The Family Moskat (77 page)

"I haven't closed an eye all night," Hadassah said.

Masha promised to call her later and sank back on the couch.

How on earth did Uncle Abram get to Ptasha Street. What did it have to do with this Manya woman? And what were they holding her for? The whole thing was crazy. She opened a bureau drawer and took out a bottle of valerian drops. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was deathly pale. Her hair, which she had had so carefully dressed the day before, was now disheveled. There were dark rings under her eyes. "My God, they bury better-looking carcasses than me," Masha thought, remembering a favorite phrase of her mother's. She heard someone sighing and coughing. Yanek came in barefooted, wearing only his short drawers. His ribs stood out like barrel hoops. A thin chain with a scapular on it hung around his neck. His lean legs were hairy. There was anger in his dark eyes.

"What the devil is all this bedlam so early in the morning?"

he growled. "Can't your lovers wait till a decent hour?"

"For God's sake, Yanek, stop torturing me. I have no lovers."

"What time did you get home? And who the hell dares to disturb my rest? I'm a Polish colonel!"

"But, darling, it was Hadassah. My Uncle Abram had a heart attack."

"The damned parasite should have croaked long ago."

"How can you talk that way? Dear God, it's my uncle. And they arrested Hertz Yanovar. His wife is hysterical."

"For Communism, eh?"

"You know very well that Hertz Yanovar's no Communist. It's somebody who lives in the house, Broide and his wife."

"Well, what the devil has it got to do with you? What do they expect? That I'll stick my nose out for these Jewish Bolsheviks? If it was up to me I'd see every one of them hanged."

"What are you getting so excited about? Hertz Yanovar's innocent."

"They're all the same gang. Those damn Jews of yours are eating up the country like a bunch of termites. And they'll never rest, the bastards, until the red flag flies over the Belvedere."

"You're crazy."

-507-"You're

one of them yourself. You go to their filthy balls. You're a plague in my house!"

"Then I'll go. I'll go today."

"Who gives a damn? March!"

"Boor!"

He went out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Masha sat brooding in silence. She knew that Yanek would come back to apologize to her. He would call her tender names: "Little soul--

little heart--little pigeon--little mother--" Then he would go away and come back late at night, drunk, boasting of the way the officers' wives were throwing themselves at him. She covered her face with her hands. "God in heaven, I'm so tired. If they'd only let me sleep!" She fell back on the couch and buried her face in the pillow. "I've no more strength. Let things happen. I can't help it." She tried to fall asleep, but thoughts buzzed through her brain. She yawned, stretched, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. "I'll go to a convent, that's what I'll do. At least I'll get some rest that way." She fell asleep. When she woke again, the room was flooded with sunlight; a fresh snow had fallen. From the kitchen came the smell of soup greens and frying. Marianna was already preparing dinner. Masha went into the bathroom and lighted the gas stove. She sat down on a stool.

The maid came to the door, knocked, and opened it.

"There's mail," she said.

She held out three envelopes. One was from America--from her sister Lottie. Her stepfather, Koppel, was in trouble with the law for selling liquor. But the family was provided for. Mendy was a lawyer, married and the father of twins. Lottie was not married.

She was an instructor at a college. Lottie complained that she kept on sending money to Bialodrevna, but never got a reply.

How was her father? How was Aaron? Why didn't someone write?

The second letter was from a Catholic society to aid war orphans. Masha was asked to come to an entertainment at the orphanage.

The third letter was long. It bore the signature Edek Halpern; he was a young man she had been friendly with before she had married Yanek. He had left her and had married a girl from Vlotslavek. Now he was asking Masha to intervene with the officials about a sawmill he owned, which the government had confiscated without idemnity. Masha sighed. Ah, what a bunch!

-508-A dirty lot.

Everything with them was money, favors, protection. She tore the letter in four. The water for the bath was ready. She undressed and looked at herself in the mirror. How small she looked without her high-heeled shoes on! How thin her body was! Skin and bones. She had practically no breasts. And she could have no children; she was too small, the doctors had told her. No one loved her, that was the truth. Neither her father nor her mother. Nor her husband.

