Displaced Persons (17 page)

He cried out in surprise and almost slipped, grasping the faucet with one hand for balance. Shampoo still in his hair. The water was cold as ice! God in heaven, was there no end to his torments on this earth? Was there no end?

Pavel? he heard Fela’s voice calling from the bed.

The water! The water again! That swindler! That thief!

I’ll call him now.

Don’t call him! he shouted through the door, shivering as he rinsed off the soap from his body, wrapped his shoulders in a towel. I want to speak to the thief myself!

Teeth knocking in the cold, he sat on his side of the bed with his robe untied and dialed the number. Nancy answered.

“Nancy,” said Pavel. “It’s Mr. Mandl. Six-E. I want—”

“He’s in the shower.”

“Ah, of course. So! Could you tell your father that I wish to speak with him?”

“All right.”

“No, Nancy, wait, not to speak with him, to show him something. He should come up to my apartment. Before I go to work. Please.”

“All right.”

“Please.”

Pavel breathed out. He would show Weisenfeld, he would show him, that what Weisenfeld could provide for his own daughter, warm water, Pavel could not provide for his children. The home—what kind of father was he if he did not make his home secure for his children, here in America, of all places? Fela made the apartment beautiful with her cleaning and cooking, and the children made the apartment alive with their games and their studies. Pavel would make sure the home was strong and secure, something the landlord, any landlord, should respect. Pavel would show him, he would be calm, he would explain, he would demand that the problem be fixed. He went into the children’s room to wake them up for breakfast.

“W
HAT WILL IT BE TODAY?”

“A butterfly,” said Helen.

Pavel cut a triangle out of an untoasted bagel, then sliced it open to make wings.

“With cream cheese,” she added.

“Same for me, please,” said Larry. He still liked the game.

“Coming right up.” Pavel put two butterflies on the center plate, then cut straight cylinders, giving Larry one, so he could spread the cream cheese on his own.

“How come he gets the drum first?”

“I’m older,” said Larry.

“It’s true,” said Pavel. “But also he knows how to butter. See?” He took his daughter’s wrist, moved it along the bagel.

“I like it better when you do it,” said Helen.

“So, Helcha, for this Larry gets his first. There’s extra wait for the service.”

“What is it called when you cream cheese something?”

“What?”

“She means, Dad, you know, is there a word for it—like there is for butter—you know, you put butter on something, you say you are buttering, but you also say it when you put cream—”

“I know what she means. I was just thinking.”

“There is no word, Hell-face.”

“Larry!”

“Sorry.”

“Do you know what a beautiful name her name is? Her name is after my mother, just like yours is after your—”

“I know, Dad, I know. Sorry. I said I was sorry.”

“All right.”

“I said I was sorry!”

“All right, Liebl, all right.”

The doorbell rang. Larry ran to get it. Pavel heard the landlord move his heavy feet through the hall, Larry pattering after him in his socks. Pavel stood as the landlord entered the kitchen, and Larry slid back into his seat, shoved a butter-smeared drum into his mouth.

“Good morning,” said Weisenfeld.

“Good morning,” Pavel made himself say. “But actually, Mr. Weisenfeld, it is not a good morning.” He looked Weisenfeld straight in the eye, the landlord’s hair still matted from his shower, his jacket hanging loose around his broad shoulders. “It is not a good morning because I, and my children, are not able to bathe in hot water.”

“So, is that what you have to show me at this hour? The same complaint?”

Pavel breathed in. Keep calm. But he felt his words rising inside him. He kept himself speaking in English, so he would be forced to speak slowly and with care. “What I have to show you,” he answered, “what I have to show you is this.” Pavel stretched his arms above Helen’s head and pushed open the window. “It is almost twenty degrees. Fahrenheit.”

“Ah, so I am responsible for the weather now?”

“I have never called you responsible,” Pavel said.

Weisenfeld turned to leave. “I did not come up here to be insulted. If you have some emergency for me to fix, that is one thing, but to be—”

Don’t you go! called Pavel, his voice in Yiddish strong but not loud. I don’t have just the air to show you. I have the water. Come!

“Daddy, I’m cold.”

