The Family Moskat (73 page)

"Come. Let's go to bed."

Abram followed her silently. A red-shaded lamp was lighted in the bedroom. On a table by the bed stood a phial of medicine -479-and a Polish

book. Ida took off her robe and got into bed. Abram started to get undressed. Everything was clear to him now, her recent nervousness, her touchiness, her veiled remarks about death. He unlaced his shoes, sighing. He took off his trousers and stood in his long underwear. Above the waist band his belly protruded. He put out the lamp. For a while he sat on the edge of the cot on which he usually slept. Then he went over to Ida's bed and lay down beside her, his arms around her. They were both silent. He put his thumb and forefinger around her wrist and counted her pulse. A fragrant warmth came to him from her body. He could see her shining eyes in the darkness. He knew her too well to make a mistake. He sensed a mysterious joy in her. Suddenly she murmured something strange: "
Mazeltov
."

He wanted to ask her what she meant by wishing him good luck now, but he did not venture it. Ida lifted his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers. She caressed his cheeks and beard. "Abram, there's something I want to ask you," she said after a while.

"Yes. What is it, dearest?"

"First, swear to me that you'll do what I ask."

"Yes, anything."

"Abram, I want to be buried beside you."

He shuddered. "No. You'll live, you'll be all right."

"No, Abram dearest. This is the end."

He had to promise her that he would buy two adjoining graves.

"Ida, do you believe in the life hereafter?"

"Do you?"

"I believe."

"You're lucky. To me, man is no more than a leaf of a tree."

She put her head on his breast and dozed off. Abram stayed awake. He stared out into the darkness. Everything within him seemed to become hollow and hopeless. He longed to pray to God, but he did not know what to say. He remembered that almost the selfsame words had been spoken to him by Hama.

She too had made him promise that they would be buried side by side, in the Moskat family plot. Ah, even the dead . . . he had to swear falsely to them too. . . . He suddenly saw Hama's face on the bier, white as cheese, the mouth open, the hint of a smile on her bluish lips. It was as though they were saying to him: -480-"You can do no more to me, neither good nor evil." He tried to drive away the vision, but it emerged again and again, full of dreamlike verisimilitude. A terror took possession of him. "Pure soul," he half whispered, "back, back to your rest."

Ida awakened. "What is it? Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked suspiciously.

Abram tried to answer, but his tongue was paralyzed. He put his face on her hair, and his tears fell on it.

THE FEW hundred zlotys that Abram got from the pawnbroker

on Hadassah's pearl necklace he used for Ida's expenses. There were doctor's fees. There was the rent for her studio and flat. On Monday Abram got into a droshky with her to take her to the hospital. The operation was to be performed in three days.

Abram insisted that Ida have a private room, so that he could visit her every day. He put a five-zloty note in the nurse's hand and asked her to take particular care of the patient. At five o'clock Abram was asked to leave.

Ida put both her arms around his neck. "If this is the last time, then God bless you."

Abram's eyes immediately filled with tears. "Little idiot, you're talking nonsense."

He left the hospital and got into a number-sixteen streetcar.

There was only a single passenger besides himself. He looked through the car window at the streets in the Vola section, half empty, dimly lighted, with red brick buildings, closed factories.

The stores were deserted. Streetwalkers loitered in doorways.

Abram wiped the misted window. As a rule he refused to permit himself to drift into a melancholy, but Ida's illness had banished all his equanimity. At Marshalkovska Street, near Zlota, he got off the car. There was a Greek bakery near the Vienna Station.

He went in and bought a loaf of raisin bread that could be -481-eaten without

butter. Then he went home. At the door he paused. Opposite, on the first floor, a Channukah lamp was burning. Two oil wicks were lighted. Abram stared in astonishment. So it was Channukah already! He had momentarily forgotten.

The flat was freezing cold. This year double windows had not been installed. The gas and electric light had been turned off.

Abram lighted a candle that stood in a brass holder in the bedroom. He sat at the edge of the bed and nibbled at the raisin loaf. One of his back teeth was loose, and every time he chewed he felt the sharp ache. He undressed, got into bed, and fell asleep. He dreamed that he was carrying a heavy load, clattering with it up a spiral staircase. His knees were buckling under him, but he had to go on and on. He glanced over his shoulder. It was a millstone. Did he need to grind flour, or was he already in Gehenna? Had his soul transmigrated into a miller's?

