Read Too Jewish Online

Authors: Patty Friedmann

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Dramas & Plays, #Regional & Cultural, #European, #World Literature, #Jewish, #Drama & Plays, #Continental European, #Literary Fiction, #Historical, #Fiction, #Novel, #Judaica, #Jewish Interest, #Holocaust, #New Orleans, #love story, #Three Novellas, #Jews, #Southern Jews, #Survivor’s Guilt, #Family Novel, #Orthodox Jewish Literature, #Dysfunctional Family, #Psychosomatic Illness

Too Jewish (2 page)

BOOK: Too Jewish
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"Oh, I think I should."

"I have his letters," I said. I went into my bedroom and came back with a packet that I had kept hidden under my mattress. Each time I put one away I considered leaving all of them out where she might find them.

I knew most of them by heart. I'd read them so many times, searched each for the details that were going to change my life. I had no access to the library, no way of seeing maps, no way to figure out what 178
th
Street meant. He mentioned Park Avenue, and it sounded rich, a boulevard of trees and fountains, so if his cousins lived there, I believed in them. I interpreted his letters to my mother.

"See what Axel can do for you," she said.

"For us," I said.

"I survived when Sali died before you were born, and then I was brave enough to have you," she said. "When a child is gone, a mother keeps living."

* * *

There is one thing about papers: they keep a person far too busy to think. I don't believe I had time to consider the future beyond the next hour at any time in those few August weeks. I had some luck of genetics in that I had fair coloring. My eyes weren't large like Axel's, but they were a pure blue, and if a person came close enough it was possible to see my eyes were light and Aryan. From a distance, I wasn't dark-eyed, and that counted for something. I also was one of those people who had been born with yellow hair, and even though it had faded over the years, I still would have been described as light-haired. Men never think of such things, unless passing for Aryan in the streets makes life feel more comfortable. I taught myself to walk with confidence. The confidence was more hypocritical than simply misleading, and I didn't like myself for it, but it was necessary.

Axel was as good as a brother. I'd told him my mother and I had registered all property worth more than five thousand marks with the government last year. "What they could see," my mother had said, and I had been surprised. I didn't write that to Axel, of course. He had written to me that all mail bore the mark of censors. I wondered what that mark looked like.

I had the affidavit. Enough money had been wired to pay the emigration tax. I had shipped one box of photographs and clothes and treasures of no monetary value like a Passover plate of my grandmother that no one would know had religious meaning. I included a few books, not to read but to keep. Like
Struwwelpeter
. Axel would enjoy seeing it, and I'd keep it for my children. I was expecting German-speaking children. It all went to 178
th
Street. I had packed a single valise. I had a passport—and I had one for my mother, too. She was willing to get a passport.

But she made no other preparations. She was not going. She was sending me away to learn. I could walk through the rooms and get my heart broken by the small hints of unpacked treasures.

It was almost September, and even my mother with her silent radio knew of the rumblings of war. But as she said, she had lived through war. Nothing new could happen. She showed no readiness to leave except the possession of a passport, and she said she would use it to accompany me when I came back with my millions of marks to take her to the South of France. "A war is beginning," I said. "Just beginning."

My mother argued that she had been listening to the news, that just because the Great War had lasted so many years, it did not mean this one would as well.

"You are being systematically starved by the government," I told her. I gently reminded her that at a slightly advanced age, that was not a healthful situation. I did not want to come out and admit, to her or me, that at seventy it was terribly dangerous.

"You don't think I was a little too plump?" she said.

"You are anything but plump now," I said, and even she knew it wasn't a compliment.

I'd grown up with a short, plump little mother, who never looked terribly old because her face was so full, and now skin was starting to hang on her. She didn't enjoy eating. She wanted tender meats, fresh fruits. We used to have meals together and talk. We used to have challah on Friday nights. Now food meant nothing. I would have thought coming to America for food alone would have meant something. But she knew food was rationed there, too. But fairly, I told her, fairly. "You go," she said. "If I'm wrong, you send for me."

The train for Paris was leaving in one hour, and I already was soaked with perspiration before I left the apartment. The air had a hint of autumn, but I was moving around too fast and nervously, I suppose, needing not to miss anything.

