She turned to look directly at him, a plea on her lips. “Will we ever see them again?”
“Yes.”
She broke into tears. “I mean in this life, Jakob.”
“I meant in this life.”
She wiped her eyes; her mouth still tight with pain. “Do you promise me that, Jakob?”
What more could he say. Life without hope is a prison. “Yes,” he said. “I promise you.”
CHAPTER 30
Almost before Hanna knew it, Paul was three years old. He was helping the houseman, Reuben, shovel from the walkway the slight snowfall of an hour earlier when she came through the gate. He was bundled up as warmly as if he was working in the South Pole.
“Tante Hanna!” he shouted, dropping his toy shovel and running towards her. Then he noticed the sled she was pulling, and his eyes grew round. “For my birthday?” She nodded. “Can I ride it?”
“Get on,” she ordered. He sat on it immediately; his gloved hands gripping the rails. She drew it over the snow-crusted lawn, Paul shouting in glee.
The birthday party started an hour later. A number of children attended, friends of the family and neighborhood playmates. After a while, Hanna and Natalie plopped down on chairs to catch their breath. Natalie held out a plate of pickles, which Hanna declined.
“I’ve become addicted to them ever since my pregnancy,” grinned Natalie, “and it’s beginning to show on my waist.”
Reuben came into the room and walked swiftly over to Hanna. His expression was dark with anxiety. “Frau Charnoff. There is a boy here from the synagogue. He says Herr Gulman is ill.”
Hanna leaped from her chair. “Where is he?” she asked, already running towards the entrance. There she found a boy, about twelve years old, sweat trickling down from under his wool cap. “What is wrong?” she asked quickly.
“I don’t know, Frau Charnoff. The rabbi told me to run to your house and get you. I went there, but you were gone. I ran back, and he told me to try here.”
Reuben was standing behind her with her coat. Next to him was Natalie. “I’ll go with you,” she said, but Hanna was already out of the door and running towards the synagogue. Natalie motioned for Reuben to go after her with the coat.
“Dear God! Dear God!” prayed Hanna, her heart pounding with fear.
As she turned the corner to the entrance of the synagogue, a horse-drawn ambulance pulled up, and two men sprang out with a stretcher. She beat them to the arched arbor way and into the building. At the library on the far side, a knot of boys were looking into the room. She burst through them. “Out of the way, please. Out of my way.”
Inside, she took one look, and her brain froze with terror. Jakob was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, his mouth and beard covered with the gore. Rabbi Gluck had placed a pillow under his head, and was holding his hand. Two of the elders were standing nearby, frightened. Shuddering, she dropped to her knees at his side. His eyes were slitted, and he was gasping for air.
“Jakob,” she cried, her heart like ice. He did not answer.
“He began hemorrhaging,” said Rabbi Gluck.
The men with the stretcher came up. “Move aside, please,” said one, pushing her away.
Quickly, they lifted Jakob and placed him on the litter. At once he began choking. One of the men turned Jakob’s head to one side to allow him to breathe. He kept gasping desperately for air.
“Do something!” cried Hanna.
“At the hospital,” the man replied, grasping the arms of the stretcher. “Out of the way, damn it!” he growled at the boys at the door. Without waiting, he ploughed through them, knocking two or three to the ground. Hanna trotted behind them, trying to catch up to Jakob.
In a few seconds, they were outside and lifting the litter to the floor of the wagon. As Hanna came up, Reuben was waiting. He had time to fling her coat over her shoulders as she went by.
“I am his best friend!” said Hanna. “I want to go.”
“All right,” said one of the men, helping her up roughly. He followed her inside while the second man slammed shut the door and raced to the seat next to the driver. He started clanging a bell as the driver slapped the horse into a trot.
The man with Hanna reached into Jakob’s mouth, searching to see if his tongue was obstructing his breathing. He found it was clear. He took a blanket from a pile at the front and placed it under Jakob’s head. “Back, please,” he said kindly to Hanna. She sidled to one side. The attendant flung a blanket over the gagging man. For the first time, Hanna noticed that it was cold inside the wagon. She drew her coat further over her shoulders.
