The Last Princess (62 page)

“I know this is very difficult for you, but you must know how seriously ill your sister is,” the doctor told him. “The kind of cancer she has …” He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps a year, we can never be sure.”

Hannah died almost a year later to the day.

After the funeral they drove home in silence, Katie and Max. She went to her room and packed her belongings in the same suitcase her mother had brought from Poland. In the evening, Max had Ellen take her a tray.

Rosalind did not come to offer one word of condolence; Katie never really expected she would. She looked at the tray but could not touch it. Max knocked on the door. Opening it, her uncle stood before her. He had aged so much in the last few weeks; his eyes were sunken and red, he looked like an empty vessel. The lapel of his coat had been cut in the traditional gesture of mourning.

They sat looking at each other for a long while and then quietly she said, “I must leave now that my mother is gone.” She took his hand in hers and said, “Painful as it is to leave you I cannot remain in this house any longer. I’ve caused you enough grief with your wife, I feel very responsible for that—”

“No, no, Katie. You and I are all that is left of our family. Please stay and I’ll try to work something out, just the two of us. Please stay.”

“Dearest uncle, some things are too late. My mother wanted me to go to America to be with Malka Greenberg. Truly, I must, for your sake as well as mine. I cannot stay and sit shivah for my mother. I’d like to leave as quickly as possible.” She swallowed hard, holding back tears. “I love you, uncle, and never in my life will I be able to tell you how dear you are to me. Thank you, thank you for everything.”

She was right, Max thought. If anything happened to him, if he died, she would be completely alone, then there would not even be Malka. Life’s commands—when to stay, when to go … He had never learned, he never would. What was left for him now? Only the prospect of death. Soon, he hoped, soon.

Now, across an ocean, David and Katie remained strangely silent. She looked down at her hands folded in her lap. How many things, she thought, had happened to her. How many lives had been spent and how many events had taken place through all the years so that she could be sitting here next to a young man she did not even know existed until a few short hours ago, revealing things to him that she had not even told Birdie, things she had not wanted to remember. But once started, she found herself unable to stop, and here she had said it all to him, a stranger. When she thought about how casually they had met this afternoon she had the strange feeling of being caught up in something inevitable. Could she call it her destiny …?

“David, forgive me, I hadn’t meant to go on and on.”

Deeply touched, he said, “I’m glad you told me.”

“I’ve done all the talking. Now, David, what about you?”

He looked at her. “What’s there to tell? I’ve used up twenty-three years of my life doing nothing, and the only thing I know for certain is that someday I’m going to grow old and die.”

His hopelessness was like a sharp pain cutting through her. She did not press him, but silently wondered.

The benches they were seated on were back-to-back, and a small boy of about four climbed up behind Katie, examined her hair ribbon, then in one quick gesture untied it, jumped off the bench and ran away, with David chasing quickly after him. After David caught the child and retrieved the ribbon, he returned to where they were sitting and handed it to Katie.

As she pulled her hair back to retie the ribbon David said, “No, please don’t, I think your hair looks so, well, so nice that way.” He looked at her—her hair falling softly about her shoulders, her lovely eyes the color of blue hyacinths as she sat so near him in her white dress, she reminded him of a Goya painting he’d seen once at the Metropolitan Museum.

The ferry had come into port and now was docking. They sat and waited for the others to get off, wanting to be the last to leave.

After David had taken her home and said good night, he waited for her to disappear inside the doorway. Leaning against the lamp post, he lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. He looked up, hoping she would come to the window, before finally flipping the cigarette away and walking toward home.

It was twelve o’clock before Katie slid past Sammy’s narrow bed in the hall. Quietly she opened the bedroom door, but Birdie was sitting up in bed in the dark, waiting. All evening she had been a nervous wreck anticipating the most horrendous things. She knew that she could handle men—look how she handled Solly—but Katie was something else again; she was green and David knew his way around plenty. All evening she’d been apprehensive over letting her go alone on a boat ride. After all, what did Birdie really know about David? What if she had gone to school with him, what did that mean? She didn’t know him as a date, and what girl could resist that gorgeous hunk of flesh? For a minute she wondered if she would have used the same tactics with David that she had used with Solly, confessing that she doubted it very much. With her arms folded across her chest, she demanded, “All right, so tell me, where have you been since four-thirty today?”

