Natasha and Other Stories (10 page)

As I listened to the story I tried to anticipate the ending. I had heard something similar from one of my Hebrew school teachers.

After Jim finished his story he wrote a list of verses that he was certain would help me to develop a personal relationship with Christ.

When Charley woke up, the doctor called Jim in and I decided it was time for me to go. A nurse caught up to me as I waited for the elevator and said I had to go see Charley right away. Charley was calling for me; he was getting excited, and I had to come right away.

Inside his father’s room Jim was kneeling by the bed. He was weeping and repeating:

–Daddy, I love you; Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you very much, Daddy! Do you know Jesus loves you? Jesus loves you very much, Daddy!

The nurse held the pad so Charley could scrawl. Ignoring his son’s hysterics, Charley wrote: MAKE SURE ABOUT MY THINGS.

I told him I would.

MAKE SURE JESUS DOESN’T GET THEM, he wrote.

In the elevator, my phone rang. It was well past one in the morning and I felt sick as soon as I heard it. I let it ring once more even though I could have picked it up. When I picked it up a man’s voice without a Russian accent said hello. A doctor, I thought, although it didn’t make sense.

–It’s Jim Davis.

–Yeah, Jim, what is it?

–What do you mean, what is it? What happened to my father?

–What do you mean?

–What do you mean what do I mean? You called, didn’t you?

–I don’t understand. Where are you?

–In Fresno. Where the fuck do you think I am? Where the hell are you?

–I’m—

–What the fuck is going on?

–Are you sure you have the right number?

–Are you fucking sick? Whoever the fuck you are, you talked to my maid this afternoon.

Just after I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was my cousin.

–Why was your phone busy?

–I don’t know.

–Come home.

In the background I heard everyone crying. My mother was already reaching for the phone. She said in Russian:

–Kitten, babushka is gone. There is no more babushka. Charley’s place was only fifteen minutes away from the airport. I went there first and found the Choynski picture he’d promised me. It was one I didn’t already have. It had been taken in the early 1890s when Joe was at his peak. In the photo he is wearing black tights and his shoulders and arms are taut with muscle. I didn’t feel bad taking it since I was sure Charley meant for me to have it anyway. For the rest of his things, I intended to call Canastota and the Hall of Fame.

There was a morning flight to Toronto and I slept for a few hours on Charley’s couch before going to the airport. It occurred to me how, with technology, it was possible to never miss a funeral.

On the plane I read over Jim’s list of verses for a personal relationship with Christ.

John 1:12 We can become Gods children

Rom 3:23 We are all sinners and need Gods grace

Hebrew 9:27 We ultimately must pay the consequences of our misdeeds

Revelation 3:20 We must open our heart to Jesus and ask Him to come into our life

At the bottom he left me his phone number and drew the sign of the cross.

I never called him or looked up the verses. At home we didn’t own a New Testament, but I found the prayer I had loved best in Hebrew school. It was taught to me by a beautiful Sephardic woman who was also my fourth-grade Hebrew teacher. We sang it every morning during prayers.

From out of distress I called to God; with abounding relief, God answered me. The Lord is with me, I do not fear—what can man do to me? The Lord is with me among my helpers, I will see the downfall of my enemies. It is better to rely on the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to rely on the Lord than to trust in nobles. All the nations surrounded me, but in the Name of the Lord I will cut them down. They surrounded me, they encompassed me, but in the Name of the Lord I will cut them down. They surrounded me like bees, yet they shall be extinguished like fiery thorns; in the Name of the Lord I will cut them down. My foes repeatedly pushed me to fall, but the Lord helped me. God is my strength and song, and He has been a help to me. The sound of rejoicing and deliverance reverberates in the tents of the righteous, “The right hand of the Lord performs deeds of valor. The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord performs deeds of valor!”

It was a fighter’s prayer.

They buried my grandmother in a plain pine box. By the end there was hardly anything left of her. In her final week she had been unable to eat, and ultimately it had become too painful for her to even swallow water. I was told that she had died unconscious, shrieking for breath with an IV in her arm.

During the funeral I only cried for my mother’s sake, and before that a little because I saw my grandfather lost and weeping like an old Jew. Even when her pine coffin reverberated like a bass drum with the first shovelfuls of dirt, I was okay.

