The Family Moskat (85 page)

Late at night Asa Heshel would get dressed and go home. He -560-was afraid to

spend the night in Barbara's room; there might be a police search. Nor did Barbara want to have the neighbors see a man leaving her house in the morning. He would dress in the darkness. Barbara would intermittently doze and wake. In a sleep-laden voice she would remind him to close the door after him. He would get one shoe on and then sit for a while, exhausted. It was strange--neither he nor Barbara had any fear of God, but they were still ashamed of people. As he tied his shoelaces with numb fingers, he would evaluate his life. The years had passed, filled with purposeless brooding, fantasies, un-quenched passions. His mother had died in dire need. David had grown up estranged from him. He had destroyed Adele's life as well as Hadassah's. Even Barbara complained constantly. In his chase after pleasure he had neglected everything--his health, his relatives, his work, his career.

He said: "Good night," but Barbara did not answer. He walked down the dark steps. A cat mewed. A baby woke up and cried. He always had to wait a long time for the janitor. Iron Street, where Barbara lived, was illuminated only dimly by gas lamps. Here and there a prostitute stood. Asa Heshel walked slowly, his head bent. Start all over again? How, with what? He stopped, leaned against a wall, and rested. He suffered from anemia. His heartbeat was either too quick or too slow. He had a constant nervous itch. He was susceptible to colds. "How long can I go on like this?" he asked himself. At such times he could actually feel his life ebbing away. At the gate of Novolipki Street he again had to ring the bell. Asa Heshel walked up the four flights of stairs and opened the door. His bed was made up. He undressed and fell asleep immediately, but after some time he awoke, frightened by a dream. His sleep had been full of visions--corpses, funerals, reptiles, beasts. There was rape, slaughter, fire, torture. He was lying with his sister, Dinah, and with Dacha, his daughter. He even had unclean relations with his dead mother. He was trembling, covered with sweat. "What's the matter with me--what do they want of me--what kind of filth is there in my subconscious?" He threw the covers off himself and gasped. A long neglected molar ached. His knees twitched. He was afraid, and full of lust. In the hectic dawn he began to think about Vanya's oldest daughter. Every time he came to Shrudborov, the girl ran after him. She would look into -561-his eyes; she contrived to talk to him, to stay alone with him in the woods.

True, she was not yet seventeen, but she probably was not a virgin any more. If only he were not so bashful, and such a coward!

ASA HESHEL tried to convince himself that he was resigned to

the impending war and to the assaults on the Jews, and that he had long ago made peace with the idea of death. But in truth he was full of fear. When he happened to be on the streets late at night, he walked in the shadow of the walls. More than once Nara fascists and members of chauvinistic student organizations had attacked Jews in his neighborhood. It was even more dangerous at times when, like tonight, he had to walk from the Otwotsk station to Shrudborov. On these lonely roads it would not be much of a surprise to get a knife stuck in your back.

As usual, when he arrived at Hadassah's villa the kenneled dogs in the yard began to bark. Vanya's wife came running to the veranda holding an oil lamp. Dacha was already asleep, but with the news that her father had come, she got out of bed. She came in from her bedroom in a bathrobe and slippers. Each time Asa Heshel saw her he was surprised. She seemed to grow perceptibly day by day. There she stood before him half a child and half a fully grown woman, resembling neither her mother nor her father, but rather like a mixture of the Katzenellenbogens and the Moskats. Her hair was chestnut-colored and her eyes were green. Both Asa Heshel and Hadassah had thin lips, but the child's mouth was large and full, with a curve that to Asa Heshel seemed to be bold and passionate. She looked at him joyfully, at the same time frowning, as children do when they are abruptly awakened from sleep. His meetings with his daughter were always embarrassing for Asa Heshel. Dacha knew all about his goings on. Because of the fact that he saw her so -562-seldom, he had continually to remind himself that she was his own flesh and blood. After a momentary hesitation Dacha came over to embrace him.

Hadassah said: "All right, now. Go to sleep, Dacha. Youll have all day tomorrow to see your father."

"Oh, Mother, I don't want to sleep now. I'll be awake all night."

