by Bill Albert
I lived with my mother, father, and grandfather, Isadore Liebermann, in a big house on Eighth Avenue on the west side of Central Park. Uncles, aunts, and cousins lived next door or around the corner. On Saturdays we went to the Temple Emanu-El. In the summers we migrated to Deal Beach in New Jersey, where we had a rambling gingerbread house with curly spires and a wide wooden porch overlooking the ocean. Uncles, aunts, and cousins continued to live next door or around the corner. It was a settled, comfortable life and I knew exactly what to expect.
That’s not to say there weren’t edges that chaffed against the comfort. School was a rough edge. The lessons were endless and incomprehensible. I did try, but declensions, Latin and Greek words, and mathematical equations seemed to slip away from me like sand through a net. With great effort I managed to survive, but survival wasn’t enough. Didn’t my cousins excel at schoolwork? What was wrong with me? I was a disappointment to my teachers and to my parents, especially to my father. He was another rough edge in my life.
“You want to be a Liebermann? Do you? Then you must learn to act like a Liebermann!”
I rarely saw my father for talks except when I was going to be punished. The disciplinary meetings took place in his study, a room darkened by thick curtains and lined from floor to ceiling with books. There must have been a thousand or more—brown ones, red ones, yellow ones, black ones. I had never seen my father read a book. My grandfather, on the other hand, was always reading, and at this particular meeting he sat in the far corner, muttering to himself, his thick index finger patiently tracking the words across the page.
“What do you expect, Meyer, if you don’t work hard in this life? How do you think we got where we are today?” My father swept his arm in an expansive arc describing the room, the books, and the whole of our tidy, ordered world. “Hard work is the only answer. No one gave our life to us on a silver plate the way it is being given to you.”
At the mention of silver plates my grandfather looked up over the top of his book, his finger pressed down stiff and firm, marking the extent of his progress.
“Ha! That boy, what does he think, you just put your bowl on the table and all by itself it fills up with the chicken soup? Is that what he thinks? Ha!”
At least two or three times a week my grandfather speared me with that question. The answer was always the same.
“No, sir.”
“Father, please,” my father said. “I wish you wouldn’t . . .”
“Ha!” snorted the old man and went back to his reading.
Father was always respectful to him, but grandfather’s old-world manners and old-world dictums embarrassed and annoyed him. After all, Nathan Liebermann was a modern man and a hundred percenter; one hundred percent American that is.
“So, what is it? Just look at this report. This isn’t a report, it’s a, it’s a . . . an embarrassment for me and for you too, Meyer.”
Exasperated, he threw the piece of paper on the desk. I looked down at the floor.
“It’s just that I don’t like the Greek and Latin, Father. I don’t see . . .”
“He doesn’t like the Greek and the Latin!” my grandfather cried as if in severe pain. “He doesn’t like the Greek and the Latin? Am I hearing this? All that money, Nathan, for what? So, he can decide not to like?”
“It’s all right, Father, it’s all right. Just let me talk to the boy.”
“So, talk, go ahead talk. I’ve got better things to do anyway. The Greek and the Latin! Ha!”
“Meyer, don’t you think getting a good education is important? Is that it? Don’t you think a lawyer has to know his Greek and Latin?”
My father always spoke to me in questions for which there were never any satisfactory answers. I was just ten years old, what did I know about being a lawyer?
“No, but . . .”
“What will you be in this world without an education?”
“But you didn’t have to study Greek and Latin!” I cried in despair.
“So spoiled!” crowed Grandfather with delight. “So spoiled! I tell you, Nathan, the razor strop is what Mr. No-Greek and No-Latin there wants, the strop across his backside.”
My grandfather never really liked me very much. Most boys I knew had grandfathers who pampered them, told them stories, bragged about them, protected them. All I ever got from Isadore Liebermann was fault-finding and sour remarks.
My father stood up and began to pace. He was a barrel-chested man with stubby legs and when not shielded behind his desk he looked much less imposing. As he paced, his large head wobbled back and forth with agitation.
“Of course I didn’t study Greek and Latin,” he said. “Of course not. When did I have time to study? I was working, working hard. But, Meyer, the world is changing. It’s not enough just to work hard anymore, now you’ve got to have an education to get ahead, to stay ahead in this life. To be a professional man. Just look at what’s happening with those Division Street Jews! So, don’t tell me you don’t like Greek and Latin. I don’t want to hear it. You understand me?”
I didn’t see the connection between Greek and Latin and the Jews of Division Street, those dark mysterious figures that haunted the conversations of my father and my uncles. I don’t think I had ever actually seen a Division Street Jew, but I knew all about them and, of course, I despised them. They were dirty, uncouth wild men with long greasy hair and round black hats, savages from the Middle Ages. And worst of all they worked for next to nothing. How could an honest man make a living in the garment business when these Moths, as my father called them, these dregs of Europe, these people who had no culture, who were happy to live in filthy tenements, could exist on air? It was un-American. It should be stopped. All the Liebermanns agreed, except my mother. It was the only thing my parents ever argued about in front of me.
