The Family Moskat (88 page)

The driver turned round furiously. "What's the matter with you?

Can't you wait with your singing till you're on the boat?"

They arrived at the village, which consisted of little more than a few boarding-houses. Here the Jewish Cultural Society and the League for Agricultural Training had, in the last few years, set up a few summer camps. The bus drew up at a wooden barracks with unpainted walls. Inside, the rafters were bare and everything smelled of fresh wood. The travelers were ranged at uncovered tables and served with fried flounder and -580-bread.

Something about these flat fish, with their brown backs and white bellies, suggested remote places. Through the windows they could see the beach and the advancing and retreating waves. The murmur of the water mingled with the silence, the sea mingled with the sky. A Sabbath peace was hovering over the open spaces.

Seagulls circled over the water, uttering their shrill cries. Far away, on the horizon, a boat lay under a long sail like a corpse under its cerements.

A spirit of hominess came over the young people. They spoke with one another in Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, and German. One young woman giggled continuously, while a young man, in a sort of bravado, took off his shoes and walked about barefoot. A few lay down on the benches and slept; most of the others began to play games. Still others went out and strolled along the beach, which was planted with pine trees almost to the water's edge. Far off a steamer appeared on the horizon, a coil of smoke issuing from it. One could not tell whether the steamer was approaching or withdrawing. The sea was neither stormy nor calm; it tossed and heaved. Asa Heshel stood and looked at the marvel: divinity itself had taken on the form of the sea. Adele, standing near him, turned white, as if she were already seasick.

They climbed up the tiny wooded hill and sat down in the moss, pine needles, and undergrowth. On the root of a tree, protruding from the ground, toadstools grew. Near by, a nest of ants swarmed thickly. Busily the tiny creatures dragged their burdens of twigs and grass. They crawled in zigzag patterns. The hum of mosquitoes was in the air, and in the distance was heard the sound of a cuckoo. The cold wind coming in from the Baltic mingled with the warm air rising from the soil.

Adele took Asa Heshel's hand. "Asa Heshel, why have you behaved like this?"

"It's too late now."

"Tell me truthfully, were you ever in love with anyone?"

Asa Heshel was silent.

"If I had been you, I would have married Barbara," she said, not knowing why she said it or what purpose she had in mind.

Then suddenly she became sharply aware that she was going away and that perhaps she would never see him again. She looked at him furtively and noticed how abnormally white his fingernails were. She looked at his nose, his mouth, his eyes, his ears. Was he good-looking or ugly? She could not make up her -581-mind. There

was something elusive in his features, something unfixed; they made her think of the waves she had been watching, with their constant change of form. At this moment, as he sat leaning against a pine tree, it seemed to her that there was a strange delicacy in the outlines of his face. Golden strands of hair trembled on his high forehead; from the clear blue eyes a childish simplicity looked forth. Only on the sharp lips a bitterness lay. It occurred to Adele that she had never been able to understand what it was that tortured him. Was it the failure to have had a career? Did his heart long for someone? She was on the point of asking him, but suddenly she knew: he was not a worldly man by his very essence. He was one of those who must serve God or die. He had forsaken God, and because of this he was dead--a living body with a dead soul. She was astonished that this simple truth had eluded her until now.

Toward evening the travelers were herded into a bus. Adele kissed Asa Heshel farewell, remained hanging on his neck for a moment, pressed his hand. He felt her salt tears on his face. Then he watched her and the others getting into the bus. She could not get a seat next a window, but she leaned over and waved to him with a newspaper. At the last moment, just as the bus started, she cried out: "Asa Heshel!" It was as though she had suddenly remembered something of the utmost urgency. Asa Heshel ran forward, but the bus speeded away, leaving a stench of fumes.

THE NEWSPAPERS were full of war news. The controlled

German press was demanding the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia. England and France had guaranteed the Polish borders.

