The Family Moskat (82 page)

Dinah had told him that it was no longer safe to hang up wash on the roof; thieves stole it.

The door opened. At the threshold stood Menassah David, in a ragged coat with its padding showing through the rips. His boots were patched, the heels run down. Over his skullcap his -540-soiled hat sat

askew on his head. His ragged beard covered almost all of his cheeks below the smiling eyes. Under his arm he held a prayer shawl.

"You sleep, heh? 'What meanest thou, 0 sleeper! Arise, call upon thy God!' There's no despair, do you hear me? All melancholy comes from uncleanliness. From a single spark a whole flame can come to life."

"Menassah David? It's you? How late is it?"

"It's never too late. All a man has to do is repent. Redemption will come just the same; why should a man impede it? One pious thought can turn the scales."

"Menassah David, maybe you'll be good enough to stop your babbling." Dinah's voice came from behind him. "Dan hasn't got a pair of shoes to his feet, and he prattles his sermons."

"Everything will be all right. 'He who gives life will give food.'

The only thing is to have faith."

"Lunatic, let him sleep. Don't pester him."

"And what does sleep bring? When a man sleeps he has no free will. Get up, Asa Heshel, let's dance."

He began to sway back and forth on the threshold where he stood. He clapped his hands. For what, after all, was the great trick in showing ecstasy only in time of plenty? The true great-ness was in giving oneself up to joy when the waters were rising around one.

2

Asa Heshel dozed off. When he awoke, it was close to three o'clock. His mother and Dinah tried to make him stay at home, but he insisted that he had to go. He promised he would come back the following day. He had risen with the feeling that time was pressing. Where could he get some money? He left the house.

The snow was falling heavily as he walked along Franciskaner Street. He stopped at a bookstore. The window was crowded with volumes in Hebrew and Yiddish--novels, poetry, drama, political brochures, a Revisionist magazine calling for war against the "maneuverings of the Zionists and their policy of mildness toward England."

While he was thus peering through the dusty window he realized clearly that there was nowhere he would be able to get any -541-money. He

thought of calling on Hertz Yanovar, but he already owed him twenty zlotys. Besides, every time Asa Heshel saw him, Hertz read him protocols of his metaphysical society, stories of dybbuks, poltergeists, about a fish who called "Hear, O Israel!" or about a baby under whose cradle a fire burned. Anyway, Hertz was probably not at home. In the daytime he was always in the public library on Koshykova Street. He took off his hat and shook the snow off it. He walked toward Adele's apartment. She would upbraid him, but what of it? He had a key to the flat, but instead of using it he rang the bell Adele opened the door for him. She stood looking at him with a doubtful expression on her face, as though she were deciding whether or not to admit him.

"Don't you recognize me?" Asa Heshel said.

"Oh, I recognize you, all right. Wipe your shoes."

"Is David home?"

"He's at the conference of the Shomrim."

Asa Heshel wiped his shoes on the straw mat. He could smell the odor of cooking meat and potatoes and fried onions. He suddenly realized that he was hungry. He had a flash of remembrance of Switzerland, when he had come to tutor some children and their mother was always busy in the kitchen, cooking and frying. "Ah, how low I have fallen!" he thought. Aloud he said: "What does David write?"

"He's full of enthusiasm. Just imagine! They put him on the committee. One out of hundreds of delegates. He sent a photograph. He has an ideal. Well, take off your coat. Come inside.

Maybe you'll have dinner?"

"I just ate."

"Too bad. You never come here without having eaten first. I was beginning to think that you'd forgotten my address."

In the living-room a half-finished plate of soup stood on the table. Adele sat down in front of it. Asa Heshel leaned back on a sofa. Adele hurriedly finished the soup and pushed the plate away from her.

"Well, what brings you here?" she asked. "You probably wanted to find out whether we had starved to death."

"Have it your own way."

"As long as David has a mother, he won't go hungry," Adele said firmly. "I gave him money to travel with, and a few zlotys pocket money. Most of the delegates are boys from well-to-do -542-families, and I

don't want my child to feel ashamed. You don't look well. What's the matter with your?"

