Amichai Belowski’s shop on the Lower East Side, unmarked and nearly consumed between a school and a church, could easily be mistaken as another unkempt apartment in a neighborhood of low-cost housing, except that through the clean patches of a dusty, fingerprinted window, Jaryk sees that almost all of the space is filled with instruments. Violins lie balanced against each other’s necks, and propped against the window are several guitars in various states of repair, the wood of the insides on some exposed while others seem ready to play. At the back of the room, there’s a man working on an upright piano. What he knows of pianos is limited to what Lucy’s told him, but even at a distance, he can see it’s a beauty, made of Old World wood and sleek edges that give the instrument a sense of flight.
“Who’s there?” the man calls from the innards of the piano.
“I was sent by Rabbi Samuel. He said you could lend us some instruments. For our Sunday classes. My name is Jaryk Smith.”
“You’re the boy from Warsaw,” says Amichai Belowski, turning finally to face Jaryk. There’s something in the country ruddiness of Amichai’s face that reminds him of Misha, a sense of laughter, maybe, even though there’s no joke to be told and even though Amichai is much older, maybe even the rabbi’s age, though he seems to be nimble enough, clearing a path for Jaryk, moving instruments aside.
“I’m retiring,” Amichai says. “So I thought why not give my old ones to the shul?”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“Rabbi Samuel said that in return you could help me with a few things.”
“Oh, he did? I mean, sure. Not a problem.”
“It’s just that I need to clean the place for the next tenant, and I have no sons to help me.”
“I’ll be glad to.”
In two weeks, the shop will be closing down. “Not enough people want things repaired anymore,” Amichai says. “They just want to buy things new.” Forty years he’s been in the business, but recently it hasn’t paid enough to keep the lights on. It’s a shame, Jaryk thinks, to retire on a sour note, especially as Amichai’s carried on a family tradition. His father in Vienna did the same sort of work, he says, tuning instruments with his ear so perfectly he was visited by concert pianists hoping for a little magic, a little something extra to enchant the audience—a good-paying job until 1939, when the family decided to flee.
“What good timing,” Jaryk says. He doesn’t mean it sardonically, but he can see Amichai wince—maybe the rabbi’s shared the story of the orphanage, maybe he hasn’t, though either way he would never begrudge the good fortune of others.
They talk of Amichai’s first years in the city as Jaryk wraps the instruments and places them into boxes. It’s a familiar tale and yet still feels miraculous to him—landing on these shores with no money, the father and son working together at a furniture company until they save enough to start a business. The American dream, predictable and comforting.
“We were lucky,” Amichai says. “That we left when we did.”
Jaryk nods. Was it luck that helped him roll off a train, or some flaw of character? He remains unsure, though in the presence of this man, who’s worked all his life with his hands, listening for the most precise of sounds, that singular tone which means pitch-perfect, he’s willing to believe in something other than luck, a kind of grace, even, a kind of order in the choice of death and life, of all divine things.
After they’ve packed the instruments into boxes—a few of which he will carry back to the synagogue—Jaryk sweeps, sands, and then mops the floor with soap and lye. He washes the window of its years of stains. Hours later, it feels almost like a new storefront; all that’s left are Amichai’s tools and the upright piano, gleaming now from Jaryk’s ministrations.
“The lady who asked me to repair this never came for it. It’s a beauty, isn’t it? Not a note is off.” Amichai runs his hand along the scales. “Do you play?”
“No,” Jaryk says. “But I know someone who does.” He imagines Lucy with her hands on a piano again. How content she seemed in India, when after the struggle of the journey she’d been presented the colonial pianola and had performed Bach so perfectly that the chatter in the room ceased. Everyone had paused to take note. She had seemed to him irreproachably beautiful. Maybe it’s not without reason that the rabbi sent him here.
“I gather the piano is very expensive, but if you are looking to sell it, then maybe I could buy it from you?”
“It is in fact very expensive,” Amichai says. “It’s restored to mint condition. I could sell it at auction. It would pay my expenses for a year, maybe two.”
“I understand,” Jaryk says. “I don’t think I could afford anything so expensive, at least not right now, but maybe I could pay on a loan. A little every month.”
“Help me sit,” Amichai says, and Jaryk makes a chair out of the boxes in the room. “Your friend who plays, she must be very special to you.”
“She is,” Jaryk says.
“A boy from Warsaw,” says Amichai Belowski, chewing his lip. “How could I refuse a boy from Warsaw? Listen, I might change my mind tomorrow. If you are to take it from me, best you do so tonight. Best you call your friends to give you a hand.”
* * *
………………
Outside Amichai’s shop, he telephones Earl at the Fulton Fish Market and Earl sounds the alarm. “Jaryk needs a hand,” he can hear Earl yell on the other end of the line.
