The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  “You can do it . . . I mean one can do it,” Tepel said, “but first you have to know if they’re nuts, and how do we find that out?”

  Garfield told Tepel about the basement window with the night light, about the box and the flowered curtain.

  “Did you see the wooden box and the flowered curtain?”

  Garfield shook his head.

  “We’ll go look.”

  Garfield looked at his watch. “It’s after six and Laurel’s an hour and a half from here.”

  “So it’ll be dark when we get there. You said there’s a light.” Tepel held the bottle protectively.

  “How’ll we get there?” Garfield asked.

  “Drive,” Tepel said.

  “I hate to drive.”

  “Nu,” Tepel said, “how did you get from Riverdale to Forty-­seventh Street?”

  “Drove.”

  They capped the bottle, and Tepel started to put it back. But they decided to keep it. And, holding on to each other, and telling each other to be careful, they came down the narrow, steep steps from Tepel’s cubbyhole to the floor of one of the smaller diamond exchanges. Three guards were stationed in front of the doors and windows, all with dogs. But the dogs didn’t growl and the guards waved as the two men crossed the floor between empty glass cases lined with black, gray, and green velvet. Behind the stalls, black safes caught what light there was, and the paintings of deer, vines, and pine trees showed on the shiny black doors of the vaults.

  They drank sparingly as Garfield drove east on the Expressway. Just after Jericho, where they took the turnoff that led away from the ocean and toward the Sound, Tepel said, “I don’t believe any of this, mind you. But it’s a beautiful night . . . look at that moon.” Garfield stared straight ahead.

  “Look at the moon!”

  Garfield looked and nodded.

  “The moon is worth the trip,” Tepel said.

  Garfield didn’t say anything.

  “You don’t believe this either, do you?”

  “I don’t know. Right this minute, I don’t believe anything, except we’ve got too far to go to get there, and too far to get back, and I’m missing The Rockford Files.”

  “You remember,” Tepel said softly, “the first time we took this road?”

  Garfield remembered perfectly. It was his first summer in America, two years after Theresienstadt. It was blazing hot and they’d chartered buses for a picnic at Orient Point. All the girls were bare-­armed, as they’d never have been in the old country, and their smooth pale skin, the fine hair on their forearms, and glimpses of their underarms when they stretched or reached for something, which they did again and again, drove Tepel wild, and he kept drinking warm beer and singing and poking Garfield whenever he spotted a very pretty one. Then Garfield saw Ada in a tight aqua blouse with capped sleeves and breasts that looked soft even in the stiff bras in style then. She sat on the other side of the aisle on the bus, and Garfield stared at the back of her neck, at her soft fat upper arms, at her breasts, and round thighs that he could barely see through her full skirt. Finally he leaned across the aisle and with a frown of concentration on his face, he touched her arm very gently.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d told her in Yiddish. Ada had smiled gently at him, and Tepel stopped laughing because he knew that this was the first time in six years that Garfield had touched a woman.

  There was a little stone house in the park where they had their picnic and she let Garfield take her back of it, and lay next to him in the grass and soft weeds. They heard other couples laughing and breathing hard, saying things to each other, and she lay still on her back in the sun and let him fondle her, then she did the same things to him, but he couldn’t keep an erection long enough that time to enter her. He saw her almost every day after that, until after a week of just touching each other, slowly, more tenderly, he thought, than he’d ever touched anything, he made love to her. She laughed softly and whispered in Russian, “Wonderful . . . oh, wonderful.”

  Tepel gave Garfield the bottle. “You’re thinking of Ada, aren’t you?”

  Garfield nodded and drank a little from the bottle; he wasn’t drunk anymore, or even high, and he didn’t feel as if he had been drunk. He was clearheaded and melancholy.