"I haven't slept the past two nights."

"What happened? Is your wife in labor?"

Asa Heshel told her that they were after him to arrest him. He mentioned Barbara. He admitted that he had stayed overnight with her at Abram's. He did not know himself why he was confiding all this to Adele; was it to bolster his masculine prestige, to make her jealous, or to let her know, once for all, that she could not place any reliance on his support? Adele listened to him in silence, looking at him with an oblique glance, her nostrils dilated. She surmised at once that he was carrying on a love affair with this Barbara. She had some regret that he was letting himself fall into such a morass, but she had lived to have her revenge on Hadassah. Besides, she had always known that things would work out this way. When a man was false to one woman, then he would be false to everyone else. As far as she was concerned, she had long since written him off as lost. There was only one thing that was wrong: she could not hate him as he deserved. Her anger with him was always tempered by pity. She looked at him as he sat there with his face sickly pale, in his wrinkled suit, his tie knotted awkwardly, and she felt an impulse to warn and help him. Why should a person want to bring about his own downfall, she wondered. That was puzzling.

She remembered a journey she had taken with him, from Geneva to Lausanne and from there to Brig. They had eaten at the station restaurant and had looked up at the mountains that loomed above the village like walls, their sides covered with grape orchards.

"Why don't you eat something?" she said. "I have plenty of food here."

"No," he answered. "Nothing at all."

"Then at least have a glass of tea." She went out of the room and came back with a plate of meat for herself and a glass of tea for Asa Heshel. As she ate she stared at him in wonder. How could a man of his age carry on like an irresponsible youth? What was it that went on in his mind? How could a father show so little interest in his own son? Strange that his irregular goings on had somehow prevented her from marrying again. It had often occurred to her that as long as this riddle remained un-solved she could not completely free herself from him. She still -543-had the nebulous conviction that he would find nothing but disappointment with everyone else and would come back to her.

"What's your opinion about David?" she asked. "He wants to go to Palestine. What will become of him there? If he were only willing to go on with his studies he would be a genius."

"The world spits at our geniuses."

"He says that hell send you a certificate. He takes after you, but he hasn't got your faults. How is that possible, I ask you. He knows all of your carryings on, but he defends you. You should see the boys who come to see him. Personalities, I tell you. Devoted to the cause. Ready to sacrifice themselves. I don't understand where they get it. A new generation."

Well, he couldn't be worse than I, so he has to be better."

"At least it's good that you understand yourself. Nevertheless, there's no reason to be so defeated. You have your own virtues.

Ah, why did things happen this way? I was so much in love with you."

Adele was frightened at her own words, but they could not now be recalled.

Asa Heshel bent his head. "Nobody can build anything on me.

"Why? Why?"

"I'm sick. Physically and spiritually."

"It's true. You're sick." Adele clutched at this remark. "That's why I can't be angry with you. If I were in your place I'd go to see a psychiatrist."

"Then every Jew in the world would have to go to one. I mean every modern Jew."

"Maybe you need some money. I can lend you some. How much do you need?"

"No, Adele. I'll never have it to pay back."

"What do you propose to do?"

"I'll still play around a bit."

"With what?" she asked. "With human lives?"

"With what else?"

They both rose.

"You've committed a great evil against me; but don't do the same to Hadassah. I've got strong shoulders; she's sick. Shell never survive it."

-544-As Adele

spoke she had a strange feeling that it was someone else speaking through her lips. It was her dead mother saying these words, her voice and her intonation.

3

Asa Heshel spent that night with Barbara at the house of a gentile Communist on Leshno Street. In order to conceal from the janitor that strangers were staying in the flat, the pair made sure to reach the house early, before the gates were locked, and to leave late in the morning. They were given a small, dark room that contained a bed and a lame-legged washstand. At eleven o'clock in the morning the two got into a number-nine streetcar.