Out of the subway they emerge still wearing the clothes of the workday, which hasn’t finished yet, which means that somehow Earl must have secured them special dispensation. Five men in all, including Earl, all men he knows from his time at the wharves, at Seven and a Half Dimes, at the Dockside Players Field.
“We stopped for doughnuts, but otherwise we came as fast as we could,” says Earl.
If only Amichai’s piano had wheels it would be perfect. But no such luck. It requires men keeping an arm on each of its corners in order to labor it out onto the street. Before he leaves Amichai Belowski, Jaryk signs a promissory note that he will pay for the piano in small monthly installments, amounts so small that the loan is likely to outlive Mr. Belowski, a fact that’s lost on no one.
As they steer the piano through Tompkins Square Park, troubling pigeons in their late afternoon droop, Jaryk exchanges a word with each of the men. If his memory serves, they all landed their jobs with Misha’s help. Now they’re here to lend a brother a hand. Around the statue of Temperance they go, cutting up toward Seventh Street.
Jaryk unlocks the door to Lucy’s building, and there is Mrs. Esperanza.
“Lucy’s not home, you know,” she says.
“Yes, I was hoping for that.”
“I’ll keep an eye,” says Mrs. Esperanza.
Earl leads them up to the second-floor landing, where the space is especially tight and maneuvering requires the men to collectively hold their breath and where the brunt of the weight is on Jaryk’s shoulders, Jaryk who has insisted he bring up the rear, where it seems to him that he might give up the ghost, let go of his grip, but the men around him won’t have it. Earl finds a way to steer them up with little injury to the walls.
There’s no good place to set the piano in the apartment; almost the entire studio is filled with Lucy’s things. Her nightdresses are on the floor along with her piles of books. They clear a space in the middle of the room, not knowing where else to put it. Jaryk leaves a note: “For the music and for you—with all of my love, J.”
“I sincerely hope she plays it,” Earl says. “And I sincerely hope you’re about to buy us all a drink.”
Returning
The city has begun to feel frenetic. The child inside her has begun to jab and kick. She still doesn’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl—who would want to know? Who would want to dampen that first surprise? Crossing the statue at Tompkins Square Park she acknowledges the knocking inside.
At times the kicking feels playful, a testing of the waters; other times, a Morse code of sorts. Communications from unknown lands.
On the subway, men have begun to stand for her. If only they’d done the same a month ago, she wants to tell them. What a strange, private enterprise is motherhood. How it must have felt for her own mother, expecting Lucy, talking with her as she grew in the womb.
Mrs. Esparanza is sitting outside the building. She knows the comings and goings of everyone on the block. Before, she used to clean houses for professors at Columbia, but she always read eclectically. Octavio Paz. García Lorca. Foucault, who Mrs. Esparanza refers to as a paranoid Communist. Lucy didn’t have to tell her that she was pregnant. She knew the way so many women in her life have known—who knows how exactly? perhaps by smell, perhaps by intuition—and immediately upon knowing conferred a blessing.
“Today is a day of love,” says Mrs. Esparanza.
Lucy’s come to expect these blessings. They have a ritual of hugging each other. This evening, Ms. Esparanza smells like licorice; waving goodbye, Lucy sees the candy stuck to her teeth.
Just a couple of years ago, she’d seen this hallway and couldn’t believe the price of city life. Now, she hardly notices.
Even before she turns the doorknob she can smell the presence of visitors. Only Jaryk has her key, but it’s not him, at least, she doesn’t think so, because her apartment smells a little like fish. It’s a Misha smell, really.
The smell of fish is stronger inside the apartment, though she doesn’t feel afraid. Maybe it’s Misha’s ghost, she thinks, then sees the upright piano. It takes up nearly all the middle space of the room. She’s seen quality pianos before, but she can tell that a master craftsman made this one. Someone who loves music as much as he loves the beauty of angles.
“For the music and for you—with all of my love, J.” Next to the note, he’s left her keys. Even the keys seem well tended to her, as if it’s for her sake that he’s polished that cheap steel.
She begins to play. Nothing specific, no exercise of her mother’s, no proper composition. Just her fingers landing where they will, finding lost time.
* * *
………………
The next day the congregation gather outside the temple in the waning sun. Is it a Friday tradition, she wonders, this lolling outside, this waiting for the last bell? She doesn’t see Jaryk in their midst, doesn’t see anyone she knows. This time she’s not wearing a hat. She knows about white on the Sabbath. Her dress trails, it’s so long, which is why she had to cab her way uptown, the driver treating her like a queen as soon as he noticed her belly. This state of motherhood gives her permission. Now she feels no awkwardness at the synagogue; some of the congregants treat her with deference.