"I have something to give you," my mother said as I walked through my bedroom at a fast clip. The room didn't look as if I was leaving. I had taken so little.

"But I'm packed," I said.

"It's in my hand," she said. "It will go in your pocket. But better in your shoe." She remembered war.

She held out her hands. In one were two gold coins. Her diamond engagement ring was in the other. She never had removed the ring after my father died. I looked at her as if she were a woman expecting to die. It was almost impossible to speak. "No," I managed to say. "No."

"Don't be alarmed," she said. "You take it to America. That's all. You don't know what the government will do next. That's all."

She was a head shorter than I was, and I wasn't a tall man. She had shrunk that much. Still, she cupped my chin as if I were still her small boy. "I don't want you crying," she said. "This is a short time apart. If you see it that way, you won't be sad."

The ring was in my hand, and I held it out to her.

"I mean it. I'm just being careful. This is good sense. It's nothing to worry about. I always meant it for your wife. So now you keep it for her."

She was being so matter-of-fact. Like a mother at the school gate. Making me let go.

But mothers at school gates don't go home and celebrate. My mother told me that, years after I first clung to her, not wanting to walk onto the school yard. Mothers turn their backs on their little boys, then walk fast back toward home, tears running down their faces.

My mother was smiling at me, but she wasn't doing a very good job.

* * *

I was determined not to cry when I left my mother. I took her cue, trying to smile, not letting tears spill. She was smiling only with her mouth, too, as I walked out the door, waving backwards because she had a superstition that as long as we waved backwards we would see each other again. But my mother had buried her parents and her baby and her husband and had learned more difficult partings, and she had made it clear to me that this was the way of nature, of sending the grown child out into the world. She wasn't thinking about herself, staying in a land where all the windows of Jews were smashed for hatred, but that was because she was still at home, in her closed, private space. I was going out into the street, and out there I couldn't help thinking about her staying in this wider world. I forced myself to stop such thoughts. My mother alone in these forlorn streets was an image that would turn me back. But then the streets made me think of myself, of leaving the only city I'd ever known. I knew Stuttgart so well, the way only a boy with freedom could. I wasn't just leaving my mother. I was leaving home for the first time, and I would know nothing when I arrived in New York.

Then I saw an SS officer three blocks from my house and all sad thoughts disappeared. I had to look out. I had to look. I had to think only about finding the train and finding Paris and finding the ship and finding Axel. I wouldn't call it looking forward, but I would call it looking hard.

The walk to the station was long. Stuttgart was an ugly city. I'm sure it's just as ugly now. Industry makes even an old city not care so much about aesthetics, or so it seems to me in retrospect. Of course, I now live in a city that manufactures nothing but is famed for being dangerously beautiful, so I think back on where I came from as sooty and angular. I know Stuttgart was a Gothic city, but only if I looked up. And only tourists look up in cities. Stuttgart did not attract tourists. I walked with my contrived confidence; I pretended I was a good German going on holiday to Paris with my small valise. The SS seemed to be out in greater force than ever. I looked each officer in the eye. I never will know how long the walk was, but at the time I was sure it was at least ten kilometers. A few months later I would walk the length of Manhattan, which was twice that length, and it would feel half as long. Every step to the train station seemed a small triumph. The image of my mother in the doorway of our apartment came to my mind, and I would squeeze my eyes shut tight for a second to keep from crying. If I was stopped, I wondered if I would be going back to the apartment.

* * *

I wasn't stopped. I wasn't questioned at the station. I wasn't bothered on the train. I was in a compartment with five other people, and I knew the couple across from me was Jewish. This is not a good thing to admit, I suppose, but it is easy to identify Jews. In part it is physiognomy. I apologize for that. I apologize more for taking advantage of the neutrality of my appearance while I was in Stuttgart. It probably did me no good, walking around looking like an overripe member of
Hitlerjugend
, but inside I had no fear of the streets, and for that I was grateful. In school my appearance did no good, of course, because identity is documented on papers. Having the name Kuper, which sounded like nothing in particular, didn't help in school. I was a Jew, and I was beaten by other boys.

