The Family Moskat (81 page)

"Ah, I tell you, I'm a broken shell," he groaned. "When I lie here, I can manage to suffer it, but when I get up, the whole damn thing isn't worth a pinch of snuff. A man's heart, I tell you, brother, is a worthless vessel. Well, I didn't expect I'd last this long. And, if you want to know the truth, I spit at the whole mess. I've thought of being cremated, but what's the difference! I suppose the worms have to eat too. They've got wives and children also. Let's talk about more pleasant subjects. How are things with you? What kind of adventures are you having? Who's that girl? I don't want to be the one to judge you, but I must say that's no way to carry on."

"I told you, they're out to arrest me."

"Naturally, if you run around with people like that they'll arrest you a dozen times. They'll very politely stow you away in jail.

And I'll not bail you out. Hadassah cries her eyes out. She's not one of your wailing women, but I can see that she's getting more than she can take. Have you got a better friend than her? For years and years she waited for you. On account of you she turned her back on everything. And now this is the way you're paying her back. What is it? Don't you love her any more?"

"I do love her."

"Then what are you torturing her for? Come on, speak plainly."

"Abram, I'm not a family man!"

"You just discovered it? You want a divorce, heh?"

"I want to be left in peace. I cannot carry the burden any more.

"What do you want to become, a tramp?"

"I can't stand it any more. I'm mortally tired."

"You really look tired. Maybe you'd like some cognac. The doctor prescribed it for me."

"No, it won't help."

"Sit down. People like you get tired of their own thoughts.

Who is that woman?"

"The daughter of a missionary."

-

534-"And a Communist into the bargain?" "So she says."

"Aha! Well, as you sow, so shall you reap. I'm content. Soon I won't be here any more. Bitter times are coming for you youngsters."

"They'll destroy all of us."

Abram lifted one eyebrow. "Who? What are you talking about?"

"We've been driven into a trap--economically, spiritually, in every respect."

"So we should at least stick together."

"Why? We don't love one another that much."

"A fine thing! Here I am on my deathbed, and I have to comfort him. The end of the world hasn't come yet."

The end of our world has come."

"You're a lunatic. You've let yourself fall into a melancholy.

What do you want to do? Sit down and weep?"

"Personally, I can't take it any more. Dacha is sick. Hadassah has nothing but doctors on her mind. She kills me with her nagging."

"Shut up! You're not letting me die in peace. Tell me, exactly what is it you want to do? Get converted?"

"I want to leave everything and get away."

"Where to? Ah, brother, I had hopes for you. You've been a bitter disappointment to me."

"Not more than to myself."

"You're a coward, brother. That's the whole thing. You want to run away from everything. You'll hang around with this new discovery of yours and in a little while you'll be high and dry again. Unless you want to commit suicide."

Asa Heshel did not answer. Abram's large, dark eyes gazed steadily at him from behind the heavy brows. The crease in his forehead deepened, like a wound. After a while he dropped his head back on the pillows and closed his lids. He lay motionless.

Then he opened one eye. "Come and kiss me."

Asa Heshel bent over the bed and kissed Abram on the brow.

Abram raised his arms and put them around Asa Heshel's shoulders. "I believe in God," he murmured. "I die a Jew."

-535-

BARBARA spent the few hours that remained before dawn in a soft chair. She put her feet on a hassock, covered herself with her caracul coat, and slept. Asa Heshel did not close his eyes.

He heard Abram snoring in the bedroom. Every few minutes Abram woke up, sighing. Avigdor got off his cot, shuffled across the floor, returned to sleep. Asa Heshel walked around on tip-toe. A long-forgotten adventurousness seized him. It was good to be in a strange house with a strange woman, without money, in a complicated situation. He stood at the window and looked out.

"I'm killing myself," he thought, "there's no doubt about it. But why, why? Because I have no faith. That minimum of faith without which one cannot exist. That humility which is friend-ship, the desire to bring up children, the readiness to sacrifice oneself for others. One cannot even make a career without it.

But how can I rescue myself? In what can I believe? I hate God, I hate Him and His creation. How can one love a dead God, a paper God? I am
kaput
,
kaput
."

