Too Many Men (24 page)

Edek was peering into the back of another building when she caught up with him. She looked through a doorway into a large square courtyard. The courtyard was empty.

“That building at the back?” Edek said. “This was a small office. My brother Shimek did work here.”

“What did he do?” Ruth said.

“Shimek did work for my father, here,” said Edek. “We did have such a place where all the trucks and wagons that did come into Lódz had to be weighed.”

“What for?” said Ruth.

“It was like such a tax what you have to pay to come into a city,” Edek said.

“Oh, like a weighing station,” said Ruth.

“Yes,” said Edek. “We did weigh the trucks and wagons and then we did put a stamp on the documents for the driver.”

“Wow,” said Ruth. “Did your father start this business up himself?”

“Of course he did,” Edek said. “Who else would do it for him? He came from a poor family.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“Why should you know this?” Edek said.

“They were my great-grandparents,” said Ruth. “It’s interesting to know who did what and who made the money.”

“In my family, my father did make the money,” Edek said.

Ruth felt almost giddy. The information felt overwhelming. The volume and the content. She forced herself to calm down. They had only been out of the hotel for just over an hour. She didn’t want to disturb Edek by being T O O M A N Y M E N

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too emotional in the first hour. She followed him quietly. Edek stopped outside another building. He shook his head. He looked sad. The building he was standing in front of was clearly a cut above the other buildings. It had interesting proportions and semiornate architectural details. What connections did this dwelling have with her father or his father? Israel Rothwax, that was his name. Suddenly Ruth felt sure of that.

“We did live in this palace for two years,” Edek said. So this was the palace she had heard her mother mention.

“This is the former Rapaports’ Palace, right?” she said.

“How do you know?” said Edek.

“Mum told me,” she said. “It’s a beautiful building.”

“On the ground floor was offices,” Edek said. “You went through that door and did turn left and there was all the offices,” he said, pointing to a doorway.

“Did your father use the offices for his business?” she said.

“No, he did rent these offices to other businesses,” Edek said. “My father did use old offices for his business. He did not have such fancy, posh businesses that he needed such offices. You do not need to have offices in a palace to write invoices for cotton fabric or do the paperwork for a truck registration business.”

“Of course not,” said Ruth.

“Was your father an educated man?” Ruth said. “Did he go to high school?”

“No,” said Edek. “He probably did leave school when he was eleven or twelve. To tell you the truth my father did not think education was such a big deal. But we did all go to school because my mother wanted to let everyone know that her children are educated.” Ruth’s head was reeling. This was more than she had ever hoped to have revealed to her. Her grandfather was clearly a very smart man. Probably smarter than most MBAs today.

“My father did own this palace with a partner,” Edek said. “A Mr.

Meyer. Mr. Meyer was a partner with my father in another business.”

Another business, Ruth thought. She didn’t want to ask her father which business this other business was. She felt she had expressed far too much curiosity already. “My father said the palace was too big for one family,”

Edek said. “So Mr. Meyer and his family lived on the second floor and we did live on the first floor.”

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“Were you close to the Meyers?” Ruth said.

“No,” said Edek. “Mr. Meyer was such a funny type, anyway.” Ruth knew from her experience, that “such a funny type” covered a diverse range of traits and characteristics. She restrained herself from investigating the phrase, in this context, any further. She was so overexcited about what she was being told. And she didn’t want anything to curtail the revelations.

“So you lived there for two years,” she said.

“Yes,” said Edek. “Then my father did find out that Mr. Meyer was cheating him in one of the businesses.”

“Oh no,” Ruth said.

“I told you he was such a type,” said Edek. “My father wanted to finish the partnership. He did offer to buy Mr. Meyer’s half of the palace, but Mr.

Meyer would not sell it to him. And Mr. Meyer could not afford to buy my father’s half from my father. So they did sell the palace and we moved back to Kamedulska Street.”

“Were you sad to leave?” Ruth said.

“No,” said Edek. “Why should I be sad about this?”

