The Lion Seeker (35 page)

—Hey? It's only here for three here. Izen it?

—Correct. Three.

—This is bullshit. You can't—you saying she has to pick three? Only three?

—Isaac, this is how it is.

—It's ganna twist her guts to hell man. And top of it, you say they can cancel? What you tryna do to her? The woman could die man. You don't know. She could actually die.

A silence for words but not for Isaac's hard breathing.

—I see, says Papendropolous.

—No you don't
see
. Sitting there fancy suit. You playing roller coasters with her, shmock! It's not right. I don't wanna put her through that. I mean, why's he making her choose? I mean it is
sick
hey. She got five—
he
knows. Five—

Papendropolous puffs air, checks his watch. —Isaac, this is the deal. This is what's on offer to you. Is what you telling me a no? Is no what you want? You want me to leave?

— . . . I dunno.

—Well, find a way to know.

—Oright. Calm your berries. Just hang on, I gotta think.

—This is a generous offer, believe me. A person has to work with what can be done, with realistic options. I was you, I wouldn't stare too long down the mouth of a gift horse. The thing might gallop away. Isaac, you have to be a grown-up.

Watching the forms, Isaac nods slowly.

—Just remember, says Papendropolous.

He looks up. Papendropolous brings a vertical forefinger to his fleshy lips.

Tiredly, Isaac nods again.

 

He listens at his parents' door, his sister's. Deep night breaths in the dark house. Silent but for the submarine knocking of his own heart in the liquid blackness of his chest. He lifts the cashbox and takes it with the papers out into the yard. In the outhouse he uses two paper clips on the lock—old trick of his barefoot days—one clip to keep pressure and the other to ease back the tumblers inside. He opens the box, sets down the cash tray at his ankle. Insects coat the single bulb on the long wire above. He turns over the copies of the passports, the government forms, the personal letters. He reads. Reads again what Papendropolous gave him. An hour evaporates like a minute in the glare of his time-burning attention.

Five Moskevitch sisters: Orli, Friedke, Dvora, Trudel-Sora, Rochel-Dor. Four husbands for them: Pinchus Snyman, Shlayma Kirtzbacher, Yossel Melkin, Benzil Kreb. And then all of their children. Then a yellowed letter in the trove draws his contemplations sideways, to his father. The document dates back to April 1911, seems to be a ministry notice, with a coat of arms and words in Russian, must be. Above them in a tiny hand someone has written in Hebrew characters, translating it, surely. The lines call on Abel Levitz Helger to report to the police station in Kovno within ten days, for service in the First Cavalry Regiment in Syzran (here the handwritten words have an additional slant above—
hundreds of miles east of Moscow!
, it says). His term of service is twenty-one years. Twenty-
one
, Isaac thinks. His father would have been, what, seventeen years of age? It says he will receive five rubles if he brings his own boots
(nice of them!
add more slanted words above); eleven kopecks for earmuffs. It floods Isaac with hot shame to remember how he has thought of his father as a coward for dealing with this as he did. No money to grease an official to lose his file; no other way to get away. He must have gone off alone to do it. Isaac imagines the woods in springtime, the white lilies in bloom, the smell of moss and mushrooms. Birdsong. Maybe carrying this very letter in one pocket, maybe in his other he had a hammer and a chisel or just a sharp heavy blade, and he must have had matches to make a fire to heat a brand for the cauterizing. Christ, Tutte. He would have prayed, ja, would have spoken the Shmah for sure: The Lord is the God of Israel. The Lord is One.

