The Family Moskat (74 page)

"Give me a kiss, beautiful."

She tried to tear herself away, but the youth held on to her tightly. There was a smell of pomade and sweat about him. At that moment Abram emerged from the crowd. "Hadassah, darling."

The stranger disappeared at once. Abram seized her by the shoulders. "What's the matter? Where's Asa Heshel? My God, you're as beautiful as the seven suns."

Hadassah broke into tears. "Oh, Uncle, get me out of this!"

"Idiot, what are you crying for? My God, what a madhouse!"

Abram started to push his way through the throng, holding on to Hadassah, his enormous belly forcing a passage. In all this tumoil he stopped to greet people, to kiss the hands of some -486-ladies, and to

wave at others, calling out compliments in a wild mixture of Yiddish, Polish, and Russian. He clutched a stout man who wore an official band on his sleeve. "Ashamed of yourself, that's what you ought to be," he scolded him. "Worse than in Berdichev."

Abram managed to push his way into the adjoining salon. Here people were crowded around buffets, eating butter buns and drinking beer and lemonade. A woman was kneeling, repairing an enormous tear in another woman's dress. A girl hopped on one foot, holding a shoe with the heel dangling. A bewildering variety of masked figures went by: Russian generals with epaulets, Polish grandees in elegant caftans, Germans in spiked helmets, rabbis in fur hats, yeshivah students in velvet skullcaps; sidelocks dangling below their ears. It was some time before Hadassah realized that these were merely masquerade costumes.

Abram himself seemed entirely changed. Strips of paper and bits of confetti were strewn on his coat and in his beard. A balloon had come to rest for an instant on top of his bald spot.

"You got out of it all right," he shouted to Hadassah. "One woman--she was left in her drawers." He broke into a peal of laughter and kissed Hadassah warmly.

She caught a whiff of the liquor he had been drinking. "Uncle, I want to go home."

"Here, you just sit down. I'll go and find your cavalier."

He led her to an unoccupied chair against a wall and went off to look for Asa Heshel. From the left Masha came along, holding on to the arm of a red-cheeked, wavy-haired man, with a round belly. One of his eyes smiled, the other seemed to wander about with a dead serious expression. "If only she doesn't notice me,"

Hadassah thought.

At that very moment Masha came up to her. "Little mother!" she said. "Look at this."

She dragged her companion forward to introduce him to Hadassah. A doctor something-or-other, Hadassah could not catch the name. Masha rattled on vivaciously, while the doctor bent ceremoniously and kissed Hadassah's hand above her glove, then turned and walked away.

"Don't forget the bonbons," Masha called after him, and to Hadassah she said: "A very sympathetic type. A captain in the reserve. And a Jew. But I think converted. What are you sitting here for? My God, what a mob! Phooey! What's the matter -487-with you?

You've been crying. Don't take it so seriously. Spit at it. Where's Asa Heshel? I've been searching all over for you."

"Uncle Abram is here."

"Really. Where is he? His sweetheart in the hospital, and he goes around having a good time. Just take a look at my dress. The place is a madhouse, as I love my grandmother! Phooey, what a scabby crew!" Masha was quiet for a moment. Then she said: "Yes, we're getting old. Have you got a pin?"

2

Abram started on his errand of finding Asa Heshel, but it was only a moment before he had forgotten not only what he had set out to do, but also that Hadassah was waiting for him. Only a little while earlier, to give himself additional spirit, he had swallowed a tumbler of cognac. He knew that he had been chosen as one of the judges of the beauty contest, but he could not figure out where he was to meet his colleagues or where the candidates were to be brought for inspection. He recognized one familiar face after another: Women who, according to Abram's befuddled thinking, should now have been doddering ancients, instead swam before his vision young, hair becomingly coiffured, slim as brides. Men he had imagined as dead of the typhus epidemic or lost somewhere in Russia called him by name and shouted greetings. A woman in a red mask clutched at his lapel.

"Abram, dear! How old you've grown! A grandpa!"

"Who are you? Give me a kiss."

Abram tried to hold her, but she nimbly escaped his clutch and darted away. He started after her, his knees strangely unsteady.

He was not sure whether he was stumbling forward or being pushed backward. Where was she, this summer bird, where had she flown? Abram tried tentatively to stop some of the masked figures that flitted by him, but they brushed past. One of the girls stuck out her tongue at him; another thumbed her nose; a third shouted "Freemason!" after him.