  “You know”—he switched to Yiddish because he could say things more precisely in Yiddish than he could in English—“with every mile now,” he said, “I believe the inspector and his lover more; I feel as if I’m getting closer to something that Ada got me away from. If it hadn’t been for her and you, and being poor and unconnected, I think that in some way I can’t tell you about, an important part of me would never have gotten out of the camp. But now, driving in the moonlight . . . even here on the highway with the McDonald’s over there and the Roy Rogers across the way, and the people settling down to watch the eight o’clock program, or help their kids with their homework, or make love, or drink Cokes or gin or play cards . . . in the middle of this I feel as if I’m going back to Theresienstadt.”

  Tepel asked in Yiddish, “You think we’ll find something?”

  “I don’t know,” Garfield said, “but if we do, run. Wolf. If they built it, they’ll use it.”

  They were a little drunker when they got to Laurel. They drove past Ryder’s church and the L & L Stationery and Bookstore. They parked the car down the road and walked as quietly as they could, only weaving a little, to the shul. They held each other’s arms and went up the dark path next to the hedge. They squatted painfully next to the window and looked in. They saw the little pig night light, and the box covered with a flowered drape. The drape hung still; the shadows around it were shallow and benign. They were surprised at the tameness of the scene and they looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Big deal,” Tepel said.

  Garfield nodded. “But what would they keep in there?” he asked.

  “Prayer books,” Tepel answered.

  Garfield looked again at the box. It was bigger than he’d first thought. Much bigger. He started to feel uneasy.

  “They’d need a thousand prayer books to fill it,” he said. His voice had gotten softer.

  “So they got other books. Lumber, coats . . .”

  “What books?” Garfield whispered urgently. “Who keeps coats in a basement?”

  Their eyes met and went back to the window. The curtain hung, the shadows didn’t move, but now they could feel something about the room, even through the window.

  Garfield clutched Tepel’s arm. “There on the drape.”

  Tepel saw it too. A stain or smudge of some sort.

  “What color is that?” Garfield hissed.

  “The light’s terrible,” Tepel whispered.

  “I see it, you see it. What color is it?”

  “Gray,” Tepel croaked, and all at once he was more frightened than he’d been in Buchenwald, than he was at night now on 112th Street. He could barely talk. “So the curtain’s old and dirty. They should wash it.” He lost his balance, his elbow smacked the window, and they jumped up and stared into each other’s wide-­open eyes.

  “Gotenyu,” Garfield gasped. They grabbed each other’s hands and stumbled up the path, trying not to make noise. They got past the hedge and ran up the street to the car.

  Garfield drove sixty miles an hour through the shut-­up town to the New York road. He drove like a maniac, and Tepel held the dashboard and swayed back and forth. They were past Riverhead when Garfield pulled off onto a side road and Tepel took the bottle out of the glove compartment. Their hands shook as they held the bottle to their lips, their faces were ghastly pale in the moonlight.

  Garfield took a deep swallow and said, “What’s in the box, Wolf?”

  “I don’t know,” Tepel murmured.

  “In your kishkes, you know. What’s in the box?”

  Tepel answered hoarsely, “The golem.”
r />   †††† Grandfather.

  ‡‡‡‡ Keeping Kosher.

  Chapter 2

  Rachel walked across the grass to Adam’s grave. Leah saw her go and started to cry. But she’d be all right for a few minutes and Rachel sat down on the cool grass and looked at the headstone with his name on it. She felt bitter when she came here. Cheated. She’d dissembled with Hawkins . . . she hated the boys in Brooklyn, she hoped they died horribly. The guards in Belzec, too. The worse, the better. Nothing could be painful enough. “Good,” she whispered at the headstone, “good.”

  But she knew Adam wouldn’t feel like that. What about Willa, he’d say. What about Tom and Eric. Jacob’s my father, and I loved him; I loved them all. But they’re still in the camp, Rachel. They think the world’s Belzec. You’ve got to stop them.

  She lay down flat on her stomach over the grave. He’d know how tired she was and he’d say, Roger will help you.

  “I’m in love with him,” she whispered.

