The Family Moskat (83 page)

"I have another fifteen minutes to live. At least I had a good night."

With every few steps he stopped to take a deep breath. He turned his eyes up to the sky. The heavens were clouded, but the sunlight was reflected from the upper windows of the buildings. The air was so fragrant. Birds were twittering. There would probably soon be a storm. Something sparkled in the dirt on the ground at his feet. A diamond? No, it was only a piece of glass.

He reached the house. He had a key to the elevator, but he climbed up the stairs. How brave Abram was! He knew how to live and how to die. He still had in him those juices which nourished the people in all the dark hours they had endured. He was a Jew biologically.

He pressed the bell at the door. Yadwiga answered. Just as Adele had done the previous day, she hesitated a moment be-fore she let him in. He glanced into the living-room; no one was there. He went into his study. The room had been cleaned and tidied, the windows washed, the floor polished. The books and papers had been cleared from his writing-desk, as though he had moved away for good. It occurred to him that this is what happens when a man dies. On the desk was a notice from the tax office. The door opened and Hadassah put her head into the room. She seemed to have become thinner; she was carefully -547-made up. She

had apparently begun to use powder. She looked at him in silence.

"Well, come in," he said. "Get a revolver and shoot me."

"All I want to tell you is that I've sold the apartment."

He looked at her in inquiry. "What do you mean?"

"They've offered me fifteen hundred American dollars. I'm going to rent a place in Otwotsk. Dacha can't stand the Warsaw climate.

And besides, there's nothing for me to do here either."

"Have you taken her to the doctor again?"

"I had a consultation."

"Who wants to pay you fifteen hundred dollars?"

"Papa and my stepmother. We've discussed the whole thing. I hope you won't stand in the way. I can't stay here in Warsaw any more. I'll bury myself in Otwotsk and wait for God to take me at last."

"You want us to separate?"

"Why? If you should come to Otwotsk you'll stay with us."

Asa Heshel could not understand how all this had come about.

When had Hadassah decided on this plan, and when had she had time to go into the matter with her stepmother? But he could tell that it was the only way out; it was the logic of events, as the philosophers expressed it.

Several things happened that day. Ida died in the Jewish hospital.

The Bialodrevna rabbi died at his evening prayers. The Chassidim wanted Reb Moshe Gabriel to become their rabbi, but Reb Moshe Gabriel refused. After much persuasion Aaron consented to take the holy burden on his shoulders. It was not for long. Aaron was planning to go to Palestine with a group of young Chassidim. The Bialodrevna court was as good as finished.

-548-

Beginning with the two cemetery plots that, years before, Reb

Meshulam had bought from the community office, an entire path of graves had developed. They were all there now, ly-ing one next to another: Meshulam Moskat and his second wife, Joel and Queen Esther, Nathan and Saltsha, Abram, Hama, Dacha, Pearl.

Among them, too, were the graves of Moshe Gabriel and a couple of the grandchildren. The marble tombstone over Meshulam's grave towered above the others. The inscription on it recited all of his virtues, his knowledge of the Torah, his philanthropies, his honesty in business. On Abram's gravestone Stepha, his youngest daughter, had arranged for the engraving of his name in Latin characters in the modern manner, in addition to the Hebrew.

Above the grave of Moshe Gabriel the Bialodrevna Chassidim had planned to erect a structure with a perpetual light, as was appropriate for a saintly man, but since Aaron had gone off to the Holy Land the Bialodrevna Chassidic court had practically fallen apart and there was neither the money for the remembrance nor anyone to devote himself to having it done.

Only three of Meshulam's children were alive now: Pinnie, Nyunie, and Leah, who was in America. Pinnie still owned one of the buildings he had inherited when the old man died, and from this he drew his livelihood. The Bialodrevna prayerhouse on Gzhibovska Street still stood, and Pinnie spent most of his time there, reading the Talmud or discussing politics. Although -549-war between Poland and Germany seemed imminent, Pinnie was optimistic.

Fishel, Hadassah's first husband, was a constant reader of the newspapers, too. He warned that unless a miracle took place Hitler might, God forbid, become the ruler of the earth. Fishel had married a second time and was now the father of children.