Come, Weisenfeld, come! I want to show you what kind of water we have in this apartment, where I have to shiver with cold as if I am in a hovel in Kazakhstan, and where I cannot trust the water enough to bathe my children in the morning!

I’ve already told you, Weisenfeld answered in his gutter Yiddish, we’re having the boiler repaired next week. There is nothing that can be done. There’s a few minutes of hot water every morning, you shouldn’t waste!

Waste! Waste! How you dare! Do you think I don’t know what waste is? Do you think I do not know?

How I dare? How I dare? You call me up here in the early morning, waking my wife and daughter—

I wake you because I cannot sleep! I cannot sleep because I throw money at you for nothing, to have my wife, and my son and my daughter, frozen in the morning, to have my own body like ice! If you want waste, that is waste!

What a tenant I have! No one is like you, no one complains like you, no one rages like you—

Maybe the others are too afraid, but Mr. Weisenfeld, I am not! What do you want? That I should tremble before you? That I should be a refugee in my own house? That my wife should be a refugee? My children, refugees?

Ah, now you blackmail me with your guilt!

Blackmail? Pavel’s voice ripped through his throat at the word. Blackmail? I? It is you who blackmail us! You are a thief! The worst kind of thief, who steals heat from women and children!

And you, a rager! You let your children see you—

Don’t bring my children into it! Don’t bring my children into it! You so much as mention their names, I—I—! You are here because I want to know, Weisenfeld, I want to know, what do we need to do to get hot water from you? Beg? Steal? Scream in the middle of the night?

Already you scream in the middle of the night! Everyone hears you!

Pavel felt the cold wind behind Helen’s head push at his cheek. His heart was burning, his face was bitter cold. I will bury you, Weisenfeld. I will have you under the earth. I will bury you, bury you, bury you!

“Stop screaming! Stop!” A noise was filtering through the fog around Pavel’s head, it was his son, his mouth open and red, his small arms grasping his sister, holding her head to his chest, a tiny adult with a tinier child clasped to him, protecting her, and shouting his little boy’s voice at the landlord. “Please stop screaming!”

Or was Larry shouting at him?

Both men stopped. The room was quiet. Pavel saw that Fela stood in the doorway, her body wrapped in a bathrobe, her face a stone. But he could read the stone. It was wrong to scream in front of the children. You have mercy on everyone, she would say to him, mercy on everyone, how about for your family?

Weisenfeld said, Enough.

So, answered Pavel, his jaw still forward. Enough. And what else?

I will call your wife. He motioned to Fela, who followed him out of the kitchen into the hallway in silence.

The door closed, not loud. Pavel stood at the kitchen counter, watching his son and daughter, Larry’s hair combed straight, a napkin hanging over Helen’s neck to protect her shirt from stains.

Helen looked at him. “Will he scream at Ma too?”

No, he answered, still in Yiddish. Your mother doesn’t scream.

Larry carried his plate to the sink.

“What,” Pavel said. “Don’t you finish your food?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Me neither.” Helen picked up her plate too.

Pavel looked at the two of them, Larry scooping Helen’s plate from her hands, the little one pale, only a bite or two eaten. On an ordinary morning, Pavel would have insisted, he would have told them eat,
kindlech
, eat, a person’s breath when he doesn’t eat is a terrible thing, not even brushing your teeth will cover it, eat, how will you concentrate in the day, eat, you are growing, eat, eat. He thought he saw Larry wait a moment for the speech to begin, but at this moment Pavel didn’t have the strength to beg them to put something in their bellies. He turned his back so as not to see his son push the uneaten bread into the garbage.

“We’re late for school, Dad.”

I can drive you, Larry. You won’t be late if I drive.

“Then you’ll be late for work. We’ll just go now, okay?” Helen took off her napkin, then went to collect her schoolbag.

Pavel looked at his son, now quickly rinsing the plates with a spatter of water.

“Okay, Dad, okay?”

Pavel thought he saw his son’s nose turn pink, almost red. Was he about to cry? But Larry was looking away, putting the milk and cream cheese back in the refrigerator.

“Dad, I’m talking to you.”

“Okay,” Pavel answered. “Everything’s okay.” He reached out his hand to touch his son’s shoulder. Larry shrugged from under his touch, then hurried to the coat closet for his jacket and scarf.

