The Family Moskat (61 page)

"I'd do it again rather than cut off a finger or take my teeth out."

"You could have gone into hiding. When the Germans arrived, all the deserters came out like rats."

"I didn't want to be a rat."

"All right, you've paid the price for it. When a man's in his early twenties he has time for everything. Now tell me, where the hell did you keep yourself? What happened?"

"I was in the army until a couple of weeks before the Bolshevik Revolution. We retreated all the way from the Carpathians to the Ukraine."

"Quite a trip, if you ask me. Where were you when the Bolsheviks got into the saddle?"

"In a village near Ekaterinoslav."

"What did you do?"

"I was a tutor in a wealthy Jewish family. The man had bought an estate there after the Kerensky Revolution."

"And then?"

"It's all confused. We didn't learn of the Revolution until the middle of November. The Bolsheviks confiscated the estate. The men formed an ispolkom and shot a couple of officers. Then came some Drozdov bandits and shot the ispolkom. After that, I think, the Austrians came. I could have sneaked through to Warsaw, but I fell sick with typhoid fever. That was when Skoropadsky was in power."

"Always in the same village?"

"No, I went over to the city. I was planning to leave, but I had a relapse. Meanwhile Denikin's troops came, and after them Machno's--and then the Bolsheviks broke through again, and after that Denikin came back . . ."

"Is it really as bad as they say with the Bolsheviks?"

-397-"It's

everybody against everybody. Hobbes's philosophy in practice."

"Did you see Petlura's pogroms?"

"I saw everything. The entire human tragedy."

"We've seen things here, too. I'm far from being a Bolshevik, but they couldn't let the Czarist bandits take over again."

"The Czarist bandits weren't all they killed."

"I thought you might have become one of them yourself."

"No, Abram, never. How is Hadassah? When did you see her last?"

"I haven't seen her for some time. She's all right. Reading books and doing nothing. Hertz Yanovar has become a real parasite.

Founded some kind of society, and all of us are members. He asks everyone about his dreams, writes them down, and sends them to England. There they pickle them, I suppose. Hadassah is his main supporter. She tried to do something for the Zionists, too. She's better now, but she's a sick girl. Tell me, what's your philosophy?

What is one supposed to do?"

"I have no philosophy."

"You don't believe in Spinoza any more?"

"Yes. But what's the good of it?"

"I don't want to interfere in your business, but Hadassah wants to get a divorce, marry you, and have a couple of children."

"I refuse to have any children. About that my mind is made up."

"What a mess! You have a nice son. Whenever I see him, I have to laugh. Asa Heshel number two. I can understand everything you've said. It's a mood, and it'll pass. What about Zionism? You used to be a Zionist."

"I don't believe we'll be left in peace unless we're strong."

"We may become strong."

"How? We've been trying for three thousand years."

"So what kind of God is yours? He can't be a fool."

"You can't see His wisdom when you look at a tortured child, all covered with lice, or when you're squeezed into a cattle car and you have to do your needs through a window."

"Suppose some good comes from all this evil?"

"What good?"

"Better conditions."

"I don't care, Abram, and that's the truth. I've made up my -398-Asa Heshel

stood outside the restaurant and stared into the night. It was a queer thing, but he had no desire to see his mother, or his child, or to return to Abram's house. He was even frightened by the idea of meeting Hadassah. His head ached, and there was a dryness in his throat and in the back of his nose. "What's wrong with me,"

he asked himself. "Am I going to be sick, or what?" He reflected that it was getting very late--too late to return to Ida Prager's. But his legs refused to budge. "What did I say to Abram? Am I really as desperate as that" A drunk in bedraggled clothes came out of Yassne Street, stopped at the gutter, and urinated. A policeman with a saber and a black helmet came from Marshalkovska Street.

Asa Heshel turned to leave. He did not have a passport; all he had was his birth certificate, tattered, patched, and half illegible.

He reached the Marshalkovska and saw a streetcar approaching from Krulevska Street. "It's really very simple," he thought; "just throw myself on the rails, with my head under the wheels." No, he might survive, a cripple. The car dashed by, rocking and roaring, as if it suspected his suicidal impulse. Asa Heshel crossed the street. A bevy of streetwalkers appeared from somewhere, rouged, powdered, bedizened, in red stockings, and with cigarettes between their lips. They were laughing and screeching; evidently there had been some kind of row, perhaps a police raid. Asa Heshel heard a police whistle. He stuck his hand into his back pocket. Where was his baggage check? Lost? Here it was, in his other pocket. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his face. "Let me imagine I'm already dead," he thought. "One of those who wander about in the world of chaos. Nothing more can happen to me, neither good nor evil."