“They are our fellow Jews,” my mother said. “Our sisters and brothers. We must help them to improve themselves. Help them to become good upstanding citizens.”
My father would snort and tell her she was being a silly woman. How could they be good citizens. They were ruining his business, weren’t they? Taking the bread from our mouths.
“Here,” he said, “listen to what they say in the Hebrew Standard.”
He held the paper at arms length and read. “’The thoroughly assimilated American Jew can have no religious, social, or intellectual sympathy with them.’ You listening, Helen? ‘He is closer to the Christian sentiment around him than to the Judaism of these miserable darkened Hebrews.’”
“I’m sorry, Nathan, but I cannot agree with those unkind thoughts. You know I cannot.”
“Helen, you heard the rabbi say the very same thing the other week. He said they weren’t religious like us, they were ignorant and superstitious. Brothers! Think, Helen, think what your father would have said, may he rest in peace.”
“My father? My father would have had charity in his heart, Nathan Liebermann. Charity, not recriminations and hatred.”
“Well,” my father replied curtly, “Meyer Perrera never had to make his living down on Broadway, did he?”
“Having to make a living” ended most arguments for my father. It was the universal standard against which everyone and everything was measured and which few things and fewer people measured up to.
Although my father strongly disapproved, he never stopped my mother carrying out her charity work among the “darkened Hebrews” who lived on the Lower East Side. He even contributed to the settlement house project there. His two conditions were that she never talk about what she did in his house and that she never take me with her. He didn’t want me exposed to such human degradation. That was fine with me. I wasn’t interested in being exposed to human degradation, poverty, or to queer-looking Jews.
5
Do you know who lives on the west side of Central Park? People with carriages live there, women who wear fancy hats de
cked out in long feathers and men with cutaway coats. People who don’t cook their own meals, bake their own bread, or polish their own boots and, most of all, people who were not born in Castle Garden. It’s the darkened Hebrews, the Division Street Moths who arrive and are born and reborn in Castle Garden. Tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of teeming shores, the homeless, the tempest-tossed. Now it’s Ellis Island, then it was Castle Garden, but the Statue of Liberty continues to greet them with a raised torch and a poem which few of them can read.
So where do I fit in? How did I cross the great divide which separates Castle Garden from the west side of Central Park? How did I travel the few miles between those very different worlds on the island of Manhattan?
If I didn’t know the answer to that question, better yet, if that question had never been asked, I might still be living in our house on Eighth Avenue overlooking the Park and not lying here freezing to death in this Idaho hellhole. Come to think of it, the question never was asked, although I suppose you might say because I was such a spoiled child, because I was always talking and never listening, I deserved the answer I got. What else should I have expected? Didn’t I live with a family of chronic question askers?
“Why are you doing this? Why can’t you behave yourself, Meyer?” my mother asked in anguish, as yet another exasperated governess gave her notice.
As long as I could remember I had had a succession of them. English, Irish, German, finally even Polish. They came and they went. I was incorrigible, they all said, spoiled, an extraordinarily difficult child. Who wouldn’t have been? I couldn’t play outside because it was too hot or because it was too cold. I had to go to bed early so I wouldn’t be too tired. I had to eat all my food or I wouldn’t grow up to be a big strong boy. I was forced to wear what was laid out for me and every single button had to be buttoned even if it strangled me. I couldn’t do this, I had to do that. I couldn’t do that, I had to do this. Most places I wanted to go to I couldn’t. Most places I didn’t want to go to I had to go to. I was a prisoner. At least that’s what I thought before I became a prisoner.
“I’m too old to have a nanny, Mother. I am eleven years and three months old. Besides, she’s nothing but a dumb, stinky Polack and her breath smells of sour cabbage and when she’s angry she hits the back of my legs with her shoe. Look.”
It was true that she had bad breath, but she hadn’t hit me. I had taken a belt to my own legs. Even then I knew how to tell a story and make it stick.
My mother didn’t look at my legs.
“I will not have you talking that way!” she scolded. “She is a human being. She is a Jew, just like us, Meyer.”
“She’s not like us, she’s not!” I protested loudly. “I’ve heard what Father says. Dirty and scum, that’s what he calls them. Uncivilized and dirty! Not like us! Not like us!”
On Deal Beach, my cousins circled around me, taunting. “Meyer is a dirty Kike! Meyer is a dirty Kike! Dirty, dirty, dirty Kike!”
Why was I so dark? Why was my nose so big? Why was I such a runt? Why didn’t I have any brother or sisters?
“Because when his parents saw how ugly he was they didn’t want any more,” explained Cousin David, the youngest of the pack of disdainful Perrera brats.
“Meyer is a dirty Kike! Meyer is a dirty Kike! Dirty, dirty, dirty . . .”
The Polish cabbage eater couldn’t have been like us, I repeatedly protested to my mother. I stamped my foot on the floor and howled. I wept in frustration. My mother had never been able to withstand a full-blooded tantrum.