But the Moskevitch sisters are still waiting when his attention swings back, their words and images staring up. His thighs have gone numb. There is enough information here to fill out the forms by himself; but information is not the problem, deciding is. Orli lives in Dusat still, so do Friedke and Trudel-Sora. Orli is single, but Friedke has Pinchus and five children, Zalman, Shayna, Tuvya, Mensil and Koppel. Only Koppel is fourteen, the rest older. Trudel-Sora and Yossel have four—Dina, Midya, Dassa and Offir-Gan—and all minors but for one. She seems an easy choice because she has three youngsters who can be included. Friedke has more kids but to choose her would be to split her family; what, would they leave their four oldest behind? Then there's Orli, single Orli—she would have no chance in his calculations but for the fact that these three sisters are still together in Dusat and maybe should stay together? No. Let Orli remain to help the older nephews and nieces who must stay behind. Then there's Dvora, married to Shlayma Kirtzbacher and living in Rokishik with two, Shimmy and Chaya. And then there's Benzil and Rochel-Dor who suffered miscarriages and lost not one but two children to some unnamed and un-understood illness and finally have only one little girl, Ilana, and live in Ponevez. To choose to get the maxium number of human beings out or to make some other kind of determination? One thing the letters make clear, there is no possibility that any one of them would turn down the chance to leave. It's bad over there.

Mame was a kind of mother to her sisters after their real one died. God, which ones to pick, how to decide? He feels weak, sick. His thighs tingle electrically. Sitting on the shitbox with the lives of his relatives under his hands like some devil king on a reeking throne. But he's becoming sure: he will not bring Mame into this torturous business, not now, not until some good is absolutely assured. No, he's not like any devil, let alone a king; just a son with a good heart, shielding his mame from needless suffering. He nods to himself five times, decided.

IN TOWN HE BUYS
a brannew Philco wireless set, Empire Automatic model. The wireless they used to have died a sad death, fading and crackling to silence some time ago and he gives this one as a gift to Mame to replace it. She doesn't want to take it—a waste of money—but she does because she needs to hear the news from overseas on the SABC. The Philco has excellent reception and a good strong volume so she can hear every word clearly, and she puts it in the workshop where she sits close beside it whenever it's news time, with a pad and a pencil, writing down whatever she thinks she doesn't properly understand so she can ask him or Rively about it later.

The wireless doesn't do any of the things that he hoped it would when he bought it. Doesn't help him feel better about the secret any. Doesn't please her as a gift should, but only makes her worse because of the bad news it pipes into the house like a poison trumpet blowing ill-making fumes all day long.

March is very bad because she listens to how Hitler demands possession of the city and region of Klaipeda, which is in Lithuania. Lithuania! Of all stuffing places it has to be Lithuania. The Lithuanians buckle under German ultimatums and never mind bladey Chamberlain, the Stupid, and all his peace-in-our-time kuk. After Germans seize the port they rename it Memel and Hitler himself sails there on the battleship
Deutschland
, gives a victory speech while thousands of Jewish refugees stream out, beaten by fascists along the way.

She was in a bad-enough way after the trip to Avrom but now her afternoon naps, once unthinkable, have turned into hour-long lie-downs that involve no sleep. He knows this from Abel, who tells him in a whisper how worried he's becoming, how when he checks on her he finds her lying on her back with her eyes wide open and runnels of tears tracing down both sides to the ears. She who never cries. Isaac thinks of that time after he was beaten, when he lay and oozed tears from his cracked soul. He can see that Avrom's refusal to help plus the terror of the bad news is doing to his mother's spirit what the beating did to his: it's the helplessness of being utterly overmatched. It makes you give up. But unlike his thoughts of revenge, she can't just jettison her fears for her sisters backhome.

She has bad dreams, his father says. Bad feelings. She lies there sometimes with the photo albums hugged to her chest. That picture of her hurts Isaac very badly so that he wishes Abel had never shared it with him. To think of her lying like that, all her slender hopes on the little bit of money that she gave to her nephew—it devastates him. She has no idea the money's already long gone, already been spent by Isaac on the business.

At times these thoughts make him want to rush to her and tell her the secret of the immigration forms he has filled out and hidden in the corner of the sewing room, to give her
some
hope at least. But hope for only three of the families would be a fresh torture; and it's hope that might turn to nothing at all. The fall from it would kill her. No, he has no doubt he's doing right—let him be strong as a lion and take this on himself. Avrom's refusal has done enough damage to her as it is. But the secret is very hard to keep. In May the booming wireless for weeks follows the drama of an ocean liner called the
St. Louis
, a German vessel with about a thousand Jewish refugees limping around the world's oceans looking for a place to land. But no one wants Jews, South Africa included. In the end they go back to Europe, four countries reluctantly agreeing to take a few Jews each.