But this year the Moskat family, as in previous years, rode out to their summer places on the Otwotsk line. Nyunie had a house of his own in Shvider. Pinnie rented a cottage in Falenitz for his own family and Aaron. Lottie was there, too. Leah and Koppel -582-were staying

in a pension in Otwotsk. Hadassah and Dacha remained where they were at Vanya's house in Shrudborov. Masha had already procured a passport and visa for America; for the present she was staying in a room at Hadassah's. Stepha and Dosha came out to visit every Saturday. Abram's son-in-law warned them all that it was sheer idiocy to stay in Poland any longer. The catastrophe might descend at any moment. He pleaded with Reb Aaron as well as with Leah to get away while there was still time. He swore that if he had the proper papers he would not linger another moment. But the visitors from abroad did not seem to be in a hurry.

In Warsaw Rabbi Aaron was collecting manuscripts that had been written by his father, Reb Moshe Gabriel, by Reb Yechiel of Bialodrevna, and even by the earlier Bialodrevna rabbi. Aaron prepared the manuscripts and sent them off to a printer. He himself did all the revising and proofreading. Besides that he was gathering a group of Chassidic settlers for the colony Nachlat Yechiel in the Holy Land, prevailing on the Palestine Office to issue the necessary visas. There was a continual pleading at government bureaus, asking for favors, sending influ-ential intermediaries. There was every kind of confusing business with money, documents, proof of citizenship, and questions of military service. The rabbi was busy from early morning till late at night. He knew that it was a time of disaster, but what could he accomplish by running away from it? A shepherd does not abandon his sheep. Deep in his heart the rabbi had a premonition that at the last moment a miracle would happen.

Koppel relied on his American passport. He kept on saying that all these countries in Europe--if you could call them countries--

shivered in their boots at the very thought of America.

As long as there was an American consul in Warsaw, then, so far as he, Koppel, was concerned, they could all go to hell. Besides, he was an old man. What could they do to him? Pour salt on his tail? After all, New York would not run away. When you came to that, he was all alone there, without kith or kin. All he could do was sit in his apartment and listen to the radio or go out to the park and sit reading a newspaper. But here in Warsaw he had a son and a son-in-law, a daughter and a daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. He had looked up some of his old friends. Isador Oxenburg and his wife, Reitze, were long dead. But their daughters had greeted Koppel with open arms. Itchele -583-Peltsevisner was gone too; a horse had kicked him and that had finished him off. David Krupnick had died of an inflammation of the lungs.

But his wife still crawled about, smoking those asthma cigarettes of hers. Leon the Peddler and Motie the Red still came to her house to play cards. Whenever Koppel went to see them, he took a bottle of brandy, a pound of sausage, or a box of sardines. The oldsters would sit up till late, exchanging stories.

In his advanced years Leon the Peddler was hardly more than skin and bone. He would look at Koppel and say: "So, Koppel.

How are you? All right in America, eh?"

"Why shouldn't I be all right?" Koppel would answer laughing.

"I stole plenty."

The business of bragging about his thefts had become an obsession with Koppel. Time after time he would tell the story of how he had looted Meshulam Moskat's safe. And each time the haul grew in size. He talked openly of his bootlegging in New York. Leah pleaded with him not to shame her. His daughters flushed. Manyek warned his father that if he did not stop the disgraceful chatter he would break off with him for good. But Koppel laughed at them. "What are you ashamed of?" he would cry. "Once a thief, always a thief." And he would dig a sly finger into his son's ribs.

At Mrs. Krupnick's, Koppel could talk to his heart's content. He pulled out of his pocket a bundle of traveler's checks and showed them off. He let them look at his bankbooks. He let the "greenhorns" in on all sorts of machinations involving real estate and stocks and bonds and told them about the operations of American gangsters and racketeers. He sneered at the Warsaw underworld; all they knew was how to open a lock with a skeleton key, or to jab a knife into somebody. The gangsters in America rode around in automobiles, shooting down people with machine guns. They could open safes five inches thick.

Motie the Red, who was now completely white, once mentioned that not long ago the Warsaw gangsters had dug a tunnel into the Bank of Poland, but Koppel waved the episode away. "Do you call that a bank?" he said witheringly.

Leah avoided him. Lottie refused to talk to him. Simon, his Palestinian son-in-law, would not even look at him. Koppel went into the kitchen in the Otwotsk pension and showed the cook how food was prepared in America. There hot water was drawn right from the sink. There was an electric refrigerator -584-in every

house. And there was kosher soap to wash the dishes. Koppel broke two eggs into a pan and set it on the stove. Instead of turning the eggs over with a spoon he tossed them in the air.