Abram halted in astonishment. It was years since he had heard that underworld epithet. The music stopped, then started again, a cacophony of horns, drums, sounds like the wailing of a thousand cats. The couples swayed, jiggled, swung right, left, heaved back and forth. Abram became more and more confused.

What was this? A shimmy, a Charleston, a rumba? Pigsl Made -488-you want to

vomit. An ocean of abandoned female flesh. He fumbled for a handkerchief and wiped his perspiring face. His shirt and underwear felt wet and clammy against his skin. His shoes burned his soles. A girl bumped into him and then shouted in his ear, as though he were deaf: "Hey, old man! Why don't you go home to sleep?"

He stumbled on a few steps more. Now he heard a thin voice in his ear: "Herr Abram, how are you?" He turned around. It was Finlender, the hunchback, whom he used to meet at Hertz Yanovar's. Yes, he remembered. Those were the days when he was full of ideas about issuing a journal; Finlender was to be one of the editors. The whole idea had disappeared into thin air, and Finlender had drifted away from the group. But now here he was in the flesh. His hair was a mixture of gold and silver. Abram swayed toward him as though to embrace him. "What do my eyes see!"

"And I thought for a minute you'd not recognize me."

"What are you talking about? Finlender! You're the same. How are you? What are you doing? And are you married yet?

"What? No."

"Where are you living? Do you ever run into Dembitzer?"

"Dembitzer's dead."

Abram started. "When? How?"

"A heart attack. It was in the newspapers."

"So. And what about the other one--what's his name--the one with the hocus-pocus--the telepath?"

"Messinger. He's here. Hes at the ball."

"Here? And the other one? That woman. The one who used to raise up the spirits."

"Kalischer. She married some manufacturer in Lodz."

"No more spirits?"

"No more."

"And Hertz Yanovar? Is he here too?"

"He's here. With Gina."

"Where are they? I've lost sight of everybody."

Abram fumbled in his breast pocket. He wanted to give Finlender a visiting-card, but he could not find one. He shuffled off. What was the difference? All words, words. At that moment he heard someone calling him. "Panie Abram! Panie Abram!"

He looked around and saw a woman in a black domino, with a fur jacket over her ball dress. She was of medium -489-height; her

hair was braided and parted at either side and studded with combs and pins and flowers. Old-fashioned gold earrings dangled from her ears. Her gloves reached to the el-bows.

Abram measured her with his eyes. "Come on, little mask, let's dance."

"The night's still young," the other answered, in Yiddish.

"You've aged. You're gray as a dove."

"A man can't get younger, only older," Abram answered. "Who are you, little one?"

"That's a secret."

"You look familiar. Tell me, have you known me for long?"

"Oh, threescore years."

"You couldn't be Reb Berish Kameika's daughter-in-law?"

"Hardly."

"One of the Przepiorko clan?"

"Wrong again."

"Then who are you?"

"Just a Jewish girl."

"Of course, what else?"

"I hear that Nathan's sick."

Abram felt a rush of elation. "So you know Nathan too? So you're one of our crowd! Don't play any tricks on me. Take off your mask. Show me your gorgeous face."

"I thought you'd guess."

"Ah, my beautiful little mask! You really intrigue me."

Abram put his hand on her waist and pushed his way with her through the crowded dance floor. He wanted to get to the buffet room, to buy her a drink. It was getting more difficult for him to breathe. Thank God, he wasn't alone and lonely here at the ball.

He could still find a woman to be interested in him. She went with him willingly. He inhaled her perfumed odor. He saw other faces he knew. Broide, the Bolshevik, moved about with the lame seamstress, Lila. He saw Gina with a short girl, someone who used to lodge there, Abram remembered. Abram saluted them proudly, bowed and waved his hand. The women looked after him, half curiously, half scornfully. Abram knit his brows.

Try as he might, he could not figure out who the woman with him was.

"Who else do you know of the family?" "Who don't I know? Pinnie, Nyunie, Koppel."

-490-" Koppel?

Then in that case you're a prewar piece of stuff." "I wasn't hatched yesterday."

" Koppel's in America. I hear he's been in trouble there."

"Yes. For bootlegging."

