Mitla Pass (33 page)

“Excuse me. I am Percy Holifield, newly promoted from captain to commodore. My ship is laid up here for repairs.”

“When do you sail for England?”

Holifield closed his eyes and prayed beneath his breath. “Next Friday.”

Moses Balaban studied the configuration of the commodore, encircling him slowly. He had a difficult body to enhance. He was stubby, potbellied, and swaybacked, a challenging combination to overcome in so short a time. Percy Holifield’s eyes watered with silent pleading.

“You have not kept yourself in very good shape,” the Jew said.

The commodore smarted but held his tongue.

Moses Balaban walked around him again, then threw up his hands. “All right, it can be done.”

“Oh, thank you, sir, thank you,” Holifield erupted, shaking the little tailor’s hand. “Let me say again, your time will be well rewarded.”

Ignoring the commodore’s effusions, Moses already had the measuring tape out. “We must start without delay.”

I
N THE ENSUING
week, the commodore and the Romanian/Irish/Jewish tailor were thrown together for hours on end and evolved a friendship of sorts. Balaban’s two little boys were adorable, about the age of Holifield’s own sons. But Moses Balaban was a difficult man to know. He snipped out his words and was always cavalier in manner.

Holifield would enter the shop and invariably see the slender Moses sitting cross-legged on a pillow atop his cutting table, stitching away meticulously by hand. Balaban would greet him with a mere nod.

He learned that Moses had been born in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, where his father and grandfather had established a paltry means of livelihood with a tailoring business specializing in naval uniforms. Most of their work consisted of repairing enlisted men’s clothing, with a few odd commissions for uniforms for low-ranking officers. The captains and admirals had theirs made in Bucharest or Paris.

The Balabans were a typically large family of a dozen children, eight boys and four girls. Only one of the sons, the oldest, could take over the family business. The others had to look to emigrate. Three of the Balaban males went to England and Scotland, where tailors were in demand.

One of them, Herman Balaban, a confirmed bachelor, signed up for a British transatlantic passenger liner, as ship’s tailor. After a couple of rough crossings, he decided that life at sea was not his cup of tea and he jumped ship in Queenstown, where he eventually opened a shop on the quay.

“And your three other brothers, Moses?”

“In Savannah, Georgia. They are out of the tailoring business entirely, and for the best.”

What he did not tell the commodore, of course, was of his lifelong reputation as a disagreeable, even nasty, person. His family in Constanta did not want him, nor did his brothers in Scotland and Savannah.

It boiled down to brother Herman, toiling in the remote colony of Ireland, who finally sent for Moses to assist in the shop. Moses was fifteen when he arrived in 1875, and in a matter of five years took over the shop when Herman died in a cholera epidemic.

The Jewish community of Ireland consisted of a few hundred families, mainly in Dublin and Belfast, with but a handful in Cork. Life was generally peaceful for the Jews, although there was a terrible sense of isolation. Cork had one synagogue and one kosher butcher, but there was little in the way of traditional communal life: no Hebrew school, no Yiddish newspaper, no debating societies, dramatic clubs, or ritual baths.

This did not seem to bother Moses, who existed as a loner. He’d go to Cork to synagogue during the holidays, or for special occasions, but his little shop in Queenstown was a personal bastion of his orthodoxy. Moses was largely friendless, a dour, stingy man who seemed to do little else but sew, pray, and play checkers with an old pensioner.

A few years after obtaining the business, he entered into a marriage contract with the daughter of a poor Belfast cabinetmaker, who bore him two sons, Saul and Lazar. The mother died in childbirth, with the new infant.

As a widower, Moses continued along, raising his sons in the small flat in back of the shop, with the help of an aged Irish nanny.

Moses had put out feelers to make an arrangement for a new wife, but he found the doors closed to him in the Jewish community in Ireland because he had earned a well-deserved reputation for meanness. Moses was known to burst out of his deep shell with sudden violent fits of temper that often included wife and child beating.

With no Jewish girl available to him in Ireland, his alternative would be to work out a costly arrangement with a matchmaker to have a girl in the old country sent over to be wed. But who would come to Ireland, to Cork? Some third-rate ugly who couldn’t find herself a husband in Romania.