He, Pinnie, and a few others still remained among the loyal Bialodrevna Chassidim. It was true that their rabbi had gone to Palestine and that the New Year pilgrimages had had to be abandoned. But what of it? Did not a saint remain a saint?

Letters came to the Bialodrevna prayerhouse relating that in the colony Nachlat Jechiel--named for the former Bialodrevna rabbi--which Aaron had founded together with a score or so of Chassidim, they still devoted themselves to Torah and prayer.

Those Chassidim who had scattered and joined the courts of other rabbis were considered to be men of little devotion. On the Sabbath the band of the faithful would gather in the Bialodrevna prayerhouse, feast on white bread and herring, and sing the familiar Bialodrevna melodies. Even the high voices of youngsters could be heard. Later the old-timers would repeat some of the Bialodrevna words of wisdom. Of course things in Poland were bitter; the anti-Semites were never idle. And the young generation was weak and helpless. But had not the prophets of old, the sages and learned men, foretold that such days--the birth throes of the Messiah--would come? It was the eternal fight. When the holy powers increase in strength, they are challenged by the unholy ones. The Chassidim sang and sighed until the stars were high in the sky. To lengthen the span of the Sabbath they would delay lighting the candles.

In the winter the Chassidim gathered every Sabbath night at Fishel's house, on Gnoyna Street, and ate of the traditional meal to usher out the Sabbath bride. Fishel's wife, the daughter of a wealthy family, helped serve the food. Even though Pinnie was Hadassah's uncle, he joined in these celebrations. In his declining years Pinnie removed himself from the rest of the Moskat family. He did not even visit his only remaining brother, Nyunie, who had turned his back completely on decent Chassidic ways. But the heresy had not helped. Pinnie had been told that outside of Nyunie's bookstore on Holy Cross Street a picket line of Polish students stood guard every day to warn prospective customers that the owner was a Jew. And Nyunie had even been on the receiving end of a few beatings from the fascist ruffians.

-550-So what was

the good of crawling to ape the ways of the gentiles? Had not there been enough evidence that the more Jews weakened in their faith, the worse things were for them?

Old Meshulam Moskat had been a king among Jews; and, with all their faults, his sons had managed to stay Jews. But the grandchildren had completely alienated themselves from the old ways. Joel's sons-in-law were paupers. Their children had become artisans. Abram's younger daughter, Stepha, had become a nurse in the Jewish hospital; she had separated from her husband, the doctor. Two of Leah's children had grown up in America, hardly to be distinguished from the
goyim
. Even Pinnie had had very little to take joy in; one of his daughters had died in childbirth, another had gone off with her husband to settle in France. Of the two who stayed in Warsaw, one had married a lawyer, and the youngest, Dosha, had taken a job as a bookkeeper in a bank. So far as Masha, the apostate, was concerned, it was rumored that her husband had walked out on her. Hadassah had hidden herself somewhere in a suburb of Otwotsk. The only ones of Meshulam Moskat's grandchildren, except Rabbi Aaron, who still followed the traditional Jewish ways, were Pearl's children, but the others knew little of them, for they lived in the north of Warsaw and went off on pilgrimages to the rabbi of Ger. More than twenty years had gone by since old Moskat had died, and the Jewish kingdom over which he had ruled on Gzhybov Place had long been in ruins.

The Chassidim talked, rolled their cigarettes, drank their brandy.

In the midst of the feasting and conversation Fishel and Anshel, his assistant, would retire to another room. The moment the Sabbath was over and the new week began, the telephone would begin ringing. Fishel was carrying on vast business affairs. If his marriage with Hadassah had worked out and he had remained a Moskat son-in-law, he would have taken old Meshulam's position in the family. But Hadassah had left him for an unbeliever. Some women said that Hadassah had taken an oath never to show her face in Warsaw again. She was not living in Otwotsk proper, but a little distance away, in the village of Shrudborov, in the heart of the forest. Her husband was living with another woman. The women whispered to each other that Fishel had not forgotten her to this very day. But how could one really know about such things?

After the meal Pinnie would go to his home on Shliska Street.

-551—

Visiting Nyunie was out of the question. Apart from the fact that Pinnie could not abide his brother's worldliness, Nyunie had moved somewhere to the other end of Warsaw, on Bagatella Street.

