Mitla Pass (23 page)

All these philosophies found their way into the Wissotzky Gymnasium, which proved to be liberal and modern with courses in Russian, Polish, and German, along with math and the sciences. There was training in business and several of the skilled trades. For the first time, Nathan was exposed to the history of nations beyond the Jewish Pale and a first peek at the world outside.

Nathan broke out of the cave of Talmud in which he had been locked and drifted naturally toward languages. In a matter of six months, he had mastered enough Russian for the entirely new world of Russian literature to be open to him.

Nathan, the loner, had found the loner’s paradise through books. Books not only stoked his world of fantasy, they proved a practical tool in working himself into group life.

Not many of the students were so captivated by literature. This afforded Nathan a special status, a subtle form of snobbery and a forum to draw attention to himself. So, he read and read and read. Nathan’s book reports became a salable item, particularly to students whose parents were able to afford fresh fruit.

Nathan wasn’t particularly sought after. His personal popularity was close to nil. He didn’t play sports, lust after girls, or indulge in the general mischief befitting gymnasium students. He remained shy and often nasty in response to civil conversation.

But Nathan now had a commodity. Reading gave him his first true social opening, a way to enter and dominate conversation which he could bend around to his sphere of knowledge. By being able to hold court he grew larger in his own eyes, and he played it for all it was worth.

Nathan discovered that his loneliness could be alleviated by lecturing or arguing in the debating club about the books he was reading. As few other students had read the books and knew nothing about the authors, Nathan had an uncontested platform.

“Do you know?” he would ask many times during a talk. Of course the audience didn’t know and that made Nathan smarter than his listeners. This opening gambit of putting them down worked famously. And it led to an invitation for him to join the labor Zionists, who courted intellectuals. This group had their own defense committee with a hidden stash of lethal weapons, pikes, clubs, and petrol bottles. On obscure outings, Nathan usually got himself scheduled to lecture. The more he spoke, the more fiery an orator he became. He could hardly wait to return to Wolkowysk and ram all his knowledge down Mordechai’s throat.

Nathan’s first trip home was for his bar mitzvah. Yehuda was thoroughly confused by the mishmash of philosophies Nathan now espoused. To his father, the boy represented the curses, confusion, and secular heresy of the big city. His ideas, when one could clearly define them, were close to godless. Why, the boy was not even wearing a prayer shawl anymore.

Nathan felt he had outgrown Wolkowysk, a perennial
shtetl
town which had doomed itself to live in the past. Moreover there was another mouth to feed, a new baby sister, Bessie.

Nathan returned to Bialystok and remained for two more years. His situation at Mrs. Ginsburg’s boardinghouse improved when Nathan was able to find work during the vacation months as a clerk in a food warehouse, which purveyed to the nearby army camp. Nathan endured ruthless harassment and was sometimes roughed up by the soldiers, but the food and the money to be earned were too powerful an incentive to quit.

He graduated from the living-room couch into a room with three other students, and his “eat days” now offered more substantial meals.

I
N
W
OLKOWYSK,
a sudden disaster all but turned the family into wards of charity. Yehuda suffered a minor stroke and would not be able to work for an indefinite period.

To make matters more distressing, Uncle Sam in America had fallen on hard times. America went off the silver standard and this brought the mining industry in Colorado to the brink of collapse. Sam carried large amounts of credit on his books, mostly staking miners, and those debts were now uncollectable.

Yehuda and Sophie came to the wrenching decision to send as many children off to live with relatives as they could place. Mordechai, naturally, was to be afforded the best piece of the chicken. Yehuda got him to Vilna first, where he was safely tucked away in the yeshiva and fully supported.

On the day of his fifteenth birthday, Nathan received an urgent letter to return home.

NATHAN

Wolkowysk and Kiev, 1911

I,
THE OLDEST SON
, Nathan Zadok, came to my father’s bedside. His beard hung outside the sheet halfway to his stomach and his eyes drooped with world-weariness. He shrugged as he recounted to me the gravity of the family problems. Groaning with despair, Father told me I had to leave the gymnasium.

