The Family Moskat (9 page)

"A fledgling,--away from the nest," she murmured. "A-ah, the pain of a mother!" She lifted her batiste handkerchief and blew her nose. She was overcome by a strange feeling, as though the boy were somehow her own flesh and blood.

2

After dinner they all went into the salon. Abram lit a cigar; Nyunie began to fidget, peer around, and grumble to himself, like a rooster before settling on its perch. Just as desperately hungry as he had been before, so desperately drowsy was he now. He left the room and went to his small study, stretched out on -48-a couch, and picked up a volume of Graetz
History of the Jews
, which he was reading unbeknown to his wife; Dacha, in common with all the pious, thought it a heretical work. In less than five minutes he was snoring soundly. Nyunie was the administrator of two of his father's houses, although it was his assistant, the hunchbacked Moishele, who collected the rents. Moishele turned over the money and gave an accounting to Koppel and every Thursday brought to Dacha the family's weekly allowance. Nyunie paid no attention to the administration of the real es-tate or of his own household economy. The wedding settlement he had received from his father-five thousand rubles--still lay untouched in the bank, and in the years that had passed, a lot of interest had been added to it. Now he lay on the couch, limbs relaxed, his mouth half open, his head resting on a small cushion, which he had had since childhood and which he had never allowed himself to be parted from, either at home in Warsaw or when he was traveling.

For Dacha, too, the hour after the midday meal was always the most restful part of the day--especially when Abram was visiting.

She would forget all her ills--the headaches, the rheu-matic pains, the stabbing darts in her side, the tightness in her joints. Nyunie would be asleep in his study, Hadassah would have gone to her own room, the maid would be visiting a neighbor. Dacha would wrap her shoulders in her silk shawl, embroidered with two peacocks, sink into a deep chair, put her feet on a hassock, and half close her eyes. The stove with its gilded eaves spread its heat through the room. The sunlight shining in through the window curtains was reflected in the oven tiles with all the colors of the rainbow. The noise of the street was shut out by the double windows, the sills and sashes stuffed with cotton padding. Abram would sit near her, his lips puffing out rings of cigar smoke, his fingers playing with the gold chain that stretched across his vest. At such times Dacha would half doze, half listen to the gossip and intrigue about her father-in-law, brothers-in-law, their wives and children, and the rest of the kin--

the dozen and one families to whose fortunes she was tied.

Despite the fact that she was a pure-minded and chaste woman--

the decorous daughter of a pious family--Abram recounted to her all his love affairs, transgressions, and carryings on. Dacha would shudder and put on an expression of disgust at his loose talk, -49-drawing her silk

shawl tighter about her shoulders. Occasionally she would open wide her half-closed mournful black eyes and stare at him.

"Feb, Abram, you're going too far! I won't listen to any more."

And when Abram would remain silent she would murmur: "Well, all right, go on and talk. I won't have to share the Gehenna that will be your portion."

But this day the chairs in the salon were drawn close so that they could all sit and talk together. The servant girl brought in tea, cakes, and preserves. Adele turned the pages of a gold-stamped album. Rosa Frumetl in a languishing voice told Dacha about the brewery that her first husband, Reb David Landau, owned near Brody; of the eighty acres of ground planted with hops that were part of the business; of the peasants and servants they employed, and of the distinguished rabbis who came to visit them. Abram sat on the sofa next to Asa Heshel. He called Hadassah over to join them.

"Come here, my girl. Don't be bashful. I'm here to protect you."

Hadassah went over and sat at the end of the sofa. She glanced at Asa Heshel and then lowered her eyes.

"Maybe you'd like to give this young man some lessons. It'll be a good deed; you'll be earning a portion in paradise."

Hadassah looked questioningly at Asa Heshel. "I don't know if I know enough," she said shyly.

"For him it'll be plenty," Abram commented.

"Maybe my Adele can help," Rosa Frumetl interrupted. While she was talking to Dacha she had had an ear cocked to the conversation of the others.

"Mamma, you know I'm leaving Warsaw," Adele said hastily.

"You're not going so soon, my darling. A lot of water will flow under the bridge before."