Taking advantage of her father's unexpected arrival, Dacha ate a second supper, chewing at some bread and drinking a glass of milk. She kissed now her father, now her mother, and indulged in all the little whimsies of an only child. She chattered away about her school and schoolmates, the teachers, the boys, the pictures she saw at the cinema. She was familiar with all the Hollywood actresses. She burbled along about sports and automobiles and planes. How different she was from the girls he had known in his youth! And how different Hadassah must have been at her age!

It was about an hour after midnight when Dacha went back to her bed. Asa Heshel and Hadassah, too, made ready to retire for the night. Asa Heshel was the first to undress. Hadassah was still fussing about in the other room, combing her hair and cleaning her teeth. She came into the dark bedroom in a long nightgown and lay down at the edge of the double bed. For a long time there was no word spoken by either of them. All the shame of their married life emerged during these moments of silence. This was the wife whom he had deceived. This was the love he had defiled. This was the same Hadassah who had once come running to him in his room on Shviento-Yerska Street in her velvet beret and with a book under her arm, the same one who had given him his first kiss. And now he was coming to her from the arms of another.

Each lay on his own side of the bed, quiet and waiting. They had to become reacquainted with one another each time. In the years she had lived in the woods, Hadassah had herself be-come as silent as the trees that looked in through her window. She had never studied any philosophy, but she had learned to appraise things in her own way. She had seen how the ones nearest to her had gone; she had lived through the decline of the family. She only rarely read the newspapers, but she was aware that the Jewish community in Poland was on the brink of disaster. In Kartchev, a village near Otwotsk, the Polish Nazis -563-were already beating up Jews. And news had come to her about Przytek, Brisk, Novominsk. In Otwotsk she had met some of the Jewish refugees from Germany who wandered from house to house, peddling hosiery, ties, and handkerchiefs. What value had her jealousy in the face of the tragic plight of people like this? She had long since found a justification for the things Asa Heshel had done. Was it his fault that he wasn't a family man? Could she demand of him that he wander about Warsaw all alone? It was true that he was nothing but an insignificant teacher, but still Hadassah felt that he had been from his very birth a person who could not be measured by ordinary standards. Once when her stepmother had delivered herself of harsh words against him, Hadassah had said angrily: "He's my husband, and I love him." From that time on, Bronya had never come back to Shrudborov.

Hadassah lay still and listened. The spring had come early this year. By the middle of February the snow was melting. In the forests the moisture dripped from the trees and the ground was soggy, rivulets of water flowing between the tree trunks to join the Shviderek River and then the Vistula. Winter birds piped with human voices. Warm vapors rose from the soaked earth. In the orchards the fruit trees took on a juicy blackness and nakedness, as always just before their branches broke out into a rash of buds.

The peasants muttered that the early spring was a sign of war and bloodletting. The farm animals seemed to become restless with the change of weather. Vanya's goat kept up a ceaseless bleating, the roosters crowed constantly. Insects be-gan to come back to life, buzzing against the window panes. Hadassah moved a little nearer to Asa Heshel. It was still good to lie in his arms.

Asa Heshel slept late. Dacha did not go to school. She sat on the edge of her father's bed, chattering away. Hadassah went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. There was the smell of fresh milk and fragrant coffee. Vanya's daughters kept popping in and out. Even the women and girls from the more distant houses came to see the visitor. Hadassah had never understood how it was that Asa Heshel managed to attract so many different people, when as a matter of fact he seemed to pay scant attention to anybody.

After breakfast they walked along the road that led to Garvolin. Here the railroad was only a single track. At the -564-edge of the

forest a hare emerged. Dacha pranced ahead of her parents with one of her friends. In the sky the sun moved be-hind clouds, reddish and hazy in an early spring gold. Beams of light pierced the fog, sharp as the blade of an ax. It was difficult to know whether the muffled sounds all came from the rustling of the pine branches, from the distant railway, or from a cart on the road. Hadassahs' hair blew in the wind. A flush appeared on her usually pale face. This was what she had dreamed of all her life: a cottage in the forest, a child, and her husband by her side.

In the evening Asa Heshel took the train back to Warsaw.