He reached the railroad station. The main room, vast, brightly lit, was not so crowded now. The light shimmered from the lamps like golden nets. A sound of snoring came from the benches. There were lines still in front of the ticket windows. Policemen walked to and fro, their rifles slung over their backs. In another hall a detachment of soldiers waited in full kit, probably ready to be shipped to the front. Asa Heshel watched one soldier take a cigarette from a comrade's lips, draw in deeply, and exhale the smoke through his nostrils. A long, bony soldier, with a freckled face and green, watery little eyes, laughed heartily, showing a -400-mouthful of wide-spaced teeth. How could he laugh, Asa Heshel wondered, when he was being sent to be slaughtered, like an animal? What sort of faith did he have? Was it the faith of Polish patriotism? No, just healthy nerves. His father and grandfather had not spent their days sitting in the study house, bent over the Talmud.

5

He stood before the zinc-covered counter in the baggage room, holding the check in his hands. But no one was about. All kinds of valises lay on the shelves--large ones, small ones, leather, wood, with locks, with hasps and staples, with outside pockets. "In the midst of the cosmos," he thought, "this little system exists by itself, a thing apart, with its own laws and values. It turns with the earth's turning on its axis, it circles about the sun, it wanders with the wandering of the galactic system in endless space." Strange, very strange! A young Pole with a long face came in at a side door. Asa Heshel handed him the check, and the other dragged the suitcase down from one of the shelves. Asa Heshel lifted it. Why was it suddenly so heavy? Just as if someone had put stones in it. Where was he to get a streetcar? Perhaps he would have to take a droshky.

The big clock showed five minutes to midnight. Now he regretted the time he had lost. He felt deeply ashamed to go with the suitcase to Ida Prager's house. Might it not be better to go home, to his mother's? Yes, that was what he would do. At that instant he heard a woman ask: "When does the express leave for Otwotsk?"

"Twelve fifteen."

The instant he heard these words Asa Heshel decided to go to Otwotsk, exactly as he was. Fishel was in Warsaw. Hadassah was alone there with the maid. What was the name of the villa?

Rozkosh. The idea seemed to him to be so clever that he was astonished he had not thought of it before. Why should he beg shelter from Ida Prager? He had a sweetheart, had he not? He saw the woman who had asked about the train to Otwotsk taking her place in the line of ticket-buyers. He put down the valise (now no longer under the protection of the baggage man) and stood be-hind the woman. Could he manage it in seventeen minutes? Would he be able to find Hadassah's villa? What would the maid say? The whole thing was crazy. He kept one eye on his suitcase, -401-the other on the ticket window. The ticket-seller seemed to be taking his time. A broad-shouldered man stood at the window, bending over, apparently getting information. The big hand on the station clock stood paralyzed for a little while, then moved forward. The men and women in the line began to mutter. What was happening? "Is the man asleep?" asked a little Pole with long mustaches. "Our Polish officials!" growled a thickset man whose nose looked as if it had been split in the middle. "Hey, panie, faster!" shouted someone. "I hope he isn't a Jew!" flashed through Asa Heshel's mind. The man in front, as if feeling that everyone was against him, bent over deeper. Asa Heshel, too, felt enmity toward that broad-backed person who blocked everyone's path and was bringing his plan to naught. Such persons should be killed! At that instant the man straightened out. He was lame and had to use a crutch. The feelings of anger were touched with something akin to shame. Now the line began to move rapidly. Asa Heshel got out the money for his ticket. But what was he to do with his suitcase? Take it along? No, that was senseless. He'd have to check it again. The lad in the baggage room would definitely think him out of his mind. If only he could take out a shirt and a toothbrush. His face was covered with a thick stubble.