"I'll be going sooner than you imagine."

"Too bad the dear young lady is leaving us," Abram remarked.

"What's too bad about it? Nobody will miss me."

"You can never tell. There's such a thing as love at first sight."

"Abram, you're starting your nonsense again!" Dacha scolded.

"You seem to forget that you're getting to be an old graybeard.

You've got marriageable daughters."

"Ah, my misfortunes! And suppose I am getting old; do you -50-have to

remind me of it? Besides, who said I meant myself? Maybe I meant this young man."

"Leave the young man alone."

Rosa Frumetl turned to Abram. "Maybe you can persuade her.

Only here a little while and now she wants to go. And if you ask me why--"

"Probably someone she wants to see."

"Only the good Lord knows."

"Don't worry, my dear mother-in-law! If her destined mate is here in Warsaw, then shell not go away. And if she does go away she'll come back," Abram said unctuously, not knowing himself where his tongue was leading him. "They all think I'm a heretic, a runaround, a corkscrew, but destined mates--that's something I believe in. Take me and my Hama. We fit together like a square peg in a round hole. But when the angel in charge of the business of seeing that children are conceived shouted out: 'Daughter of Reb Meshulam, take Abram!' nothing could help me."

"Abram, shame!" Dacha glared at him and gestured with her hand to indicate that he should hold his tongue in the presence of the girls. Abram struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"Who changed the subject! We were talking about lessons. Take him into your room, Hadassah, and listen to what he knows.

Young man, I forgot to ask you, where do you live?"

"Me? In a hotel on the Franciskaner."

"I know it. The Hotel de Bedbug. How much do you pay?"

"Fifteen kopeks a night."

"Listen to me, Dacha. I just got an idea. Maybe we ought to fix him up at Gina's."

"What are you talking about?"

"She took a big apartment on the Shviento-Yerska and rents rooms. It'll cost him ten rubles a month, but it'll be a home."

"Abram! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

"What's there to be ashamed about? Back to her father, the rabbi, shell certainly not go. I hear that Akiba will be divorcing her any day now, and, God willing, she'll be married to Hertz Yanovar according to the law of Moses and Ishmael--I mean Israel."

"I don't know what'll happen later. All I know is that now it's a scandal and disgrace. Why should you drag the young man into a swamp like that?"

-51-"Nonsense. It's a

fine, lively place. All of Warsaw's Jewish intelligentsia congregate there. It's a real salon. I'd hang around there myself--if not for the bedbugs."

"Abram, I asked you not to talk that way," Dacha called out angrily. The story about Gina, her husband, Akiba, and Hertz Yanovar was not for the ears of the eighteen-year-old Hadassah.

Rosa Frumetl put down her teacup and raised her eyes, full of curiosity. Adele leafed the album pages more vigorously.

When Hadassah and Asa Heshel had left the living-room Adele got up from her chair and walked over to the window. Twilight was coming on. The first snow of the winter was falling, wet and soft, the snowflakes swirling in the wind, melting away before they touched the ground. The smoke rising from the chimneys merged into the white mistiness. Birds, singly and in flocks, flew by. At the other side of the street stood a dray loaded with sacks and covered with a canvas. The two squat draft horses with their scarred hides were huddled together, their ears cocked. From time to time they turned their heads to each other as though whispering some equine secret. Adele stood at the window, her warm forehead pressing against the pane, and it suddenly came to her that her mother was right, there was no reason for her to go away--and there was no one to whom she would be going. She was tired of reading books, tired of thinking of her father, who had died too soon, of the Brody love affair that she had broken off out of pride, and of her entire uneventful life. She regretted now that she had been so sharp with the homeless youth from Tereshpol Minor and that she had needlessly irritated Abram and Dacha.

"I could have tutored him, too," she thought. "Anything rather than always be alone."

3

Hadassah's room was long and narrow. The window gave on the courtyard. The wallpaper was light-colored. Some landscapes and family photographs hung on the walls, among them one of Hadassah. At one side of the room stood a metal bed covered with an embroidered spread. A needlepoint cushion lay against the pillow. In a small rectangular aquarium bedded with moss, three tiny goldfish swam about. From the window the rays of the setting sun shone into the room, heightening the color of the -52-gold-framed pictures, throwing patches of light on the wallpaper, the polished floor, and the gold-stamped bindings of the books on the bookshelves. On a round table stood a volume and a vase of faded blue flowers. Hadassah crossed the room quickly, took the book from the table, and put it into a dresser drawer.

