He had heard about me through my brother. He had read in the magazine Globus the serialization of my novel, as well as several of my stories in the Forward, and he began to call me by my first name.
Before driving my brother and me to Seagate, where Joshua was now living, he wanted to show me New York. In the two hours that he drove us around I saw much—the avenues with the metal bridges, the “els,” looming overhead and the electric trains racing, as well as Fifth and Madison avenues, Radio City, Riverside Drive, and later, Wall Street, the streets and markets around the Lower East Side, and finally the ten-story Forward building where my brother worked as a staff member. I had forgotten that it was the first of May, but the columns of the Forward building were completely draped in red and a large throng stood before the building listening to a speaker.
We crossed the bridge to Brooklyn and a new area of New York revealed itself to me. It was less crowded, had almost no skyscrapers, and resembled more a European city than Manhattan, which impressed me as a giant exhibition of Cubist paintings and theater props. Without realizing it, I registered whatever uniqueness I could see in the houses, the stores, the shops. The people here walked, they did not rush and run. They all wore new and light clothes. Within kosher butcher shops, bones were sawed rather than chopped with cleavers. The stores featured potatoes alongside oranges, radishes next to pineapples. In drugstores, food was served to men and women seated on high stools. Boys holding sticks resembling rolling pins and wearing huge gloves on one hand played ball in the middle of the streets. They bellowed in adult voices. Among shoe, lamp, rug stores and flower shops stood a mortuary. Pallbearers dressed in black carried out a coffin decorated in wreaths and loaded it into a car draped with curtains. The family or whoever came to the funeral did not show on their faces any sign of mourning. They conversed and behaved as if death was an everyday occurrence to them.
We came to Coney Island. To the left, the ocean flashed and flared with a blend of water and fire. To the right, carrousels whirled, youths shot at tin ducks. On rails emerging from a tunnel, then looming straight up into the pale blue sky, boys rode metal horses while girls sitting behind them shrieked. Jazz music throbbed, whistled, screeched. A mechanical man, a robot, laughed hollowly. Before a kind of museum, a black giant cavorted with a midget on each arm. I could feel that some mental catastrophe was taking place here, some mutation for which there was no name in my vocabulary, not even a beginning of a notion. We drove through a gate with a barrier and guarded by a policeman, and it suddenly grew quiet and pastoral. We pulled up before a house with turrets and a long porch where elderly people sat and warmed themselves in the sun. My brother said, “This is the bastion of Yiddishism. Here, it’s decided who is mortal or immortal, who is progressive or reactionary.”
I heard someone ask, “So you’ve brought your brother?”
“Yes, here he is.”
“Greetings!”
I got out of the car and a soft and moist hand clasped mine. A tiny man wearing a pair of large sunglasses said, “You don’t know me. How could you? But I know you. I read Globus faithfully. Thanks is due you for writing the naked truth. The scribblers here try to persuade the reader that the shtetl was a paradise full of saints. So comes along someone from the very place and he says ‘stuff and nonsense!’ They’ll excommunicate you here, but don’t be alarmed.”
“He’s just arrived and already he’s getting compliments,” remarked another individual with a head of milk-white hair and a freshly sunburned round face. “I had to wait twenty years before I heard a kind word in America. The fact is that I’m still waiting … cheh, cheh, cheh ….”
My brother and Zygmunt Salkin exchanged a few more words with a girl who served someone a cup of tea, then we got in the car and drove for a few seconds and stopped before another house. My brother said, “This is where we live.”
I looked up and saw my sister-in-law, Genia, and their son, Yosele. Genia seemed the same but Yosele had grown. Out of habit I started to address him in Polish but it turned out that he had completely forgotten that language. He spoke English now and also knew a little Yiddish.