Whenever Hadassah accompanied him to the Otwotsk station she had the foreboding that she was seeing him for the last time.

She gave him a package of cookies she had baked. She walked with him up and down the platform. Men still looked at her, but she resented their glances. Love had been cruel enough to her.

The train was ready to leave. Asa Heshel turned to embrace her.

For a moment she hung on him. He would never know how much she loved him. He would never understand how much she had suffered on his account from the very day her Uncle Abram had brought him to her fathers' house for dinner. Asa Heshel climbed into the train and then looked at her through the window. She looked back at him, nodding her head. She was suddenly ashamed that she was past forty, a middle-aged woman. Who could know? Maybe it was her destiny to grow old. She shook her head as though she were saying no.

The train moved on. Hadassah turned to go back home. Asa Heshel had promised to come back the following week, but she knew how little one could rely on his promises. She was certain that this very night he would sleep in the arms of that other woman.

-565-

BEFORE PASSOVER, guests from America and from Palestine arrived in Warsaw. Koppel was an old man in his seventies, his wife Leah in her late sixties. Now the aging pair had traveled to Poland to see their children. Koppel had sent money to Shosha, his daughter in Palestine, so that she might come to meet him in Warsaw. Leah was to meet her son Aaron, who was journeying to Warsaw from the Holy Land not only to see his mother but also to collect some money for the orthodox colony he had founded.

Leah expected to take her daughter Masha back to America with her. Masha was no longer living with her husband, and Leah hoped that in America Masha would return to the Jewish faith.

With Leah came her younger daughter, Lot-tie, who had become a teacher in an American college. The news of Leah's impending arrival brought new life into the Moskat family. Pinnie and Nyunie at once made up the old quarrel that had kept them away from each other. The sisters-in-law Hannah and Bronya, who were blood enemies, began to talk to each other again. The Moskat grandchildren began to call their uncles and aunts on the telephone. All of them were possessed of the same thought: to be helped to get out of Po-land while there was still time.

The day that Leah and Koppel were to arrive on the Paris express the entire family assembled in Pinnie's house. All but Hadassah, Asa Heshel, and Masha. The flat was crowded with the Moskat grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Pinnie gazed at them and shrugged his shoulders. A miracle of God! He had hardly realized that old Meshulam had left behind him such a multitude. But still it was not the same as in the old days. Then, when the family gathered at the old man's for the Channukah holiday or Purim, they were all cut from the same -566-cloth. But now Pinnie compared them in his mind to the animals and fowl of Noah's ark. There was such a bewildering variety of types: with beards and with shaven cheeks; yeshivah students and modern youngsters; women in matrons' wigs and women with naked hair.

Most of the girls talked Polish. Joel's daughters Pinnie hardly recognized. Anyway, he had never been able rightly to distinguish one of them from the other. All three of them were fat and blowsy, a perfect combination of Joel and Queen Esther, may both their souls find eternal rest in paradise.

As for their children, they were utter strangers to Pinnie. Pearl's son, Simchah, had gray hairs in his beard. Pinnie's son-in-law, the lawyer, was talking Polish with Abram's daughter Stepha.

Avigdor, Abram's son-in-law, and his wife, Bella, had brought a houseful of their children with them. The oldest, Meshulam, or Max, as they called him, had completed a course in the Techni-cum. He was talking with Dosha, Pinnie's unmarried daughter.

Pinnie wandered around the rooms with Nyunie, the "modern"

of the two brothers. Pinnie was only a couple of years older than Nyunie, but he looked like his father. He was altogether white. His small figure was bent. There was not a single tooth left in his mouth. His speech was halting. Nyunie's chin beard was gray, but his face had stayed full, his neck firm and unwrinkled. He clenched a cigar between his lips, and across his vest a gold chain bounced up and down.

Pinnie kept on nudging Nyunie and pointing with his finger.

"Who's that one over there with the glasses?"

"That's Joel's grandson."

"What does he do?"

"Ask me something easier. He just came out of the army."

"So he had to serve. Ah, me. Who's the virgin there?"

"Avigdor's daughter. What makes you think she's a virgin?"