The Family Moskat (86 page)

Nyunie asked slyly.

"Feh, Nyunie!"

According to the railroad timetable the train was scheduled to arrive at eight thirty. By eight o'clock the entire family was waiting at the station. Nyunie had presented platform tickets to everybody. Bronya watched sourly as he proceeded to squander the few zlotys she allowed him as pocket money. The Paris train was an hour late. The train from Gdynia was to arrive at ten.

Aaron had come from Palestine in a Polish ship. Shosha and her husband had traveled in the same boat. It looked very much as -567-though both

trains, the one from Paris and the one from Gdynia, would pull in at about the same time. The Bialodrevna Chassidim fluttered about to be ready to give a welcome to their returning rabbi.

There would ordinarily have been vast crowds to meet him, for over the years Aaron had acquired something of a reputation among Warsaw Jews. The papers mentioned him frequently, and everyone praised him fulsomely

for the sacrifices he was making in helping to rebuild the Holy Land. But Fishel Kutner, Pinnie Moskat, and a few others of the older Chassidim maintained that in bad times like these the Jews should not make themselves too noticeable. The younger Chassidim were persuaded to keep away from the railroad station. Fishel did not put in an appearance, either, for he preferred not to meet the Moskats. Who could know?--maybe Hadassah might be there. Aaron was scheduled to stay at the house of Fishel's assistant, Anshel, who some years before had married a widow and lived on Bagno Street.

And if the Moskat clan and the Bialodrevna Chassidim were not enough, there was another group who had come to greet Koppel and his daughter Shosha. These were Koppel's other children, Manyek and Yppe, with their families. All of them took platform tickets. The Poles in the station looked on with disgust at the motley crowd of Jews. There was Hitler with one foot practically in Poland and here were these Jews carrying on as though it were the old days. Didn't they see what was in store for them? Or had they already secretly prepared the death blow for Hitler?

At ten minutes to ten the Paris train came in. Koppel and Leah descended from a first-class car. Although Koppel was an old man, he was wearing a light-colored coat, a light hat, and reddish-tan shoes. He carried a cane in one hand and in the other he held a handbag. Leah still looked like a sound specimen of womanhood. Her hair was white, but her face was unlined, well powdered and rouged, and half hidden under her veil. They at once heard her strong voice, which reminded them somehow of old Meshulam's tones. Lottie wore a mannish-looking hat and coat. There was a scarf around her throat, and glasses with thick lenses on her nose. They could hear Leah asking: "Where is Aaron?"

"The Gdynia train is coming in any minute."

"Nyunie! Pinnie!"

-568-Leah

embraced and kissed Nyunie, but she did not kiss Pinnie. This was not the Pinnie she knew. This was an old doddering Jew, bent and worn, with a comically shrunken mouth. The tears started to Leah's eyes. She began to kiss and embrace the others, not knowing whom she was greeting. People talked to her, but she could not make out who was addressing her. What seemed to her old women were calling her Aunt. Their mouths stank of onions. Younger girls talked Polish to her, but she could not find the phrases to answer. Pinnie asked her about Meyerl, but for the moment Leah could not remember that she had a son by that name. Then she grasped that it was Mendy.

"Meyerl?" she answered. "He's all right. He's got two wonderful children."

"Zlatele, what are you standing so quiet for?" Pinnie found the courage to ask.

"Uncle Pinniel" Lottie fell into his arms and kissed him on both cheeks. Pinnie lost himself altogether.

"Hannah, where are you?" he called to his wife. Suddenly Masha seemed to materialize. She had not been at Pinnie's house; he would not have given the apostate admission. And it had been rumored that she would not put in an appearance at the railroad station either. But here she was, wearing a jacket with a silver-fox collar, a dress bordered with fur, and a flowered hat. All the others moved away from her. Mother and daughter embraced in silence. On her first visit back to Warsaw Leah had not seen her daughter.