It was only later, that night, when I was on my hands and knees in the cemetery searching for her dentures in two feet of snow, that I wailed in Russian:
Babushka, babushka, g’dye tih, maya babushka?
Babushka, babushka, where are you, my babushka? I cried shamelessly, up to my elbows in the snow, looking for the new teeth which they had forgotten to bury with her. Bearing the dentures I had driven out into the worst blizzard since 1944 with neither a flashlight nor a shovel. I had gone to the cemetery even though my mother had forbidden it and even though Jewish law dictated that nobody was permitted at the grave for a month. But I felt that I was following other laws. And so I dug—first with purpose, then with panic. My hands burned and then went numb. Snow soaked through my shoes and pants. By the end, I didn’t even want to bury the teeth anymore, I just wanted not to lose them.

A
FTER MY GRANDMOTHER’S DEATH, my grandfather announced he wanted to move out of the apartment they had shared for ten years. Too many memories, and also, for one person, it was expensive. My mother and aunt filled out forms for subsidized housing and my grandfather was placed on a waiting list. If a spot opened up he would be able to save hundreds of dollars each month. Of course, the money wouldn’t change his life. His needs were minimal. Tea, potatoes, cottage cheese, black bread, chicken, milk, preserves. My mother and aunt bought him his clothes at Moore’s—a discount chain whose labels read: Made in Canada. He never traveled, never went to concerts or movies, and had no hobbies aside from the synagogue. That he had no immediate use for the money wasn’t the point. When he was gone, the grandchildren would have more.

My grandmother’s yartzheit came and went and my grandfather was still no closer to getting an apartment. Thousands were on the waiting list and there was no way of knowing how much longer he would have to wait. My mother told me a year wasn’t that long, she had heard of others who had waited three or five. The waiting list outlived more applicants than she cared to mention. Sholom Zeydenbaum’s son, Minka, received a letter a month after Sholom’s death. Minka said he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When he told the story, he laughed.

The system was inscrutable. At least in Russia you knew who to bribe.

But, unable to give up, my family sought angles. My mother made inquiries in the community. Apartments had been had. Others had experienced success. No doubt an apartment existed, and waited, like America, to be discovered. My father canvassed his patients in search of a lead. Many patients were the children of Polish Jews who had made their money in real estate. They owned buildings all over the city. Surely one of them could find a suitable place for an honest man, a war hero and a pious Jew. My uncle played his trump card and exploited a political connection from his days doing business with the new Russia. The man had been an ambassador, the man had served on the city council. Such a man must be able to help. My aunt wondered why it had to be so hard. Didn’t all these people have parents of their own? Were their hearts made of stone? My uncle informed her that these people did indeed have parents of their own and that their parents were probably the reason why my grandfather couldn’t get an apartment.

More months passed. A possibility here and a potential opportunity there. All of them came to nothing and my grandfather, never an optimist by nature, resigned himself to the fact that it was a lost cause. Some people had a talent for making things happen, he was not one of them. Once, during the war, he had had a chance to make some money. A man in Kyrgyzstan had a load of hats he wanted to move. Good woolen hats of a very desirable fashion. My grandfather and his brother had the inside track on the hats. One railway car to Moscow and they could have made a fortune. They could have been extremely wealthy men in Russia, but their father wouldn’t let them do it. He was a very honest man. He never invited trouble. So the hats went to someone else—who naturally made a fortune—and my grandfather worked with his hands for the rest of his life. Like the hats, so the apartment. My grandfather entertained no illusions, unless, of course, they were illusions of exaggerated bleakness.

All along, at the margins of the apartment search, there was one possibility that neither fully materialized nor completely disappeared. A building owned by the B’nai Brith was in fact subsidized. It was only a short bus ride from my grandfather’s current building. It faced a park. Most of the people in the building were either widows or widowers. On the ground floor was a common room where concerts were occasionally held. My grandfather had a few acquaintances who lived there and he felt the building would present him with more social opportunities. Since my grandmother’s death he had seen less and less of their old friends. My grandmother had always been the one to make the phone calls and the arrangements, and now that she was gone, he felt that most of their friends had indeed been her friends. On his own, my grandfather found it hard to break the old patterns.