Katie threw her arms around Birdie’s neck. “Birdie, I’ve met the most wonderful boy!” She hesitated, drew in her breath, and said, “You won’t laugh if I tell you something?”

“No, I won’t laugh, I hope. So what is it?”

“I think I’m in love.”

“Oh that’s great, one time you go out and you’re already in love. Congratulations. Now tell me, what did you do?”

“We went on the boat ride and then David took me to dinner. And after dinner we went for a long walk and just talked about everything …”

“What kind of everything?”

“Oh, about books, and paintings, and music.”

“Well, that sounds just lovely,” Birdie said sarcastically, as though she believed for one minute that anybody could talk for eight hours about books, music and paintings. She knew better than that, knowing all too well these east side Romeos. Sure she’d wanted Katie to meet David, but not this way. There should have been a chaperone along and who better than Birdie since she had been the shadchen, the matchmaker, especially with an innocent like Katie on her first date with a boy, and someone like David Rezinetsky, no less! “O.K., now be honest with me, I’ll understand. What did he do? Did he get fresh, did he try to do something like … Oh, you know what I mean. Did he?” Birdie was so serious that Katie started to laugh when she became irritated and repeated, “Well,
did
he?”

“Oh, Birdie, you darling goose. He didn’t even kiss me good night.”

All her careful planning down the drain … hadn’t even kissed her good night. She should have known that someone like David wouldn’t go for Katie. Sweet and lovable as she was, she was so plain; Birdie should have insisted that she at least use some lipstick. After all, David had turned down the best-looking girls on Hester Street—her, for example. She kept her thoughts to herself and finally fell asleep, to dream of new and bolder stratagems….

David stood outside his flat now. Looking at the closed door, he realized how impossible it would be for him after the evening he had just spent with this lovely girl to go to bed and lie alongside his brother Ben’s sweating body, to go to sleep smelling freshly fermenting garbage in the alley below. He turned and went up the stairs to the roof, then over to the parapet and looked over. It was not quite the same sight he had seen earlier today. All he had come back to was the ghetto’s imprisonment that he felt deep inside himself. For him there was no beauty here, and no love. He turned around and saw the wash drying on the clothes line, walked over and took down a towel, rolled it up into a ball to use as a pillow and lay down with his hands behind his head, looking up at the stars. Close enough to reach out and touch.

He thought about Katie. Certainly he’d never imagined meeting anyone like her, or that someone like her existed. She had been to Paris, she played the piano, she had attended a private school. How strange that she was happy here with the Greenbergs in the ghetto when she had known that other life, that she was happy in a place that he found so oppressive. How could she settle for this? Of course her life had been lonely and he could understand why she’d needed to leave; but to be happy and content here, this was something he found impossible to understand.

He could sense her now, sitting alongside him. He had wanted to run his fingers through her hair earlier, but he had resisted then. Suddenly he became warm from desire for her, wishing she could be next to him at this very moment. He’d felt this way when they said good night, yet he hadn’t even kissed her. Why? He shrugged it off, telling himself he had only been fascinated by her, she was so different…. That’s all it was, really, but … the question still persisted. If he found her all that fascinating and desirable, why hadn’t he kissed her good night. Was it because he thought she was so naïve and untouched? No, it had nothing to do with her naïveté. And then the thought rushed at him: it was quite simple—he had fallen in love with her. Yes, unbelievably, impossibly, it apparently had happened to him the way the oldest stories said it did, and the way he had long since promised himself it never would….

In love? Oh, my God, no, he couldn’t be in love, he wasn’t
ready,
he couldn’t afford to be in love! How could he? He couldn’t even support himself, much less a wife. What was he thinking of? Why had he even thought of the words
wife
or
support
? To support someone meant that you had to get married. Married? My God, he was insane! He just met this girl; one didn’t fall in love so quickly, it took time. You don’t take a girl for a boat ride and right away think about getting married. He didn’t even know her. Maybe it was an illusion. He wasn’t going to see her ever again. Isn’t that what he told Solly, just once? By tomorrow he’d forget her; by next week he wouldn’t even remember she existed. He made up his mind, he was not going to be in love.

