The Family Moskat (68 page)

Lottie took after her father, Reb Moshe Gabriel. She had small features, dark hair, blue eyes. In New York she was thought to be good-looking, but Leah never understood what -444-others saw in

her. The girl ate like a sparrow. She had no bust. She read too much, and her eyes had become myopic. She dressed simply--too simply, Leah thought. Now she was wearing an old green jacket, a dark dress, and an unadorned hat. In one hand she was carrying a French book and in the other an English magazine. She turned to answer Koppel's question.

"So-so," she shrugged. "Kind of drab."

Mendy was already tall, and stout like his mother. He was wearing a green hat with a feather, which he had acquired in Paris, a jacket with a fur collar, and gray woolen socks. He clutched a bag of peanuts, chewing at them and dropping the shells on the sidewalk.

"Do you like it here, Mendy?" Koppel asked.

"I'm hungry."

"Wait, glutton. We'll soon eat lunch."

The news of Leah's arrival soon spread over Gzhybov Place, Panska Street, Gnoyna Street, Tvarda Street, wherever the Moskat tribe was to be found. Saltsha and Queen Esther kept the telephone busy. It was no small matter for the Moskat clan to address Koppel as brother-in-law. Nathan took a firm oath that he would not permit the upstart into his house. Hama, Abram's wife, wept bitterly when she heard the news. All of them had the same questions: Would Leah see Masha? Would she meet her gentile son-in-law? What would Moshe Gabriel say and do when he saw his Americanized children? How would Aaron speak to his mother? Pinnie ran to get advice from Nyunie in the book and antique shop on Holy Cross Street. Students were fingering the volumes on the shelves. Bronya stood at a table, polishing the belly of a naked Buddha and looking around at the customers with her sharp eyes. Pinnie greeted her, but Bronya pretended that she did not see him. She did not like the Moskats. The two men retired to a rear room.

"Well, what do you think?" Pinnie asked. "My God, it'll be a madhouse. All Warsaw will laugh at us."

"And if they do laugh?" Nyunie answered. "He's still her husband. Am I right or not?"

Pinnie grasped his brother by the lapel. "Is it our fault? We didn't marry him. She did."

"What are you whispering about there? What's going on?"

Bronya called through the open door.

Nyunie trembled. "It's nothing, nothing."

-

445-"Where's the new catalogue?" Bronya continued in a harsh voice.

Nyunie began to scratch his beard. "How should I know?"

"Who should know, then? Count Pototski?"

"Bronya, darling, Leah has come from Am-m-m-erica," Nyunie stammered.

"That puts no money in my pocket."

She slammed the door, stirring up a cloud of acrid dust. Pinnie started to sneeze.

"What's she so angry about?"

"Ask me something easier."

Both brothers decided to ask Leah and Koppel to their homes and not to add to any scandal. Apart from the fact that brothers should not humiliate a sister, Leah was filthy rich and might be in a position to do them favors. In the evening the two went to the hotel, Pinnie in a too long overcoat, a silk hat, and mud-died boots, Nyunie in a fur coat that had grown too tight with the years, a fur hat with ear muffs, kid shoes, and galoshes. The hotel employees looked at them suspiciously. The elevator operator told them to use the stairs. They started to climb, gesturing with their hands, stumbling into one another.

Pinnie bent down and touched the carpet. "How soft! A pleasure to walk on."

"In paradise you'll walk on butter," Nyunie answered.

When they reached their sister's room, Pinnie blew his nose and knocked at the door. Leah opened it, squealed, and threw herself at them. "Pinnie! Nyunie!"

She broke into laughter and tears. Lottie and Mendy, standing behind her, gaped at the two small queer-looking men who were their uncles. Koppel turned pale and spat out the cigarette butt that dangled between his lips. "Children! Your uncles!"

Leah cried.

"How do you do?" Mendy said in English, after some hesitation.

"Lottie, what are you staring for? Koppel, why are you hiding there? Ah, dear God, that I've lived to see this day!"

Koppel came toward them with his familiar light step. Nyunie flushed.

Pinnie took off his misted spectacles. "The same Koppel!"

"What did you think? That he'd grow horns on his head?"

-446-Leah said.

"Take off your coats. Nyunie, you look like a lord. Pinnie, you're all gray."