The couple in the train compartment saw me as an Aryan on holiday. So did the three other travelers with us. They were three businessmen who clearly were together. Older men, too old for the German army. I had nothing to do. My seat was the farthest from the window. The window was wasted on the businessmen. They were too busy talking to enjoy looking out. I could gaze past them into the distance, but that would have been rude. Besides, I was a sophisticate, a young man who traveled for pleasure. Why would I want to see the outskirts of Stuttgart? Or the countryside, dry and colorless as the seasons had not changed yet?

Paris was seven hours, but the French border was only two. I was expecting a transformation at the French border, as if suddenly I would become a carefree French speaker once the train made its crossing. I could be bored for two hours. I could make myself think of nothing for two hours. My mother came to mind. I made myself think of nothing. She came to mind again, so I thought of Axel. I thought of Park Avenue. The man and woman across from me said nothing. They looked past me. I dozed off, and the train had come to a stop.

Karlsruhe.

We still were in Germany. The men in our compartment did not excuse themselves as they stepped over us. All of them were leaving in Karlsruhe. No one else came onto the train, and after we pulled out of the station, I caught the man's eye and said, "Jude," in a whisper.
Jew.
His neutral expression turned to horror.

"Oh," I said. Then I pointed at myself. The woman let me look her in the eye. But she didn't smile. She didn't trust me. I didn't know why I trusted them, except that I was completely certain I could recognize a Jew on sight. I thought about pulling my passport from my pocket and showing them the "J" on it. But the ride to the French border was short. I didn't need to prove anything that very second. Once we were across, we could talk. We could express our relief.

When the train came to a halt, it was not rail personnel who came to the compartment but an SS officer. I was accustomed to SS officers. I didn't flinch. "
Raus
!" he said. The English meaning of that word is "out," but in German it means so much more. It makes a person jump. Germans say it to their children, and their children learn to jump and run. I stood up, bumping into my compartment mates as we pushed to the exit. "Juden?" the officer said. None of us said a word. He asked for our passports. The gentleman handed over their passports, and as he did so, I carefully slipped one of the gold coins out of my left shoe. My socks were damp and made it difficult to reach down, but some power inside me made my fingers nimble and fast, and I palmed the coin. I felt where the other coin was, just in case. The ring was nestled down in the toe of my other shoe. It wasn't coming out unless I had a gun to my head. That didn't seem to be what was going to happen. This officer was no older than I was. He was frightened of himself. When he pushed the man and woman out farther, I told him to wait, that surely there was some misunderstanding. He asked for my passport. Instead I slipped him the coin. "They're my parents," I said. "I don't think so," he said. He turned and walked away, pushing the woman roughly down the passageway. Their baggage was still in the overhead rack. I considered my other coin. They hadn't smiled at me. They hadn't believed me.

Until I saw Axel, I did not allow anyone in any crowd or small space to be an individual to me.

Chapter Two

When I went into the Automat and fixed myself soup by squeezing free ketchup into free hot water, I had a feeling I wasn't making good decisions. Axel arrived fifteen minutes after I did and gave me a quarter to get myself a sandwich and a glass of milk, and then he made me talk to him.

We spoke in German, of course. Knowing Axel and his cousins in New York could have made it easy for me to get through life without learning English. But I went around embarrassing myself in public places, trying out my vocabulary and my verbs. So talking to him in German was little more than a chance to unclench my jaw and stop struggling so hard to watch a person's lips. I hoped we could linger all afternoon. In a way I hoped we could stay until dinner time so he might buy me chicken and potatoes. I kept kashrut: I'd wait enough time after the milk. I was always hungry. I wasn't spending my money, saving it in a little bank account, but I also had no idea how to prepare food.

"I don't see why you won't come into my business," he said.

"Because I would feel as if I were stealing from you." Axel was very successful. How could I become a partner when I hadn't done all the work?

Axel waved his hand around an imaginary world that extended far past the doors, far past New York and the harbor and the ocean. "Fairness isn't something people expect right now," he said. "You don't have to be fair with me. You can be fair with someone else."

BOOK: Too Jewish
12.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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