Running downstairs to his flat, he undressed in the dark, got into bed and spent the worst, most miserable night he could ever remember. Not only that night, but for three nights and three days he kept arguing, fighting, debating with himself. He was not going to see Katie, he was going to forget her, cut her out of his thoughts. Why not? He was too strong-willed to allow a girl,
a mere girl
he met once, to make him fall in love with her. Nothing was strong enough to make him change his mind. Fine, finished, period.

Except now, he found himself waiting just beyond the tenement where the Greenbergs lived, waiting for Katie and Birdie to come home from work. Maybe, he reasoned, if he saw her once more he would realize how stupid he had been to have plagued himself. He took out a cigarette. When he struck the match his hand shook. Taking a deep breath, he moistened his lips and tried to compose himself. He wanted to run away, he still had time; but when he saw Katie and Birdie approach, he knew … knew it was too late. Birdie was already saying, “Hi, Dave.” He shrugged his shoulders. Later he couldn’t even remember whether he had answered or not. All he could focus on was trying to disguise his joy at seeing Katie, a joy mingled with irritation and surprise at his own weakness—he still thought of it that way. “How are you, Katie?” He hoped it sounded casual. When she smiled in reply he felt his heart pound. When he heard her voice … “Fine, David, and you? How are you?” … just those few words, that’s all … she was
real
all right. Just the smile…. And he heard himself saying, as though he had no will of his own, “Fine … thanks, are you busy tonight?” “No.” “Would you like to go for a walk or to a movie?”

Birdie interrupted, “What about supper? Mama’s got supper ready. Want to come up, Dave, and eat first?” He had forgotten Birdie was there. “No,
thanks
.”

“But you got to eat,” she said, suddenly disliking him enormously. After all, she had been the matchmaker and he was treating her like some kind of intruder. Maybe Solly was right, he was a schmuck, a snob. What, her house wasn’t good enough for him? She wished she had never started the whole affair. She didn’t feel less offended when David passed over her again and asked Katie directly, “Would you like to eat out?”

Katie looked at Birdie, “Do you think it would be all right?”

“Why … what’s not to be all right? Go … go and have fun.”

Katie knew Birdie was hurt. David had been rude, but why he had been rude, she didn’t know nor could she understand. She felt vaguely guilty, but she wanted so badly to be with David that her loyalties to Birdie were overruled. She kissed Birdie on the cheek and said she would be home early, then left with David as Birdie stood watching them walk down the street until they were out of sight.

The Greenbergs were seated in their usual places at the kitchen table when Katie came in. Birdie looked at the clock. It was only seven-thirty. “How come you’re home so early?” Katie shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed David was tired and said he had a big day tomorrow.”

“Some date. The Romeo, the big Beau Brummell of Hester Street was tired.” Birdie was about to go on when Malka asked, “Did you eat, Katala?”

“No … I wasn’t hungry.”

“Come, sit down. The stuffed cabbage is still hot.”

Before Katie could answer, Birdie interrupted, “What? The big spender couldn’t take you somewhere for a bite. In our house, he didn’t want to eat.”

“Please, Birdie, that’s not true, I just didn’t feel hungry. We did have coffee.”

“Ha—that must have set him back a whole dime.”

Malta was mystified at Birdie’s attitude. “That’s enough already, Birdie, with the big mouth. Now, Katala, sit down and I’ll fix tea.”

Katie bit her lip to stop from crying, “Thank you, but may I be excused?” Before anyone could say another word, Katie walked quickly to the bedroom and shut the door behind her, stood at the window and let the tears tumble down her cheeks. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. She didn’t look around as Birdie entered and for the first time Katie was angry, confused with Birdie. In fact, she was confused about a great many things. Most of all about David’s reactions to her during their brief time together. He had said little. In fact, they seemed to have little to say to one another. Sitting across the table at Plotkin’s, drinking coffee, there was an awkward silence between them, as though David’s mind was a million miles away. To break the silence she asked, “David, do you like your work?” He looked up from the coffee and said, “You bet I love it. In fact, you know, I had the opportunity to be a banker, but I turned it down. Sure, I even turned down being gentile and picked Jewish.”…