She looked away from her reflection. Above the washstand stood a bottle of iodine. She drew out the cork and sniffed the vial. Suddenly she lifted the bottle to her mouth, threw back her head, and swallowed a mouthful. It was as though her hand had done it on its own account. She regretted it at once. There was a burning sensation on her tongue, her palate, in her throat. She tried to shout, but no sound came from her seared lips. She turned and rushed naked into the kitchen. "Help, help!" she gasped.

The maid stared at her and started to howl. "Jesus! Mary!"

Neighbors poured into the apartment. Someone called for an ambulance. One woman snatched up a pan with milk and poured it down Masha's throat. Masha was more surprised than terrified.

She had not meant it. Why should she have done it now? She closed her eyes, resigned to never opening them again. They carried her out of the room, pressed her stomach, urged her to vomit. After a while she was aware that a tube was being forced down her throat.

Yanek came rushing in and knelt down by the bed. "What have you done? Why? Why?"

She did not want to open her eyes. Whatever was going to happen, let it happen in the darkness.

The news traveled like wildfire through the Moskat family. They did not know what to talk about first, Abram Shapiro's heart attack or Masha's attempted suicide. Hadassah was struck dumb.

Only Gina had heard nothing. She telephoned, to urge Masha again to intercede for Hertz Yanovar. Yanek answered the telephone. He heard the Jewish accent, and he shouted at the top of his voice: "Go to the devil! Beastsl Bastardsl Dogsl Traitors!"

-509-

THE OFFICIALS of the political police on Danilovichevska

Street apparently considered Hertz Yanovar a real haul. They took away his suspenders, removed the laces from his shoes, and put him in a fifth-floor cell by himself. All this happened not much after dawn. Hertz sat down on the edge of the broad bunk that stood in the middle of the room. He looked about him. The walls of the cell were scrawled with a miscellany of names, dates, Communist slogans. He tried to look out of the window, but it was too high. He put his head between his hands. Time after time he had warned Gina that her Communist lodgers would ruin him.

But who ever listened to him?

He lay down on the bunk, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep, but his bones ached and his body itched. What was it? Bugs, maybe, or nerves? He wriggled about and scratched. According to the philosophy he held, he should be ready for anything--sickness, loneliness, squalor, even death. If there was any meaning at all in existence, it would only be comprehended beyond the bourne, in the darkness that knows without knowledge, creates without a plan, and is divine without a god.

But now that the catastrophe had come, he could not accept it with any stoicism. To fall into God's hands was one thing, but to fall into the hands of man was fearful. Ever since his childhood he had been afraid of police and officialdom. He had no pass, no birth certificate, no military papers. He hardly knew whether he was properly registered in the records. He knew in advance that he would stammer and blunder at the examination, contradict himself, make his situation even more difficult. He was even nervous lest, out of fear, he might denounce others. He remembered that Broide had served three years in the Pawiak Prison. He knew revolutionists who had been sent to penal servi-tude and hard labor. How could they have survived it? He himself felt already broken.

-510-He raised the

collar of his coat and put a handkerchief under his head. He could hear noises, shufflings, shouts at the other side of the door.

The key turned in the lock. A guard thrust in a blind eye.

"Time for the toilet!"

He got up and went out into the corridor. The hall was crowded with prisoners, whispering and gesturing to one another. The guards herded them into a large room, the walls covered with tiles. Along one side was a line of water taps. Men were washing, gargling, combing their hair with their fingers, drying themselves with pieces of paper. Across the room was a row of open toilets where men were relieving themselves. Hertz stood against the urinal, but out of anxiety he could not function. A youngster tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, professor. Yes or no. Make up your mind."

They were led out into a kitchen. Each man took a tin tray and spoon. They filed past a table where they were handed bowls of some kind of brown grits and a slice of bread. The blood rushed to Yanovar's face. "This is man, the crown of creation," he thought.