August 1965

B
EREL WANTED A SUIT.
He mentioned it to his son-in-law one Sunday morning. He mentioned it while standing at the back door of the apartment, watching Chaim polish his shoes. Chaim, who sat on the third step of the building’s rear stairway, responded without looking up: A suit. I know a place.

Yes, said Berel, I’d like to buy a suit like the suit you wear. Something like that.

Chaim worked in one of New York’s radio stations, where he used his smooth if accented English to fit in easily with the other technicians and engineers, who had bought him a new tie last year for his thirty-third birthday. Chaim wore a different suit every day. He had five. He had ten shirts, all blue or white or pink or yellow, and combined them in different orders with the suits.

Chaim said, Go to the place I go. Only go there. The tailors speak Yiddish. I know the owner from before. I’ll tell him you’re coming.
The ankle of each shoe Chaim polished glimmered at the seams. They were good shoes, solid black leather with a layered black sole.

Those are good shoes, said Berel.

They are, said Chaim. Nothing like American, no?

No, said Berel. Chaim was right. In the dairy where for seven years Berel had scooped out milk curds from metal barrels and for the next seven had operated the machine that sealed shut the plastic milk bags, he had worn heavy brown boots. They had come apart at the soles from too much contact with the cleaning fluids; in fourteen years he had gone through eight pairs, all produced in a kibbutz factory from which the dairy bought supplies. Chaim was right, but he said that phrase, nothing like American, only American, too often. Berel wasn’t emigrating. He had made that clear.

It was August, three months after Berel’s wife had died of a typhus relapse in a small hospital in Tel Aviv, two weeks into Berel’s grief-trip to America to visit his only daughter. He had been in Tel Aviv or nearby since 1949, sixteen years, longer than he’d lived anywhere since childhood. Yes, his wife had died. His daughter Sima was here. But Berel’s home was there, the home he had made, alive on the stove where his wife had boiled soup out of eggs and water and potatoes, alive in the small freezer where he kept his sharp, homemade seltzer. He had less there, but also more. He could do for himself. Besides, he wasn’t so alone. He had a surviving brother in Jerusalem, and a sister in Rehovot. They were married, but they were older, and Berel was not yet sixty; what would they do without him?

He wasn’t emigrating, yet he wanted a suit. For no reason. The clothes he had, short-sleeved shirts and plain trousers, were enough. But his nephew could replace him at the dairy for up to three months; his wife had saved the German reparations money they had started to receive; perhaps he would stay in New York for the High Holidays; he would need a suit for synagogue in America. Chaim was lanky, with a flexible, loose-jointed sway to his walk; nothing he had would fit Berel’s round body. But Chaim wasn’t one to ask for reasons. He accepted
the stupid occurrences and irrational violences of the world, and he accepted particularly the odd desires of others to sell and to buy. He accepted and he advised. He wrote down the address of the tailor and told Berel to take the number five bus from Riverside Drive.

B
EREL WAITED
. I
T HAD
been very humid, and he spent his days with the baby, inside at noon and outside after four, when the air cooled. He walked sometimes a few blocks uptown, to the garden of the church of St. John the Divine. Sometimes he went a kilometer south, to look at the stone memorial to the war, hidden in the bicycle lanes at Riverside Park. The baby was six months old and could crawl on the grass. She could laugh. She pushed the buds of her teeth against stale bagels and rubbed her head at Berel’s shoulder. He talked to her in Yiddish and sang to her in Hebrew. No Polish! He didn’t want her to hear it. She stared up with purpose and seriousness and made noises to his songs. They hummed at each other in the living room and the street and in Riverside Park, where Berel pushed the perambulator Tuesday to Friday afternoons while Sima rung up postcards and art books and little reproductions of classical sculptures at the cash register of the Met’s enormous gift shop. He fed the baby from a bottle, filled with formula, from a grocery; she was weaning.

He went to the tailor’s, finally, on a Monday, when Sima had her day off and could stay home the whole day. The directions were complicated: bus, long blocks, short blocks, narrow alley. One had to climb a dank staircase, but once inside the shop, Berel thought the place was wider than the building itself. It wasn’t that it was so filled with clothing, although there were several racks on which hung rows of suits in wool and serge and even perhaps cotton. It was the mirrors on the opposite side of the door, mirrors folded in threes and reflecting off each other, that made the place seem large.

