by Max Gross
She didn’t remember much about the first night. Before business started for the evening, someone suggested a toast to the new girl. Pesha was handed a drink in a red plastic cup, and a few minutes later she felt woozy. She woke up the next morning naked in one of the beds. Whatever imp or foul demon had crept into the bed and defiled her in the night was long gone.
Pesha looked down at her coffee and away from Yankel.
“It isn’t so bad, you know. Not really. That first time was terrible, no question. I guess they figured they had to lure me in. Once I was initiated, there would be no turning back. And I have to give Kasia credit—she was cunning about it. I would have run a thousand miles away if she came out and said what it was that she wanted me to do. And I cried and cried the next day. But once the vilest deed had been committed, the rest doesn’t seem quite so bad. At least, it didn’t for me. One of the things you learn when you’ve been away from Kreskol for a while is that the world is a far less modest, less moral place. But modesty isn’t everything.”
“You don’t mean that, Pesha,” Yankel answered.
She smiled and looked back at him.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she continued. “No, I don’t like what I’m doing. Not at all. And yes, if you said that I traded one nightmare for another that wouldn’t be so far off the mark. But if you asked me right now if I would like to return to Kreskol I would say no. A thousand times no. Never.”
Yankel looked away, before he returned to her gaze.
“I was sent to Smolskie to look for you, you know,” Yankel finally said. “Rabbi Sokolow and the rest of them gave me a note to give to the authorities saying you were missing, and that your husband probably killed you.”
Pesha looked surprised.
“They thought Ishmael murdered me?”
“Yes.”
She released a one-note staccato laugh.
“And, you know, your family was grieving for you.”
Pesha blanched.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Pesha said. “You’re right. I should have left a note.” But that appeared to be the extent of her regrets.
Yankel remained downcast as they continued drinking their coffee.
“Let me tell you something, Yankel. The girls at these brothels are idiots. I don’t know what you know about drugs, but there are a lot of them at the brothel. Kasia gives the girls their allowance and their tips, and they turn around and spend it on all sorts of terrible stuff. But not me. I’m figuring out how to get out of there. And I’ve got my money stashed away. Someday I’ll go to Paris or New York or Jaffa and I’ll open up a café or a flower shop, or I’ll wait tables. Something better. Don’t you feel sorry for me—not for a second. I’ve made my choices, and I’m happy enough with them.”
Her voice dropped, slightly, with this last pronouncement; as if she had imprudently invited Yankel into a private reverie she had never intended for his—or anyone’s—ears.
Perhaps she already learned that indiscretion was dangerous in her line of work; that it was wiser to keep any fantasies to herself. However, this moment of incaution was also a gesture of trust. An involuntary vote of confidence in him. Yankel couldn’t help but be moved.
They continued chatting for another hour before they both decided it was late and they should go.
“I have a question for you, Yankel,” Pesha said just as they went their separate ways. “So when you said that everyone thinks that Ishmael murdered me, does that mean he’s locked up in chains?”
“No—he fled town, too. Just before I was sent off to alert the authorities.”
A shadow fell on Pesha’s lovely, doll-like face, and her mouth curled downward in a frown.
“He’s on the loose?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Nobody knows.”
Pesha looked more angry than fearful.
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she said, looking at him for the first time with eyes bespeaking something other than affection.
Yankel fell in love with Pesha as only the very young can love: instantaneously; unquestioningly; implacably.
Truly, Yankel felt a certain astonishment that emotions could overwhelm him so completely for a woman he didn’t know very well. And for a woman whose moral history, under normal circumstances, he would have been appalled by.
On the tram back to Karol’s, he had to stuff his hands into his mouth and bite into his fingers to keep himself from howling with rage that this woman—whom he suddenly felt so tenderly toward—should have endured the degradations and abuses she described. When he got off the tram a few stops early, he stomped his feet on the pavement, like an angry ogre, eager for the world to take notice of his displeasure. As he passed an unattended car, he kicked one of the headlights with all his might, leaving shards of yellow glass on the asphalt. Dismayed at this gratuitous act of wrath, he sprinted the rest of the way home.
Back in Karol’s apartment, he had no interest in eating dinner or discussing the events of the day. He merely asked to be left alone, and meditated solely on Pesha and her misfortunes.
When he realized that the next time they would see each other, Pesha would have been with a dozen different men—or more—none of whom loved her or cared for her, his anger became unbearable. He wished he hadn’t just kicked out a headlight—he felt a savage urge to heave a rock through the windshield; slash open the rubber tires with a knife; burn the remains to the ground. If he had access to enough gasoline, he might have ignited the entire block.
In the abyss of his rage, Yankel went out later that night and lost his virginity.
“What are some of the other cathouses around town, Karol?” Yankel asked his friend. “Do you know any others?”
“Whoa, tiger. You just went to one. I know you had a good time, but you’re trying to save money—remember?”
“I know.”