The lawyer whom Barbara had consulted the day before had advised her to return home as soon as possible, declaring that the longer she hid herself, the worse her situation would be. The same advice applied to Asa Heshel. Barbara expected that the moment she entered her father's house she would be arrested; a detective was surely waiting at the outside door, or near the Saxon Gardens. The lawyer had promised her that if she was arrested he would get her out on bail; but no one could ever be sure what the charge would be or whether the examining judge would permit bail.

Now she sat in silence, hunched up, looking through the misted car window, which she wiped constantly with her glove. What a strange game fate was playing with her! As long as she had been alone no one had bothered her; now that she had found a lover she would have to give herself up into the hands of the police.

She tried to justify in her mind the sacrifice she was making for the proletariat, but somehow or other this morning all of her social zeal seemed to have faded away. These workers outside, the draymen, the janitors, the gentile stallkeepers in the market places, did not know that she was suffering for them. And even if they knew, would they care? That fat woman with the red cheeks, for instance, sitting at the ready-made shoe stall and gulping soup from a pot. Her husband was probably a cobbler, but what did she care about the working class? She spent her time running to church, kissing the hand of the priest, and cursing the Jews and the Bolsheviks. After the revolution she'd be of the chosen, while as for Barbara, she -545-might have to face the accusation of being the daughter of a clerical. Why in the devil's name should she be singled out to be the one to sacrifice herself for them? She tried to drive away these bourgeois thoughts. What she needed now was encouragement.

But who was there to give it to her? She regretted now that she had come back to Poland, and even that she had begun an affair with that pessimistic man who had a wife and children and who lacked any vestige of faith in humanity. Dear God in heaven, if her father knew how his Barbara was behaving! He was sure that she was still a virgin. She closed her eyes. After the night of abandonment comes the punishment, she thought. Just as it is written in the holy books.

At the corner of Krulevska Street Barbara got out of the streetcar. She made a motion to kiss Asa Heshel, but their hatbrims were in the way. She wanted to say something to him, but there was no time. She pressed his wrist. The streetcar started to move while she was getting off. Asa Heshel pushed his way to the platform. Through the fog he caught sight of her caracul coat and the pale oval of her face. She waved her hand to him and turned as though she would run after the car, as though at the last moment she regretted leaving him. The streetcar rolled on, over New World Boulevard, the Place of the Three Crosses, Uyazdover Alley. Asa Heshel started to recall the ecstasy that the last night had brought to them--the kissing, the embracing, the ardent talk--but with it all there was a bitter aftertaste. He remembered how Barbara had said to him as they left the house: "Well, there you have your laboratory of happiness!"

At Bagatella Street Asa Heshel got off the streetcar, but instead of going directly home, as he had made up his mind to do, he crossed over to the other side of the street to make sure that no one was waiting for him at the gate. There was no one there. He went into a restaurant and telephoned to Barbara. He hoped that she would answer the phone herself, but instead he heard the hoarse voice of her father. He hung up. After a few moments he called up his own home. The servant answered.

"This is me, Yadwiga," he said.

"Oh, the pan! Jesus Mary!"

"Has anyone been there for me?" he asked. "Have the police been there?"

"The police? Why should the police come?"

"Is your mistress there?"

-

546-"Yes, I'll call her."

While he waited at the phone he realized that he was doing everything the wrong way. He should not have asked about the police. It was not impossible that the phone was being tapped.

Even in these few moments it was possible that they were already surrounding the restaurant he was calling from. But it was too late now.

Yadwiga came back to the telephone. "Your wife doesn't want to talk to you. You'd better come home."

He went outside, but instead of going home he walked along toward Marshalkovska Street. The fact that the police had not been around was no proof that they were not looking for him. A detective was probably hiding somewhere. He walked along, taking long steps, every once in a while looking back over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. The old man's voice had been shrill, he reflected, thinking of Barbara's father. They had probably arrested her. Suddenly he stopped. He turned around and began to retrace his steps. "I'll imagine I'm a French aristocrat and they're leading me to the guillotine," he thought.