Too Many Men (30 page)

Still, the mess disturbed her. She wanted to sweep the old leaves that had gathered against the wall. She wanted to get rid of the stubbles of straw and the cigarette butts, and the dust. She kicked a couple of old rags to one side, until they were in front of the building next door. Then she remembered, her grandfather had owned that building, too. She kicked the rags into the gutter. She wanted to get a bucket and a scrubbing brush and

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scrub the pavement clean. She wanted to get down on her hands and knees and clean the street herself. She told herself that she was being ridiculous.

She had seen other Jews in Poland. Jews like herself. Looking for something that was no longer there. Looking for gravesites of mothers and fathers who were never buried. Looking for monuments and testaments to the existence of people. People who were extinguished without fanfare or comfort. Without prayers. Without tombstones and headstones. Without anyone at their side.

Ruth had met Jews who had traveled to Poland to erect plaques in the birthplace of lost mothers and fathers. Plaques listing the family members who once lived there. In return for permission to put up the plaques, the Jews contributed money. Money for the upkeep of the town square, or money to build a public park. Polish officials were, on the whole, pleased with these arrangements. And so were the Jews. This way they had a site, a marker, a memorial. A place to visit and sit with their dead. A place to pay their respects.

Housing the dead seemed to Ruth to be an essential part of life. She wasn’t sure why it was so important. The dead were absent. They were absent regardless of whether their memories were enshrined in a vault or tombstone. Or their names engraved on plaques and monuments. The dead were as absent as they could be. A dwelling place for the dead was really an address for the living. A place where the living could commune with those who were out of reach of regular communication. On the surface the fixtures and fittings of death, such as cemeteries and gravesites, seemed unnecessary. The obstacles to communion with the dead seemed less tangible than the problem of a clearly marked location for the meeting.

Still, she wanted to clean up this particular location. She contemplated hiring someone to keep at least the exterior of 23 Kamedulska Street clean.

She decided that that was absurd. What would she be keeping clean? A memory? You couldn’t sweep and scrub and wash memories. Memories came with their own degrees of cleanliness and comfort.

“Why can’t they keep this place clean?” Ruth said to Edek.

“What for?” he said. “For us? It could be the cleanest street and the cleanest building in all of Poland and it would not make any difference to us.”

T O O M A N Y M E N

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“They should clean it out of a respect for the memory of those people whose lives they moved into,” said Ruth.

“It is too late for respect,” Edek said.

Edek was carrying a dozen red roses and a box of Lindt chocolates. A four-pound box of Lindt chocolates. The roses were beautiful. Tall, volup-tuous, full-bodied roses. They were a deep red. The color of blood. Her mother had loved roses.

“Mum did like roses very much,” Edek said.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Ruth.

“We think alike, me and my daughter,” Edek said. Ruth thought that Edek must have forgiven her her irritation at his solo outing.

“We do, don’t we?” she said. She took the roses from Edek. “You give Mrs.

Whatever-her-name-is the chocolates and I’ll give her the roses,” she said.

They had bought the roses at an open-air market. The market had had a life force that was scarce in Lódz. Rows and rows of brown eggs had suggested a fecundity, a fertility that appeared at odds with the matte gray sky and flat air. Mounds of big round brown onions and bright red potatoes seemed to be bursting with life. The carrots looked strong and orange. Not pale like most city carrots. And the cabbages as big as beach balls seemed almost carnal. The street market had buoyed Ruth’s spirits. The people shopping at the market had looked less grim than most of the other residents of Lódz. They had seemed more robust. Almost cheerful.

Ruth and Edek had planned to catch a tram to Kamedulska Street. But all the trams were crowded. And Ruth didn’t want to stand in the middle of a crowd of Poles. All of the yellow and white trams in Lódz, were always packed. Packed with dour passengers. All immobile. All frowning. Jammed in on their way to somewhere. Ruth wondered why the trams were always packed. The buses were always crowded, too. Where were all of these Poles going?

“Shall we go inside?” she said to her father.

“We got the flowers and the chocolates,” he said. “Why not?”

