The Family Moskat (63 page)

When the meal and the ritual blessing were over, Anshel left.

Hadassah went at once to her own room. Fishel paced back and forth, biting his lips. For a while he stood at the window, looking out into the street below. Stars glimmered in the sky. The dark courtyard was crowded with barrels and cases--all his merchandise. Then he opened the bookcase and took out a volume of the Zohar. He turned the pages and read. There were four kinds of souls, the book said, corresponding to the four worlds that God has radiated out of Himself. Usually Fishel and Anshel stayed up late on Friday nights, quoting the rabbi's sage sayings, discussing rabbinical politics, throwing in a remark now and then of more prosaic business matters. But tonight Fishel did not know what to do. Why had she come home? he asked himself. It was not her custom. Maybe she had seen that she was treading a false path.

He would forgive her anything, he decided. "I remember thee the kindness of thy youth," he quoted. A man could not al-ways live his life according to strict law.

He opened a volume of the Midrash and sat down at the table.

The gas lamp was never lighted on the Sabbath; instead, two candles flickered and an oil lamp. The pages were yellowed and creased, spotted with blobs of tallow. Here and there Fishel noticed a hair lying on the page, plucked from his grandfather's beard. He shuddered. "Surely he has long been in the higher sphere," he thought. "Who knows to what height he has attained?"

As Fishel murmured over the volume, the door opened and Hadassah came in. Before, when she had sat at the table, she had worn a kerchief. Now her head was uncovered, showing her hair, combed back over her forehead. It seemed to Fishel that she had become strangely youthful.

-411-"I

have to talk to you," Hadassah said. "What? Sit down."

"I want to tell you that--that we can't go on this way." She seemed to be confused by her own words.

Fishel closed the volume. "What is it you want? The way things are now, you're doing whatever you please."

"I--I--this is no life," Hadassah went on, her voice trembling.

"I won't discuss it now. It's the Sabbath. Can't it wait until tomorrow evening?"

"What difference does it make? I want a divorce. It will be better for you, too."

Fishel's throat went dry. "Why? Has anything new happened?"

"He is here," Hadassah broke out, as though to have it over once for all.

Fishel's face matched the tablecloth in whiteness. "When did he come?"

"A few days ago."

"What of it?" asked Fishel.

"You once promised that if he came back, you would give me a divorce. Now he's here."

Fishel looked at Hadassah's face. The softness that had formerly dwelt in her eyes was no longer there. A gentile toughness emanated from her. "Well, is he willing to have you?" As he spoke, he was aware of a hollowness below his chest.

"We are already man and wife."

"What? He has a wife and child."

"I know all that. We are already living together, at Klonya's mother-in-law's."

"Well, this is different, this is different," Fishel murmured. His cheeks turned red and then white. He had a desire to scream: "Whore! Unclean woman! Leave this house! A thousand curses upon you!" But he restrained himself. First, because it was the Sabbath; then, what good would screaming do? She was already completely depraved, worse than converted. "Why did you have to come today?" he asked. "Did you want to desecrate my Sabbath?"

"He's in Warsaw, too. He came to his mother," Hadassah said, hardly knowing why she told him this.

Fishel pondered and rubbed his forehead. Her words made him think of the confessions of sinful women quoted in the Jewish law books. "I see. I'll give you an answer tomorrow evening."

-412-"Thank you. I'll

stay here," said Hadassah. She stood still for a few moments. Then she turned sharply. Fishel looked after her. She took her first steps quickly, as though preparing to run, then she slowed her gait and walked uncertainly toward the door. She held the knob with her left hand, blocking her own exit. Fishel lifted himself as though to call her back. Then he sank back into his chair. "Let it be as it is," he thought. "Who falls into the pit never emerges."

He went into his bedroom. The two beds, one placed at right angles to the other, were made up. There was a fresh smell of lavender from the sheets and coverings. Fishel was not yet tired.

Nevertheless he applied himself to the recitation of the night-time prayers. He undressed and stretched his body out on the cool linen.

He had thought that he would not be able to sleep, but the moment his head lay against the pillow he fell into a doze. At first he dreamed he was studying a Talmudic tract in the Bialodrevna prayerhouse; then that dream faded away and he dreamed instead that the dollar had fallen and that there was a panic on the Bourse.