“Because it’s a beautiful building,” she said.

“We had enough rooms for us in the palace and we had enough rooms for us in Kamedulska Street,” Edek said. “A room is a room wherever it is.”

How could her father have such a direct, straightforward approach to habitats, she thought, while she fussed and planned about every inch of what she was surrounded by in her apartment? Her sheets had to be the right shade of white. The walls and the flooring had to match the furniture and anything else in the rooms. She chose the canned food she bought according to the color on the label. The can opener couldn’t clash with the peeler or any other utensil. She bought blue soap, deodorant, and shampoo for the bathroom. She was so pretentious, she thought. She must try to change when she got back. Maybe she could begin with multicolored toilet paper and tea towels.

“Mr. Meyer did get less for his half of the palace than he would have got if he had agreed to allow my father to buy his half,” Edek said. “I told you he was such a funny type.”

“It really is a beautiful building,” Ruth said.

“Look up there,” Edek said. He was pointing to the top floor. Ruth couldn’t see what he was pointing at.

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“When we did buy the palace, it did not have such windows on the top floor,” said Edek.

“What was there?” she said.

“Those windows what go toward the ground,” Edek said. “Not straight windows.”

“You mean attic windows?” said Ruth.

“Yes,” said Edek. “The windows what are not straight.” Ruth looked at the top floor again. She could see, now, that a new section had been added. The walls were slightly different in texture from the rest of the building.

“What happened to the attic windows?” she said.

“When they did buy the palace, Mr. Meyer did measure every room,”

Edek said. “He wanted to make sure each partner did get exactly half. And the top floor because of these windows was a bit smaller than the first floor.

My father did say that Mr. Meyer could have the first floor. But Mr. Meyer did say it was important that each partner did have the same.”

“So they ruined the original architecture in order to divide the palace in half?” Ruth said.

“They did not ruin anything,” said Edek. “What was ruined? They did a very good job.”

“They changed the design of the building,” she said.

“So what?” Edek said. “Is a design of a building such a big deal? No.”

Ruth didn’t want to argue about an issue of aesthetics. “No,” she said.

They both stood and looked at the building.

“Fancy owning a palace,” Ruth said, after a few minutes. “I would have been a rich girl if I’d grown up here. If it all hadn’t been taken from us.” She had never thought about this before. About the wealth that had been lost.

“You are a rich girl,” Edek said.

“Okay,” she said. “Anyway, I’m rich because I’ve got you,” she said. She took his arm. “I wouldn’t trade you in for all the tea in China.”

“You do not drink such tea,” Edek said. “You drink only the herbs rubbish.” Ruth laughed. She looked at him. He looked fragile, and tired.

“Walk next to me, Dad,” she said. “There’s no need to rush.” They walked away from the palace. She held on to Edek’s arm.

Neither Edek nor Rooshka made much of the financial aspect of their loss. The loss of businesses and buildings. There was, she thought, too

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much other loss for them to think about. Her parents’ lives would have been so different if they had been given just a fraction of the wealth that was taken from them. The theft had turned them into factory workers.

Stolen her mother’s dream of becoming a pediatrician, and given Edek a perpetual feeling of having failed his beloved Rooshka.

Would she herself have been different if she had grown up wealthy?

Would being a rich girl have changed her? Would it have made her calmer?

Would she have been calm and rich? Maybe she wouldn’t have had so many metaphorical twitches? She would have grown up surrounded by family. As it was, she was left alone at home a lot as a child. She had always felt it was lucky she was able to imagine others around her. By the time Edek and Rooshka got home from their factory jobs, they were both worn out. There hadn’t been a lot of time for games and bedtime stories. But Ruth hadn’t minded. She had had such an assortment of fictitious friends and relatives around, she had been quite tired, herself.

Maybe if she had grown up rich, she wouldn’t have had to tap her feet or blink? Who knows? Maybe she just would have been rich and neurotic.