He broke into laughter and woke up. He suddenly recalled that the ball was to be held the next day and that he was one of the beauty-contest judges. What difference did it make? He would not be there. With Ida as sick as she was, he was not go-ing to run off to any ball. Besides, he did not have the proper clothing. By the way, where could he have put the tickets?

He got out of bed and hunted through his pockets until he found them. Without any particular plan he went over to the clothes closet. Once upon a time he had had a tuxedo, hadn't he? Maybe it was still wearable. Yes, there it was. He felt the silk lapels and the braid on the side of the trousers. In the darkness he put the coat on. Yes, it still fitted. And didn't he have patent-leather shoes somewhere? They were probably cracked, but he could soften them up with polish. And he had a pair of shoe-trees somebody had once brought him from Germany. Where could they be?

Probably in that locked wardrobe. Where were the keys? Yes, they were in the writing-desk.

He moved about the room. In the darkness he took out shirts, ties, collars, starched cuffs that Hama had put away in the old days. He wondered now how it had ever been possible to lay aside as worn-out such fine things. Poor Hama, she had been right; he had just thrown away money. What he was doing now was contemptible, but, after all, who was there to see him? He slapped his body and sides to keep himself warm. "Dear God, -482-what a pouch I have!" he murmured to himself. And a pair of breasts like a woman's. His hand touched his groin. He was overtaken with desire. "To have an affair with another woman," he thought.

"Once more before I die." He got back into bed and covered himself with the blanket. He chewed on another piece of the raisin bread. In his years of woman-chasing Abram had learned that a man's will always prevails. If a man makes up his mind, a woman will happen along. It was a kind of magnetism.

Soon he fell asleep. In the morning he awoke refreshed. He washed with cold water at the kitchen sink, singing in a hoarse voice. He picked up the pile of clothing he had put aside in the middle of the night, packed it in a valise, and went off to a tailor he knew. The snow lay dirty and wet. Street-cleaners were clearing it away with picks and shovels. Birds hopped about, poking after stray morsels of food. Abram suddenly recalled the phrase in the prayerbook: "God feeds all things, from the giant elephant to the eggs of a louse."

The tailor was ailing. In the couple of years since Abram had seen him last the man had become as bent as an ancient. His mouth was toothless. A tape measure hung about his thin neck.

There was a thimble on his crooked middle finger. He was cutting a piece of canvas with an enormous pair of shears. His yellow eyes looked at Abram doubtfully. "Not today," he muttered when Abram told him what he wanted.

"Murderer! You're killing me! I've got to go to a ball tonight."

From the tailor Abram went in search of a shoemaker. The patent-leather shoes would need to be half-soled. At the entrance Abram saw a sign with a boot on it. The cobbler's shop was in the court, in the cellar. Abram started to climb down the muddy steps. The corridor was pitch-black. He bumped into boxes and crates. He pushed open the door to a small room with an uneven ceiling and a grimy, dust-laden window. On a cot, half hidden by piles of stuff, lay a child in a diaper soiled with excrement. At the rusty stove a bedraggled woman knelt, tending the fire. A small man with a parchment-colored face sat at a table, pale watery eyes looking out of his fallen cheeks. He was pulling the sole from a shoe with a pair of pliers, the exposed leather spiked with nails, like a mouthful of jagged teeth.

Abram sat down on a chair. The air was full of mustiness. Acrid smoke steamed out of the oven. The child wailed. The -483-mother picked

herself up from the floor, went to the bed, and offered a flaccid pendulous breast. In a corner of the room, among spiderwebs and a pile of refuse, there was a bookcase full of pious books.

Abram took down a Pentateuch, the binding split, the pages mottled and wormeaten. He opened it at random and began to read:

"And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all His commandments; and to make thee high above all nations which He hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honor; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as He hath spoken."