They were paying ten dollars for a single Polish mark! "What's the sense of it?" he was asking Anshel. "But America's a rich country.

It's all speculation." Then he noticed that Anshel, under his long capote, was wearing a pair of women's drawers, lace-embroidered at the edges. "What has happened?" he wondered. "Can it be that Anshel is a woman after all?"

Suddenly he woke up. It seemed to him that a breeze was blowing across his face. He opened his eyes. He did not remember what had happened, but he awoke with a feeling of heaviness in his heart. Or was it his stomach, he wondered. Then he remembered.

Strange, but although Hadassah had not lived with him as his wife for years, he had always found comfort in the thought that she was legally bound to him. She lived in his house, he provided for her needs. He had been sure that sooner or later she would repent and return to him. Now everything was different. "We are already man and wife," the words repeated themselves. He sat up and looked into the darkness. He knew that according to God's law he should hate her, but it was not in his nature to hate. It occurred to him that his feeling must be what worldly books call love. He had a desire to get up, go to her room, plead with her to have mercy on him and not bring shame on her -413-saintly mother

in paradise. He went so far as to get out of bed and walk to the door, but there he stopped.

"No, it's no use," he murmured to himself. "Suppose she were dead," and he heard his voice whispering the prayer for the dead: "Blessed be the true judges. . . ."

3

Saturday evening Asa Heshel set out for Adele's. He had already spoken with her by telephone. He had also provided himself with a few things for little David: a tin whistle, a wooden sword, a few toy soldiers, a bar of chocolate, a bag of candy. When he left, Dinah was in the kitchen preparing the Sabbath valedic-tory meal.

The air was filled with the odor of beets, garlic, and citric salt. His mother had undressed her grandchildren and was putting them to bed. In the middle of the room Menassah David stood in his satin gaberdine, a velvet hat covering his skullcap, and he half recited, half sang:

"
The Lord said unto Jacob,
Fear not, My servant, Jacob,
The Lord hath chosen Jacob,
Fear not, My servant, Jacob,
The Lord hath redeemed Jacob,
Fear not, My servant, Jacob
."

His mother asked Asa Heshel whether she should prepare his bed, but he was not certain that he would return that night. He had made a midnight appointment with Hadassah. They might perhaps go by train to Klonya's, in Miedzeshin. Everything depended on Fishel's answer. Asa Heshel promised his mother that if he did not return that evening he would send a postcard. He was on the other side of the door before he had finished talking.

On Nalevki Street he boarded a streetcar. Here in Warsaw one could still feel in the air the ending of the Sabbath. Chassidim walked in the street wearing their velvet hats. Here and there one could glimpse through windows the light of candles. Sienna Street was bleakly illumined by a few gas jets. In the distance a high factory chimney pierced the heavens. A feeble old woman was doddering along the sidewalk, carrying a pair of men's boots in a basket. From an upper floor came the sound of someone -414-strumming a piano. Asa Heshel stopped for a moment in his walk. What an immense world! What a variety of destinies! Here he was, going to meet a wife whom he had never loved, and a child of his on whom he had never set eyes.

He entered the gate of the courtyard. He remembered the house in which Adele lived as handsome, but the plaster was peeling from the walls. In the middle of the yard there was a glistening garbage box, newly smeared with tar. The windows were reflected in the asphalt as in a dark pool. He rang the bell, and heard footsteps.

There Adele was, standing at the door. He scarcely recognized her.

She had bobbed her hair and was wearing a short dress. Her face was white with powder, her eyebrows were plucked. A distinctive sharpness, which he had long forgotten, lay on her arched forehead, her bony nose, her pointed chin. She made a quick gesture as if to embrace him, but stepped back suddenly. "Yes, it's you!"

She led him into the room that he had known years before, when his mother had come to Warsaw. He recognized the carpet, the writing-table, the sofa, even the pictures on the walls.

"Sit down. I've just put David to bed. I want him to fall asleep."

"Yes, I understand."

"You don't look well. I've become stout from the potatoes we ate three times a day. We got swelled up from the water."

"We didn't have any potatoes over there."