This particular tantrum, however, she withstood and when finally I ran out of steam she was still standing there with her “You’ve disappointed-me-terribly” look. She was a tall, stately woman with direct brown eyes and a finely made mouth. When she got upset she became taller and more stately, her eyes narrowed and her finely made mouth was transformed into two thin lines of displeasure.
“Meyer, Meyer. How could this have happened?”
Downstairs a clock struck. Outside a carriage rattled across the cobbles. Someone called out in a shrill voice. My mother dabbed at her eyes with a white handkerchief. She took a deep breath and then stared at me steadily as if measuring me for something. I fidgeted. Finally, she walked briskly to the door.
“Meyer, get your coat. You’re coming with me.”
“But, I’ve got to go to school. I’ve . . .”
“Be quiet, Meyer. Don’t say another word. Get your coat.”
It was the voice reserved for the servants. I got my coat.
Outside, our carriage was waiting in front of the house. The driver helped my mother and me in, touched his hat respectfully and closed the door. He climbed back up on the seat, snapped his whip and we were off. There were only a few people on the street and the park seemed empty. It was a bright morning and although there were patches of brown snow on the ground a few daffodils had begun to show themselves along the edges of the park. Another carriage passed us going in the opposite direction. My mother half raised a gloved hand in greeting. Through the side window I saw the Dakota Apartments loom up on our right. We were headed downtown.
“Where are we going?”
My mother looked straight ahead and didn’t answer for a minute or so. I could see she was getting ready to give me a lecture. When my father was angry he would shout, indignantly spluttering out in interrogatory disbelief the sins I had committed, but my mother proceeded more calmly, always starting at an unlikely point and then traveling in a roundabout way to her final destination—my current transgression. Although she was more deliberate in her attack, because of the circuitous routes adopted she sometimes got lost on the way and I would then escape as her lecture strayed into a dead end.
“You’ve been a very lucky little boy, Meyer, haven’t you? Nothing has been too good for you, has it? Have your father and I ever denied you? The finest clothes, a wonderful home, the most prestigious schooling, everything a boy could ever desire. You have been loved and cared for like a prince. And more than that, we have done everything to ensure you will have a prosperous, secure life ahead of you. Do you know anyone who is luckier? Anyone in the entire world?”
Although I was convinced there must be thousands of luckier boys, millions maybe, at that moment I couldn’t think of one.
“And with all this attention lavished on you what have you become? Do you know? Well, I’ll tell you what. A rude, selfish little boy, Meyer, that’s what. And spiteful. What is worse, you take everything for granted. You refuse to work at school. No governess will put up with you. You are rude to the servants. You . . .”
Why did I have to be polite to the servants? No one else was.
“It’s not my . . .” I began indignantly.
“Stop! Not a word. Not another word. I want you to listen to me. Just listen for a change.”
It was completely unlike my mother. Something was wrong. She paused for a moment and then continued in a softer tone and on a completely different tack.
“There are events in the world that we don’t understand, Meyer. Chance meetings, meetings that never take place, meetings that are supposed to take place and don’t take place. And when we try to understand why or to put it more . . . What I’m trying to say is . . .”
She hesitated. That was much more like my mother.
We were approaching the end of the park. I could see Columbus on top of his tall column. It was where the carriage usually turned off to take me to school. Now the driver continued down Broadway. By the time we crossed Fifty-second Street the buildings had become taller and the road narrower. The traffic had increased tremendously. Cable cars, trams, drays, omnibuses, carriages, cabs, all fighting for their piece of the road. Drivers shouting, horses snorting, the sound of the iron wheels rattling against the cobbles. The carriage was being rocked violently and I drew back into the seat cushions. I had never
been allowed anywhere below Fifty-ninth Street before.
6
“I want to tell you a story, Meyer,” my mother said after a time. We were now somewhere near Fortieth Street. She pointed out the Metropolitan Opera House. I wasn’t interested, for my alarm was increasing as we traveled farther and farther into the center of the city. Where could she be taking me? To see my father at his work? Had I done something so serious that it couldn’t wait until that evening to be punished?
“Maybe I should have, I just don’t know,” my mother said to herself. “But, it doesn’t matter now.”
She was oblivious to the noise and the movement of the carriage. I, on the other hand, was being disoriented by the chaos outside and the fear of meeting my father and was only half listening to what she was saying. It didn’t seem a good time for a story anyway. Before going to bed was the best time for stories, but she rarely visited me then. She had explained that she would, of course, like nothing better than to tell me a bedtime story but that she and my father had so many pressing social obligations that it was difficult. She knew I would understand. After my mother left I asked the governess what a “social obligation” was. She said it was something rich people did.
“Are you paying attention, Meyer?” my mother asked sharply. “This is important. I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
She looked out the window and then turned and smiled warmly at me. She rested her hand on my knee.
“You know I do love you, Meyer, don’t you?” she said with sudden and unexpected passion.
I nodded at her unsurely. Then the story began.