Bell clanging, the ambulance raced through the streets. Jakob had another spasm and retched up more blood.
“Oh, God! Dear God! Please help!” she prayed, her back against the rocking side of the vehicle. There was nothing she could do except watch with horror. The man seemed to know what he was doing. Quickly, he placed two more blankets under Jakob’s head. Jakob’s lips began moving. She bent her head.
“Hanna,” he gasped. “Hold my hand. Tightly. Hanna, I love you. Always remember.”
Tears were filling her eyes. “Always, Jakob. And I love you.”
She lifted his hand and pressed it to her breast, praying that the beat of her heart inside would reach out to his.
Then she heard him start the words of the Shema Yisrael.
Suddenly, he gave a loud retch, and a great gush of blood came from his mouth. He cried out two or three times, short bursts of anguish, then abruptly, before her eyes, he suddenly collapsed.
The ambulance made a sharp swing and came to an abrupt stop. At once, the door was flung open, and men reached inside for the stretcher. The attendant said nothing, but his face was grim. Without hurrying, he helped guide the litter from the wagon, then assisted Hanna down to the ground. They were at the entrance to a hospital. The men carrying Jakob were speeding through the door. Hanna trotted to catch up.
Once inside, a man in a white smock motioned for them to place the stretcher on two trestles, and then leaned over Jakob to examine him. He took one look, lifted an eyelid, then placed a stethoscope to his chest. He stood up and turned to Hanna. “Are you related to this man?”
Hanna nodded, barely able to speak. “I am his best friend.”
“I’m sorry, gnädige Frau. But your friend is dead.”
CHAPTER 31
The first thing that struck Hanna was the difference between the cemetery in Stuttgart and the one in which she had buried her mother and father. It was so neat here in Stuttgart, even with the light coat of snow, and so proper. Under the trees, she could see wisps of grass that would return in the spring. Even the soil shoveled out of the hole that was to receive Jakob was placed out of view under a tarpaulin. It was nothing like the mound of raw, yellow earth that waited next to her parents’ graves. And the name stones here were all upright, not tilted like so many in the little graveyard in Lithuania.
Hanna knew she had to put her mind to something other than what lay in the simple, pine box, or else she would go mad. Jakob had died at three-thirty yesterday, and since today was Friday, here she was at eleven o’clock in the morning, saying farewell. The body must be buried before the Sabbath began.
Rabbi Gluck, his kind, brown eyes reflecting his sorrow, said the proper things, and the casket was lowered on straps. Before the kaddish, Jules whispered into the rabbi’s ear the words Hanna had given him. Gluck looked at her in surprise, and then he nodded. He motioned at one of the members standing nearby. The man walked up to Hanna and made the keri’ah in her dress, on the right side, the side of a sister. When all the words were said, she dropped a handful of dirt into the grave, then she was led by Natalie and Jules back to their car. Afterwards, the mourners went to Hanna’s house, where Reuben was waiting with a pitcher of water and towels for all to rinse their hands before entering.
Food and drink were set out, and many of the Jewish community who had not attended the funeral came by to offer their condo
lences. Hanna waited patiently for them to share her grief and to go through the motions which custom dictated, and then all had gone except for the Fergls and the Weiners.
“Come stay at our house tonight,” pleaded Natalie.
Hanna shook her head, stubbornly refusing to cry.
“Very well,” she went on. “We’ll come by tomorrow.” Hanna nodded. She was not going to weep. Jules motioned his head, and quietly they filed out.
She sat in the parlor on a box next to the chair that she had occupied for so many peaceful years, her hands folded loosely in her lap. She did not realize the hours had passed so quickly until she saw through the window that it was getting dark outside. She rose and lit the candles for the Sabbath, then took her seat again. She was glad none of the lamps were lit. The dark suited her well.