"These are my books," she said, pointing to the shelves. "If you like you can look at them."

Asa Heshel looked them over. Most of them were school books --a grammar, a Russian history, a geography, a world history, a Latin dictionary. Przybyszewski
The Outcry
leaned against a copy of Mickiewicz
Pan Tadeusz
. Strindberg
Confession of a Fool
reposed next to a thick novel that bore the title
Pharaoh
. Asa Heshel picked up some of the books, glanced at the title pages, leafed them, and put them back on the shelves. "The trouble is," he said, "I'd like to read all of them."

"I'll be glad to lend them to you. Whichever you want."

"Thank you."

"Maybe you'd like to light a lamp--although I love this half-light, between day and night."

"I like it too."

"Tell me what you'd like to study. I'm very weak in mathematics."

"Well, I want to take the university examinations--as an extern."

"Then you'll need a tutor. I didn't get through them myself; I became ill--before the examinations were given."

She sat down on the edge of the bed. In the setting sun's rays her hair took on the color of molten gold. Her small face lay in shadow. She looked toward the window, at a large expanse of sky, a row of rooftops, and the tall chimney of a factory.

Snowflakes pattered against the window pane. Asa Heshel sat on a chair near the bookshelves, his face half-turned toward Hadassah. "If I had a room like this," he was thinking, "and if I could only stretch out on a bed like that . . ." He took a book from the shelf, opened it, and put it on his lap.

"Why did you leave your home?" Hadassah asked.

"Just so. For no real reason. It was impossible for me to stay."

"And your mother let you go?"

"Not at the beginning. But then later she could see for herself that--" his voice trailed off.

"Is it true that you're a philosopher?"

-53-"Oh, no. I've read a few books, that's all. What I know amounts to nothing."

"Do you believe in God?"

"Yes, but not in a God who demands prayer."

"Then what God do you believe in?"

"The whole universe is part of the Deity. We ourselves are part of God."

"That means that if you have a toothache, it's God's tooth that's aching."

"Well, I suppose it's something like that."

"I really don't know what to tutor you in," Hadassah said after a slight pause. "Maybe Polish. I don't care for Russian."

"Polish will be all right."

"Do you understand the language?" She asked the question in Polish.

"Oh, yes, I understand it well enough."

The moment she went over to Polish the entire tone of the conversation seemed to change. Before that her voice had had a youthful, almost childish quality, the sentences sometimes drawn out, sometimes tumbling. Now the Polish accents came from her lips precisely and definitely, with the soft consonantal sounds carefully formed. Asa Heshel's Polish came slowly and stumblingly; he had to stop to think of the proper word forms and tense endings. Hadassah crossed her knees and listened carefully to him. He spoke with grammatical correctness, not substituting, as her father did, the dative for the accusative. It was his sentence structure that was unusual. In his mouth the language took on a languid sort of intimacy, as though the Polish had suddenly, by some sort of miracle, become the homey Yiddish.

"How do you plan to establish yourself in Warsaw?"

"I don't know yet."

"My Uncle Abram can be of great help to you. He knows everyone. He's a very interesting person."

"Oh, yes, I noticed that."

"He's a bit wild, but I love him. We all love him--Papa, Mamma, everyone. If a day passes without him coming here, we miss him. I call him 'the Flying Dutchman'; that's the name of an opera.

"Yes, I know."

"He has a daughter--my cousin, that is--her name is Stepha.

-54-She's the one who'd really be able to teach you. When she finished school she got a gold medal. She's just like her father--runs around, always jolly. We're altogether different."

"Forgive me, Miss Hadassah, but you talk so beautifully--like a poet."

Asa Heshel's own words surprised him. They escaped his lips as though of their own volition. The unfamiliar and formal language and the dimness of the room seemed to have conspired to banish his timidity.