Too Many Men (46 page)

“What would you like me to do with the boxes?” he said. “Should I take them to your room?” Several suggestions of what the doorman could do with the boxes remained unspoken inside her. Restrained by a tight grip on her vocal cords.

“You can do whatever you like with them,” she said. Her throat hurt.

Back in her room, she looked in the mirror. She looked a bit bedraggled. She washed her face. It was strange, she thought, how washing made you feel better. What were you washing away? She was washing streaks left by her tears. Tears really did streak your face, she thought. Well, faces that had foundation applied to them. She put on a new layer of makeup. It was just a light foundation, but it covered all the small blemishes. She thought she looked much better. She called her father and arranged to meet him in the lobby. She repacked the coat into a better bag. A Saks Fifth Avenue bag she had had her shoes in.

“You do look terrible,” Edek said when he saw her.

“Don’t say that, Dad,” she said. “You’ve said that so many times since we arrived in Poland.”

“It is the truth,” Edek said. “In Poland you do not look so good. The truth is the truth.”

“Do you want a cup of tea?” she said. “I’m going to have one.”

“No thank you,” Edek said.

“Would you like anything else?” Ruth said. “A cup of coffee? A hot chocolate?”

“Maybe a small hot chocolate,” he said.

Ruth ordered the hot chocolate, the tea, and a slice of apple cake for herself. She was hungry, and she thought her blood sugar could do with some lifting.

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L I L Y B R E T T

“I am glad that you are going to have something to eat,” Edek said.

“So am I,” she said. “Did you have breakfast?”

“Of course I did have breakfast,” Edek said. “I did go to the buffet like you did suggest.”

“I’m so pleased,” she said.

“It was a bit funny, to tell you the truth, to eat in a dining room by myself,” Edek said. “But they did have a very good breakfast this morning.”

“Better than the other mornings?” Ruth said.

“They did have bratwurst this morning,” Edek said. “And knackwurst and weisswurst.”

“Wow,” said Ruth.

“All of them was very good,” Edek said. “And the eggs was just how I like them. Not too hard. And the compote was only plums today. I like this compote very much.”

“I like plum compote, too,” Ruth said. Edek looked happy. She was pleased he had had a good breakfast.

“You didn’t have a bad reaction from the worms from last night?” she said.

“I did not eat the worms,” Edek said. “Only my daughter did eat the worms. And my daughter does not look so good.”

“I thought I saw you eat half a worm?” Ruth said. Edek looked worried.

“I’m only joking,” Ruth said. “Anyway, they’re not worms, they’re prawns.

And I’m fine.”

A waiter brought them the tea and the hot chocolate and the slice of apple cake. Ruth looked at the apple cake. It was exactly the way she liked apple cake. Bursting with stewed and baked apples. She felt very hungry.

She took a forkful of the cake. It was delicious. She felt instantly better. That one mouthful had revived her. Or had it? Surely the sugar couldn’t get into your bloodstream that fast? She finished the rest of the slice of apple cake. It was like ingesting a sedative. Each mouthful that she took had soothed her, made her feel calmer. “My daughter does like an apple cake,” Edek said.

She hoped Edek wasn’t going to say anything else. She already felt self-conscious enough. She never ate cakes or any other food considered to be fattening in front of anyone else. It came from years of every calorie she consumed being observed by Rooshka. This acute observation by her T O O M A N Y M E N

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mother had resulted in Ruth’s eating only grilled fish and vegetable salads in public. If she had anything sweet, she had to eat it in private.

“Look at how quickly you did eat the apple cake,” Edek said.

“Dad,” she said, “do I comment on what you eat?”

“I wouldn’t mind what you would say,” he said.

“Oh yes you would,” she said, in a tone that she hoped conveyed that she was capable of a broad range of comments on his food and on his eating. It seemed to work. He dropped the subject.

“I did book Stefan for twelve o’clock,” Edek said.

“I think we’ll have to change it to a bit later,” Ruth said. “We won’t have enough time for the ghetto. Could you call him and ask him to pick us up at two o’clock?”

“We have to go to the ghetto?” Edek said. Ruth looked exasperated.

“Okay, okay,” Edek said. “I ring Stefan now.” He ran off to the phone near the front desk.