"I'm not a youngster any more. I'm a man of sixty."

Leah wrung her hands.

"Mamma, Mamma! It's like yesterday when you were married.

How the years fly by! Well, sit down. Why are you standing?

How are you? How's everybody? How's Hanna?"

"How should she be? She complains, as usual," Pinnie answered.

"Why shouldn't she complain? She probably can't stand your nonsense any more. How's Nathan? And Abram? I telephoned to everybody, but they were never home. Or maybe they're hiding from me. Koppel and me--we could quarrel from morning to night, but so far as you're concerned he's my husband."

"Maybe you'd like a drink?" Koppel interrupted.

No one answered. Koppel went over to the commode, filled some glasses with a reddish-looking liquor from a round bottle, and put them on a tray. He carried the cognac over to the group silently, with the expertness of a waiter.

Leah darted a sharp glance at him. "What's the hurry? Put it down."

"Koppel, you're still a young man," Pinnie remarked.

"In America no one gets old," Koppel answered.

"Really?"

"In America you can see men of eighty playing golf."

"So. And what is this--this 'golf'? Maybe you've got an American cigarette?"

Koppel took out a silver cigarette case and struck a match on. the sole of his shoe. Pinnie looked on in surprise. "American tricks,"

he remarked.

"In America matches are free," Koppel said. "You go in to buy cigarettes and you get the matches for nothing. Am I right, Mendy?"

Pinnie clutched at his beard. "This is Meyerl?" he exclaimed. "Do you still remember how I taught you the Gemara Baba Kama?"

"Yes, I do."

"What do you remember?"

"The first Mishnah. 'The ox, the ditch, the tooth, and the fire."

-447-"What a

memory! And you," Pinnie turned to Lottie, "I hear you've got a young man already."

Lottie turned red. "I'm not sure yet," she murmured.

"Then who should know? From what I hear, in America it's all love, love."

"Today it's love and tomorrow it's good-by," Lottie answered.

Pinnie put his glasses back on his nose. He furrowed his brow, squinted, and bit his lips. He could not make up his mind what to think about these Americans. There was something about them--

something was missing, but he could not seem to grasp what it was. Was it the changed accent, the clothing, the gestures? They looked somehow familiar and yet alien; they looked Jewish and gentile at the same time. The words they spoke, the phrases they used, were as though taken from a book. There was a simplicity, a seriousness, a self-assurance on their faces that one saw only in foreign countries. What was lacking was the homeli-ness, the manner, the expression. Ah, the difference a few years make, Pinnie thought. He looked at Nyunie, baffled. "A world, eh? Ah, dear God in heaven."

DURING the years they had been in America Zlatele and Meyerl had written many letters to their father. But Moshe Gabriel had answered them only infrequently. He could see little difference between his apostate daughter Masha and these "American" children of his; as long as they attended worldly schools, profaned the Sabbath, ate unkosher food, they were cut off from the community of Israel. Several times he had received money from Leah, but invariably he had refused to use it, turning it over instead to Aaron.

-448-"What

happened to Jacob happened to Joseph." What happened to Moshe Gabriel happened to Aaron. Aaron had married, but did not live with his wife. His father-in-law, Kalman Chelmer, had died of typhus. Aaron's wife had opened a store, but Aaron was not a good businessman. They quarreled constantly, and finally she drove him out of the house. Aaron left Warsaw and went to Bialodrevna to join his father. He plunged deep into the lore of Chassidism. It was understood among the Chassidim that when the rabbi died, Moshe Gabriel would be-come the Bialodrevna rabbi, and Aaron would be his heir. Once a month the youth wrote a card to his mother in America and from time to time received from her a draft for twenty-five dollars. It was partly because of these remittances that his wife was not too insistent about a divorce.

It was in the Bialodrevna study house that Leah and her children met Aaron. Leah could not understand how she recognized him. She remembered him as a youth with a few hairs sprouting from his chin. But this man had a disheveled beard, an unbuttoned collar, a gaberdine down to his ankles, and sidelocks dangling to his shoulders.

Leah took a step back. "Aaron, it's you!"

Aaron's pale face became as white as chalk. He made a move as if to run away. Lottie began to murmur something in English. It was all Mendy could do to stop from breaking out into laughter.

