To America and Back
Page 31
Humik hired a room in Nahalat Benjamin Street in Tel Aviv. He remembered strolling in that street in his childhood with his mother. It had been The Textile Marketing Street in Tel Aviv since its establishment, and Ramona bought there for Nahumik a nice black beret, that from then on was ‘recognized sign’ on his head, while studying in his Rabbi’s class, and also in Torah classs lessons in the elementary school, in which he was a pupil.
Now he began living above a store of Fabric Rolls there, and was jealously looking at some carriers, bringing rolls to stores by tricycles or bicycles. He decided that first of all he would visit his childhood town, and then search some work to do, maybe here nearby, in the Textile street.
Four days after having arrived in the country, Humik took a bus to his hometown.
He walked to the ‘Brethern Grave’, in which Elkano had been buried. Winter tall nettles were growing between the graves. The graveyard has been much extended since his boyhood, and twenty or more graves’ rows had been added there. On the new stones there were engraved names that he had known in his childhood. A cursed Scythe, called ‘Time’- had sowed their lively souls and hidden their physical bodies in the ground.
He felt subdued, his heart filled with heavy gloomy memories. He quickly left the place and his eyes were looking around. Trunks of the avenue’s ‘religious Ficus‘ trees have become thicker, and their heavy long branches were reaching inside coutyards of people who Humik had once known by their names. Then he was surveying faces of passers-by. Some he had remembered, but none of them identified him. ‘ I know,’ he said to himself ,’that most of the people I see now – came to the country after my family had left it. They have settled inside the town or in the new suburbs. In the first years they were living in temporary tents and tin huts. Afterward – the State began to build terraced or semi detached long buildings for them. Everyone will have his own apartment there. Some would become rich – and will move to the old center, which had already been partly destroyed, and re-built. The new blocks of flats will replace old-one story houses, that heirers of the town’s establishers would sell to constructors. They will soon build almost sky scrappers here, without having a sentiment to the old little town, that I had memorized in my mind…
I see men walking, and I don’t recognize them. I know the faces of obscure figures, like emerging from an old drawing in black and white. Their steps are pounding on the sidewalk with such a strong assurance that everything is theirs. What claim may I have
here? They have captured the stage of life in this place. They- and not those far forgotten dead heros… Oh, veiled curtain of my precious childhood! Woe to its exposed and hidden secrets, the lighted and the dark…
At last Humik came again to the main street near the Synagogue square. Old Major Davidovitch was walking toward him there, on the paved square.
“Excuse me,” said Humik, “Do you you remember me?”
“No,” answered the man.
“I’m Nahumik, the son of widowed Ramona, who had married the Photographer Kaplansky; and we had left the place.”
“Oh, You have grown up!” the man complimented Humik. He remembered the fact that Humik had been Rabbi Aron’s pupil. “He has passed away,” said Davidovitch, “Blessed be his memory. The annoucements about the funeral were hanging here recently, but now they have already been replaced by fresh ones. If you can say ‘fresh’ about death.” He smiled bitterly.
Humik felt sorry he had not visited his Rabbi’s grave.
“There is no stone over it yet.” told him the army retired Major.
Humik knew, that most families set up a stone grave only eleven month after a funeral. Such is their Tradition. So, ’if I’ve thought still to visit my living Rabbi – he is no more available.’
Humik was sore. A heavy screen suddenly covered his eyes and he was sitting on a new public bench and saying to himself that the past has passed, dead and buried. Nothing good would grow out of it. He must return to Tel Aviv, and that’s it. Everything has been detriorated here, so I feel. Maybe I have to thank my Mom, who has decided to leave the past behind us. If it’s so terrible for me to walk here- even for an hour- and feel so bad, then what would have happened with me if I had continued living here? But the memory of my homeland, that is full of passion to the hidden past – cannot be removed. It’s a kind of pity, telling me that I should not forget the blood that had been shed. I was witnessing this Epos, and my soul is so built, that my demon wouldn’t allow me to run away. It’s better for me to live in this dry land, with a long summer that makes everything grey and beige, and in an automn like this – you would hardly find changing faces of trees and bushes from green to pink to yellow to red to white. It’s a black and white kind of film, this bloody country. I want to cry and weep and love the avenues of these Ficuses, that I don’t remember thier fall of leaves. If I don’t remember that, maybe it’s not important. to me? No, my memory of the green is worth more than reality… Why suddenly had I become joyful? Let me think: Because of my original private name: Nahum. My father chose that name… It had been in those days – when my both grandfathers were strill alive, and all my uncles from either side- my Mom’s or my Pa’s- were also alive. So my father gave me that name of a prophet. It means: the Condoled! I will be condoled. Despite the hollocaust, that had killed all our family, except me and my Mom.
Who’s that man walking ahead of me? The municipality Architect. Hoffman is older than he had been, of course, but he seems still healthy. He was constantly betraying his wife. I had learned it once- from my Mom’s conversation with her friend Hemda, who said: ”Hoffman and his wife Shifra believe in Stalin; and she believes her husband like she believes in the dictator. Can you imagine?” Now Stalin is dead, and his believers believe in his heirs in Russia. They preach for ‘eternal peace and arms control’, and on the other hand they’d made a contract with Egypt for a huge Arms’ supply. And I’ll have to face these weapons. But I’ve read that Israel now has also good weaponry. Now is not the War Of Independence period. Elkano hardly had a rifle, and now we have many kinds of arms, airplanes and tanks and artilery. Hopefully we won’t use them…
Humik returned to Tel Aviv. In the afternoon he began to search for a job. He looked around and saw a young chap, riding a bicycle – with a roll of fabric for women dresses on his shoulder. “Excuse me,” said Humik, “maybe you need an additional carrier there, in your store?”
“Follow me to Number thirty four,” said the chap, named Simon Hilely. His boss liked Humik, and gave him a chance. Sometime he should carry at once two fabric rolls, so he told the guy. But most of these are made of French silk, which isn’t heavy.”
Humik felt quite well in that job, and decided to stay there. His earning was less than in The NY Cellar or with Mike, but it was sufficient for him. Also – his mother would not neglect him, he knew. Ramona would get used to idea, that her son is in Israel.
CHAPTER 32