In the hallway, Ruth was distracted by the ceiling. The ceiling was patched in several places. Large rough patches of brown concrete had been

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smeared over what must have been cracks and leaks. It was a particularly unpalatable shade of brown. The ceiling looked shit-stained. Patched and repaired with excrement.

“I’m sorry I made you come to Poland,” she said to Edek.

“You did not make me,” Edek said.

“It was my idea,” said Ruth.

“Maybe it was not such a bad idea to see how it looks now,” Edek said.

“You’re just being nice to me,” Ruth said. “I don’t feel at all good, in Poland.”

“Who would feel good in such a place?” Edek said.

“Looks like not even the Poles,” Ruth said. “They don’t look like the happiest people on earth, do they?”

“Shoosh,” he said to her. “Do not speak like this.”

“Nobody in this building understands English, I’m sure,” she said.

“Anyway, why do we care about offending them? I don’t care if I offend them.” Edek shook his head and walked up the stairs. “Sorry, Dad,” she said. “I know this is not easy for you.”

Ruth and Edek stood outside the door of the apartment. Edek must have stood in this very spot so many times in his life, Ruth thought. He was still living there with his mother and father when he was twenty-one and twenty-two. He was there for part of his twenty-third year. Ruth looked at the door of the apartment. She felt a sense of dread. She wished she was back in New York. Back in New York, where the unfamiliar was more familiar than anything here.

“Come on,” said Edek. “Let us go in.” He knocked loudly on the door.

Ruth was surprised by the vehemence in his knock. She thought that she herself wouldn’t have had so much boldness in her knock. Her knock would probably have been timid. A timidity designed to hide her rage.

A woman opened the door. At first glance, it appeared as though the woman had an exceptionally large head. Then Ruth realized it was the woman’s hair that was huge. Some of this oversized hair was held in place by a scarf. The hair was bright red. The scarf that was attempting to restrain the hair was green. Ruth was disconcerted by both the color coor-dination and the volume of hair. Elderly women didn’t usually possess such unruly hair. And the red and green looked terrible together. Of course, Ruth realized, this red expanse of hair was not growing on the T O O M A N Y M E N

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woman’s head. It was a wig. It was somebody else’s hair. Or maybe it was nylon.

The woman’s face was lined and hard. She smiled at them. Her features rearranged themselves for the smile. Her face remained hard. “Come in, come in,” she said. Her lips stayed almost fixed while she mouthed a series of obsequious welcome greetings. Ruth felt frightened. She walked behind Edek into the apartment. The old woman looked carefully at the gifts of roses and chocolates, and then handed them to her husband. “Sit down, sit down,” she said. She took the rocking chair for herself. Ruth and Edek sat, facing her, on the sofa. It was warm in the apartment. Ruth was shivering.

She moved closer to her father. Edek looked at her. “I’m just a bit cold,”

she said.

“There was nothing in this building,” the old woman said. “When I moved here, the whole building was empty.” Ruth was startled. How could the woman lie like that? Ruth knew she had understood what the woman had said. “She moved in in early 1940,” Ruth said to Edek. “Everything was still here.” Edek asked the woman if the building had other tenants when she had arrived. “No one else was here,” she said. “The building was empty.” The old woman had said this facing Ruth. Ruth tried to hide her expression of disbelief.

“We have a lot of trouble with this building,” the woman said. “Nobody will fix anything, as you can see. It is a broken-down building and not worth any money at all.”

“I am not at all interested in reclaiming the building, kind madam,”

Edek said. “What do I want to trouble myself with a building in Lódz for?

Please, kind madam, I live in Australia, on the other side of the world.

What use would I have for this building?”

“Nobody pays their rents,” the old woman said. “So you would not make any money from this building.”

“Of course not, madam,” Edek said.

“The tenants would pay rent, of course, if someone looked after the repairs needed,” she said.

“Of course,” Edek said.

“It would not be easy to get this building from the current owner,” the old woman said with a sigh. She rolled her eyes. “The owner is a very difficult man.”

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“Please, please, please,” Edek said. “I did not come here to try to reclaim the building.” Edek looked at Ruth. “Do you understand what she is saying?” he said.