Ruth looked down at the Saks Fifth Avenue bag. It was on the floor, beside her. She wanted to show Edek the coat and the photographs. She hoped he wouldn’t be upset by them. Edek came back.

“That is fine with Stefan,” he said.

“Of course it’s fine,” she said. “We’re paying him. He has to do what we want.”

“Why are you in a bad mood?” Edek said.

“I’m not,” she said.

“You are in a bad mood,” Edek said.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Forget about it,” Edek said. “Stefan was very very happy with his hotel. He said he did have a very good sleep last night.”

“Oh good,” Ruth said. “We need him to be in good shape for the drive to Kraków.”

Ruth took a deep breath. She leaned down and picked up the bag.

“Dad, I had to lie to you about what I was doing this morning,” she said. “I didn’t want to worry you, so I said I was going running. But I went back to Kamedulska Street.”

Edek looked shocked. “You went to Kamedulska Street by yourself?”

he said.

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L I L Y B R E T T

“No, I had an interpreter with me and a taxi driver waiting outside for me,” she said.

“You went alone to a Polish home with two Polacks?” Edek said.

“I told the manager of the hotel where I was going, and that it could be dangerous,” Ruth said. “I told him to ring the police if I wasn’t back at the hotel by ten o’clock, and to let you know.”

“What time did you go?” Edek said.

“Eight o’clock,” she said.

“By ten o’clock you could easy be dead,” Edek said.

Ruth had forgotten she had called the manager, the night before. The manager had clearly forgotten, too. It was 10:30 A.M. There was no sign of the manager or of any police in the hotel, and the manager had not called Edek. So much for her foolproof security arrangements.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Edek said. “They could kill you in a second.”

“It’s not so easy to kill Jews today,” Ruth said.

“It is not so hard, too,” said Edek.

“I went back to buy the china,” Ruth said.

“My mother’s old teapot?” said Edek. “Are you crazy? To go early in the morning by yourself with two Polish men to a house where there is more Polacks? Don’t you know what happened in Kielce after the war? A pogrom. They did kill more than fifty Jews. And this was after the war. This was Jews who was looking for their families, for their homes.”

Edek looked agitated and irate. Ruth was surprised. He hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about their safety in Poland. He hadn’t seemed concerned at all. Maybe he felt that Jews were okay as long as they stuck to brightly lit main streets and kept out of Polish homes. She realized he had been reluctant to walk too far from the hotel at night.

“I know about Kielce,” Ruth said. “They killed forty-two Jews in Kielce, on July 4, 1946. They were shot and stoned or killed with axes and clubs.

They were killed by a crowd of Poles who were incited by the same old rumors of Jews kidnapping and murdering Christian children for ritual purposes. The same old story.”

“China is only china,” Edek said. “It is not alive.”

“But I am,” Ruth said. “And I got the china. There was much more of it than we saw.”

T O O M A N Y M E N

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“Really?” Edek said.

“There was the tea service,” Ruth said, “and then there were eighteen dinner plates, twenty bread and butter plates, twenty bowls, twenty cups, and twenty saucers!”

“They did have so much pieces?” Edek said. He shook his head. “It is something impossible to believe,” he said.

“And everything was in perfect condition,” Ruth said. “Not one crack on a cup or saucer or bread and butter plate.”

“We did use these small plates not for bread and butter,” Edek said.

“We did use them for
Vorspeisen
, for appetizers.” He shook his head again.

“My mother did serve herring and an egg salad on such small plates.”

“Well, I’ve got them, now,” Ruth said. “We can eat on them together.”

“What for?” said Edek. He looked sad.

“Does it make you feel sad?” she said.

“No,” he said. “How can some pieces of china make me feel sad? The sad things did already happen, and not to this china.”

Suddenly the thought of the cost of the china occurred to Edek. Ruth could see it coming. She had known it would be only a matter of time before Edek asked her how much she had paid.

“What did you pay for this stuff?” Edek said.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” she said. “But first I want to show you something else.”

Ruth removed the coat from the bag. She stood up and held the coat out in front of her. Edek looked bewildered. And then an expression of pain mingled with disbelief came across his face. He didn’t say anything. He just kept shaking his head. Ruth waited for him to speak. She found Edek’s silence disturbing. He looked as though he was going to cry. She thought that maybe this was too much for him. She shouldn’t have produced the coat now. She was just about to speak when Edek spoke.