My brother lived in a house built as a summer residence. It consisted of a bedroom and a huge room which served as a combination living and dining room. There was no kitchen here, only a kitchenette, which opened like a closet. Joshua told me that he planned to spend only the summer here. The furniture belonged to the landlord, who was the brother of a well-known Yiddish critic. The bathroom was shared with another tenant, a writer too. Genia reminded me to latch the door to the other apartment when I used the bathroom, and to unlatch it when I was through. Fortunately, the neighbor was an elderly bachelor who was away most of the day, she observed.
My brother had rented a room in the same house for me. The death of Yasha, the older boy, had driven the family into a depression and I saw that the passage of time hadn’t diminished it. My sister-in-law tried to cheer up in my presence. She asked me for all kinds of details about Warsaw, the literary crowd there, and about me personally, but her eyes reflected that blend of grief and fear I had seen there back in Warsaw. She barely restrained herself from crying. My brother paced to and fro and praised America. He told me that he had grown enamored of this country, its freedom, its tolerance, its treatment of Jews and other minorities. Here in the United States he had written a new novel, The Brothers Ashkenazi, which had appeared in Yiddish and which was now being translated into English.
Zygmunt Salkin had said good-bye to us and had gone back to Manhattan. Before leaving, he told me that he had plans for me. He mentioned casually that I was dressed too warmly for an American summer. Here, there was practically no spring. The moment winter was over, the heat waves began. No one here wore a stiff collar, such a heavy suit as mine, or a black hat. The vest had gone out of style too. America aspired to lightness in every aspect of behavior. I watched him get into his car. He turned the steering wheel and, in a second, he was gone.
My sister-in-law confirmed Salkin’s words. Here, the climate was different and so the life-style—eating, dressing, the attitude toward people. Only the Yiddish writers remained the same as in the old country, but their children all spoke English and were full-fledged Americans.
After a while, my brother took me to my room. It was small, with a sofa that could be transformed into a bed at night, a table, two chairs, and a glass-doored cabinet which my brother had stacked with a number of Yiddish books for me. On a rod running the length of a wall hung hangers for clothes. I wasn’t used to removing my jacket during the day but my brother insisted I do so, along with my vest, collar, and tie. He critically considered my wide suspenders and jokingly remarked that I resembled a Western sheriff. He said, “Well, you’re in America and one way or another you’ll stay here. Your tourist visa will be extended for a year or two and I’ll do everything possible to keep you from going back. All hell will break out over there. Should you meet a girl who was born here, and should she appeal to you enough to marry, you’ll get a permanent visa on the spot.”
I blushed. In the presence of my brother, I had remained a shy little boy.
2
My sister-in-law didn’t prepare dinner that night. We ate with our landlord and his family. Although he was the brother of a well-known critic and fervent Yiddishist, his children knew no Yiddish. They sat at the table in silence. When they did speak, it was in a murmur. Our presence at the table apparently disturbed them. They might have been leftists and heard that my brother was an anti-Communist. My brother remarked that Jewish youths in Poland had already grown disenchanted with communism, or at least with Stalinism, but here in America the young were communistically inclined. What did they know of the evils perpetrated in Stalin’s paradise? True, if one of them did go to Russia to help build socialism, he was never heard from again, but this was interpreted by those remaining as meaning that he no longer wished any contact with the capitalist society, not even with his old comrades.
My brother
said, “They are all hypnotized. I never knew that a few pamphlets and magazines filled with banalities could possess such a strength. On the other hand, if such a scoundrel as Hitler could hypnotize Germany, why shouldn’t Stalin be able to fool the world?”
We finished our meal quickly. My brother told me that he still had some work to do on his novel that day. Yosele attended school and he had homework to do. My brother confided to me that Yosele suffered from nervous anxiety. He was afraid to remain alone in the house, even by day. He hadn’t forgotten his elder brother. My sister-in-law wasn’t able to sleep nights.
