“Jump in or get shot,” Zach replied eagerly.
“Right. So what do I do?”
“Jump in.”
“Right again. But what do I do first?”
Zach said he didn’t know.
“Take off my jacket and roll it up like ball. Then I jump in and hold the ball up out of the stream while I paddle across.” Nathan set down his razor, folded a towel, held it above his head and made swimming motions with his other hand. “Always remember to keep your clothes dry if you can,” he said. “So I’m paddling across, my legs are going numb, but I make it to the other side. Guess how.”
“How?”
“By taking my mind off the cold. I said to myself my grandpa’s favorite prayer, six words, one for each stroke: Sh’ma. Yisroel. Adonai. Eloheinu. Adonai. Echad. Three times I repeated it—swam across in eighteen strokes, put on my jacket and hid behind some bushes, quiet like a cat. Nazi bastards came crashing through the woods, one took a look at the stream and shook his head. ‘No Yid would ever dive into this ice bath,’ he says. ‘They’re all cowards.’ The other bastard agrees with him. Germans can’t imagine a Jew taking a swim in February. So one of them runs north, the other runs south. And biff, boom! the Yid gets away.”
“Wow, Papa. I never heard that story before. That’s amazing! Rabbi’s going to love that story!”
“Why that story?”
“Because the Sh’ma got you across the stream! In Hebrew school, Rabbi taught us it’s the most important prayer in Judaism. It’s our declaration of faith in God.”
“To tell the truth, Boychik, I’m not that interested in God.”
“What? You make the brachas on Friday night, you go to shul . . .”
“I don’t go to shul to pray. I go to hear Rabbi’s talks. He’s really smart, that man. You’ve got yourself a helluva teacher.”
“But if you don’t believe in God, why did you say a prayer in the stream?
Nathan shrugged as he wiped off the last patch of shaving cream. “Because my zaide said the Sh’ma when he was worried. I figured if it helped him, it might help me. He was the last of the believers in my family. By the 1930s, everyone else was a communist. Me, I never trusted God or Stalin.”
Zach stared at his father in disbelief. “But the Sh’ma worked, Papa. You escaped.”
“I escaped because I know how to swim with one arm in freezing cold water. A Jew can’t always choose his conditions. Prayers are nice but when you’re in trouble, power and strength are better. You’ll see.” Nathan removed the blade from the razor, slid it into the safety receptacle, and handed the empty razor to Zach. “Forget the swimming, Boychik. This papa is going to teach his son to shave.”
ABOUT HIS HARROWING escapes, Nathan was willing to talk endlessly. Other experiences he refused to discuss at all. Certain questions infuriated him or shut him down entirely; to most questions about the past, he’d reply by reiterating basic biographical facts that Zach already knew from his previous interrogations. For instance, the fact that his parents met in medical school and married after graduation; that they bought a townhouse in Kraków and set up their practices side by side on the ground floor; that Yitzhak was born on June 21, 1939; that the “Nazi bastards” invaded Poland three months later and murdered Yitzhak three years after that. Nathan would never say how, only that on that awful day, he had escaped to the forest and from then on, lived in hiding and fought with the partisans while Rivka was shipped to Auschwitz, a concentration camp where Jews got worked to death or exterminated. After the war, Nathan said he tracked down Rivka in a displaced persons camp and persuaded her to move to America for a better life. “Period. The end.”
That’s what Nathan always said when he was tired of talking or fed up with his son’s questions. “Period. The end.” Though Nathan controlled the narrative, Zach kept trying, month after month, year after year, to extract from his father bits and pieces of the Levy family history the way his mother had once plucked broken glass from his knees with her tweezers, one sliver at a time.
ELECTION DAY, 1960. Nathan came home from one of his long walks with a box of sparklers he had bought in the Irish neighborhood. “Quick, Boychik! Put on your jacket. We’ll go up on the roof and help the Catholics celebrate.”
