cold. The other recruits picked on him. He was constantly threatened with court-martial. Of all the raw recruits, Asa Heshel was the rawest. But weeks went by and he survived. In the evening, before taps, after he had cleaned and polished his rifle, he would sit down in the -368-barracks and try to read a few pages of Spinoza
Ethics
. A harmonica played; a group of peasants danced a
kamarinska
. The kerosene lamp threw a brazen light. Some of the soldiers would be drinking tea, others writing letters. Some would be telling jokes, others sewing buttons on their uniforms. The Christian soldiers would laugh at him. The Jewish recruits would gather about him to ask what he was reading. They could never understand how, at a time like this, a man could devote himself to poring over such small characters.

He sat here in the barracks before taps and carried on a dispute with Spinoza. Well, then, let it be admitted that everything that was happening was necessary. That the entire war was nothing but a play of modes in the infinite ocean of the Substance. But for what reason had the divine nature required all of this? Why should he not put an end to the entire tragicomedy? He read from the Fifth Part of the
Ethics
, where Spinoza discussed the intellectual love of God.

Proposition 35: God loves Himself with infinite intellectual love.

Proposition 37: There is nothing in nature that is contrary to this intellectual love of God or that can remove it.

Asa Heshel raised his eyes from the page. Was it really so? Could one in truth love all these Ivans? Even this one with the pockmarked face and the shifty piggish eyes?

Asa Heshel bent his head. He had come here with the intention of becoming a dutiful soldier. He wanted to demonstrate to himself that he, too, could endure what others endured. He had always looked askance at the youths who maimed themselves to avoid military service, or deserted, or bribed the doctors. It gave the enemies of the Jews the pretext to declare that the Jews always looked for special privileges. But try as he might, he could not live with the others. He had no patience with their talk or their games.

The whole business of drilling and learning the military art had no interest for him. He was disgusted with the coarseness of the soldier's vernacular. He avoided all of them, and they avoided him.

After all, what was he doing among these people? He was a Jew; most of them were Christians. He was born an intellectual; they were ignoramuses. They had faith in God, in the Czar, in women, children, country, and soil. He had nothing but doubt about everything. Even according to the very Spinoza whom he so much admired, their lives were more virtuous -369-than his, with all his pride, his modesty, his individualism, his intolerable suffering, which were of no use to anybody.

He put back the copy of the
Ethics
in the wooden barracks box that stood under his bunk. He went out for a while into the yard.

Soldiers squatted in partitioned, doorless chambers, doing their needs and talking to one another at the same time. In the kitchen the cooks were peeling potatoes and throwing them into huge vats. A Ukrainian was singing in a heavy bass, which emerged as though from a grave. Asa Heshel had been here only a month, but it seemed years to him. He stood there haggard, sleepless, unshaven, in boots that were too big for him, with calluses on his hands, with a wide belt around his waist, and he had the feeling that he was a stranger even to himself. He had no fear of death; he felt only that this life was simply beyond his powers to endure. He had one desire, to be sent to the front.

2

Before the Purim season Asa Heshel's regiment was sent to the front. General Selivanov was beleaguering Przemysl. The Austrian garrison was making efforts to break out of the encirclement and it was necessary to bar the escape route. The march to the front followed a familiar path, along the borders of the river San.