  He wouldn’t answer at first; he’d have to get used to the idea. He’d wonder if she still loved him, if she compared them in her mind. But he’d never ask. He’d ask instead, Does he love you?

  “Yes.”

  Will you marry him or live with him?

  “Yes. But I’m scared.”

  Of what?

  “Of me and Leah having to live with black people who hate us.”

  Leah stopped crying and in the silence she could almost hear Adam laugh.

  Beats the Nazis, he’d say.

  “It’s not funny,” she whispered sharply.

  He’d say he was sorry and he’d be quiet for a moment, looking at her with his head to the side, then he’d put his arms around her. She lay still and could almost feel that firm gentle touch. Tears ran out of her eyes and fell on the grass.

  You loved me, married me, lived with strangers to be with me. Was it worth it?

  “Yes,” she sobbed.

  Then it’s a good bet. A necessary wager, Pascal would say.

  When she got home, the kitchen light was on and she thought Jacob was waiting for her. Leah was still asleep and she carried her into the house and put her down on the mattress in her playpen. Then she took a breath and pushed open the kitchen door. It wasn’t Jacob but Isaac Luria sitting at the kitchen table. All the lights on; they reflected on the white cabinets, the stainless steel sink and refrigerator, and back into her eyes. He looked at her without smiling and she let the door swing shut after her. The Shabbes school book that she thought she’d sent to Tel Aviv was lying on the white metal table.

  “Where did you go this morning?” he asked her, without saying hello.

  “To Riverdale,” she told the truth without thinking.

  “Why?”

  She knew she had to be careful.

  “Who did you see in Riverdale?” He’d left all the lights on on purpose, she thought . . . the third degree. She grinned.

  “What’s funny?” he snapped, and she stopped smiling and just looked at him. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, better-­looking than Hawkins or Levy or Adam. There were carvings of faces like his from Southern Italy, Cyprus, Byzantium. She’d seen his profile in relief on walls carted from the Mediterranean islands and hung in museums. Only his eyes didn’t fit. They were light, gray sometimes, blue others. They were gray in the kitchen light. He didn’t have a cup of coffee or tea in front of him. He’d die before he’d make it himself, she thought. Even the Germans cooked for him. They stared at each other.

  “Would you like coffee or tea?” she asked.

  “Coffee,” he said.

  “Is instant all right?”

  “Fine.”

  She put water up to boil, measured powdered coffee into a cup while he watched. Round one to him, she thought. I’m cooking for him. . . .

  They didn’t talk until the coffee and a plate of cookies were in front of him. Then he said, “It’s a long trip to Riverdale.”

  She couldn’t tell him about Garfield. He’d find out who that was and they’d guess why she needed a rabbi. They’d hide the thing if it existed, and she’d have to find it before she could kill it. If it existed. Lie, she thought.

  “I went to see Rose Pinchik.”

  “Who?”

  “Rose Pinchik. Eli Pinchik’s wife . . . from Sterling Street. They moved to Riverdale when Adam died.”

  “You were so close?”

  Rachel shrugged. “We were friends. She’s never even seen Leah.”

  He opened the book. “The name here is R. Saltzman. Little R. Saltzman.” His eyes were wide and blank. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t look at the book. “I thought it was going to Tel Aviv,” she said.

  “I found it at the shul and read the chapter about Rabbi Loew. Of Prague, of the great Altneushul . . . Did you read it?”

  Rachel didn’t answer.

  “By far the most interesting of the stories . . . I never believed in the Dybbuk . . . Gilgul . . . Samael . . . any of that. . . did you?”

  Still no answer.

  “But the Rabbi Loew’s golem is something else.” He held the book, resting its edge on the table, and opened it facing her and turned the pages until they opened to the picture of the ghetto street. There was the rabbi’s house with leaded windows and the rabbi standing on the cobbled street in his black robe and the shadow that was so big the wall could only contain half of it. Luria held the book and said, “You know, don’t you?”

  “Know what?”

  He laughed softly and her skin prickled.

