Too Many Men (32 page)

“I didn’t know about your cousin Herschel,” Ruth said.

“He was already gone before you was born,” Edek said.

“Where did he go?” said Ruth.

“He did not go anywhere,” Edek said. “He did die. In a car accident.

He did not even live long enough to see his son born.”

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“How terrible,” Ruth said. “To survive the Nazis and die in a car crash.”

It was illogical, but Ruth thought that surely all of Herschel’s suffering should have protected him against further tragedy. Ruth felt depressed.

Life was so haphazard and unpredictable.

“I did like Herschel very much,” Edek said. “He was the only one in my family what was alive after the war.”

“Dad,” Ruth said. “Do you think we could buy your mother’s china from those Poles?”

“Forget about it,” Edek said.

“I’d really like to have it,” said Ruth. “Why should they keep using it?”

“Why not?” Edek said. “Who does it hurt? Nobody.”

“Me,” she said. “I don’t want them to have it, firstly, and then secondly, I’d really like to have the set myself. It would be very meaningful to me to have tea from the teapot and sugar from the sugar bowl that your mother used.”

“What sort of meaning does some pieces of china have?” Edek said.

“A lot of meaning, for me,” said Ruth.

“Forget about it,” he said. “I do not want to go back there. For me, it is finished everything what was there.”

They walked back to the Grand Victoria in silence. Edek looked tired.

“Would you like some dinner in your room tonight?” she said to him.

“That is not such a bad idea,” he said.

“It’s been a big day,” Ruth said.

“You can say that again, brother,” Edek said.

When they got back to the Grand Victoria, Ruth ordered some barley soup, a
schnitzel
, and a slice of chocolate cake to be sent up to Edek’s room. She wasn’t hungry herself. Her head was swimming with images of the old man’s teeth, and the pile of wigs, and the gold-edged china. She thought about Herschel, who got to America in order to die, and the general disarray and disorder of the universe. It was enough to take anyone’s appetite away.

Ruth sat on the bed in her room. The room felt airless and depressing.

She was finding it hard to breathe. She used to have trouble taking deep breaths. Her breath felt shallow now. This was an anxiety symptom, she

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L I L Y B R E T T

had discovered, that appeared when she was trying to contain her anger or her excitement. Her breathing felt labored. It definitely wasn’t excitement she was suppressing at the moment.

She decided to have a cup of tea in the lobby. Before she went down she called Edek. He sounded more settled. He had almost reached the end of
The One-Armed Alibi
, he said, and was about to begin
The Hot-Blooded
Heiress
.

“I hope that
The Hot-Blooded Heiress
is good,” Ruth said to him.

“It does not matter if it is good or not,” Edek said. “When I read it, I am living every word.” Ruth thought that the words in
The Hot-Blooded
Heiress
would probably be a lot more comfortable for Edek than the words he had had to hear in Kamedulska Street today.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said to Edek. In the lobby she ordered herself a chamomile tea with lemon and some bread and jam. Plum jam.

The Poles made very good plum jam.

Ruth thought about her grandmother’s china again. The teapot and sugar bowl and milk jug. She had never thought of herself as having a grandmother. It was strange to think of her grandmother’s china. The fact that there was also a matching plate suggested that it must have been part of a dinner service. It must have been a stunning dinner set. The china was very fine and the gold fluting around the edge of the plate was unusual enough to have made it an idiosyncratic choice of tableware. Ruth wondered who had chosen it. Her grandmother? It must have been an expensive purchase. Did women choose those things then? Or did the men buy them?

The silver bowl that Edek had pointed out looked very solid. That must have been expensive, too. It was strange to think of these sophisticated and luxurious accoutrements of everyday life as coming from her own family.

She had grown up poor. She had grown up knowing that there were no family heirlooms. No legacies. No bequests or requests. No family recipes.

No words of advice or pieces of wisdom. It was very strange to think of these pieces of china as part of her past.