Mame goes around with crying eyes, even if there're no tears. He understands: reading their words in the night in the sewing room, doing his secret filling-in of the forms, there were moments he also cried, so hard sometimes he had to take care not to drip on the letters and leave clues of his spying. Reading them he saw what Mame saw through their sentences, flashes in himself from that long ago, sometimes the faces of the photo albums fluidly moving to life again. Remembering Auntie Dvora giving him the wooden bucket stained with berry juices to carry while she lifted him onto her hip. Remembering Auntie Trudel-Sora doing tricks with her plump fingertips brushing her lips, going
brim-brom-broomdubu! brim-brom-broomdubu!
, making him dizzy with giggling. There was much in the Yiddish text slanted in longhand Hebrew characters without vowels that escaped him, his knowledge of the written language not enough to extract the deepest sense of what these documents carry, and maybe that was for the better, for the news is perpetually bad. Another anti-Semitic incident or measure taken, another one killed by sickness, another financial hardship, another lucky one able to leave for Africa or Argentina or America and bless The Name this and bless The Name that, as if the harder their lives the more they must profess their love to the deity that wields their groaning fate.

But nowhere in his scanning did he ever find the name of Hershel or Suttner or Avrom. Not once.

 

At the Reformatory he drives himself savagely, working late and rarely breaking. And when he's with Yvonne he kisses her and caresses her with a new ferocity, like she's prey in his lion claws, like he's devouring her down to the toes with the force of his love, and sometimes she'll turn away from him with a kind of fright in her green eyes and then he'll hold her and whisper to her, tell her it's all right, whatever she's worried about, whatever it is, it's nothing to them, nothing can affect
them
when they're together like this, nothing . . . 

He finds himself telling some of this to Hugo, over mugs of sweet tea laced with whisky, dipping rusks into the brews between sips and mouthfuls; but his feelings knot up his tongue and ball in his chest so that his hesitant words trail off and he shakes his head.

—Boyki, I can see there's only one cure for you left. Dr. Bleznik's seen this disease too many times.

—You're an arse, Hugo.

—No, genuine, you ganna like this. Leave to me.

Soon after, Hugo takes him to a sunny spot and brings something out of his pocket that he holds to the light. —See how it sparks. That's the carbons. Nothing else on earth like it.

Isaac swears.

—Can thank me anytime boyki.

—No. This a real one? No.

—Diamond is as diamond does, my friend. And sterling silver. Put that on her pretty little finger and you got yourself an official engagement. Most times Dr. Bleznik will try and save the patient, but I can see you too far gone. You a terminal case.

Isaac blinks at the bright tiny stone. —Wait. Are we paying for this?

—Relax yourself boyki. Not exactly the crown jewel is it? Anyway it's not costing us tuppence. S'a favour of a favour from an ou I know down Kimberley way. From me to you. So take it and smile. You ganna need all the smiles you can get.

Isaac picks it off the plump palm. —Holy shit man, Hugo. I dunno what to say.

—Say thank you Dr. Bleznik. And if—I mean when—she says yes, try and edge me in to see the father-in-law hey. Couldn't hurt to let him in on investment of a lifetime, why not.

Isaac answers this with a long stare. Hugo looks away. —Oright, oright. Sorry.

—You better be.

He takes the ring to Chertkov the jeweller and has him engrave
Isaac & Yvonne Forever
on the silver. It's in his pocket when he picks her up the following Saturday but his plans for a nice romantic supper don't unfold as she's dying to see a new American flick called
The Wizard of Oz
, some fairy-tale nonsense starring a girl called Judy Garland. They're having a one-night-only early screening at the Metro Theatre, biggest and most larney in town, and it won't be back for months for general release, so Isaac shelves his plans and drives to the Metro instead to buy them overpriced tickets and make Yvonne happy. In the dark his work-tired body grows slack. He was nervous before about the ring, what he would say exactly when he took it out, and as the nervousness fades his eyelids sag. He falls asleep before the end of the newsreel. Yvonne's elbow wakes him up at the credits. —Now
that
was what I call a bladey good film, he says.