"Aaron, don't you recognize me? I'm your mother."

Aaron hastily began to button his gaberdine. "Yes, Mother, I recognize you."

"My child--come here. Me you may kiss," Leah said, frightened by her own words. "This is your sister Zlatele. This is Meyerl."

Aaron took courage. "It's you, Meyerl. You've become a big boy."

"You look like a Jew," Mendy stammered.

"How should I look, like a gentile?"

"He means a Chassid," Leah hastened to explain. "My God, the way you've let yourself go! If you'd at least comb your hair once in a while. Where's your father?" She gazed at Aaron with wide-open melancholy eyes.

"Is this Zlatele?" Aaron half stated, half asked. "Like a real lady."

-449-"I recognized

you immediately," Lottie answered, and took a step toward him.

Aaron said nothing, but went off to announce the visitors' arrival to his father. He was gone quite a long time. Moshe Gabriel came in with reluctant steps. He had been in the middle of his daily hour of study of the Zohar. He was anxious to see his son and daughter, but why did Leah have to come with them? True, according to law he might talk with her in the presence of the children, but just the same the matter was awkward. He smoothed his beard and curled his sidelocks. The way he saw it, it was all a cunning design of the Evil One. As he reached the door of the study house his glasses misted and he saw everything as through a fog. "Good morning."

"Papa!"

Lottie ran to him, threw her arms around him, and covered his face with kisses. Leah felt a lump rise in her throat. In direct contrast to Aaron's neglected appearance, Moshe Gabriel looked, as of old, neat and cared for. His alpaca coat was spick-and-span.

His low shoes glistened. His beard, now graying, was combed.

No, he had not changed. He half pushed Lottie aside. His daughter, yes; but a female just the same. Mendy held out his large warm hand.

"Hello, Pop," he said.

"Meyerl, is this you?" Moshe Gabriel took off his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. He looked at the boy and shrank back. He remembered him as a soft and delicate child, and here before him stood the strange apparition of a tall, stout, big-boned youth. "Big. He's grown to be big, may the evil eye not harm him."

"
Bar mitzvah
two years ago," Leah said. "He made a speech."

"Do you put on your phylacteries?"

Mendy flushed.

"It's hard to follow all the pious ways in America," Leah explained.

"It's hard anywhere. If it were easy, there would be no temptation."

"Mendy, tell your father what you've studied."

"The Torah--the Law."

"The Law. A Jew must live by it, not only read it," Moshe Gabriel announced gravely.

"I haven't got the time."

-

450-"What do you do?" "I go to high school."

"This is what the prophet meant when he said: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns.' Without the Torah there can be no lasting existence."

Leah interrupted in the boy's defense. "He can't make a living from the Torah," she said firmly.

"The Torah is the source of life."

"Papa, do you think I've changed so much?" Lottie asked.

Moshe Gabriel did not at first grasp what she meant. Now he looked at her appraisingly. She pleased him. Her face was delicate; it had not yet lost the image of God, he thought. Aloud he said: "You're a grown-up girl."

"Papa, I'd like to talk to you alone."

"What about?"

"Oh, many things."

"Well--you're not going yet."

'Forgive me, Moshe Gabriel, but what's the point of sitting here in the study house?" Leah said. "I can understand that you don't want to see me. But the children would like to take some joy in their father. Why don't you go with them to Warsaw?"

"What business have I in Warsaw?"

"They'll take a room for you in a hotel."

"Out of the question."

"Then at least take them to your room."

"I live here in the rabbi's house. It isn't tidy there."

"Oh, I'll straighten it up," Lottie proposed.

"God forbid. You're a guest."

"I'll tell you what," Leah said. "Mendy, you come with me to the lodging-house; we'll get something to eat. Lottie can stay here with her father. Later we'll come back for her."

Moshe Gabriel was silent.

"Is that satisfactory to you?"

"Let it be so."

"And you, Aaron, come with us," Leah commanded. Aaron looked questioningly at his father; Moshe Gabriel nod-ded his head. He could tell that Aaron was eager to be with his mother.

A mother is a mother, Reb Moshe Gabriel reflected. That is the way of the world. Leah called Lottie over and whispered something to her. Aaron looked uncomfortable, smiling -451-shyly.