Ruth wondered if there was more china than the pieces she had been shown. She thought that the old woman must have known that Edek would recognize the tea set and the silver bowl. But why would the old woman want that? Was the china a carrot? A bait? Was Edek supposed to offer to T O O M A N Y M E N

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buy it? Did the old couple fantasize about the amount of money an old Jew would pay to retrieve something from his former life? Or was the old woman simply flaunting her ownership of the stolen goods? Surely if the old woman had anticipated a sale, she would have given Edek and Ruth some indication of her expectation. Some grounds to begin a negotiation.

But there had been no sign that the old woman or her husband knew that what they were serving up was an invitation.

Ruth didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to upset Edek by suggesting that they return to Kamedulska Street. Yet she wanted the china and the silver bowl. She wanted them badly. She wanted to touch them. To hug them. To hold them to her. She knew they were only inert objects, but they had been held and touched by all the people that she would never be able to hold and touch. They had been touched by her grandmother and grandfather. They had been held and touched by cousins and uncles and aunties. She wanted to hold and touch them, too.

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice said. Ruth jumped. She had been completely immersed in her thoughts. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” the woman said. Ruth looked up. It was the blond woman who had been staring at her yesterday at breakfast. The woman was smiling at her now. “I saw you yesterday,” the woman said. “You were having breakfast with your husband.”

“My father,” Ruth said. “I was having breakfast with my father. I’m not married. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have a boyfriend. I support myself.

I don’t need a man to support me or travel with me.” Ruth was startled at her own response. Why was she being so snappy to a perfect stranger?

“I’m sorry,” the woman said.

“No, I’m sorry,” said Ruth. “I’ve just had a rough few days and my nerves are a bit on edge. I guess not many daughters travel with their fathers. It’s easy to mistake a father for a husband.” Ruth patted her hair.

She felt disheveled. As though her snarled and tangled thoughts had dis-arranged her appearance.

“My father is forty years older than me, though,” she said.

“I assumed you had married an older man,” the woman said. “Your father is very cute.”

“I think that, too, some of the time,” Ruth said.

“I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself,” the woman said. “My name is Martina Schmidt.”

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L I L Y B R E T T

“Ruth Rothwax,” Ruth said. She stood up and extended her hand to the woman. They shook hands.

“Do you mind if I join you for a moment?” Martina Schmidt asked.

“Not at all,” Ruth said. “Please, sit down.” They both sat down. “I noticed you at breakfast,” Ruth said, “not just because you were staring at me, but because everything about you said that you didn’t come from Lódz.”

Martina Schmidt laughed. She was really very pretty, Ruth thought. “I teach here,” Martina said. “I teach at the film school. This is my last semes-ter, and then I go back to Germany, to Berlin. I was staring at you because I couldn’t believe that I was seeing you, again.”

“Seeing me again?” Ruth said.

“I was on the same flight as you from New York to Warsaw,” Martina Schmidt said. “I was two rows behind you, on your right.”

A vague recollection of someone staring at her came to Ruth. She had worked for most of the transatlantic flight. She had known that she was immersing herself in work in order to stave off an already increasing apprehension about arriving in Poland.

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice you,” Ruth said.

“You were busy,” Martina said.

“Can I order something for you?” said Ruth. “I’m in need of comfort, so I’m having the ultimate comfort food, bread and jam.” Martina laughed.

“I like bread and jam very much myself,” she said. “Most Germans do. We eat more bread than any other European country. We make three hundred varieties of bread and we eat nearly two hundred pounds of bread a year per person. During the years after World War II when other food was not so available, we ate three hundred and ten pounds a year for every man, woman, and child in Germany.”

Ruth laughed. “I didn’t know that,” she said. She instinctively liked Martina Schmidt. Anyone who could come up with those statistics had to be an interesting person.

“There is a German saying,” Martina said, “ ‘He who dishonors bread dishonors life.’ ”

“Really?” said Ruth. She thought it would be inappropriate to comment on the irony of Germans honoring life. She called the porter.