The prisoners were brought back to their cells. Hertz sniffed at the bowl and put it down on the floor. He began to pace back and forth, his hands folded behind him, in the position he had used to assume in the Bialodrevna study house. He knit his brows as though he were wrestling with a Talmudic interpretation. "If I were guilty," he thought, "all right, let them do what they want with me. But as long as I've not been convicted of anything yet, why humiliate me? Is this justice? Ecclesiastes was right: 'In the place of judgment is wickedness.'"

The door opened and a tall uniformed officer entered, with a pockmarked face, long neck, and angry eyes, gray as tallow.

"Come with me."

Hertz followed him. They went down a flight of stairs, the steps edged with iron. Black doors lined the walls. They went through a long court. In the middle was a patrol wagon, with barred windows. They entered an office. The floor was strewn with sawdust. On the wall hung a portrait of Pilsudski. At a desk sat a flaxen-haired woman, working on her fingernails with a file. A stout man with wine-colored spots on his bloated face, his fleshy nose peppered with pimples, leaned against a chair. His stubby fingers were pawing through a sheaf of papers.

-

511-"Your name?" " Hertz Yanovar."

" Chertz Yanovar," the officer mimicked. "What are you? A technician? A secretary? A functionary? A delegate from the Comintern?"

"I'm not a Communist," Hertz began in a trembling voice.

"That's what they all say, the sons of bitches."

"Gracious pan, I'm innocent. I'm not even a Marxist. My wife keeps roomers. We couldn't pay the rent unless--"

The officer raised his eyes from the papers. "What's your profession?"

Hertz did not know what to answer. "Nothing special. I do research for a book I'm writing."

"A writer, eh? What do you write? Proclamations?"

"God forbid. I'm the founder of a society to investigate psy-chical phenomena."

"Where is the society's headquarters?"

"At my flat."

"Have you got a permit?"

"I didn't know one was needed."

"Illegal, eh?"

"Just a few of us get together and--"

"Who are the members? Their names and addresses."

Hertz recited the names of half a dozen of his friends. The officer wrote them down with a red pencil. "How long have you known Broide?"

"Oh, a long time. From long before the war."

"And did you know that he was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of Poland?"

"I only knew that he was a Leftist--"

"A Bolshevik?"

Hertz was silent.

"Answer when you're asked something!" The officer thumped his fist on the table.

"That's what they say."

"And how does it happen that you rent rooms to people like that?"

"I don't rent the rooms. My wife does. I don't mix in that."

"Your wife's name?"

" Gina Genendel Yanovar."

-512-"How long

has she been a member of the Communist Party?" "Who? My wife? God forbid. She doesn't belong to any party."

"Do you know that your house is a nest of Bolshevist canaille?

Are you aware that your house is a meeting-place for agitators from Moscow?"

"I swear by everything I hold holy that I know nothing about it."

"Where do you live? On the moon? Do you know a woman by the name of Barbara Fishelsohn?"

"Oh, yes, since she was a little child."

"When did you see her last?"

"Last night. At a ball."

"Aha! Who was she with?"

"She came alone, I think. I introduced her to a friend of mine."

"His name and address?"

"He's someone who's far away from all these things."

"We'll decide that. His name and address."

" Asa Heshel Bannet. He's a teacher in a theological seminary.

He lives on Bagatella Street, number--"

"Was he at the ball alone?"

"No. With his wife."

"What's her name?"

" Hadassah Bannet."

" Hadassah Bannet, eh? Who else was with him?"

"A cousin of his wife's. Masha Zazhitska, the wife of Colonel Jan Zazhitski."

"Where does the colonel live?"

"In Uyazdover Alley. I don't know the number."

"What's the colonel got to do with this group?"

"What group? My God, the colonel is miles away from such ideas."

"Do you know the colonel personally?"

"I was introduced to him long ago. When he was an unknown painter."

The officer threw a side glance at the woman sitting at the desk. "You hear that?" he said. "The business starts in one of those nests on the Shviento-Yerska and reaches as far as the house of a Polish colonel. His wife is Jewish, isn't she?" He turned his glance back to Hertz Yanovar. "What was her name before?"