Who could go wandering around in those sections? Who could know whether the janitor would open the gate for a gaberdined Jew? Besides, Bronya, Nyunie's wife, was a vicious shrew. Pinnie was thus left practically alone. He walked along, looking in at every doorway. Strangers lived in the flat Meshulam had once occupied. Over the years the houses had changed owners.

On the way home Pinnie had to walk fast. Near Shliska Street the gentile neighborhood began, and a Jew might find himself in trouble. The Nara men, the Polish Nazis, were in the habit of walking about with rubber truncheons, letting Jews have it right and left. It was as much as one's life was worth to cut through the Saxon Gardens. One of his grandsons, the son of his oldest daughter, had to stand at the university through the lectures because the gentile students refused to allow a Jew to be seated, or demanded that the Jews sit in "ghetto" benches separated from the others. And those idiots insisted on their right to sit with the enemies of Israel!

Pinnie scratched his gray beard. Ah, what had become of Po-land?

What had happened to the whole world? A den of scoundrels!

Pinnie was relieved when the janitor opened the gate. Here, in the courtyard, he, Pinnie, was the boss. Here no one would dare touch him. The few elderly gentiles in the house still greeted him with a courteous "Good day." Hannah, his wife, opened the apartment door for him. In the early years of their marriage they had quarreled without cease, but now, in their old age, Hannah waited for him in the evenings, not going to bed until he came home.

When he left the house now, she kept on hoping only that he would not fall into the hands of hooligans and get a beating. She knew very well that Pinnie would be done for with one blow. Besides, she had a constant need to have him around to talk to about their daughters and grandchildren. Pinnie sat down at the table while Hannah brewed some tea.

"Well, what's the news at Fishel's?" she asked.

"May all decent Jews have it no worse."

"They're going to close the bank. The government will take over everything."

-552-

"
Mazeltov
. That means Dosha will be left without a job. Very nice. And an old maid, too. What a shame and what a disgrace!"

"The whole fault is yours."

Pinnie flared up. "So you're beginning at me now? Listen to me.

I'm an old man. I've got no more strength to chase around. But if you're going to start wagging your sharp tongue I tell you I'm going to pick up and leave. I'll sell the house for anything, for a few coppers. But I'm not going to stand for your lunacy."

"My, my, the delicate gentleman's offended. What did I say?

Other fathers see to it that a daughter doesn't sit around till her hair turns gray."

"And a decent mother rears up decent Jewish daughters, not shikses," Pinnie flared back. "You're the one who dragged her to their modern schools. You, with your own hands. You with your newfangled ideas. Litvak pig!"

Hannah shook her bewigged head. "Go to sleep," she said.

"You're out of your mind."

Pinnie occupied himself in reading the prescribed prayer on retiring. He paced back and forth across the room, murmuring the phrases and losing himself in dark thoughts. What did they want, these women? They were the ones who caused all the trouble, and it was the men who got the blame. It was the men who had to chase about and slave, while they sat around in the house like princesses, making all sorts of complaints. And what was the sum of it all? Men died before their time, and
they
lived on to a ripe old age. Warsaw was full of widows. Pinnie plucked at his beard and the remains of his side curls. That wife of his had given him no rest in his young years and she was torturing him in his old age.

If he weren't a man of breeding he'd take a stick and break her skull. But no, that wasn't his nature. He must bear it and be silent.

Maybe it was some sort of affliction for the sins he had committed. He began to recite aloud, pronouncing each word separately:

"On my right hand is Michael. On my left hand is Gabriel. In front of me is Uriel. Behind me is Raphael. And over my head is the divine presence of God. Into Thy hand I commend my spirit.

Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. . . ."

-553-

WHEN HADASSAH gave up her Warsaw flat and moved out to

Shrudborov, the family's comment was that she had voluntarily exiled herself to Siberia. They prophesied that she would die of loneliness, and Dacha would grow up wild, without any discipline. They told each other that the region was so snowed in during the winter that it was impossible to get to the store to do the shopping. Besides, there was not a single Jew anywhere around. But the years passed by and Hadassah did not die; and Dacha recovered her health completely.