While all this was going on, Koppel turned his attention to his own family. Manyek, his son, had grown into a man in his forties. There was a strong resemblance between the two. Nyunie Moskat looked at them in surprise. It was as though he saw two Koppels, one old, the other young. Manyek's wife had become stout. Yppe, Koppel's younger daughter, leaned on her husband, a small person with a dim mustache on his upper lip. Instead of the brace she had worn on her bad leg when she was a child, she now used crutches. Bashele had died. Her second husband, Chaim Leib, the coal dealer, had also gone to his long rest. Both Manyek and Yppe had brought their children with them. Koppel had all their photographs in his breast pocket, but now he could not recognize any of them. To him Yppe was simply a middle-aged lame woman. She talked with a sort of stutter, and Koppel could hardly understand what she was saying.

-569-Manyek had

developed a noticeable potbelly. He turned to his father and said: "Let's wait here. The Gdynia train will be coming any minute."

"Hey, boss, where do you want me to take this baggage?" a porter called out. He had Koppel's, Leah's, and Lottie's baggage piled on a hand truck.

"Maybe he ought to take it into the baggage room," Manyek suggested in Polish.

"Yes. And bring me the receipt," Koppel answered in his Americanized Yiddish.

"Children, this is your grandfather," Manyek's wife kept on saying to her brood as well as to Yppe's, speaking to them in Polish.

"I've forgotten the language already," Koppel remarked. "Yes, I am the dziadek, the grandfather. What's your name? Whose are you?"

"I'm Manyek's daughter, Andzha."

"Aha, Andzha! Do you go to school, eh?"

"Yes. I'm in the sixth class."

"In America they call it 'high school.' Tell me, do they beat the Jews here?"

"Nobody beats me."

"It'll come yet. In Paris all you hear is that there's going to be a war. Do you know any English?"

"They teach us French."

"French is something I don't know. Anyway, they don't speak that language, they gargle it. At your age I was already working for a living. I was a clerk on Gensha Street. I swept out the store. They paid me half a ruble a week. And if I didn't steal anything, then I didn't have anything.

Leah came over to them. "What's all this babbling about stealing? Introduce me to your family."

"This is my wife," Koppel said after some hesitation. "Her father used to be my boss. I stole the money out of his safe and then I stole his daughter."

Leah took a startled step backward. "Have you gone crazy?"

"Its' the truth. Once your father--may he rest in peace--said to me: "Tell me, Koppel, do you believe in a next world? And I said to him: 'When I get there I'll let you know all about it.' He was smart, the old man. He knew I was stealing from him, but who wasn't snatching it from him in those days?"

-570-"So help me

God, Koppel, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Leah stormed at him in English. "The moment you get here, you begin with your monkey business."

"Never mind, never mind," Koppel growled. "It's the God's truth."

2

The train from Gdynia was late too. The Bialodrevna Chassidim, led by Anshel, hovered among the Moskats and Kop-pel's family.

Then they all crossed to the track on which the Gdynia train was to arrive. From the station emerged a group of Polish sailors in their round hats, short jackets, and wide trousers. The Chassidim took a few hesitant steps backward; one could easily be beaten up by this band. Pinnie and Nyunie looked helplessly about them.

Leah stared at them in open astonishment; she had had no idea that Poland had a navy. The uniform was something like the American sailors' uniform, she thought, except that the Americans seemed to be tall, and here they were almost like dwarfs. Koppel shook his head. They also call themselves a country, he reflected.

One American ship and their whole navy would be at the bottom of the sea. In spite of all the trouble he had had in America because of his bootlegging, he thought of himself as an American patriot. In France he had had arguments with Leah. He maintained that one Brooklyn street was worth all the boulevards of Paris. He insisted that the French did not know the first thing about cooking a meal, that the hotels were dirty, and that the women were something awful to look at.

Gazing at the Polish sailors, Koppel remarked: "Look at them.

Purim masqueraders!"

" Koppel, please!" Leah warned. "Hold your tongue."

"To hell with them all!"

Everyone had expected that Aaron would travel second-class; instead he got out of a third-class car. Leah saw a thin figure of a man with a disheveled beard, a wrinkled coat, and a wide velvet hat. Leah had heard that Aaron was doing farm work, but one would never have guessed it by looking at him. He was not even tanned like the others who came back from Palestine. The Chassidim immediately ringed him about.

Leah did not know whether to embrace him or not. She -571-pushed through

the throng. She heard Aaron say: "Mother! It's you!"

"Yes. It's me!" And she could say no more.

"Aaron, Aaron! This is me, Zlatele!"