Homes had been found for two of my brothers and two of my sisters. As for my own fate, I had to help support the family. Had my father and mother found a situation for me? My mother’s sister, Tante Sonia, was married to a well-off coal merchant in Mariupol and had offered to take me in and give me a job. Mariupol? Mariupol! So why didn’t they send me to Mongolia?

I hid in the woodshed and wept all night. I considered running away, but really there was no choice but to obey.

My father at least showed a twinge of guilt. While preparing me for this trip to the end of the earth, he showed me more kindness than he ever had before. You can be sure the magic name of Mordechai was missing. I said goodbyes to Reuben, Matthias, Rifka, and Sarah as they went in all directions to live with
mishpocha.

Soon my own ticket arrived. If proverbs could be sold in the open marketplace, the Jews would have all the wealth in Russia. My father sent me off with the great wisdom:

“If fortune calls, offer him a seat.”

To which my mother added, “If rich people could pay poor people to die for them, the poor would make a fine living.”

Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, was over three thousand miles away. By train it meant five days and nights, during which seven changes had to be made. My belongings easily fit in one straw suitcase, which was sent ahead by baggage mail. I carried a package of dried food, because there wasn’t always something to eat at the stations. In many cities along the route, Jews were not allowed to leave the train station area and enter town. I had five rubles to see me to Mariupol and the first memory of Momma crying over me.

Always on the trains, hoodlums and soldiers looked for Jews to victimize. My shabby coat would give me away. I climbed upon the wide slab like a shelf in third class, balled up in a corner, and kept a newspaper in front of my face.

Things did not go too badly until I arrived at Kiev. There was to be an eight-hour layover until the next train, which would take me as far as Poltava. So, what to do for eight hours? Kiev was forbidden for Jews in its sacred streets. Even Jewish tourists in transit were confined to the station where they were easy picking for the hoodlums.

I was very curious because Kiev was the home of my father. There was a suburb called Podol where Jews were permitted. Hoodlums around the station were making me very nervous, so I decided to take a risk. If I got to the Podol district, I could remain in a synagogue until train time. The streetcar was a wonderment! An astonishing piece of machinery, which was able to drive without horses pulling it.

For fifteen kopeks I ate a meal in a kosher restaurant. All of the conversation around concerned the trial of Mendel Beiliss, which had been taking place in Kiev. You ask me who is Mendel Beiliss? I’ll tell you. He is the Jewish victim of a frame-up, accused of killing a gentile boy for ritual purposes. For Jews, Kiev has always been the shithouse of Russia. No matter how bad things were for us, it was worse in Kiev. Mendel Beiliss was the victim of an organization of
goyim
pigs, who were called the Black Hundred.

I couldn’t resist taking the chance to go to the courthouse where the trial was being held. I got directions to the center city, but with warnings to stay away. I couldn’t help myself. I was drawn immediately to a large crowd waiting outside the courthouse, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of Beiliss, so I could lecture about it someday. Suddenly everyone pointed beyond the police lines to a droshky that had just pulled up.

A priest emerged and made for the courthouse.

“Pranaites!” everyone screamed.

The name of this animal was well known among us. Pranaites the priest claimed to be an expert on Talmud and was a key witness for the prosecution. His “scientific” testimony was that the murder had all the characteristics of a ritual murder allegedly practiced secretly by the Jews. It was known that Pranaites had a long criminal record, but nevertheless the fine people of Kiev cheered him as he entered the building.

I turned away in anger—directly into the largest man I had ever seen, a gendarme with a red face and drunken eyes. His enormous hand clamped on my shoulder.

Propelled by fear, I broke loose and ran over the street with the whiskey policeman and a half-dozen others after me. I ran right down a dead-end alley, leaped and tried to scale a wall. First stones hit me, then hands grabbed my legs and pulled me smashing to the ground.

I crouched like a turtle and felt kicks to my ribs and head. The policeman finally took control.

“Yid! Let me see your passport.”

“Please, sir. I was only passing through Kiev. I went to the Jewish section for a meal because there was nothing to eat ...please, sir, let me go!”