From time to time Moses cast an eye toward America, but he hesitated. His brothers in Savannah, knowing of Moses’ irritable temper from childhood, were not all that anxious to bring him over.

In addition, Moses lived on the waterfront. He knew about too many voyages to America where unscrupulous agents had crammed emigrants on death ships. There were terrible tales of epidemics and deaths at sea, almost as bad as during the slave-trading and famine days. Moreover, there would be further privation in the promised land itself. He knew that most Jews landed in New York, where an enormous hellhole of a ghetto emerged on the Lower East Side, which was already overflowing with tailors.

So he continued to sew and pray and save his pennies and yell at his sons, while holding a high opinion of himself for his unwavering piousness.

L
ATE
F
RIDAY
afternoon, Commodore Percy Poindexter Holifield buckled on an ornate belt holding a gleaming saber as Moses affixed the commodore’s hat on his head.

He stood before the three-way mirror, stunned by his dazzling appearance and steeped in self-admiration. Moses Balaban had created a miracle! What was more, the masterpiece was completed with three hours to spare before the Jewish Sabbath began. He turned and pumped the little tailor’s hand with gusto. “Moses, how can I ever thank you!”

Moses offered his small version of a smile. The kids yelled in the back room.

“Now let us settle our account,” Holifield said, thrusting forward a bag of gold coins. “I think you will find this quite generous.”

To his utter surprise, he saw Moses hold up his hand.

“No charge,” he said.

“I say, old fellow, you can’t be serious.”

“The Talmud says we must make one great gesture of this sort in our lifetime. You happened into my shop at precisely the right moment.” Having performed few sincere acts of contrition in his lifetime, Moses was playing it safe.

“But ... but,” the commodore stammered.

“So go and be a jim-dandy for the Queen and knock her eyes out.”

T
HE
USS
Q
UINNEBAUG
slipped from her berth just before sunset. Moses Balaban and his two boys waved to the skipper, who waved back, choked with emotion.

In the next fortnight of celebrations in England, Commodore Percy Poindexter Holifield acquitted himself more than adequately to represent his country among the most elegant admirals of Europe.

Returning to America and assuming his post at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, he never forgot the little Jewish tailor, or his debt to him.

His new position involved him in a great deal of socializing, parties, dinners, trips to Washington, and the like. This required a higher standard of dress than that of an officer on sea duty. As superintendent, he was entitled to a number of privileges, among them the right to appoint a civilian as chief tailor. But alas, his new uniforms did not have the quality and flair of Moses Balaban’s work. Several months later, Moses received a letter from the commodore.

My dear friend Moses,

I have never forgotten your great kindness to me when I needed you. What is more, my present chief tailor, who does the officers’ uniforms, is simply not in your class.

If you are of a mind to immigrate to America, consider this letter to be an offer for you to assume the position of chief tailor at the Naval Academy. It will afford you a modest but steady income, good housing, and other benefits. I understand there is a large, thriving Jewish community in Baltimore, just a short train ride away.

If you are inclined to make this journey, simply take this letter to the American consul in Cork, who has instructions to arrange decent passage for yourself and your sons, in the first ship coming directly to Baltimore.

I hope you will consider this offer in a positive way and allow me to repay the gratitude I have felt all these months.

I look forward, hopefully, to a transatlantic cable informing me you are en route.

With kindest regards,

P. P. Holifield, Commodore, USN

Superintendent

U.S. Naval Academy

Annapolis, Maryland

Annapolis, 1888

A
S PROMISED
, Moses Balaban and his sons, Lazar and Saul, had a decent crossing. The change from the perpetual foul weather, grim destitution, and eternal sorrow of Cork to the gleaming little jewel of Annapolis forced a ray of light into Moses Balaban’s life.

