The Invisible Wall (12 page)

He paused, and I happened to glance at the rabbi just then. He was holding the long cigarette holder upward in his hand, smoke curling from the cigarette, and his mouth was open a little, the round red cherry-like lips pursed as if in surprise. Then Max went on, and I swung my eyes back to him.

“I must say this,” Max said. “I must be quite honest. My question did not come from within my soul, as if it were a miracle, so to speak. I had been doing a great deal of reading. I have always read a great deal. My father will testify to that. But in the early part of my life, until my thirteenth birthday, my reading was confined to the Talmud, the early Hebrew scholars, the ancient Greek philosophers, the British, French, and German classics. But then in the library I had stumbled on other books, writers of a different sort, with views that were strange to me at first, strange and disturbing. Gibbons, Smith, Seligman, Engels—and, yes, Marx. They mean nothing to you now. Perhaps they will someday, Marx especially.”

Now, glancing at the rabbi, I saw a distinctly shocked expression on his face. It no longer glowed with pride. I thought for a moment that he was about to say something, but he checked himself as Max continued to speak.

“So perhaps I was already primed for this question. Perhaps it had been there gnawing inside me for some time before. But I did not dare ask it that night. I would have upset the seder completely, and hurt my parents, and I did not want to do that. I kept it inside me, and it is there still, gnawing away, troubling me. I have tried for my father's sake, for my mother's sake, to eradicate it, but I cannot. It persists constantly, that fifth question, and especially now that another seder is near. I think constantly of all the suffering that is going on in the world, and all the injustices that are taking place. I think of the cruelties that man has inflicted upon man throughout the centuries, long before the Jews fled from Egypt to escape the wrath of the Pharaoh, and long after that. I think of the slaughters that have taken place in the wars throughout history, the one that is being fought now in France, and I ask myself, why does God countenance all this? If God is our creator, the supreme, kind, and benevolent being whom we all worship, why does he permit us to destroy one another? And why too does he permit one religion to persecute another when both are his children? And so there came that terrible question—supposing, supposing it is all fantasy—is there really a God?”

“No!”

The cry burst from the rabbi. There was an agonized look on his face. We all stared at him, and Max turned around to face him, a sorrowful look on his face.

“I warned you, Father,” he murmured. “I said you were not going to like it.”

“It is the devil talking. It is not you. Get out of here. Go home and cleanse your mouth.”

Max did not say anything else. He turned and walked out of the room, and we heard his feet marching through the corridor and the door closing after him. The rabbi was pacing up and down before the fire, his head bent, an expression on his face that was bitter and filled with pain. He seemed completely oblivious of our presence. After a moment he roused himself sufficiently to wave a hand and say, “Go home.”

We quickly sprang up from our seats and hurried out, chattering excitedly to ourselves over the strange thing we'd witnessed that night, not quite understanding it, not at all sure what it was Max had said that angered his father so much, but aware that it must have been something of great significance.

         

IT CREATED A GOOD DEAL
of talk on the street, and in my mother's shop. They all knew about it from us, but they knew more than we did. Their heads were close together as they bent over the counter toward my mother, and their voices whispered excitedly. I heard some of it. I heard them say that he was a revolutionist, and that he was involved with anarchists and socialists and even, God help him, with the Russian Bolsheviks. They clasped their hands together and shook their heads back and forth and moaned, as if they were in the synagogue saying prayers for the dead.

Soon, however, everyone was busy with other things, chiefly with preparations for the coming Passover holiday. Special dishes were being prepared in advance. The house smelled of fermenting beets that would become rossel, the red juice we would drink all through Passover, and another kind of smell from the mead my mother was brewing in the cellar, and still another from the chicken fat being rendered, which would be spread on the matzohs.

Now the matzohs themselves arrived. This always created a lot of excitement on the street, on both sides, with the Christians curious onlookers as Levine's horse and cart came clattering around the corner and drew up at our curb. It was piled with boxes of matzohs, all ordered in advance by the families on the street. We clustered around eagerly as Mr. Levine, his pasty face sweating with exertion, handed out the boxes to us, calling out the names as he did so. “Jacobs, Mittleman, Cohen, Finklestein, Berger, Zarembar, Blank.” Hands reached for them, boys carried them into the houses, and there they were stored carefully to await the first day.

Finally, after the house had been cleaned from top to bottom, the last of the forbidden bread removed from sight, usually given to some Christian family across the street, the remaining crumbs—the chometz—were swept up, placed in a bag, and taken out into the street to be burned. With all the Christians staring at us in something like horror at what must have seemed to them a pagan rite, smoke coming from all the bags, flames flaring upward, and the women murmuring prayers, we burned them.

Then at last it was the first night of Passover. We dressed in our best clothes. That year, thanks to the shop, all of us had shoes, and all three of us boys had new suits, and we walked proudly to the synagogue, Joe carrying the little purple velvet bag that contained the one siddur we shared and our talithes. It was clear, warm weather. Everyone strode briskly, in front and behind us. New shoes squeaked as we marched through the streets. Mill workers coming home just then stared at us and then bent their heads and continued their clattering in the opposite direction.

But one of them, a man, managed to call out, “Bloody Jews. Who killed Christ?”

There was some laughter from a few, but for the most part they said nothing and continued on their way. We too said nothing, pretending not to have heard. The sun was setting behind the square brick tower of the India Mill. The sky would be red while we were in the synagogue.

Korer, the treasurer, tall, thinner than ever, his face almost skeleton-like, stood in the doorway, silent and grim, greeting no one as the congregation entered. His eyes fell a bit sharply on my brothers and me, then turned away as he remembered that our dues had been paid.