She knew few wealthy people who were happy. It seemed most human beings had to find something to be unhappy about. And the wealthy posited their unhappiness in their wealth. They blamed the laziness of their children on too much money. They blamed family feuds on the excess of money. They saw arrogance or rudeness in their offspring as the result of indulgence. The list of the ills caused by money was endless. The rich felt that everyone was taking advantage of them, from the maid to the doorman. They were always complaining about problems with staff. Yet they bought more houses and yachts and traveled and shopped. They seemed to overlook the fact that they chose to live like this. If you listened to the rich you would think that their lifestyle was forced on them and the number of servants required to service that life was simply an unfair and intolerable burden.

Rooshka and Edek had mentioned the material wealth that was stolen from them so rarely that Ruth was an adult before she had understood that Edek’s family was wealthy. She had known that her father wasn’t poor because he had said many times that as a young man he could buy as many ice creams as he wanted. She knew that her mother’s family, the Spindlers, were poor. Rooshka was proud of that. Ruth thought that Rooshka might T O O M A N Y M E N

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even have looked down on the Rothwaxes’ wealth. Rooshka’s family had intellect, she always said. And she let Ruth know that Edek’s family didn’t.

“I did hire a lawyer,” Edek said to Ruth.

“A lawyer?” she said. “What for?”

“Many Jews have got lawyers to see if they can get something back from the Poles,” Edek said. “So I did get one too. A very nice chap as a matter of fact.” Ruth was startled.

“You didn’t tell me you were even thinking about it,” she said.

“I did not think about it for so long, to tell you the truth,” he said. “One day, I did think to myself, why not?”

“Well, it’s a big thing,” Ruth said.

“I got plenty of time,” said Edek.

“It could open up too many old wounds,” Ruth said.

“They did never close,” Edek said.

“Who did you get to represent you?” said Ruth.

“A very nice chap, in Collins Street,” said Edek. “My chap has a partner in America what is working on the same things with American Jews. I think that is a good thing. American lawyers are the best lawyers.”

Ruth felt shocked. She had never even considered the possibility of trying to regain some of what was stolen.

“Why do you want to immerse yourself in all of that?” she said. “I don’t need the money.”

“I am not doing it for you,” Edek said. “To tell you the truth I do not know why I am doing it.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know why I do half of the things I do,” Ruth said.

“The lawyer did tell me,” said Edek, “that the Union Bank of Switzerland, the Swiss Bank Corporation, and Credit Suisse made an offer of six hundred or seven hundred million to the Jews. This is not so much as what it looks.”

“We had money in Swiss bank accounts?” Ruth said.

“Of course,” Edek said. “In 1934 the Swiss passed such a law which did guarantee anonymity to all people who did put their money in Swiss banks.

My father was frightened of what the Nazis would do to our money, so he sent Shimek to Switzerland with money many times.”

“I had no idea,” said Ruth.

“Why should you know?” said Edek. “The seven hundred million that

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the banks did offer is nearly only the interest of the money they did have from Jews. They are not going to give back the money, just the interest, it looks like. And they want to give the seven hundred million over quite a few years.”

“So the seven hundred million that they are offering barely covers the interest they made?” said Ruth.

“That is right,” said Edek. “After all, they had this money for over fifty years. When the Jews who was still alive made inquiries about the money after the war, the Swiss bank did say because of this anonymity that they did guarantee, they could not reveal any details of any banking accounts.”

“What a brilliant use of the law,” Ruth said. “And of course none of the poor, damaged, and bedraggled Jews who’d managed to live through Bergen-Belsen or Dachau or Sachsenhausen or Auschwitz had any of their documents on them.”

“The lawyer did say,” Edek said, “that the Swiss banks say they can find only ten percent of the records for these deposits by Jews.”

“Some people’s loss is so handy,” said Ruth. She felt furious.

“The Swiss banks did do very good business,” Edek said. “They gave the Germans Swiss francs to buy war materials from other countries. From Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Turkey. They did give Germany the Swiss francs and the Germans gave them valuable possessions from dead Jews. The Germans gave them gold from the bodies of dead Jews.