THE TWO TICKETS that Abram had brought to Asa Heshel and Hadassah were the cause of a good deal of excitement in the household. Hadassah was eager to go to the ball. It had been years since she had been to any sort of function. As long as she had lived with Asa Heshel without benefit of clergy, the pair had been invited nowhere. Then came the long period of her pregnancy, the bearing of the child, the illnesses of infancy. Besides, Asa Heshel invited few to his home and had accepted almost no invitations. But how long could a person isolate herself?

She was still good-looking; it was criminal to sit like an old crone warming herself at the oven. Asa Heshel admitted that she was right, but still he had an aversion to balls, parties, celebrations.

Nevertheless, he decided to let Hadassah have her way. He hired a tuxedo, bought a pair of patent-leather shoes, a starched shirt, and a bow tie. Hadassah bought an evening dress. The -484-preparations

precipitated another quarrel between the two. It all cost so much money. There was the hairdresser, the mani-curist. Masha also had a ticket for the affair, and the cousins made their preparations together. They were busy laundering, pressing, and mending. The telephone rang constantly. Masha kept on bringing over dozens of odds and ends, coral, bracelets, earrings, strings of imitation pearls. Asa Heshel watched with embarrassment how the vanity that slumbers in every woman had overpowered Hadassah. And all the excitement was having a bad effect on her health. Things she picked up would fall from her hands. She scolded the baby, sometimes even cursing. When Asa Heshel reprimanded her she would break into tears.

"What do you want of me?" she complained. "I'm unhappy enough as it is."

The tension had its effect on Asa Heshel too. He neglected preparing his lectures. He could hardly get any sleep at night.

On the day of the ball Hadassah awoke with a temperature. Asa Heshel insisted that it would be dangerous for her to go out, but Hadassah swore she would not stay at home even if it meant her death. She dosed herself with aspirin, and her fever subsided. At nine o'clock, when Hadassah and Masha came out of the bedroom where they had been dressing, Asa Heshel gazed at them in astonishment. Two beauties stood before him, one blonde, the other dark, of the kind whose photographs one sometimes saw in a magazine. He hardly recognized his own image in the mirror.

His hair was freshly cut and he was shaved. The evening clothes fitted him well. Some of the gentile tenants of the building, riding down with them in the elevator, gaped at these elegant Jews who, for all their eternal complaining that the last bite of bread was being taxed out of their mouths, could still manage to go to balls.

The three had to wait downstairs for some time before they could get a droshky. Hadassah was wearing only a light coat; Asa Heshel chased about for a full quarter of an hour before he could find a droshky. In the meanwhile Hadassah was chilled through and beginning to cough. Her eagerness to go to the ball and show her good looks subsided. She felt weak and listless and was aware of only one desire: to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible and take to her bed. They sat in the droshky silently.

Masha, who had taken a glass of liqueur before they left the -485-house, became

impatient. "What are you so quiet about? It isn't a funeral we're going to."

The droshky came to a halt. Outside, in front of the building where the ball was being held, the sidewalk was packed. Asa Heshel had never seen such a crush before. More tickets had been sold than the hall could accommodate. Women shrieked, men quarreled. Someone tried to force open the doors. A troop of police arrived. A girl called out: "Jewish arrangements!"

The crowd gave a sudden push forward. Hadassah was carried with it. She felt her dress rip. Terror seized her that it would be torn off, leaving her naked. The girls behind the checking tables could not manage to dispose of the heap of coats, hats, parasols, boots, galoshes, and wraps flung at them. They ran out of checking tickets and hangers. Hadassah wanted to hold on to Asa Heshel's arm, but a shift of the crowd separated her from both him and Masha. The mob swept her forward into the ballroom. A band was playing and the dance floor was so crowded that the couples just stood shaking on one spot. Trumpets pealed out, drums throbbed. The overheated atmosphere was full of shrieks, giggling, and laughter, a confusion of odors and colors. A man in a rabbinical fur hat swayed with a woman whose mask had slipped down to her nose. On the stage, in front of the musicians, towered an enormous figure with a helmet on his head and a breastplate of mail. It was the strong man who had been mentioned in the advertisements. Hadassah wanted to get out of the place; she was hemmed in on all sides. Someone put his arms about her. It was a lean youth, with sharp features and a crooked nose.