The crowd screamed and spit on me, urging the cop to take me to jail. He handcuffed me and dragged me to a police van on the main street. As we drove off, the crowd cheered.

I was so terrified I shook all over and could barely speak. Everyone was rough to me at the police station, as if they had caught the biggest criminal in the Ukraine. After being photographed and fingerprinted, I was put into a holding cell which had no bench or seat, only room to stand. This becomes very painful after a few hours.

I had done a dumb, stupid, idiotic thing by going into Kiev. The punishment for Jews caught outside the Pale was to send them to the place of their birth and leave them there until they died. I was born in a village called Novogrudok and to return there forever was worse than a death sentence.

The building, fear of the policemen, fear of terrible punishment, all closed in on me. I must have fainted because when I revived, I was in a different place.

“The Jew boy has woken up.”

“The Chief wants to see him.”

I was dragged into an office obviously belonging to a high-ranking authority and was seated before his desk with a huge guard on either side of me.

The Chief did not appear as though he had gotten his position through kindness. His face spoke of too much vodka and his heavy hands appeared to be the recipient of many bribes.

“Sir,” I pleaded and tried to repeat my case, but was silenced by his fist banging on the desk. He looked me over to determine how much I could spend for a bribe. He didn’t like what he saw.

“Did you look in the lining of his coat?” the Chief asked.

“Yes, nothing hidden.”

“Shit. Little turd bastard. All right, Jew boy, do you know anyone in Kiev who can pay your fine?”

“No, sir.”

“You are in serious trouble. Take him away.”

That night was the most horrible I ever spent. I was tossed into a huge cage of a cell that held a dozen drunks. There was only the wet cement floor to lie down on and no toilet. Drunks were urinating and vomiting all over the cell, which was already covered with bugs.

As soon as it turned dark, I felt the hands of a very powerful man on me. He reached between my legs and tried to fondle my private parts. His smell was something which I will never forget. I managed to run to the other side of the cell screaming.

“Murder! Rape! Help!”

A guard removed the pervert to another cage. I was almost dead with fear. Nor could I eat the slosh they slipped in under the door with a slice of bread.

One of the prisoners decided he would be my protector for the night and I eventually calmed down, but I could not sleep for a single instant. Every little move startled me.

As the darkness came on, I shivered throughout the night in a tiny corner. I blamed my father for this. Why should I be sent so many thousands of miles away, while Mordechai was safe in one of the finest yeshivas in Russia? It was not fair. It had never been fair. God forgive me, but during the night I personally hoped my father would die from his stroke. It would serve him right. But he should not die until my body was shipped home for him to see.

At last morning came.

“Jew boy!” a guard called at me.

I was taken again to the Chief’s office.

There was a very well-dressed Jewish-looking gentleman with a Van Dyke beard. My passport was returned. I was given to the custody of the gentleman, Mr. Lapidis, who I understood paid my fine. I found out from his carriage driver that Mr. Lapidis was a wealthy merchant with special permission to live in Kiev. The Chief had a thriving business in catching stray Jews, for whom Mr. Lapidis always paid the fines. This kindly gentleman had saved me from a terrible fate. He drove me to the station and admonished me to stay put. You can bet I wasn’t looking for more adventures in Kiev.

Mariupol, 1911

I
HAVE NEVER BEEN
in such a house as belonged to the Borokovs in Mariupol. There were seven rooms if you can imagine such a thing. The parlor and a separate eating room were filled with silver and cut-glass crystal and figurines. The furniture was upholstered with velvet, like a rich bride would wear, and the curtains were made of fancy lace. Rugs were beneath your feet wherever you walked.

Tante Sonia was a tall woman who dressed every day like it was the Sabbath. Her fingers were filled with rings and she never had a hair out of place. She was a pinched, tight woman who tried to smile, but when she did her mouth went crooked, and when she reached to pat you all you could see were her long, bony fingers and those rings. She ran the house like it was a museum. You walked around, I guarantee you, on tiptoes.