The tears finally came. “Goodbye, my dearest Jakob. How lonely we will both be tonight. I can still remember looking down from the window in Gremai and seeing you for the first time, and thinking how absurd you seemed in that black suit and black hat, with the curls hanging down the sides of your face. Little did I know then that I could love you so very much. You were my dearest friend. I do not think I will live a day of my life without hearing your words in my ears and feeling your eyes on me. I did not just love you for having saved my life, nor for that terrible wound that finally tore out your life. I loved you because you became the reason for my being. You guided me down a path of devotion and honor, and I would have proudly become your wife if I had the right. Oh, Jakob, Jakob. Are you discussing Torah with God and telling Him the thousand bits of knowledge that is in your brain. Maybe you will be explaining the Talmud to Him. Lord, let my brother, Jakob, find the grace in Your eyes that he did in mine.”
She stayed on the box for the remainder of the night. She did not sleep.
There were too many memories.
She remained in the cottage for two more weeks, then, over the pleading of her friends, she moved back to the Rosenthal house. But now having the sewing machine, she did not need to return to the small room on the fourth floor. Instead, she took a large, comfortable one on the second floor, overlooking the garden at the rear of the building. Jakob had joined the synagogue’s burial association, so the costs of the ambulance and hospital and funeral were generally covered by the insurance. With their savings over the years, she had enough to face any minor emergency.
After a week to settle in, going by streetcar every other day to visit Natalie and Paul, she started sewing again. On Saturday, she went to the small, neighborhood synagogue, sat upstairs in the mehitzah with the other women, and when the old, gray-bearded rabbi mentioned Jakob’s true name among the departed, she rose with the other mourners and said the kaddish.
In February, winter struck with a vengeance, and in the evenings, after spending hours over her sewing machine, she bundled up and took long walks in the snow, aching with the cold and winds, but finding a peace within herself. On almost every occasion, as she came back, Frau Rosenthal was waiting with an invitation to come in for a cup of tea. She grew to like the older couple enormously.
On many days when she did not visit the Weiners, Natalie and Paul would stop by, bringing a strudel or a dish of this or that, and talking while Hanna sewed. It was very comforting.
Like the suddenness of the winter, spring came almost overnight, and everyone seemed to shake off the grimness that the cold generated and opened like flowers. Spring also brought a sudden increase in business. More and more women were seeking her services, not just the ones from the Jewish community, but gentiles who were eager to keep up with the latest fashions. It became too much to handle, taking streetcars to their houses for measurements, fittings, and then the final deliveries.
She had a talk with the Rosenthals. It was time to take on an assistant, but utilizing her room would not be appropriate. Herr Rosenthal mentioned that he had a cousin, not a total gonif, but a cross between a highwayman and a plain pickpocket. He had a vacant shop on the second floor in the garment quarter. A shmatte, a rag of a place, but with a little painting of the walls and washing of the windows, and maybe a curtain or two, it could be suitable. Best of all, it could be gotten cheaply.
She rented it the next day, and let it be known that she was seeking a helper. A dozen showed up the following week, and from them she selected an eighteen-year-old woman, an untalkative German, who she learned was helping her widowed mother take care of a houseful of younger children. Her name was Elfriede, and she went to work like her life depended on it. She also had the talent that Mrs. Merkys had seen in herself. Hanna still made all the measurements and fittings, for they were the keys to proper dressmaking, but Elfriede followed her directions to the letter, and once given a piece of advice, seemed never to forget it.
Like a snowball gathering momentum, having an assistant brought on more work rather than relieve her of routine effort, and in only weeks, she needed a second seamstress. Most of her customers now sought dressmaking rather than alterations, and Hanna loved it. She subscribed to the latest fashion magazines and often attended public social functions to determine what the trendsetters were wearing.
A mild autumn rain had begun in October. As Hanna walked briskly home from the streetcar stop, her mind was still on Paul. He had started kindergarten only the previous month, and now had stories to tell when his Tante Hanna visited. He was already far ahead of the other children in his ability to read, and far, far ahead in mathematics as a result of Jules’ games with him.