He got his ticket and hurried to the baggage room. Again the lad was absent. Now everything was lost. There were only five minutes left. Where in God's name did that wretched idiot keep disappearing to? Why didn't he stay on the job? That's how the world was--full of dawdlers. He might very well be gone for a full half hour, the swine. But there he was, suddenly. Asa Heshel handed him the suitcase, and the other turned a pair of astonished eyes on him, then asked for ten pfennigs. He fiddled around with the string that fastened the ticket to the bag. Less than three minutes now. Asa Heshel snatched the check and ran wildly to the door. The conductor, with his spectacles pushed down to the tip of his nose, seemed to be ready to close the gate and pulled a face as he punched two holes in the ticket. The train was still standing at the platform. A young man ran in front of Asa Heshel. A woman laden with packages also tried to run, her hips and but-tocks swinging. She reminded Asa Heshel of a cow. He overtook her and jumped aboard. He held the door open for her. There was a mixture of goodwill and malice in him: he wanted the woman to get aboard the train, but he was also aware of a childish desire to see her left behind.

-402-The train

remained standing for almost another two minutes. It was apparently setting out on a long trip. The racks were filled with valises, baskets, sacks. Most of the passengers were leaning back against the headrests of the seats, trying to doze. The benches were crowded. In the air there was already the sweet-sour odor of mid-journey and sleeplessness. Asa Heshel stationed himself at a window. How queer, he thought, were the twists in the chain of causality. He had only just come to Warsaw, and here he was, leaving it. Who knew but what he would again be away for five years. Everything was possible. Suppose he were suddenly to get a hemorrhage in Otwotsk, and were to be taken to a sanatorium?

What insane thoughts! What would happen if he were going through the forest and were to come across the miserable little officer who had beaten him up? Suppose that the officer was unarmed and he himself had a revolver? Would he shoot him down? Was it proper to invoke the law "Thou shalt not kill" in such a case? The Ten Commandments lacked all preciseness. He who had said "Thou shalt not kill" should also have said "Thou shalt not beget."

The train began to move. Asa Heshel looked out: a midnight city, with somnolent factories, houses, squares. What would Abram say when he discovered that he had not returned? There was the Vistula! How oddly the lights were reflected in the water, like memorial candles. The river carried on at its appointed task; it flowed from Kracow to the sea. Nothing mattered to it--

capitalism, Bolshevism, Russians, Germans, Paderewski, Pilsudski, Christians, Jews. . . . What was Hadassah doing now?

Did she have a premonition that he was coming to her? Perhaps, this very day, she had resolved to put him forever out of her mind. Perhaps she had guests. Perhaps she had a lover. Everything was possible. If time was nothing more than a mode of perception, then history consisted merely in turning the pages of a book that had long ago been completed. "If I at least had a clean handkerchief! If I had at least shaved! They hate kissing a bristly jaw."

The engine bellowed like an ox and spat out rolls of smoke.

Clouds of steam dashed by. Sparks flew through the air like shooting stars. Somewhere in the car a Pole was complaining angrily and cursing the Jews.
"Zhydy! Zhydy!"
The word was taken up by the others. What were they so infuriated about? What had the Jews done to them? They blamed them for every--403-thing.

If the baggage swayed, if the lamp flickered, if the water-closet was occupied. A woman holding an infant on a cushion cried: "Here, you little bastard, take my breast!""Madame, excuse me,"

said someone, "maybe he has stomach-ache, or he's raw between the legs and has to be powdered." The mother took out her swollen breast and offered it to the infant. "He's biting my nipple, the little beast."

The train fled rapidly, without a stop, through Miedzeshin, Falenitz, Michalin, Usefov, Shvider. Here was Otwotsk. Asa Heshel tried to get off, but the door would not open. "Hey, pull harder! Those feeble Jewish hands!" The door gave, and he got off. Scattered lamps glimmered in the surrounding darkness, throwing yellow nets on the sand. The air was laden with pine, wood-fires, tuberculosis. How many people died here every day?

Every sanatorium had its little morgue. Asa Heshel asked a passer-by for the road to Shvider. Down the Warsaw road, he was told, and then to the left. What on earth had made Fishel name his villa Rozkosh--pleasure? Did Fishel, too, believe in the pleasure principle? Asa Heshel stopped another passer-by. "Where is the villa Rozkosh?" No answer. Deaf! Or perhaps dumb. Hadassah was surely asleep by now. What a crazy adventure! "If only I don't go impotent! That would be a real tragicomedy. The impotent lover! I mustn't think about it. The very thought is dangerous.