He sat down on a chair and dozed off. He started up, then fell asleep again. He huddled into his coat and put his hands into his sleeves. "Why does he sigh so much--Abram? What is he thinking of? He's afraid of death, in spite of all his bravado. They're all afraid and they all die. What a cursed order!"

At dawn he fell asleep. When he awoke it was daylight. The rising sun threw a purple sheen on the pictures. Barbara stood in the middle of the room, erect and pale. Her big black eyes, like those of a huge bird, looked nowhere. "You're up at last," she said. "It's bitter cold. Maybe we can go down and have a cup of tea."

The gate was already open. Across the street was a coffee house lighted by a gas lamp. A single guest sat at a table. The waitress -536-had not yet

come to work. The owner himself brought them tea and rolls.

Barbara did not drink her tea immediately, but cupped the glass in her hands to warm them. "What are you go-ing to do now?"

she asked.

"I'm going over to my mother's. Although, if the police search my house, they'll discover her address and come after me there."

"Where does she live? I'll tell the whole story to my lawyer.

Where and when can you meet me? Let's say six o'clock at the opera house."

"If I don't come, you'll know I was arrested."

"The same with me."

They ate and were silent. The coffee house filled with people.

The street became bright. A newsboy brought papers into the restaurant. Barbara bought the
Morning Courier
. She glanced at the headlines and grimaced. She read the editorial. She looked alternately angry and sad. Asa Heshel watched her. How alike all believers are to one another! How they hate others' beliefs! flow sure they are of their own! He closed his eyes for a while. It was warm here, almost hot. There was the smell of coffee, milk, and freshly baked cakes. He took out a pencil and a piece of paper and began to draw lines, circles, letters, numbers. If the police were after him, everything was lost. He would never be allowed to teach again. And even if they didn't arrest him, the situation would still be far from good. He was in debt to everyone. He drew a bird with an exaggeratedly long beak, with a rooster's comb and the tail of a peacock. Inside the outlines he wrote, over and over, the number five hundred. That was the sum he needed.

When Barbara left, Asa Heshel telephoned his house to find out whether the police had been there. But when Hadassah heard his voice she immediately hung up the receiver. Asa Heshel had not been over to his mother's for a long time. He took a streetcar that went along Franciskaner Street. Neither his mother nor Dinah ever visited him at his flat on Bagatella Street. They still sided with Adele. Every fortnight Adele was in the habit of bringing David to pay a visit to his grandmother for a Sabbath meal. She still addressed the old woman as mother-in-law. And Finkel still referred to Hadassah as "that one." Finkel had seen Dacha, her granddaughter, only twice, once when she was still an infant, and the second time in recent months. David knew some Yiddish; Dacha understood only Pol--537-ish. It was impossible for the grandmother to have any conversation with the child. She had asked: "Do you love your papar?"--this in Yiddish--and when the child made no answer, had commented: "A little
shikse
."

Everything that had happened seemed unreal to Asa Heshel --spending the night away from home, visiting his mother so early in the morning. It was as though he were a bachelor again.

Now, at this hour, the poverty of his mother's surroundings struck him more forcefully than ever before. The stairs that led to the flat were covered with filth. On the steps some children sat, wrapped in nondescript rags. They were playing with peb-bles and fragments of shells. One of the little girls had a rash on her forehead. A small boy in a tiny skullcap, with adult-looking, disordered sidelocks, ran out of a doorway, a prayerbook clutched in his hand. He called somebody by a nickname and ran back again. Dinah's daughter, Tamar, opened the door. She was small-boned and short of stature and resembled her father, Menassah David. She had a head of brown hair, a high bosom, brown eyes, and broad, freckled features. She had studied in the newly organized Orthodox Beth Jacob school and knew Hebrew as well as Polish. She had done her part in helping in the house since she was ten. In the afternoons she worked as assistant bookkeeper in a piece-goods store on Gensha Street. When Asa Heshel knocked, she had been at the sink, cutting an onion. She wiped her hands on her apron.

"Uncle Asa Heshel," she said, "it's been so long. Grandma will be glad."

"Where is she? And where's your mother?"