She goes in with the others, who proceed en masse once the cantor begins to sing. Inside she notices the chandelier, every bulb casting a soft light onto the pews. She scans each row for a sign of him and, finding none, walks to the back of the synagogue. She’s afraid he might’ve skipped the service. She’s afraid she might not see him again, but he’s there in the back pew, sitting alone.
He rises, seeing her. He’s wearing his one silk shirt. Once he asked her how he should be ironing it, as if she had the first idea. Now it’s bereft of wrinkles. He’s neatly side-parted his hair and applied pomade; she notices he has more gray in his temples than before. He reaches out his hand, maybe in a hello, maybe to help her to her seat, but she declines.
At first she sits a few feet across from him, as if between them there is an invisible body who’s claimed the space.
When the rabbi begins to speak, she moves closer to him. Again his hand reaches for hers and again she declines. It’s only when they begin singing a wordless melody that she permits herself to move still closer. The whole congregation seems to know the tune, but Jaryk isn’t singing.
“Do you know this one?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says.
“Would you sing it?”
He sings so quietly she has to strain to hear. She’s never heard him sing before. His voice is more melodious than she’d imagined it.
“Thank you,” she says. She takes his hand, leads it to her belly, where their child is saying hello for the first time to a father.
“Oh,” he gasps. “This is what it feels like?”
“Yes,” she says. “This is what it feels like.”
She doesn’t know yet whether she’ll allow him any more than this. An occasional visitation, a relationship of dutiful acquaintances. Returning to love is always the harder journey, and she doesn’t know if she has the heart for it. Inside her, the little prince kicks and jabs, flops in seeming delight. Jaryk surprises her—he lifts his voice, joyously loud, to join the others in song—and it is so simple then to lift her own voice to make a harmony only they can hear.
notes and acknowledgments
This novel came to be in community and in widening circles, and I am indebted to my mentors, teachers, and dear friends. To my parents, Kisor and Chandana Chakrabarti, who instilled in me a love of learning and stories, and my sister, Sukanya Chakrabarti, and my family still in India. To my Los Angeles family, Phil, Chana, and Michael Bell. To my writing teachers and mentors who nurtured this novel in its formative stages: Joshua Henkin and Ernesto Mestre-Reed from the Brooklyn College MFA program. To Elizabeth Gaffney and Mary-Beth Hughes, who guided me during my time as a Public Space fellow. To my writing community and my readers, Ruggero Bozotti, Peter Dressel, Katie Belas, and Mathias Black—this book is better because of you.
Thank you, Julie Stevenson, for your enduring vision and your kindness. Thanks to my Knopf family: Catherine Tung, Robin Desser, and, of course, the inimitable Tom Pold, whose patience, wisdom, and wit allowed this book to find its final form.
And to my first reader, poet Elana Bell—you’ve seen me through the hours—thank you for joining me in this life of books and love.
* * *
—
For research on the life of Janusz Korczak and his orphanage in Warsaw, Poland, I am grateful for the assistance of Dr. Robert Shapiro, Brooklyn College, and Agnieszka Witkowska, Historical Museum of Warsaw.
“It transcends the test—being a mirror of the self…” is a quote in translation from the poet Władysław Szlengel and was used in flyers to announce the performance of The Post Office in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
The epigraph from “Childhood 1940” by Jerzy Ficowski was translated by Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Summer.
In addition, the following books informed the sections on Warsaw:
Selected Works of Janusz Korczak by Janusz Korczak, translated by Anna and George Bidwell, et al.
Ghetto Diary by Janusz Korczak, translated by Christopher Hutton
The King of Children by Betty Jean Lifton
The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow by Adam Czerniakow, translated by Stanislaw Staron and the staff of Yad Vashem
A Chronology of the Life, Activities, and Works of Janusz Korczak by Maria Falkowska, translated by Edwin P. Kulawiec
Who Will Write Our History? by Samuel D. Kassow
Who Korczak Was and Why We Cannot Know Him by Richard Lourie
Final Chapter—Korczak in the Warsaw Ghetto by Yitzhak Perlis
“The Religious Consciousness of Janusz Korczak” by Krystyna Starczewska, Dialogue and Universalism, vol. 7, nos. 9–10, pp. 53–71
* * *
—
While Gopalpur is a fictional village, there are historical correspondences to the social and political climate of West Bengal of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This material, along with some of the references to the life of Rabindranath Tagore and his time at Shantiniketan, were informed by:
Calcutta Diary by Amit Mitra
In the Wake
of Naxalbari by Sumanta Banerjee
The Naxalite Movement by Prakash Singh
Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man by Krishna Dutta and W. Andrew Robinson
The website sanhati.com
a note about the author
Jai Chakrabarti’s short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize. Chakrabarti was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received his MFA from Brooklyn College. He was born in Kolkata, India, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family. A Play for the End of the World is his first novel.
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A Play for the End of the World Page 28