"When did you get here? In the middle of the Sabbath?"

"I got here Friday evening."

"Why didn't you telephone?"

"Dinah told me they don't answer the telephone here on the Sabbath."

"What a lie! She knows perfectly well that my mother is in Shvider. Well, I suppose it would have been doing me too much honor. Who am I, after all? Only the mother of your son."

"Could I see him?"

"Not now. He's lying there talking to himself. And is he clever! He asks questions that only a philosopher can answer. Well, tell me about yourself. You don't seem to get any older. I'm all gray.

Frankly, I didn't believe you'd ever come back."

"It might very well have happened."

"My stepfather wanted to have me declared a deserted wife.

He wanted me to go to the rabbis. As if that was my biggest -415—

worry. . . . His son is a doctor, and he thought of marrying us to each other. I'm going to speak openly to you. Why did you come back? To whom? I should think five years was time enough for a man to make up his mind."

"Nothing has changed."

Adele turned a pair of yellow eyes on him. "I understand. You don't have to draw a map for me. I only want you to know one thing: he's your son and you have certain obligations toward him."

"I'll do what I can."

"I'm not asking you for any favors. He's your child legally. I could demand his support for all these years, but what's past is past. He costs me at least thirty marks a week. Everything is terribly scarce. I'd look for work, but he needs me. He goes to school, but I have to take him there and fetch him. Children get run over. My mother is getting very old. Well, what about you? What's be-come of you?"

"I'm the same rubbish."

She looked at him askance, as if measuring him. Yes, he was still the same Asa Heshel. When he had come in, he had seemed for a second older, but this new expression had immediately disappeared. He still had in his face that mixture of youth and age which she had noticed the first time she met him. God, how David resembled him!--even to the movements of his face. She had a strong desire to bring the boy in to him, but she decided to wait.

"I suppose you had women enough over there," she said, amazed by her own words.

"Sometimes."

"So you weren't faithful even to your beloved Hadassah."

"That has nothing to do with faithfulness."

"No? That's something new to me. Not that I worry about her.

What are you going to do now, if I may ask? Are you going to settle down? Fishel will probably divorce her. He can't bear the sight of her any more."

"What about us? Will you let me get a divorce?"

"Why not? But you'd have to pay me."

"You know I have nothing."

"She has. He's given her all sorts of money, the idiot! He's taken away the entire Moskat fortune. You'll be kind enough to get me ten thousand American dollars and sign an agreement -416-to give me

fifty marks a week for the child. I mean at the present exchange rate."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, my dear, I loved you once--even more than you know. But everything is dead. Why did you run away into the army? To show Hadassah you're a hero?"

"It's too late to begin it all over again."

"Well, what have you found? What have you reached? What do you expect to do in Warsaw? Become a shoemaker?"

"Excuse me, Adele, but I came to see the child."

"Tell me, when did you actually come? You must have been here the whole week."

"Why do you say that?"

"I know your dodges. The first thing you did was to run off to her, even before you went to your mother."

"It's true."

"What have you got there on your left side? A heart or a stone?"

"A stone."

"Yes, that's it. But why are you like that? Are you really so madly in love with her? Or do you hate everybody else?"

"What difference does it make to you?"

"No difference. But I'm still entitled to know something about you, after five years of absence. My God, it seems to me an eternity!"

"I have nothing to tell."

Nevertheless, after some hesitation he began to speak. She asked and he answered. He told her about his months in the barracks, the almost three years on the battlefront. He was far from being a hero, but he had been in danger many times. He had squatted in trenches. He had had typhoid fever and dysentery. He confessed everything to her: he had gone to prostitutes; he had made love to the daughter of the owner of a sawmill near Ekaterinoslav; he had had an affair with a kindergarten teacher in Kiev. His talk seemed to Adele to be a jumble of unrelated things: Petlura's pogroms and a People's University where he had taught; Denikin's bands and some Hebrew library where he had worked on a catalogue; the Bolshevik Revolution and a book of Hegel's that he was supposed to translate. Adele listened and bit her lip. It was the same old story all over again: starvation, dingy rooms, idle dreams, useless books. He still had neither profession, nor -417-plans; neither real love for anybody, nor responsibility. He looked tired and sad.