“We’ll go again in a few weeks. Believe me, I understand why you want to go back.”
Yankel stared at his friend for a few moments before he spoke.
“Tonight,” Yankel said. “I want to go tonight.”
Karol was taken aback. His roommate was such a passive chap that it was almost unthinkable that one of Karol’s edicts should be challenged.
“Why do you have to go tonight?” Karol asked—but Yankel didn’t answer.
Karol considered this for a few moments. He was not Yankel’s father, after all. If the kid wanted to throw away another couple hundred zlotys, it wasn’t really his business. Plus, the kid spent almost nothing. He never went to the movies, or out to clubs, or bought himself Italian leather shoes, or even a pack of cigarettes.
“All right,” Karol said. “I’ll take you back.”
“Not the place we went,” Yankel said. “Somewhere else.”
This was peculiar, given that Karol had been under the impression that his friend had done very well at the last cathouse. But he decided not to say anything. He drove Yankel to an address in Srodmiescie, and pointed to an apartment building. “It’s number twenty-one. Do you want me to come up with you?”
Yankel shook his head.
As he got out of the car, Karol said, “Do you want me to wait for you?”
“No,” Yankel said firmly. “Thank you. I’ll find my way home.”
I have long found Yankel’s behavior here difficult to fathom. The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that there’s a demon of pride in every man, and Yankel was determined that if he should be cuckolded by the woman he loved, he would cuckold her in return. It was, perhaps, faulty reasoning, but the heart is tethered to a different set of rules than any other part of the anatomy. His fingers trembled as he rang the bell, but the only behavior that seemed to make any sense to Yankel was to do with another woman what Pesha was undoubtedly doing at that very moment with another man.
The door to this brothel was answered by a stocky, bald, and somewhat frightening man.
“What do you want?” the gatekeeper asked.
Yankel was unprepared for questions—but he knew that the request needed to be cloaked innocuously.
“I want to meet one of the girls.”
The gatekeeper eyed him up and down, and led him into the living room of what seemed an otherwise normal three-bedroom apartment. Seated on the couch were three bored-looking girls: a blond and two brunettes. Two of the girls were in bathrobes, one was in her underwear. All three were smoking cigarettes.
“Okay,” said the gatekeeper, dispensing with unnecessary protocol. “Take your pick.”
They were all ordinary-looking. Yankel settled on the blond, who was short, with puppyish brown eyes and rounded lips, simply because she looked less like the other two.
The girl stubbed out her cigarette and got to her feet.
“Let’s go,” she said with an affected cheeriness, and led Yankel down the hall.
Before they entered the bedroom, Yankel found the gatekeeper standing behind him. “Hey,” the gatekeeper said. “It’s gonna be three hundred zlotys.”
Yankel took a moment before nodding.
“You leave it on the dresser before she does anything.”
Yankel nodded again, deciding he didn’t like this fellow very much.
“One other thing,” the gatekeeper said, giving Yankel a final look in the eye, and apparently deciding he didn’t like Yankel much, either. “No rough stuff. You hurt one hair on her head, and I’ll break your arm.”
“I understand.”
The room was more dimly lit than the one in the other cathouse. A lamp with a red lightbulb was the only illumination, which made the girl’s flesh look as if it were glowing.
She was quicker about her business than Pesha had been. There were no unnecessary creams or makeups to add or subtract. Once the door was closed, she discarded her robe and lay down naked on the bed.
As ordinary as her face looked, the robe had done a good job concealing how exceptional the girl’s form was. Her breasts were enormous, even as the rest of her frame was small. Her skin, more honey-colored than Pesha’s, was unblemished. And even though he was fully dressed—and a muddle of different emotions—Yankel was aroused. He began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Three hundred on the dresser,” the girl said, not moving.
Yankel wordlessly counted the money and left it where she told him.
“Do you have a rubber?” the girl asked as he proceeded to undress.
She needn’t have asked; the prophylactic remained unopened and untouched in his pocket, slyly taunting him for failing to consummate his first encounter.
“How does this work?” he asked, showing her the condom.
The surprise passed from the girl’s face as quickly as it appeared, and she removed it from Yankel’s hand, tore off the wrapper, and unrolled the device into place. But Yankel’s question softened the girl. She moved slower, raised his chin with her fingers, and kissed him. Whether it was simulated or authentic, there was warmth in the kisses, thrusts, and moans that followed. As Yankel groped blindly through his first sexual act, he felt something greater than the clumsy dread most males feel during their inaugural moment.
When he finished, she slid off him and, rather than get dressed right away, lit a cigarette.
“That was your first time, wasn’t it?” the girl asked him.
Yankel nodded.
“I didn’t think that when you came in,” the girl said. “You can usually tell.”
Yankel didn’t say anything.
“The virgins are always so timid. Afraid of their own shadow. You looked determined. Like nothing was going to stop you. But then you asked me about the rubber and I knew . . .”