“This coat did belong to my father,” he said.

“I thought it might have,” Ruth said. She showed him the embroidered name and initials on the coat’s lining. Edek kept shaking his head. He looked very vulnerable. Ruth wished that she had waited to show him these purchases. Why was she calling them purchases? she thought. They were not ordinary shopping items. They were not purchases, they were discoveries. Discoveries unearthed after decades. As important to her as archaeo-

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L I L Y B R E T T

logical relics uncovered by archaeologists. She could tell so much about Israel Rothwax and his wife Luba from this coat. She could see how big he was, and she could see in what beautiful condition Luba maintained his clothes. Not one part of the lining was marked or torn. Maybe tidiness and order were inherited traits. She kept her most formal clothes in plastic clothes bags in her cupboard. If something tore, she had it mended. She cleaned every item right after it was worn. Maybe that was a Rothwax quality. A thrill ran through her. The thrill of being able to link herself to a family. To be part of somebody else. She had only ever been part of Rooshka and Edek.

“I’m so happy to have this coat,” Ruth said to Edek.

“It was very dangerous what you did,” Edek said. He shook his head again. “The last time I did see my father in this coat was at my sister Fela’s wedding anniversary,” Edek said. Ruth was worried. Edek looked as though he was on the verge of tears. She didn’t want him to cry. “I remember Fela’s husband Juliusz did help my father to take the coat off when my father did arrive to the anniversary party,” Edek said.

Fela’s husband Juliusz, Ruth thought. She had never heard Juliusz mentioned before. He sounded like a nice man, helping Israel off with his coat.

Ruth knew that the knowledge about Juliusz helping someone take off a coat was not enough information to give you a full picture of a person. But it was a start. Juliusz must have had good manners and he must have been fond of his father-in-law.

“I did like Juliusz very much,” Edek said. Juliusz definitely must have been a nice man, Ruth decided. She was glad that Fela was in a good marriage. A contradictory thought surfaced in her. How did she know that her father’s sister Fela had a good marriage? The fact that Edek liked Juliusz didn’t on its own make Juliusz a wonderful husband. She didn’t want to ask her father. She felt she was already causing him plenty of turbulence.

“I’ve got something else, Dad,” she said. “It might give you a shock, so prepare yourself. It’s something you haven’t seen for a long time.” Edek tried to look composed, but Ruth could see his apprehension and his distress. She really should have waited, she thought, before presenting all of this to her father. She should have waited until he was back at home, in his apartment, in Melbourne. But she had already started the whole thing off, and she couldn’t stop now.

T O O M A N Y M E N

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She got out the old envelope and removed the photographs. She handed them to Edek. Edek held them in his lap. He looked at them for a long time. He didn’t move. He was so still he looked as though he had stopped breathing. Ruth wanted him to say something. She wanted to see that he was all right. Edek didn’t speak. He raised his head as though he was going to say something. Then he lowered it again. And then he began to weep. He wept and wept.

The sight of her father crying was too much for Ruth. She began to weep, too. They sat, side by side, on a sofa, in the lobby of the Grand Victoria, and wept. Finally, Edek pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

Ruth tried to stop crying. She wiped her eyes with a wad of tissues. They were Polish tissues and much rougher than their American counterparts.

The tissues hurt her skin. She had to be strong, she told herself. She couldn’t dissolve into a weeping mess. She had caused the distress that Edek was experiencing. The least she could do was look after him.

“This is my mother and father,” Edek said.

“I thought it was,” Ruth said. She started to cry again.

“We shouldn’t cry, Ruthie,” Edek said. “My mother and father is already dead. My sister Fela is dead. Juliusz is dead. Tadek, who is also in these pictures, is dead. His wife Maryla is dead. Everybody is dead. It is too late to cry.”

Ruth looked at her father. Edek’s face looked crumpled. Crumpled in grief. His eyes were wrinkled and furrowed, his mouth knotted and distorted. His shoulders had sunk. In sorrow. Weighted with a sadness that couldn’t be submerged or defeated. Her father looked buckled and broken. Ruth felt frightened.