The cook made a contemptuous grimace. "American tricks."

When Leah caught him at these antics she went at once to her room. When Koppel came in she shouted: "Yes, I deserve it! If I could give up a man like Moshe Gabriel and take up with a dog like you, I deserve the stick."

"If you want I'll give you a divorce," Koppel responded. "And I'll pay you alimony."

Leah put a summer scarf around her shoulders, took her bag and cane, and went off to Shrudborov. She walked on the sandy path, stopping every once in a while to take off a shoe and shake out the dust and gravel. Sometimes at night she had a terrifying feeling that war would break out and she would not be able to return to America, but during the day her terror was dissipated.

The sky above was clear and blue. A golden sun hovered over the pine forests, the houses, the telegraph poles. Birds twittered.

Trains sped back and forth. Boys and girls played. Phonographs ground out cantorial melodies. Peddlers in long caftans wandered about with baskets of fruit. They reminded Leah of the years of her youth. Here, in these very forests, she had mooned about Koppel. In Shrudborov Leah felt at home. Hadassah drew her a drink of cold water from the well. Dacha kissed her. Leah always brought a gift for the child. Vanya's daughters danced attendance on her, vying with one another to be of service. Masha came out of her room. Leah threw side glances at her daughter. In the years since she had seen her, Masha had changed past recognition. There was a lot of gray in her short-cut hair. She seemed to have taken on gentile features. No matter how many times Leah tried to get closer to her, she could not manage to break through the wall that separated them. The worst was that Masha had forgotten how to speak Yiddish and talked to her mother instead in a bastard mixture of Polish and Yiddish.

Leah shook her head dolefully. "Aren't you happy that you're going to America?"

"I'm happy."

Masha went out on the veranda, sat down, and opened her book.

This American woman with the silver-white hair and the coarse red face was strange to her. She did not know what she -585-would do in

that distant America. The talk about her being converted back to Judaism seemed meaningless. She had never been a really devoted Christian, and she could not take the Jewish faith seriously either.

Ever since the time she had swallowed some iodine, the thought of suicide had never left her. She would never try poison again, but there were other ways. Somewhere in her valise she had a revolver. Then again it was possible to hang oneself. From the time she had begun to make efforts to get a passport to America she had thought each day about jumping off the ship. She was too old to begin all over again. She had already lost her menstrual periods.

F0R S0ME YEARS now Asa Heshel and Barbara had planned to

spend a summer vacation together. But there had always been obstacles. Asa Heshel never had enough money, and he was un-willing to take it or borrow from Barbara. Again it would happen that at the last moment Barbara would have to take one of her party trips. This year, however, Asa Heshel borrowed four hundred zlotys from the loan department of the teachers' union, and Barbara had no more party duties since every kind of party activity had come to a halt.

It was not easy for Asa Heshel to go away with her. Any day the war might break out in earnest. He was afraid to leave Hadassah and Dacha alone in Shrudborov. He was afraid that he and Barbara might be arrested. But it was impossible for him to stand the oppressive Warsaw heat any longer. He made up his mind not to tell Hadassah in advance, but to write to her when he had gone. Later on he would send her some money.

Everything went without a hitch. Asa Heshel spent Saturday and Sunday in Shrudborov. He left Hadassah sixty zlotys. Early Monday morning he packed his valise and met Barbara at the -586-Vienna Station.

He had paid his landlady a month's rent in advance. The two boarded the express for Krakow.

The express halted at Skierniewice, Piotrkow, and Radomsk. At the stations hawkers called out cookies, lemonade, chocolate, and magazines. There were crowds of Jews and groups of soldiers at each station. In the train a woman was quietly telling one of the passengers that in Great Poland they were already busy digging trenches. The rich were providing themselves with private air-raid shelters. An old man, red-faced and with big white mustaches, interrupted the conversation, declaring that Hitler was simply making idle threats, so that Poland would hand over the Corridor. Now that England and France had guaranteed Poland's borders, nothing remained for Hitler but to gnash his teeth and bark.