They took the elevator to the top floor and climbed a steep iron ladder to the open air. The sky was almost as black as the asphalt tar and gravel roof and there was no moon to outshine their fireworks display, no one to tell them that sparklers were illegal in New York. All around them were six- and seven-story apartment buildings, dozens of windows flickering with the blue glare of TV screens, some sashes raised to the autumn air so snippets of the election night coverage reached Zach’s ears.
“You think we’ll ever have a Jewish president?” he asked.
Nathan tore open the box of sparklers. “We just got a Catholic, so why not a Jew? In America, anybody can be anything.”
Zach, always alert to a natural opportunity to pursue new information, followed with, “Then how come you and Mama can’t be doctors here?” His father had been dodging that question for months.
Nathan acted as if he hadn’t heard. Fishing out one of the sparklers, he handed it to Zach. “Just hold the stick like a lollipop and keep it away from your face,” he cautioned, then flipped open his Zippo and ignited the stick.
A fountain of white-hot sparks spewed forth. Thrilled, the ten-year-old squealed with delight and raced around the roof shouting, “Yay, President Kennedy! Yay, JFK!” as the sparkler, trailing glitter, lit up the night.
“All yours, Boychik,” Nathan said, offering his son the full box. “Happy Election Day!”
Zach ran around with one sparkler after another until the last stick sputtered into ash and only stars illuminated the sky.
“I never saw you so excited,” Nathan said, as they climbed down the iron ladder. “Maybe you’re part Irish!”
While they waited for the elevator, Zach tried again. “Before, you said anyone can be anything here. So why can’t you and Mama be doctors? I really want to know.”
Nathan pursed his lips and punched the down button several times, though they both knew it wouldn’t bring the elevator any sooner. “Genug!” he said.
Genug, Yiddish for enough, was another of Nathan’s cutoff lines.
Zach’s next interrogative opportunity came one winter day after a bully yanked his arm out of its socket and the school nurse called Rivka to pick him up and take him to the hospital emergency room. As soon as she arrived, his mother diagnosed his injury as a dislocated shoulder and with a quick, sure-handed jerk, popped the ball of his humerus back into its socket. The pain, which had been excruciating, vanished as if by magic, and Zach was sent back to class.
That night at the supper table, he told his father what she had done.
“I’m not surprised,” Nathan said. “Your mama was a fine doctor!”
“Then why does she give piano lessons now?” Zach felt weird speaking of his mother in the third person when she was sitting right there but he’d been warned not to ask her questions. “And how come you work in a hat factory? I mean if you’re both doctors, why aren’t you doctors?”
It was never clear what made his father answer this time. Maybe because Rivka was listening and her husband wanted to give her the recognition she deserved.
“We had a tough time when we first came here,” Nathan began, putting down his fork and knife. “Foreign physicians were not allowed to practice in the United States unless they got training to bring them up to American standards. Then they had to take a test to be reaccredited. Your mama and me, we couldn’t afford the training course, not even for one of us to sign up. We were lucky to get a cash advance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to cover the first six months’ rent on the apartment and a stipend for food while I looked for a job. I was ready to do any work at all, but the GIs were home from the war, flooding the labor market and employers were in no hurry to hire a Polish Jew ahead of an American war he
ro. Who could blame them?
“When the HIAS stipend was about to run out and our social worker was reviewing our file, she happened to notice that your mama once performed with a famous amateur chamber music ensemble in Kraków. She told us she could get someone to donate a used piano if Rivka would agree to give lessons to children in the neighborhood. It would provide a service to the community and, since the minimum wage was forty cents an hour and piano teachers charged three dollars a lesson, Rivka could make some real money.”
“That sounds great,” Zach said, rapt.
“Yes, except your mama hadn’t touched a piano since . . .” his father glanced at his mother across the table. She was burying her peas in her mashed potatoes, “. . . since before the war. Still, we needed the money, so even though she didn’t want to, she said yes and HIAS delivered the Baldwin like they promised. I ran all over the neighborhood putting up signs in lobbies, laundry rooms, synagogues, barber shops, and the pupils came in droves. Thanks to your mama, we made ends meet until I got hired at the factory, first seasonal, then permanent. She got us through.” Nathan reached for Rivka’s hand. She pulled it away and started stacking the dirty dinner plates.