"Mamma went to the market. Grandma's praying. Father's at the prayerhouse and Jerachmiel's at the yeshivah. Dan's at cheder."

"What's the news? It seems like years since I've been here."

"You really should be ashamed of yourself. Only the other day Grandma was saying: 'He comes as seldom as a doctor.'

How's David? And Dacha?"

" David, I think, is going to some conference. Dacha has trouble with her ear. What are you doing, Tamar?"

The girl smiled. "What should I be doing?" she said. "In the morning I help in the house and in the afternoon I go to work, and that's how the day goes. We've started a girl's group of the -538-Religious

Worker. We're trying to get certificates for Palestine. And they've started a women's division on the farm near Mlava."

"Do you want to go to Palestine?"

"Why not? What is there to do here? In business things are terrible. Nobody pays; everybody buys on credit. And then there are piles of protested notes. The old man is such a joker. When a dealer comes to pay a note, he says: 'I see you're one of the old-fashioned kind. Nobody pays any more.' I tell you, you could die laughing. Anyway, a girl can't go to Palestine alone. They give certificates only for families."

"Well, then all you have to do is get married. I hear that they arrange fake marriages."

"We don't. What are you standing in your overcoat for?

You'll catch cold."

The door of the adjoining room opened and Asa Heshel's mother came into the kitchen. Each time he saw her he experienced the same shock. She was growing more and more aged and shrunken.

She was not yet sixty, but she looked eighty. There was a shawl over her close-cropped hair. A pair of spectacles rested on her curved nose. She was toothless and as a result her lower jaw curved upward. In one hand she was holding a handkerchief and in the other a prayerbook. Asa Heshel went to her and kissed her.

She looked at him smilingly and in surprise. "We never see you any more," she said. "I even told Dinah to telephone to find out about you. You don't look too good."

"I didn't sleep well last night."

"Why shouldn't you get a good night's sleep? A man of your years should sleep soundly. How's your family?"

"They're all right."

You're getting to be more and more of a stranger. You've got no time, I suppose. With all the burdens you've got to carry it's no wonder. Will you drink a glass of tea? There's some cake left from the Sabbath. Dinah will soon be here. She's got a lot of complaints against you. Tamar, make your uncle some tea. What are you staying here in the kitchen for? Come in the other room, although, to tell the truth, it's warmer here."

"Yes, Mother, I'll stay here."

"Tamar, wipe off that chair. And clean off the table. In the meanwhile I've got to finish my prayers."

She turned and went back into the room from which she had -539-come. Tamar

busied herself preparing tea and slicing lemon. She went out of the kitchen and in a moment came back with the Sabbath cake.

"How's your father?" Asa Heshel asked. "Is he managing to earn anything?"

Tamar shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing. He's got two pupils, but they keep on owing the money. Jerachmiel gets his dinner at the yeshivah. They got some funds from America, Dan helps the beadle on Friday. He gets a zloty for it." The girl showed a mouth of wide teeth.

"How about you? Weren't you supposed to get a raise?"

"I'm thankful that they don't cut me."

Asa Heshel drank the tea and took a bite of the dry cake, leaving the rest of it on the plate. The young ones yearned for a treat like this, he knew. He was behind more than a hundred zlotys in the allowance he gave his mother, but all he had to his name now was four zlotys. And it would be almost two weeks be-fore he would get paid by the school. And he had left no money with Hadassah.

So far as Adele was concerned, there was no use even thinking about the sum he owed her. If he could not manage to borrow at least a hundred zlotys at once, he'd be practically starving. He took a swallow of tea and shook his head in astonishment at his own situation. "Abram is right," he thought. "What I'm doing is committing suicide." With the tips of his fingers he began to pick up the scattered crumbs of cake and carry them to his lips.

As he sat over the glass of tea he reflected that it was not yet too late to end the adventure he was having with Barbara. But his existence was too gray; he simply had to find something to hang on to. Among the extinguished souls with whom he was surrounded it was impossible to breathe.

After he had exchanged some words with his mother and Dinah, who had returned from her marketing, he went into the bedroom and stretched out on the bed. The wallpaper was shabby and peeling; laundry hung drying on ropes slung from wall to wall.