"Zlatele! Blessed be God's name."

"He may be your son, but he's our rabbi," Anshel remarked.

"The rabbi's staying with me, on Bagno Street. And it's time to go. It's late."

"So soon? Well, all right. Ill come to see him."

The Chassidim led Aaron out into the street. Leah's eyes followed the group as they shuffled along, pushing into one another. She had lived two thirds of her life here in Warsaw; she had been back once before on a visit; she remembered Poland.

Nevertheless, when she gazed at these Chassidim leading her son away, making their uncouth gestures and contorting their faces, she realized that she had forgotten a good deal. She began to look around for Masha. Ah, what a strange brood she had given birth to: a rabbi, an apostate, a teacher in a college, a Wall Street lawyer! She suddenly remembered that there was still no headstone on the grave of Moshe Gabriel. As she stood there among the confusion of trains, locomotives, rails, in the glare of the electric lamps, and among the hurrying passengers, what she had felt for a long time became clear to her: she had not long to live. At the most she had only a few years left. In Brooklyn, in the cemetery, there already waited the plot that Koppel had acquired from the Warsaw society. Then why should she take things to heart? Why should she keep on endlessly quarreling with Koppel? Why should she torture Lottie? What was the good of all this traveling around? She became so lost in her thoughts that she did not see Koppel greeting and embracing his daughter Shosha and her husband.

Pinnie came over to her. "What are we waiting here for? It's getting late. We'll not be able to find any droshkies."

"One second. I must go over to them."

Her years in Palestine had turned Shosha into a real beauty. Leah could only stare at her. She had become somewhat fleshier, but she was still slim. She was tanned by the sun. Her eyes looked lighter. She kept on kissing her father, Manyek, Yppe, and her sister-in-law. She took her handkerchief out of her bag and wiped her eyes; and the rest followed suit, shed--572-ding a tear at the thought of Teibele, who had died before her time. Shosha's husband, Simon, stood a little distance apart. He was dark as a gypsy, with an enormous shock of jet-black hair. His big body seemed constricted in the clothes he wore. A pair of enormous hands protruded from his coat sleeves. Simon worked his own orange groves in Palestine. Pinnie did not know him; nevertheless he went up and extended a courteous greeting. The giant clutched Pinnie's hand in his enormous paw and bent over him, as over a child.

All started to leave the station. The conductor collected the platform tickets, at the same time favoring each of them with a searching glance, as though trying to fix their features in his memory. Manyek collected the baggage from the baggage room.

Koppel had wired ahead a reservation for three rooms at the Hotel Bristol, one for himself and Leah, one for Shosha and Simon, and one for Lottie. Outside, these five climbed into a taxi. Manyek summoned a droshky; so did Yppe. Some of the Moskat family went away on foot, others took streetcars. That's the way it always was with these Americans, they reflected.

They were always surrounded by hosts of people, and it was impossible to get in a word. Anyway, it was pointless to pin too much hope on them. Even if Leah had the desire to take all of them off with her to America, that didn't mean she could. Joel's daughters withdrew in irritation. Their American aunt hadn't so much as looked at them. Stepha walked off with Dosha, Pin-nie's younger daughter. They spoke of Hadassah.

"She did a smart thing in not coming," Stepha remarked. "It turned out to be a circus."

"What did you expect? It's impossible to get a thousand greetings over with in ten minutes."

"That Koppel looks like a cunning fox."

"They say he's half mad."

"It's a wonder they had the nerve to come to Poland now.

With all the war talk."

"American citizens have nothing to be afraid of."

"Youll probably think I'm crazy, but I honestly wish the thing had started already," Stepha remarked after a slight pause.

Dosha stopped stock-still.

"Stepha, you must be out of your mind!"

"This waiting is worse than any reality could be. At least, if -573-they kill

you you're dead and you can laugh at all of them."

"Ah, Stepha, you're just talking nonsense. I've got nothing to be afraid of. I'm all alone. But you--you have a child."

"He got a beating last week--I thought they'd fractured his skull."

"My God! How did it happen? Why didn't you say something about it?"

"They ganged up on him like a swarm of vultures. Six against one.

'March to Palestine!' they yelled at him. He was going to a meeting, in his uniform. He belongs to the Trumpeldor organization."