I said good night and went to my room. I didn’t have to use my brother’s bathroom since there was a bathroom with a shower and a tub in the hall. In my room I lit the ceiling lamp, took a Yiddish book out of the cabinet, and tried to read, but I quickly became bored. I glanced into my notebook, where I had jotted down various themes for short stories. None of them appealed to me at the moment. A deep gloom came over me, the likes of which I had never before experienced, or at least I thought so. I gazed out the window. Seagate lay in suburban darkness. It had grown cool toward evening. The roar of the ocean sounded like wheels rolling over stone. A bell tolled slowly and monotonously. Whirls of fog spun in the air. For all my difficulties in Warsaw, I had been self-sufficient there, an adult, connected with women. I could always drop in at the Writers’ Club if I had nothing better to do. I knew that this sort of club didn’t exist here. I had heard of the Cafe Royal, which was frequented by Yiddish literati, but my sister-in-law had informed me that to get there I had to first take a bus to Surf Avenue, a streetcar to Stillwell Avenue, then travel for an hour on the subway, and after getting off in Manhattan, still have to walk a good distance to Second Avenue. Besides, I knew no one there. And what of the trip back? I lay down on the sofa, not knowing what to do with myself. I didn’t have the slightest desire to write. I had read accounts of the difficulties encountered by immigrants to America, but these hadn’t been lone individuals. Whatever they went through they shared with fellow countrymen, relatives, co-workers in sweatshops, boarders with whom they shared a corner of a room or even a bed. Some arrived with wives and children at their sides. But I had managed it so that I would arrive all alone in a dark cabin, and stay with a family of strict individualists who were as isolated and withdrawn as I myself. And what would I do here? Since the urge to write had deserted me, I had to find some other occupation. However, as a tourist, I lacked the right to work. How was it I hadn’t foreseen all this? What had happened to my logic, my imagination?
I had opened the window. The air here was damp, oppressive. I wanted to go for a walk, but how would I find the house again? As far as I could see, it had no street number. I didn’t know a word of English. I would get lost and be forced to stay out all night. I was liable to be arrested and charged with being a vagrant (I had read in translation Jack London’s stories about tramps). Still, I couldn’t just sit here. To cover any contingency, I took along my Polish passport with the American visa. True, I could have stopped by my brother’s apartment and obtained such information as the address of the house, but I knew that he was working on his novel. Genia might have gone to sleep.
After a long hesitation I decided to take a walk. Outside, I made a mental note—there were two white columns at the front of the porch. No other house on the street had them. I walked slowly and each time glanced back at the house with the two columns. I had read accounts of spies, revolutionaries, of such explorers as Sven Hedin, Amundsen, and Captain Scott who wandered over deserts, ice fields, and jungles. They were able to determine their locations under the most bewildering conditions, and here I trembled about getting lost in such a tiny community as Seagate. I had walked, not knowing where, and had come to the beach. This wasn’t the open sea, since I could see lights flashing on some faraway shore. A lighthouse cast its beams. The foamy waves mounted and crashed against a stony breakwater. The beach wasn’t sandy but overgrown with weeds. Chunks of driftwood and vegetation spewed forth by the sea lay scattered about. It smelled here of dead fish and something else marinelike and unfamiliar. I trod on seashells. I picked one up and studied it—the armor of a creature that had been born in the sea and apparently had died there as well, or had been eaten despite its protection.
I looked for a star in the sky but the glow of New York City, or maybe Coney Island, made the sky opaque and reddish. Not far from the shore, a small boat tugged three dark barges. I had just come from eight days at sea, yet the ocean seemed as alien as if I were seeing it for the first time. I inhaled the cool air. Maybe simply walk into the sea and put an end to the whole mess? After long brooding, I headed back. It was my impression that I had been following a straight path, but I had already walked quite a distance back and the house with the white columns was nowhere in sight. I reached the fence that separated Seagate from Coney Island and spotted the policeman guarding the gate.