“Can I help you?”

“Hmm?” said Berel, startled. But the question was one he understood.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Berel said. “I look for Pavel Mandl.” It came out quickly, easily, a sound he had used before in a context he no longer remembered. The little bit of paper on which Chaim had written the name lay folded in Berel’s pocket.

“He stepped out.”

“Excuse me?” said Berel.

“He stepped out. He isn’t here.” The young man worked his brows together. He said, loudly, “Not here.”

“Excuse me,” said Berel. “Excuse me,” he repeated, gaining time for the sentence he wanted to squeeze from his mouth. “Please, em, Yiddish?”

“No,” shouted the young man. “
Nein
.”

Berel’s chin began to itch. What was the English word for
Polish
? He had no idea. But that was stupid; if the man knew Polish, he would understand.
“Popolsku?”
Berel tried.

“One minute,” yelled the young man. “Just a minute.” And disappeared into the back.

Berel stood still at the counter. There was a small fan near the cash register and a large fan near one of the three-way mirrors. The streams of air hitting each other collided at the back of his head and cooled the sweat behind his ears.

A smaller, older man came out. Good. The man put out a pale, wide hand. Pavel isn’t here, he said in Yiddish. I am his cousin Mayer.

Berel shook his hand. Berel Makower. My son-in-law sent me here to look for a suit. Chaim Traum.

Wonderful, said Mayer. Yes, Chaim. He’s a good customer.

I am here from Israel. On a visit.

Wonderful, repeated Mayer. Wonderful. So! He stood up a little straighter. We now do a little custom work, but of course this takes quite some time. What is your preference?

Oh, said Berel. He managed a polite smile. I can look at what you have ready. I don’t know how long I will be here.

Mayer led Berel to a rack of thin gabardines. These are right for any weather. Even the midsummer if you have air-conditioning. Thin, airy, but warm enough for winter. Really, the best material.

He took out a measuring tape from his pocket, then circled Berel’s neck. Berel shook a little: it tickled.

Stand still! Mayer muttered, sharply. He roped Berel’s waist, then bent to the floor, stretching the tape at the inside of Berel’s thigh and up the length of ankle to hip. Let’s go, he said. He had written nothing down, but at the rack he shuffled through the almost identical hues of dark colors and handed hanger after hanger to Berel, who waited by him.

Between them they carried ten suits, navy and brown and beige and gray, into an area divided off from the center of the shop. Mayer kept talking as Berel pushed off his shoes and removed his trousers: the business that wasn’t so good in New York summer, the heat that wasn’t so bad, the Hungarians who had moved into his block in Midwood, the chance he had to move to his own little shop in a few months. Berel gave nods and smiles of encouragement, then put on the first suit: double-breasted, dark blue with thin, faint maroon stripes.

Wonderful, said Mayer.

In his socks Berel slipped over to one of the three-way mirrors. The cuffs of the pants turned over around his ankles; so as not to rip or stain, he lifted the cloth at the thighs as he walked, like a woman in long skirts.

He paused before the center panel of the mirror. Under the wide set of buttons his chest and belly seemed enormous, and his neck emerged like a bent branch, small and fragile. He could see Mayer behind him in the reflection, but Berel turned around to look at the tailor directly. Do you have something simpler?

Of course! Mayer riffled through the remaining nine suits hang
ing on the hook of the wall. He pulled out something in gray, dark and polished, like the tip of a pencil. It had a row of black buttons up the chest and one button at each wrist.

Berel pulled the pants up, tightened the zipper. The lining of the pants felt cool against his legs. He removed the jacket from its hanger with care. The jacket created a tiny breeze as it lapped against his chest. Mayer leaned over and pulled the shoulders out from each end.

Beautiful, said Mayer.

Berel moved to the mirror. These pants weren’t so wide. And the jacket, it fit perfectly. He looked tall and elegant, his metal gray hair floating above the dark collar, his shoulders broad but not heavy, his legs—was it possible?—longer, steadier under the vents at each side of the jacket.

“I’ll take it,” said Berel, in English: he had heard this in stores.