The B’nai Brith building seemed the perfect solution. And, it appeared that there was a slim chance that he could gain a preferential place on their waiting list. Word had spread at the tiny Russian community synagogue that my grandfather was looking to find an apartment. This word had reached a popular and well-respected rabbi who knew my grandfather to be a pious man and regular synagogue attendee. This very fact made him an attractive candidate since the B’nai Brith building had its own one-room synagogue which was no longer drawing a minyan for Friday night and Saturday morning services. I couldn’t believe that, in a building whose entire population consisted of old Jews, they couldn’t find ten men, but my grandfather insisted that it was true. Even though the building was Jewish, the people were old. Some were sick, some were atheists, and more than half of the residents were women. It was a serious problem. The synagogue was Orthodox, and without ten Jewish men, they could not hold proper services.

Since I was conveniently between jobs, it was my responsibility to drive my grandfather to the B’nai Brith building to meet with Zalman, the synagogue’s gabbai. Zalman was a Romanian Jew who spoke Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and quite a lot of English. For years he had overseen the day-to-day running of the synagogue. If my grandfather could impress upon him his level of religious commitment, then Zalman would be able to use his influence with the building’s manager. The manager was sympathetic to the synagogue’s plight and might be willing to manipulate the waiting list in order to bring in the right kind of resident. In other words, a spiritual ringer.

On the way to meet with Zalman my grandfather repeated that it probably wouldn’t do any good. If Zalman could do anything, he would have done it long ago. The trip was a waste of time. Nevertheless, he clutched the letter of recommendation that the rabbi had written for him. I told him not to worry. He replied that when you got to be his age there was no longer much to worry about. Everything was in God’s hands. Who are we to know His plans? What is getting or not getting an apartment compared to losing a wife? God does what He does for His own reasons. If it was meant for us to get the apartment, then it would happen, if not, then not. What could anyone do? I said he could pray, but he didn’t get the joke.

The synagogue was indeed one room which was divided into two sections by a flimsy latticework partition. On the left was the women’s section; on the right the men’s. Each side could hold thirty people. Zalman pointed out what went where. Here the prayer books, there the tallisim are folded, over there the ark and the Torah. He opened up the doors so that we could take a look at the scrolls in their velvet cover. My grandfather said it was a very good synagogue and gave Zalman the rabbi’s letter. Zalman promised to do what he could, so long as we understood that there was no telling when an apartment might open up. Did we understand what it meant for an apartment to become available in such a place? Unfortunately, my grandfather said, he understood very well.

On the way out, Zalman escorted us through the lobby. We passed two Russian seniors who studied us with unconcealed malice. Zalman explained that these were two of the ones who wouldn’t come. Atheists, Zalman said. One a product of Stalin, the other of Hitler. But what do you say to a man who asks you where was God when the Germans were shooting his parents and throwing them in a hole? It isn’t a pleasant conversation. And who here didn’t lose someone to the Nazis? I lost my grandparents, three beautiful sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins. So what am I supposed to do, let the bastards win? Because who wins if a Jew doesn’t go to synagogue? I’ll tell you who: Hitler.

Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch his bad leg, the other kept his walker near for emergency trips to the washroom. I was between them and the front row where my grandfather sat with two other men. Herschel, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, sat beside my grandfather, and Itzik, a taxi driver from Odessa, sat beside Herschel. Zalman was at a small table beside the ark. On the other side of the partition were half a dozen women. There was no rabbi and so the responsibilities for the service were divided between Zalman, my grandfather, and Herschel. The task of lifting the heavy scrolls fell to me, as I was the only one with the strength to do it. The Saturday morning services started at nine and lasted for three hours. Most of the old Jews came because they were drawn by the nostalgia for ancient cadences, I came because I was drawn by the nostalgia for old Jews. In each case, the motivation was not tradition but history.

After services everyone went to the common room for a kiddush. Zalman brought a bottle of kosher sweet wine and a honey cake. The Russian man with one arm contributed a mickey of cheap vodka. It takes only one arm to pour and only one arm to drink. Thank God, he said, at least here it is no disadvantage to be a one-armed man.

One of the women distributed the wine in small paper cups and also circulated a dish with the slices of cake. When everyone had drunk their wine and munched their cake, they wished one another a
gut Shabbos
and wandered alone or in small groups back to their particular lives.