I turned around to go back. Someone had once advised me to always carry a compass. I’m the worst fumbler and clod under the sun, I scolded myself. A compass wouldn’t have helped me. It would only have confused me further. Possible Freud might have unraveled my mystery. I suffered from a kind of disorientation complex. Could this have anything to do with my repressed sexual urges? The fact is that it was inherited. My mother and father lived for years in Warsaw and they never knew the way to Nalewki Street. When Father journeyed to visit the Radzymin Rabbi on the holidays, Joshua had to escort him to the streetcar and later buy his ticket and seat him in the narrow-gauge railroad running to Radzymin. In our house there hovered the fear of the outside, of Gentile languages, of trains, cars, of the hustle and bustle of business, even of Jews who had dealings with lawyers, the police, could speak Russian or even Polish. I had gone away from God, but not from my heritage.
What now? I asked myself. I felt like laughing at my own helplessness. I turned back and saw the house with the two white columns. It had materialized as if from the ground. I came up to the house and spotted my brother outlined within the illuminated window. He sat at a narrow table with a pen in one hand, a manuscript in the other. I had never thought about my brother’s appearance, but that evening I considered him for the first time with curiosity, as if I weren’t his brother but some stranger. Everyone I had encountered in Seagate this day had been sunburned, but his long face was pale. He read not only with his eyes but mouthed the words as he went along. From time to time, he arched his brows with an expression that seemed to ask, How could I have written this? and promptly commenced to make long strokes with the pen and cross out. The beginning of a smile formed upon his thin lips. He raised the lids of his big blue eyes and cast a questioning glance outside, as if suspecting that someone in the street was observing him. I felt as if I could read his mind: It’s all vanity, this whole business of writing, but since one does it, one must do it right.
A renewed surge of love for my brother coursed through me. He was not only my brother but my father and master as well. I could never address him first. I always had to wait for him to make the first overture. I went back to my room and lay down on the sofa. I did not put on the light. I lay there in the darkness. I was still young, not yet thirty, but I was overcome by a fatigue that most probably comes with old age. I had cut off whatever roots I had in Poland yet I knew that I would remain a stranger here to my last day. I tried to imagine myself in Hitler’s Dachau, or in a labor camp in Siberia. Nothing was left for me in the future. All I could think about was the past. My mind returned to Warsaw, to Swider, to Stefa’s apartment on Niecala Street, to Esther’s furnished room on Swietojerska. I again had to tell myself that I was a corpse.
3
My brother apparently sensed my melancholy since he did things for me with a particular energy. He and Zygmunt Salkin took me to Manhattan and forced me to exchange my heavy black Warsaw suit for a light American summer outfit. I also had to discard my stiff collar for a soft-collared shirt. Without even consulting me, Joshua arranged for the Fo
rward to provide me with work and possibly publish a novel of mine as well. He took me along to the Cafe Royal downtown on Second Avenue and introduced me to writers, to theater people. But my shyness returned with all its indignities. I blushed when he introduced me to women. I lost my tongue when men spoke to me and asked me questions. The actresses all claimed that my brother and I were as alike as two drops of water. They joked with me, tried flirting with me, made the comments of those who have long since shed every inhibition. The writers could hardly bring themselves to believe that I was the one who had written such a diabolical work as Satan in Goray and had published in Globus biting reviews of the works of famous Yiddish writers in Poland, Russia, and America. My brother fully realized what I was enduring and he tried to help me, but this only exacerbated my embarrassment. I sweated and my heart pounded. A waiter brought me food. I couldn’t swallow a bite. A rage filled me against America, against my brother for bringing me here, and against myself and my accursed nature. The enemy reposing within me had scored a smashing victory. In my anxiety I resolved to book a return trip to Poland as quickly as possible and to jump overboard en route there.
I had reverted to boyhood, and those who came up to the table to greet me wondered and shrugged their shoulders. Zygmunt Salkin went off to make a phone call, someone called my brother to another phone, and I was left sitting there alone. The waiter came up and asked, “Why aren’t you eating your blintzes? Don’t they look good?”
Love and Exile Page 28