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“I will have a vodka,” Martina said to the porter. “I am ordering a comfort of a different sort,” she said to Ruth. “It is my birthday today.”

“Happy Birthday,” Ruth said.

“Thank you,” Martina said. “I was not feeling at all happy. This is my fortieth birthday and I am again alone.”

“I didn’t even notice my fortieth birthday,” Ruth said.

“It is not so much that I will be forty,” Martina said. “But it is the fact that once more I am alone on my birthday.”

“Alone is not such a bad way to be,” Ruth said. “It’s much better than being with the wrong person.”

“I have spent many birthdays on my own,” Martina said.

“Why?” said Ruth. “You’re very beautiful and you work in a glamorous field—the film industry.”

Martina laughed. “I’m not interested in my students, especially the Polish ones.”

“I can understand that,” Ruth said. “Not the not finding students attractive, but the not finding Polish students attractive.” Ruth looked at Martina. She thought Martina might have viewed that remark as too openly anti-Polish. But Martina laughed.

“It is true that Polish people are not the most attractive people in the world,” she said. “But at the film school, I think we have some of the nicest and most interesting of them. Still I am very glad to be leaving Lódz.”

“It’s a pretty depressing city, isn’t it?” Ruth said.

“Very depressing,” Martina said. “Especially for women. Polish men think that all women find all of them very attractive. They look upon women as a combination of a decoration and a servant. I think the servant part is more important to them than the decoration.”

“You qualified in the decorative terms but failed in servitude, did you?”

Ruth said.

“Yes, very much so,” said Martina.

The porter arrived with the vodka. Martina held up her glass.

“Cheers,” she said. Ruth raised her teacup. “Cheers,” she said. She looked at Martina. Martina was beaming. Ruth suddenly felt happy. An inexplicable happiness spread through her. Suddenly Lódz didn’t seem so leaden. So lifeless.

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L I L Y B R E T T

“Why have you spent so many birthdays on your own?” Ruth said. “If you don’t mind me asking the question.”

“I don’t mind,” Martina said. “I was in love with someone for a long time. And it is not so easy to switch your love from one person to another.”

“Of course not,” said Ruth.

“I was staring at you, in the plane, because you reminded me of someone,” Martina said.

“It’s these standard-issue Jewish-Polish looks I have,” said Ruth. “We all look alike.”

“You are Jewish?” Martina said.

“Yes,” Ruth said. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Not to me,” Martina said. “You looked so familiar and yet I could not place where I had seen you.”

“You had seen me before?” said Ruth.

“I thought I had,” said Martina. “It wasn’t just the way you looked, it was something else about you. When I got off the plane, it hit me, it was the way you were moving your leg.”

“Oh, no,” Ruth said. “I didn’t think my leg movements were so obvious.”

“It was not so obvious to other people, I am sure,” Martina said. “But the movements were in groups of ten. Each time you tapped your foot, you did ten taps.”

“You were counting?” said Ruth.

“Almost unconsciously,” Martina said. “You see, the person I was so in love with also tapped his foot like this.”

“Really?” said Ruth.

“It was my husband,” Martina said. “And when I realized that it was the leg movements that were familiar to me, I also realized who you reminded me of. My husband.”

“I look like your husband?” Ruth said. She felt vaguely offended about resembling somebody’s husband.

Martina laughed. “Of course he is not beautiful like you,” she said. “But he is very good-looking. I shouldn’t call him my husband really. He is no longer my husband. He is my ex-husband. When I realized who it was that you reminded me of, I tried to find you, but you had already left the airport.”

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“Why did you want to find me?” Ruth said.

“I don’t know,” Martina said. “Somehow it was this movement with your legs. My ex-husband does exactly the same. It irritates everyone he knows.”

“Lots of people have nervous mannerisms that are similar, I guess,”

Ruth said.

“When I saw you in the hotel,” Martina said, “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had been thinking about Gerhard, my husband, my ex-husband, and then you appeared.”

“Did you come here tonight looking for me?” Ruth said.

Martina looked surprised. “How do you know this?” she said.