Zach asked, “Once you got the job in the hat factory, why did she keep teaching piano? Anyone can see she doesn’t enjoy it. Do you still need the money?”
Rivka cleared the dishes and carried them into the kitchen. Nathan leaned closer to the boy. “I pay our expenses, her earnings go in her knippel,” he said softly so his wife wouldn’t hear him over the running water. “That’s the little pouch she keeps in her underwear drawer. What she makes from the lessons, she’s saving for your college . . .” Nathan glanced toward the sink where Rivka’s back was visible through the kitchen door. “She does it because she wants to be sure we can give you an education—and because she loves you.”
Zach wondered why his father was always trying to build his mother up in his eyes. “But, if she hates teaching . . .”
“Period!” Nathan said.
For Zach, it was a comma. The next day he took down the album, slid off the paper clips—because he hadn’t had the nightmare in months—letting the pages fall open to the snapshot of his mother and brother in front of Wawel Castle, and for the first time, noticed the splendor of Yitzhak’s carriage, especially compared to the baby buggies on the sidewalks of the Bronx. It had shiny wheels and the contours of a princely coach, its outer surface enameled to a high gloss, the brass hardware scrolled and polished, its lining tufted and cushioned.
“Did you have a lot of money in Kraków?” Zach asked, studying the picture.
Nathan, deep in his Yiddish newspaper, murmured, “Hmm?”
“Yitzhak’s carriage looks really fancy. Were you and Mama rich?”
“We did okay,” Nathan said, still looking down.
Zach studied the picture through his magnifying glass. “Yitzhak’s ears stuck out, right?”
Pause. Beat. “A little.”
“As much as mine?”
“Yeah.” Nathan crossed his legs but kept his eyes on the paper. “You couldn’t see them, though. His hair always covered his ears.”
“Like mine!” Zach said, thrilled when any of his traits matched his brother’s. “What happened to him, Papa?”
Nathan slapped the newspaper on his knee and glared at his son. “How many times do I have to tell you? The Nazi bastards killed him.”
“I know. But how?”
“Never mind how. Dead is dead. Period. The end!” Nathan stalked out with his paper, leaving Zach alone with the photographs.
THEN THERE WAS the time the two of them were waiting for chairs in Sam Kranzberg’s barbershop and Zach noticed on the floor mounds of platinum hair that had been harvested from a previous customer.
“Was Yitzhak’s hair that color?” he asked his father. “I know his was much curlier but was it as light as that?”
After a quick downward squint, Nathan became visibly agitated and without a word, charged out of the shop.
“Don’t be mad, Papa,” Zach said, trotting to keep pace with his father’s long strides. “You can’t blame me for wondering what he looked like, can you? I was just curious.”
Not until they passed between the marble lions flanking the entrance to their building did Nathan reply, “Too curious.”
That was their last visit to the barber. From now on, Nathan announced, Rivka would cut their hair. Her shears were as sharp as Sam Kranzberg’s and her haircuts would save money. The new policy suited Zach fine. He had never been fond of Sam’s buzz cuts anyway. He preferred his mother’s snip-and-trim barbering; Rivka always let his hair grow long enough to cover his ears.
The first Saturday of every month was haircut day. Nathan usually went first and left the kitchen once his cut was done, but occasionally he would linger afterward, pour himself a glass of seltzer, and watch Rivka barber their son’s hair. Zach worshiped his father but resented the intrusion. His half-hour haircut was his most intimate time with his mother, her hands touching his head the only physical contact she seemed able to tolerate.