On those mornings I accompanied my grandfather back to his new apartment, where we drank tea and played checkers. The new apartment was slightly smaller than the old. The brown sofa had been sold and replaced with a blue one. The brown sofa hadn’t folded out; the blue one did. (Now, in the event of familial tragedy, my mother and aunt wouldn’t have to spend the accursed nights on the living room floor.) The bedroom remained identical and in the kitchen were the same chipped plates and the same enamel Soviet bowls good for warming soup. I would spend a few hours with my grandfather, his only visitor all week. The change of locale hadn’t done much to improve his social situation. For every reason to leave his apartment he could always find ten to stay where he was. My grandfather had expected Zalman to make more of an effort, but Zalman was always preoccupied with unspecified concerns. He also had a wife. Only Herschel, the survivor who sat beside my grandfather, had extended invitations—to come over for tea, to read some Yiddish poetry, to play cards, to go for a walk in the park. He is a very intellectual man, my grandfather said. A professor.

Despite this, my grandfather had yet to accept any of Herschel’s invitations. He would go, he said, it was only that every time he was invited something needed to be done. Once he had been salting pickles, another time he had needed to mend a pair of shoes, yet another time he had had an appointment to get his toenails cut. But when the time was good he planned to go. Other people said things about Herschel and Itzik, but he had lived a long life without listening to those kinds of people. Who can know about the truth between two people? Both had had wives. Itzik had two children. What’s to say that they aren’t even cousins? Who knows? Would someone think to say a word if two cousins shared an apartment?

The following Saturday I noticed how, when Itzik coughed, Herschel placed a hand on his shoulder. I also noticed an undercurrent of disapproval emanating from the back of the room. After Herschel read from the Torah the other men took his outstretched hand without enthusiasm. Previously undetected signals were everywhere. It seemed less like a coincidence when Itzik and Herschel were the last to receive their paper cups of wine. It was evident that the one-armed man barely acknowledged Herschel as he happily made an observation in Yiddish. Itzik sat alone at a table, his thick chest spasmodically wracked by terrible hacking. Young person, he said, could you bring me some water? The devil has me by the throat.

When I returned from the water fountain with a paper cup, Herschel was standing beside Itzik. At the front of the room Zalman was announcing a Chanukah party. I handed the cup to Itzik. Herschel asked me how tall I was. In his shtetl I would have been a giant. You can only get so big on cabbage, he said. His brother, a Communist before it was a good idea to be one, had been big for a Jew. He’d broken the arm of a Pole who had cracked Herschel’s skull. The Pole was a blacksmith’s apprentice. He had arms like legs. Herschel wondered if I would be able to come to their apartment and change a lightbulb. Itzik used to do it but it wasn’t such a good idea for him now that he wasn’t feeling well. And even standing on their tallest chair, Herschel wasn’t big enough to reach. You could only sit in the dark for so long. Herschel spoke to me in English. Itzik, when he spoke, spoke to me in Russian. They spoke Yiddish to each other.

While beating me twice at checkers, my grandfather told me what he knew about Herschel and Itzik. They had been neighbors in another building. Their wives had been friends. Herschel had come to Canada in 1950. During the war Herschel’s wife hid in a cellar; Herschel was sent to Auschwitz.

Like our family, Itzik left the Soviet Union in 1979. He had been a successful man in Odessa. He drove a cab. He had his own car. Sometimes he went for long trips with a full trunk and when he came back the trunk was empty. People said he brought dollars with him from Odessa. How else could he have bought his own taxi so soon after coming to Canada? Later he had three cars and rented them out. He wasn’t like my grandfather and the other old men. On the first of the month he didn’t have his nose in a mailbox sniffing for government envelopes.

Four years ago Itzik’s wife died. He put himself on a waiting list for a subsidized apartment. The next year Herschel’s wife also died. Herschel also put himself on a waiting list. But unlike Itzik, Herschel couldn’t sit and wait. Even though he was no newcomer to the country, he had no money. He was an intellectual, a man of ideas. Not a practical man. Without his wife’s check he could barely afford to pay for the apartment. So Herschel moved into Itzik’s apartment. Maybe Itzik did it as a mitzvah, because everyone knew he didn’t need the money. But then again, a man loses a wife, another man loses a wife—this is an unimaginable loneliness. Who knows who is helping who? One hand washes the other.