Mayer laughed. We can alter it for you and have you pick it up, or you can wait and we’ll do it now.

Now is good, said Berel. How much will it cost?

Mayer told him.

It was more than a month’s salary, but Berel kept his face blank. A good price.

Well, it’s actually quite high for us, but the quality makes it worth it. You’ll have it for years. Mayer was bent again, pinning the ankles. Do you want cuffs at the ankles? Or just plain?

Plain, said Berel.

He went back to the stool where his own clothes lay folded and began to undress. Mayer took the pants from him and walked away. You take your time, he called to Berel. We’ll be at least twenty minutes.

Berel sat on the stool in his trousers and shirt. He felt a bit cold. The buses and taxis outside honked like animals in a zoo. He could hear the people on the street chattering nonsensically, louder and louder. The door to the shop opened and closed, opened and closed.
A bell rang out whenever someone stepped across the doormat. There was chattering inside too.

Pan Berel. Berel looked up. A man who looked bitingly familiar. His head was narrow, his eyes large, his face thin, one cheekbone slightly flatter than the other.

Pavel Mandl, said the man. A good friend of your son-in-law. He told me you were coming, but I did not know when.

Berel lifted himself up and shook hands. Good day.

I see you’ve picked out something exquisite. You have good taste!

Berel swallowed, and smiled. You have very nice things. He stepped back for a moment. The man’s voice.

I’m glad you decided to wait. So I could meet you—

What is to meet? Berel thought.

Mandl was going on and on, almost hoarse. Chaim—I love him like a brother!

Then it came to Berel. I know! he blurted. We have met! In Belsen. And immediately a blush began to come over him. He tried to push up a tear to his eye, make it look like he was overcome with something other than a sudden shame.

Pavel Mandl stood still. Ah! he cried, slapping a hand to his cheek. My God! You—of course—you—you performed the marriage ceremony for my sister! To Jakub! In our house—my God—

Of course, of course. Outside the camp. You were one of the few who lived like a real—it was the first time my wife and I had been in a living room in—

Berel Makower, your name! But Chaim did not tell me—he married so quickly in Israel—I never knew his father-in-law was a rabbi!

Berel smiled, still nervous. He would not be found out, not now. What was it, Pan Mandl, twenty years ago?

What a wonderful coincidence! What a joy!

Berel was always a terrible liar. And if he remembered correctly, this Mandl had some scholarly background. What if he began to con
verse about some Talmudic problem Berel would not even begin to remember? What a crazy thing he had done, performing a false religious ceremony for a young couple. For what, a bit of money and a visit to a house?

Berel stood up straight, tried to affect a tone of sadness. Yes, well—what I work in now—and I went through a period of, well—I no longer am so—and I hadn’t quite finished all my—you know, so many of us lost faith, after—

But Pavel did not hear what Berel tried to say. That Chaim!

Yes, nodded Berel, his face cooling. He did not even warn me that we knew each other.

Pavel bent toward Berel. I think sometimes he forgets his past. Not forgets, exactly—he was always very intelligent—it is just that his mind is somewhere else, he doesn’t like to go back—and we love your daughter, from the moment we met her, we said—Chaim was even smarter than we thought!

Pavel’s face bore a look of pride, as if Chaim were his own, like an older brother after the father has died, his face worn and misshapen, the face of a man ten or fifteen years older, Berel’s age. A camp face. One could tell the difference even years later. Berel’s palms began to itch a little. No, he would not confess.

Yes, he is smart, Berel agreed. He tried to think back to the little house and the ceremony, Chaim guiding them to the center of the room, the sound of his own voice above the murmurings of the guests, Dvora weak and feverish but excited, his daughter clinging to his thighs, the bride straight-backed and quiet. But what became of your sister—she is in America?

She is here! And her husband—we are partners still! This—Pavel motioned to the ceiling, then to the back room—this, in a way, is from you.

Oh, no, Berel started. But the young man whom Berel had seen upon first walking in trotted over to the dressing area and shouted, “It’s ready—try on?” He pointed at the pants and at Berel’s legs.

Berel looked at the pants, worried again. Do you mind if I don’t? said Berel. I’m so hot. He laughed a little. I’m sure it fits.