The Navy and its institutions were on the mend from a long decline that followed the Civil War. The Academy itself had become an orphan, lollygagging for appropriations and direction. Changes were in the wind with the Navy’s transition from sail to steam, from primitive ironclads to steel battle wagons, from the old-salt sailors to sophisticated engineers and gunners. Under the direction of the previous superintendent, a legendary admiral, the Academy found its fortunes making a dramatic turnabout as he directed it toward becoming a first-class university.

The city of Annapolis nestled sweetly on the shores of the Severn River, near where it flowed into the mighty Chesapeake Bay. It was a place of many prerevolutionary buildings, of charm and quaintness, a pastoral setting to make its landfall, easy to abide in.

Moses Balaban found a small cottage a few minutes’ walk from the campus and hired a negress mammy to take care of his boys and the home. Indeed, life had taken a turn for the better, and this was reflected in a change of the man’s disposition. He was the house Jew, an oddity, but under the protection of the commodore. Moses was treated, not as a mysterious menace, but as a man with direct bloodlines to the Bible and therefore to be respected. He relished the status and now dressed snappily in one of his three handsome suits and tapped his cane and doffed his derby as he strolled, chatting it up with midshipman, officer, and civilian alike.

There were a few dozen Jewish families in Annapolis, mostly merchant families, but they were Reformed in their religious practice and were more Americanized than Jewish. He would have no truck with them whatsoever. In Ireland, he had felt little inclination to associate with his neighbors. It was the same in Annapolis, only better. The only place of worship was a tiny chapel on campus for the Jewish midshipmen, who rarely numbered more than one or two in a class. This didn’t bother Moses, either. He was used to praying alone in a room.

Fifteen months after his appointment and six months after Moses’ arrival, Commodore Percy Poindexter Holifield died peacefully in his sleep of a heart attack, after a raging session with the bureaucracy.

Moses prayed as he had never prayed before, as the new superintendent arrived on the scene. His prayers were not answered. Rear Admiral Adam Harper didn’t particularly like Jews. However, he was a reasonable sort and offered Balaban what seemed a palatable demotion, at first.

Among the raft of new changes instituted was the manner in which uniforms were to be made, particularly those of the midshipmen. Previously they had been hand-tailored. Harper brought in a new-era tailor, who manufactured clothing on an assembly line, using mass-production methods. This was galling to Moses Balaban. Henceforth Moses was to supply only a variety of sizes of pants and vests and had to become a government employee, as well, on a fixed and meager salary. After a few months of this, he decided to resign.

But not foolishly.

Moses had been the epitome of frugality for over a decade in Ireland, stashing away a small but tidy sum of money. He traveled an hour and twelve minutes by train to Baltimore, which held a Jewish population numbering in the tens of thousands, and through the various agencies there made inquiries.

In a matter of weeks he heard of a tailoring business for sale in Havre de Grace, a town to the northeast of Baltimore. He went to see it.

Havre de Grace, 1889–1901

H
AVRE
D
E
G
RACE
, like Annapolis, sat on a river that flowed into Chesapeake Bay. By contrast, though, the Susquehanna River was a large body of water that ran deep into Pennsylvania and was partway navigable to commerce. The town had connections to the outside by both rail and ferry. There was a thriving canning industry for the farm produce from the Eastern Shore, a racetrack, a canal whose barges hauled coal and timber, and large fishing and oystering fleets.

The business for sale was a good-sized store, nearly three times as large as his shop in Queenstown. It was perfectly located on St. John’s Street on the riverfront, with living quarters above the shop. With the help of a Jewish lawyer from Baltimore, he secured the deal. Twelve hundred dollars, cash, bought him the building, the inventory, and the goodwill of the late proprietor.

Balaban merchant tailor, the storefront window read. Thus Moses once again picked up his singular, semi-monastic life, a wandering Jew among the gentiles. It didn’t bother him the least that there was no Jewish life in Havre de Grace. After all, Baltimore was only a short train ride away and it was grander than Constanta and Cork combined on the holidays.

Moses Balaban had long ago conditioned himself not to hear what he did not wish to hear or see what he did not wish to see. He personally crammed his sons with several hours of nightly instruction in Hebrew and the Talmud, to ensure they would grow up to be good Jews, but he did not look at the world in which they were existing.