  “You want to pretend,” he said, “we’ll pretend.”

  He kept the book upright and went on turning the pages. The pictures flashed past her: the ruined Seder table, dead bodies on cobbled streets, the shadow again. She turned her back and emptied his cup and rinsed it. She added more coffee powder, heard the pages stop rustling, and looked around. An androgynous-­looking being filled the page he’d turned to. It had no beard, and the nubs of breasts showed chastely over the body of a huge snake that was coiled around it. It had wild black hair and flat almond-­shaped eyes, its arms were round and heavy, and Rachel knew if she could lift the snake away she’d see a fat slashed-­looking vulva. The painting was two-­dimensional and looked like it was copied from the wall of some Bronze Age tomb.

  She stared at it, fascinated.

  “Do you remember her from Shabbes school, R. Saltzman?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. Meet Lilith. Demon of demons.”

  “Why is she a demon?”

  “She was made from earth, like Adam. At the same time as Adam. But she wouldn’t accept her femaleness. She refused to lie under him.”

  “That made her a demon?”

  “Of course,” Luria said, matter-­of-­factly.

  “What happened to her?” Rachel asked.

  “She defied Adam, she defied God, she spoke the forbidden name and flew off into the air, then fell into the Red Sea,” Luria said. Rachel wanted to laugh in his face.

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “She comes back at night, seduces men in their sleep, then steals their . . . emissions.” He smiled at the word. “And uses them to beget more demons. In some of the stories she strangles newborn infants, including her own. There’s an amulet against her and I wanted to put one over your bed when you had Leah, but Jacob wouldn’t let me.”

  “To protect me?” she asked.

  “To protect your daughter,” he said. “You don’t need protection from her.” He nodded at the picture, then stood up and faced her. On impulse she opened the knife drawer under the counter and found and gripped the largest handle. Luria took a step closer and she eased the knife out of the drawer, keeping it hidden behind her, feeling the flat of the blade against her buttocks. He took a
nother step. She held her breath.

  “Keep your book,” he said softly.

  “Let the children in Tel Aviv have it,” she said.

  “Look at that picture,” he told her. “Look at her.”

  She looked past him at Lilith and her snake.

  “Should the children in Tel Aviv see such things?” he asked. “Should Leah?”

  “Why not?”

  He leaned very close. If she stabbed him it would have to be in the face, but his hands hung loose at his sides. “Because she’s an abomination, Rachel. A defiant, Godless, demonic abomination.”

  She was not going to look away from him. Childish or not, she was not going to look away. Her eyes stung, tears filled them, spilled down her face. He raised his hand and she jumped, but he smiled and kept raising it, palm open in a gesture of harmlessness. Then he wiped her tears carefully away with his thumb. His eyes were kind all at once, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle and concerned.

  “Don’t take us on,” he said softly. “You’ll lose, and that will be awful.”

  He let his hand fall and he walked out of the kitchen. She listened, thinking he knew she had the knife and he was hiding somewhere in the dark. She heard the front door open and close and she ran through the dining room to the living room, turning on lights as she went. From the front window she saw him walking up the block toward the Main Street Extension and then the phone rang.

  It was Golda calling to tell her that it was April and she still hadn’t picked out a dress yet. As Golda scolded her, Rachel realized that she was still holding the chef’s knife and she started to laugh.

  “Rachel, this is serious. What if you have to order the dress? what if you pick a hotel and they’re booked for June? Rachel, stop laughing!”

  But she couldn’t, and after a minute Golda hung up in disgust. Then Rachel stopped and caught her breath. It wasn’t funny. She had to tell Allan something.

  She went to put the knife away and saw the book on the table, still open to Lilith’s picture.

  She stood on Allan’s doorstep and looked up at the handsome house with regret. She thought of the fireplaces, swimming pool, glassed-­in porch, and country kitchen. They’d’ve had a lovely life in that house. She rang the bell, and waited. It was eleven. Willa’s house was dark, there were lights on on the second floor of Golda’s.