NATHAN’S LOVE ALMOST made up for Rivka’s inattention and distance. Sunday mornings, Zach and his father would walk to Daitch Dairy, the appetizer store on Kingsbridge Road, and buy lox, bagels, and all the trimmings. On Sunday afternoons, the city’s streets were their hiking trails or, because he wanted his son to be a schtarke—a strong man able to survive in all terrain—Nathan would lead Zach through the wilds of Pelham Bay Park that spread out beyond the sooty barbeque grills and beer-can-littered basketball courts. While they wended their way past placid salt marshes, through acres of mugwort and bayberry, brambles, bushes, and vines, and under canopies of oak, pine, and spruce, Nathan would identify edible plants, and branches that, were Zach ever forced to spend the night outdoors, would make the best shelter. Almost invariably, they would end up at the hoary post oak that Nathan claimed was the oldest tree in New York City. Its bark was scarred by fire, its limbs chipped, bleached, and whacked by storms and salty winds but Zach grew to venerate the old oak for standing bold and tall in the stingy earth, a survivor in the woods of the Bronx, as his father had been in the Polish forests.
WHEN ZACH TURNED twelve, his father started taking him along to the schvitz, the Russian baths where Jews from Eastern Europe, whose flags changed with every war, paid a couple of bucks to stew together in a steam room. Why Nathan would spend his free time sweating after he’d sweltered all week over boiling water and hot rollers at the hat factory, Zach could not fathom, but he was overjoyed to be included in the grown-up masculine camaraderie of the schvitz. The fragrance of Eucalyptus oil perfumed the air a half block from the baths and inside, the slap of rubber flip-flops on the tiled floors sounded like applause. When the burly clerk at the front desk gave Zach his own towel and locker key, he felt as if he’d been initiated into an exclusive club.
Spending time with Nathan and his lontzmen from the Old Country—Herman the butcher, Sol the druggist, and Izzy the furrier—was as much fun for Zach as hanging out with his own friends. He loved watching their pinochle games and breathing the smoke from their cigars. He marveled that they didn’t cry out when big burly men who couldn’t speak a word of English gave them pletzers—rubdowns with soap suds and oak leaves that could peel off a layer of skin. He adored listening to the stories they told each other during a nosh in the cafeteria—maybe herring and black bread, or steak and onions with a shot of vodka, neat—and afterward, when they took naps on rickety, white iron cots in a dormitory that looked like a hospital ward, Zach was flattered when they trusted him to wake them after twenty minutes. Cocooned in their thick white robes and contrapuntal snores, they reminded him of babies in bassinets, except that the lontzmen had paunches and more hair growing out of their ears than on their heads. Zach took guilty pleasure in the fact that, unlike Izzy, Sol, and Herman, his father’s physique matched that of Charles Atlas, the bodybuilder in Marvel Comics ads who promised to transform a ninety-seven-
pound weakling into a He-man. Only after witnessing a shocking event did Zach understand that Nathan and his lontzmen didn’t go to the schvitz just for their health. They went to test themselves and each other. They went for forgiveness and love.
The steam room was thirty feet square with three levels of wooden benches along which large wooden buckets were stationed at several points, each fed by its own spigot. There was an airtight door to the locker room on one wall, and directly across, a revolving glass door that gave way to a pool. The first time Nathan brought Zach to the steam room, he instructed his son on proper conduct.
“Remember, Boychik: the higher the bench, the hotter the air. As soon as you feel the heat close in on you, you have to cool down—right away. Don’t wait to faint. Go out and take a plunge in the pool or else splash yourself with a bucket of water. If you use the pail, don’t dump the whole thing on your head like Niagara Falls. Do it right—like this.” Nathan picked up the nearest pail of water, brought it close to his chest and slowly tipped about a third of its contents onto his torso, another third onto his face, and the rest onto the top of his head. Then he returned the empty pail to the spigot. “Don’t forget to put the bucket back under its spigot so it fills up for the next guy,” he said.
One day, as they undressed in the locker room, Nathan told Zach the lontzmen were going to be having a competition to see who could hold out the longest in the steam without cooling down.
“Don’t ask to join the contest,” Nathan said. “It’s not healthy. You’ll get dehydrated.”
“If it’s not healthy why are you doing it?”
“Men do dumb things.”
Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate Page 2