Abram stopped. "As I live, you know everything. Can you read the future, too?"

A pair of brilliant black eyes looked at him through the narrow slits of the mask. Abram had an uncanny feeling: perhaps this was the Angel of Death. By now he was sober. He remembered his bad heart, Ida's operation, Hadassah waiting for him while he went off in search of Asa Heshel. "My God, what's happened to me? I've sunk low." He had an urge to abandon this stranger, to flee home and take to his bed. Instead he clutched her with renewed firmness. "Happen what may, one way or another I'll die." He realized in a flash who the woman was. It was Manya, Reb Meshulam's servant, Naomi's helper. The Black Manya, as they used to call her.

3

For all his searching, Asa Heshel was unable to catch sight of Hadassah. Besides, he had no particular desire to find her. What would be the point of dragging around with his own wife? The jazz music deafened his ears. The stark lights blinded his eyes.

He wandered into the buffet room and took a glass of beer. He sat down at a table. What the devil were they carrying on for, these exiled vagabonds? They had lost God and had not won the world.

"I can't go on like this," he murmured. "I'll be suffocated."

Suddenly he heard a familiar voice.

"
Nun, gezweifelt ist genug
. . . ."

He opened his eyes and saw Hertz Yanovar, in a wrinkled tuxedo and an artist's flowing tie. Since Asa Heshel had last seen him his side whiskers had grown entirely gray. Near him stood a tall girl, dark and slender, with long, even features and big black eyes.

Asa Heshel noticed that her hair was not cut stylishly short. The silk dress she wore was unadorned. Although she was brunette, her skin olive, there was an indefinable non-Jewish quality about her, as among the women of France or Italy whom Asa Heshel had often met in Switzerland. He did not know why, but somehow the girl reminded him of a nun.

Hertz Yanovar was talking to him. "I want to introduce you -491-to a beautiful

lady," he was saying, in Polish and in an excited voice. "Panna Barbara Fishelsohn-- Asa Heshel Bannet."

Asa Heshel stood up and murmured acknowledgment. "Please sit down."

"My honored friend here is a philosopher," Hertz Yanovar said in his flowery Polish, half ironically. "And this beautiful lady is also a thinker. Just returned from France. And studied under the renowned Bergson."

"Some more of Mr. Yanovar's exaggerations," the lady interrupted. "I'm a simple student."

"Modesty is the crown of all the virtues," Hertz Yanovar declaimed. "I had the honor of knowing Panna Barbara when she was only a little child. Now she's grown a head taller than me--

mentally as well as physically."

"Please don't take him seriously. He's had a glass too much."

"Wouldn't you like to sit down for a while?" Asa Heshel asked. "You too, Hertz."

"I must go back to my better half. Where is your lady?"

"Hadassah? We became separated."

"Separated, eh? It's Freudian. The subconscious wish to stay a cavalier. If I were in your place I wouldn't be sitting so peacefully. Hadassah is still a lovely woman."

Asa Heshel blushed. "You talk nonsense, Hertz," he said.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. Just let's hope she won't get bored in all this bacchanalia." He waved his hand in a gesture. "Well, au revoir. I leave you in charming company."

Yanovar bowed, clicked his heels, and threw the lady a kiss. He spun around on his short legs and hurried off. Panna Barbara looked after him. "The poor man. He can't drink."

"Maybe you'd like something?"

"No, thank you. Nothing."

"You really attended Bergson's lectures?"

"Oh, just a few."

"And how long were you in France?"

"Five years."

"Studying philosophy?"

"I specialized in French literature. I understand that you're a professor in a theological seminary."

"Just an instructor."

"I've never met any Jewish seminarists. Tell me, do they dress like rabbis, with sidelocks?"

-492-"No. They

wear European clothing. Just like anybody else." "But why?

Aren't they orthodox?" "The really orthodox ones study in a synagogue." "Oh, yes. I remember. My own papa went to a yeshivah." "Your father is a rabbi?"

The girl smiled. Her mouth opened slightly, revealing longish teeth. "A pastor."

Asa Heshel could hardly believe his ears. "Really?" he said.

"Where?"

"Here in Warsaw."

"What church?"

"A mission of the Evangelical church. They have a chapel on Krulevska Street."

"You were probably born in the Christian faith," Asa Heshel suggested.