“I can understand what she’s saying,” Ruth said.

What were they terrified of? Ruth wondered. If the current landlord was so mean wouldn’t anyone else be preferable? Even a Jew? Probably not, she thought. Not if the Jew was around, in person. Maybe that prospect was what was frightening them. The thought of Jews returning was clearly not a palatable thought.

“Tell her this is the last place on earth you’d want to live in,” Ruth said to Edek. He ignored her. “I meant, tell her you’re committed to your life in Australia. You wouldn’t possibly be in a position to move back to Lódz.”

Edek looked puzzled. “I just want her to know that there’s no chance she’s going to be surrounded by Jews again.”

Edek explained that he was not planning to return. The old woman looked relieved. “Ask her if there wasn’t anything small left behind,” Ruth said. “Like mezuzahs, or candles or photographs. Tell her you’re only interested in those things of no value other than their sentimental value to you.”

“There was nothing here,” the old woman said. “Nothing?” Ruth said to Edek. “That is impossible. No one cleared the apartments out of all of the inconsequential stuff or anything else. A few Gestapo officers might have looked for valuables, but everything else was left just as it was.”

“There was not one thing in any of the apartments in this building,” the woman said. She was still wearing her scarf. She must keep it on all the time, to contain that wild wig, Ruth thought.

“There were no books, no photographs?” Edek said.

“I have said to you,” the woman said, “there was nothing.” The old man came out of the kitchen.

“I can vouch for that,” he said. “I came not too long after her and the place was completely empty.”

Edek winced. Ruth looked at him. His face was contorted.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“I am fine, fine,” he said. But he didn’t look fine. “I did see, in the corner, a bowl which did belong to my mother,” Edek said to her. Ruth looked shocked. “Please,” Edek said. “Do not let her see that I saw this.”

Ruth looked in the corner. On top of a small chest of drawers was an T O O M A N Y M E N

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ornate, engraved oval silver serving dish. She started trembling. “Do not look at it, she will see,” Edek said. Ruth tried not to stare at the oval silver bowl.

“There was nothing in this building,” the woman said. “The Jews took everything with them.”

“So she knew that it was Jews who lived here?” Ruth said. “At least she’s admitting something.”

As though she had understood what Ruth had just said the old woman said, “Everybody knew this was the Jewish area,” to Edek. Ruth thought that her tone must have alerted the old woman to what she was saying.

“Of course, of course,” Edek said to the old woman.

“Ask her where all the Jews went.” Ruth said. Edek asked.

“The Jews moved to bigger apartments,” the woman said.

“Jews are always moving on to bigger and better things,” Ruth said to Edek.

“I wasn’t here when the Jews moved out,” the old man said.

No one appeared to have been there when the Jews moved out, Ruth thought. No Poles at all. Where had they all been when that endless strag-gling procession of Jews, carting whatever possessions they could, had walked through Lódz? Were the Poles out celebrating? Did they know they would soon be relocating to the dwellings that the Jews were forced to leave? For the poorer Poles, it must have been quite a bonanza, quite a bonus. It must have seemed like Christmas.

“Could we offer to buy the silver serving dish?” Ruth said to Edek.

“Please,” Edek said. “Do not look at it. She will see you.”

“I’d really like to buy it,” Ruth said.

“What for?” said Edek.

“I’d just like to keep it with me,” Ruth said. “To hold it and look at it.”

“It is not a person,” Edek said. “It is just a dish.”

“It’s probably solid silver,” Ruth said.

“My father liked to buy silver for the table for
Shabbes,
” Edek said.

They were both quiet.

“I didn’t know anything about what was happening to the Jews,” the old woman said. “I knew nothing myself,” the old man said. “I was in Cze˛stochowa.”

“It wasn’t happening to the Jews of Cze˛stochowa?” Edek said to the old

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man. Edek looked uncomfortable as soon as he had said this, as though the sentence had propelled itself out of its own accord. Edek shifted uneasily on the sofa. Ruth could see he was distressed at what he had blurted out. She could see that it was far more accusative than he had intended. Ruth smiled at the old man, in an effort to dilute the discomfort.