The synagogue was filled to capacity. Every seat was taken. Blood-red sunset showed at the stained-glass windows. It grew darker gradually. A Christian woman came in and lit the gaslights, moving swiftly from one to the other with a taper in her hand, seeming almost afraid and anxious to get this over with, then having lit the last one, scurrying out, just as quickly.

A silence fell after she had gone. All eyes were on the door, and through the door came the rabbi, swathed in his huge striped talith, and then a gasp went up. For right behind him, wearing a smaller talith that came just over his shoulders, walked the rabbi's son. Max, the godless one, the revolutionist.

Whispers went back and forth, heads came together, and from the balcony over our heads we heard the gabble of voices. Then silence once more, and the services began.

That Passover was a strange one in every way. Not only had the rabbi's son shown up at the synagogue for the first time in months, and right after his talk at the cheder, but we too had an unexpected guest at the seder. It was our father. He was seated at the table when we came home from the synagogue, his head bent a little, the same glower on his face. My mother's face showed some of her feelings. It glowed with happiness, but she hardly dared talk. None of us did. We whispered to one another. We took our places at the table, and lifting our glasses of wine we began the seder with the blessing.

It was Joe who recited from the Haggodah. My father did not know any Hebrew, and even if he had I doubt if he would have conducted the seder, and we did not expect him to. It was enough that he was there. He had never attended our seders before this. For that matter, we could not remember any occasion when he had sat down at the table with us before this. Why now so suddenly? It was a bit of a mystery. Yet I have the feeling that it had something to do with Larry and the fight he'd had with him, and perhaps other things connected with our boarder.

Something about that night was definitely different from all other nights, and these words that we spoke later from the Haggodah had a double meaning for us. There was a softness and a gentleness in our home that we had never experienced before. He said nothing to us all through the ceremony, and he ate in silence too, afterward, his head bent low over his plate. But he was there with us, and we felt an odd sort of happiness, and later, lying in bed, the sweet warmth of the wine I had drunk lulling me gradually to sleep, the house very still, a sense of peace came over me and I must have still been smiling as I fell asleep.

         

FOR MY SISTER LILY
, however, there was no peace and no rest that night or any of the other nights. The worry showed on her face, and in the shadows around her eyes. She had probably not slept since she had taken the exam. Throughout the day there was a strained look on her face. In school she went about her duties silently. She and the headmaster scarcely looked at each other. She had no news for him, and he had none for her. The notification was to come to both places, the school and the home. As soon as Lily got home, dashing into the house, her eyes went to the mantelpiece where the letter would be. My mother, coming out of the shop where she had been serving a customer, shook her head.

“Not yet,” she said, and then added cheerfully, “Oh, it'll soon come, and then you'll see, you'll have passed.”

“No, I won't,” Lily said mournfully. “If I'd passed they would have let me know already.”

“How do you know that?” my mother said. “Has somebody told you that?”

She looked at Lily suspiciously. Had Arthur been talking to her, was what she meant. But Lily refused to walk into the trap. She shook her head, though in a way that denied they had been talking. On the way to and from school, they had exchanged looks, with Arthur's questioning, and Lily shaking her head slightly, barely perceptibly. No, she had not received the notification, was what she said. There was constant gloom and anxiety on her face. She was irritable with everyone. Rose, taking advantage of the situation, deliberately taunted and sneered and goaded her into a fight.

It meant so much to Lily. One thing, it would save her from having to go to work in the tailoring shop—and be with him all day long. That fear must have haunted her more than anything else. It would have kept any of us awake nights, and we were all in sympathy with Lily—except perhaps Rose, whose perennial jealousy was at its height since the day Lily had been picked to take the exam. The rest of us wanted her to pass and go on to the grammar school, and we kept our eyes peeled for the postman just as much as Lily did, and dashed into the house when we came home from school along with her and searched the mantelpiece.

Once, as we were coming home, Joe cried out, “There's the postman.”

He was late in making his rounds. He had usually delivered to our street before we came home. But there he was now, and he was stopping at our house. We raced madly toward him. Even Rose tore along with us, caught up in the excitement. Our mother was at the door, taking the letter from the postman when we arrived, and the expression on her face showed her own excitement.

She could not read. Lily tore the letter from her, and immediately disappointment swept over her face. She handed it back to my mother, saying, “It's from America.”

Ordinarily, this would have been reason enough for the excitement to continue. It did in my mother. She did not get letters from America as often as she would have liked, and no matter how many disappointments there had been in the past, each one made her tremble with new hope. I saw the flush come on her cheeks and her hand shake as she gave the letter to Joe to read.

I felt some of the hope rise in myself. I had caught the fever from my mother. I too wanted to go to America. Lily, uninterested, too disappointed to care, turned away. The rest of us, though, clustered around Joe as he tore the envelope open. Was this to be the letter that said they were sending for us? Lily was forgotten.

This one proved to be from Uncle Abe, and it was ecstatic. But it had nothing to do with us. It was about himself. He had just got married. I have never forgotten this letter. “Yes, I have just got married,” he wrote, “I am working and making good money, and I have a nice home and a beautiful wife with electric lights and a bathtub.”

At least, my mother was able to laugh. She had a good sense of humor that was not always shared by the women in her shop. She “read” the letter to several of them, remembering the words from Joe, and they stared at her, puzzled as she choked with her laughter. They could not seem to understand what was so funny, and my mother, wiping her eyes, folded the letter and gave up trying to explain. She changed the subject, becoming serious again.

         

LATE ONE AFTERNOON
, while we were in the midst of lessons at St. Peter's, a wave of excitement seemed to sweep through the school. There was much whispering among the teachers, signaling to one another through the glass part of the partitions, and going into one another's classrooms. The headmaster was striding back and forth, visibly excited, his ears very red. Then he went into a consultation with Cocky, and a few moments later they were pushing the partitions back, and old Mr. Bell came trotting in to lend a hand.