Under her arm was a package. She had delivered two skirts and two shirt waists to one of her better customers, and had gotten three articles to alter. Either Elfriede or Marta, her two employees, could do the actual work, but Hanna still insisted on keeping personal contact with her clients.
Herr Rosenthal was waiting at the outer door. He was highly excited. “Frau Charnoff,” he burst out. “Please call Herr Weiner at once. He has been searching for you for an hour. He wants you to call his office.” He held open the door to his apartment.
Hanna immediately put in the call. One of his office people answered. “Oh, Frau Charnoff,” he said. She could detect a tension in his voice. “Herr Weiner wants you to go to das Marienspital at once. Frau Weiner has been taken seriously ill.”
Hanna’s heart stopped. She could barely breathe. “I will go right away.”
She dropped the receiver on the hook. “Herr Rosenthal, Frau Weiner is at the hospital. Please call for a taxi. I will try to get one on the street at the same time.”
She dropped the package on the table, and rushed out of the house. Her mind was whirling as she ran into the middle of the street, searching for a taxi. A delivery truck approached. Frantically, she waved it down, then trotted to the driver’s side.
“Please, mein Herr. My friend is ill. I must get to das Marienspital at once. I will gladly pay whatever you want.”
He was a square, muscular man of middle age, and he recognized at once the desperation in her face. “Get in, gnädige Frau. I’ll have you there in short order.”
She leaped onto the seat; her hands held tight as he put the truck in gear and sped off. At each traffic signal against them, she beat her fist upon her knee.
At the hospital, she thrust a bill into his hand and jumped from the truck.
“It’s too much,” shouted the driver, but he was talking to her back as she ran inside.
My God, she thought, it is the same one where Jakob was brought. She hurried to the nurse at the admissions desk. “Schwester. I am…”
“Hanna!” she heard from one side. She turned. It was Jules. His eyes were staring wildly, and they were red from weeping.
She walked quickly over to him. “Where is Natalie?” she demanded.
He stood at the point of trembling. “The doctors have her in the contagious disease ward. She’s…” his voice broke. “They think she may have poliomyelitis!”
Hanna stepped back as if struck. Her hand went to her throat. The mortality rate among th
ose with the disease was over 75%. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “When? How?”
“The first thing this morning. She complained of a terrible headache, and then she began losing control of all her muscles.” He bit his lip in dismay at the thought of the sudden attack of a woman in her physical prime. “We got her to the hospital at once.”
Hanna was breathing so rapidly that she thought she would choke, then a thought so horrible hit home that she paled. “Paul. How is Paul?”
“I had sent him to school. Then I had Reuben pick him up the moment I received the first report from the doctors.”
“Does he know about Natalie?”
Jules shook his head. “Not yet.”
“He must be quarantined.” She looked him squarely in the face. “Even from you.”
Jules swayed back as the implication hit home. “Yes, yes. You are right.”
“I am taking him home with me, Jules. Now.”
He nodded dumbly. “Yes. Yes. Of course. You are right.”
“I will keep in touch with you by phone.” Without a goodbye, Hanna fled outside. A taxi was standing to one side, and in short order, she was in Jules’ house. Paul was playing with a wooden train set in his bedroom, surprised, and a bit upset at the sudden change of schedule.
“Paul,” she said, after her usual warm kiss and hug. “Mami is not feeling well. Your father took her to the hospital to see a doctor. How would you like to spend a few days with me until she gets back.”
She had not fooled him. He looked up at her with his serious, brown eyes. “Is Mami dying?”
Hanna was shocked at the question. “Of course not, dear. Where did you hear such a thing?”
“One of the boys in the school said his grandfather was taken to the hospital and died. He went away and will never come back. Never. Not in my whole life.”
“No, my dearest. It is not the same with Mami. She became ill, and the doctors will have to give her medicine. Now hurry, help me pack a suitcase for you.”
Enemy of the Tzar Page 31