Neither of them spoke for a minute, as the girl smoked.
“Well, I’m honored I was the one you picked,” the girl said. “I suppose you’ll never forget me now.”
“I suppose not.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
The moment he finished had been filled with regret. He felt like he had betrayed an unspoken promise he had made to Pesha. Of course, no vows had been exchanged, but Yankel was convinced of his indecency nonetheless.
However, the physical sensation had been so much greater than anything he could have been prepared for. The eruption in his loins had felt at once so abnormal and yet so liberating. As if his entire essence had joyfully tumbled into a vast, bottomless ocean.
“Yes,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”
Yankel and Pesha continued meeting every Monday.
At their second rendezvous, Yankel began telling Pesha his story, and she listened with the same rapt attention he had shown her.
He loved her more and more after every encounter. He thought of her at the bakery and when he went home. As he walked the streets, he looked for Pesha’s face on the shoulders of every woman he passed. He went to the Trzmiel café that she had taken him to in the hopes that she would return on a random Tuesday or Thursday and he would have an extra hour or two alone with her. He could no longer sleep on Sunday nights, as he lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, and wondering if she would really be waiting for him at Trzmiel.
And yet after each encounter with Pesha, Yankel would find himself in a different cathouse, in a different part of Warsaw, with a different prostitute. (For some reason, he tried not to visit the same brothel twice.) He would come home from these houses of ill repute and wordlessly climb into his makeshift bed, where the tears would silently fall down his cheeks. Karol began to grow concerned that his friend might have mistaken that first dalliance with a harlot for love, in which case he would have to wise up the poor sap. But whenever he asked Yankel if anything was wrong, Yankel insisted everything was fine.
Sometimes Yankel and Pesha would sit and have coffee as they talked, sometimes they would wander through the Galeria Mokotow. They exchanged their impressions of Warsaw; their constant amazement at the pace of things. How quickly affairs were decided. How plentiful food and luxury were. How fast people traveled. How lonely it was to live in a city where you didn’t speak the language. How confounding the technology proved.
And they remembered Kreskol with nostalgia; the cobblers and winemakers and butchers all garnered laughs and smiles. They talked of how secure it felt walking the streets and recognizing every face. They rarely spoke of the things they both despised about Kreskol.
“Next week, do you want to meet me on Sunday morning at the Kolo Bazaar?” Pesha asked one Monday. “It’s only open on Saturday and Sunday. It’s supposed to be something to see.”
Sunday was Yankel’s busiest day at the bakery, but given his otherwise punctual and uninterrupted attendance record, the request for a day off was granted.
They walked through the bazaar like two dazed children. It reminded Yankel of his journey to Smolskie all those months back, when he had sat in the back of the gypsy wagon. The bazaar was a strange mixture of old and new; there was a Prussian Pickelhaube on one table, a used DVD player on another. Some of the crazy old gypsies had put out their soiled underwear on the ground, hoping to find the right customer.
Pesha tried on a fur coat, and examined herself in a full-length mirror for several long minutes before she conceded that it was too expensive, even if she haggled it down to its proper price.
“Try this on,” Pesha instructed Yankel, handing him a leather jacket.
Yankel obeyed.
“Oh my!” Pesha said when she saw him. “Oh my. You’re getting that, Yankel. No questions asked.”
Yankel blanched when he saw the cost—four hundred zlotys—and he was about to say so, but before he had a chance Pesha was bargaining the jacket down in price. “One hundred,” she told the old woman who was selling jackets, winter coats, and blazers off a rack.
The proprietress laughed at Pesha’s brazenness, and counteroffered: “Three hundred.”
“One-fifteen.”
And after the two went back and forth for a few more rounds, they agreed on a pric
e: 170 zlotys. Before Yankel could reach into his pocket and buy the jacket that he didn’t really want, Pesha had already paid the woman.
“That’s a gift, Yankel,” she said when he tried to reimburse her. “Just wear it. You look handsome in it.”
The love he felt for Pesha at that moment was uncontainable. He wanted to buy her something. Anything. He almost went for the fur coat that she had discarded, but another woman had already picked it up and had begun bargaining with the crone.
“Thank you,” he said in a hushed voice.
“You’re welcome.”
As brashly as she had purchased the jacket, she took his hand in hers and walked him to the next stall.
“Your hand is sweaty,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She laughed sweetly at his embarrassment.
He could have died right then and there with a glow of contentment on his face that no undertaker could have disguised. He laughed, too. And when their eyes met, Yankel was convinced that she shared his affections.
They spent the morning walking through the bazaar, going from table to table, examining antique brooches and bonnets and admiring photographs and old movie posters. “Who’s that?” Yankel asked when he saw an oversized black-and-white poster of a lean, clear-eyed man wearing a sweater, sitting astride a motorcycle. “Steve McQueen,” the merchant answered. Accordion players and guitarists ambled slowly through the market serenading the shoppers. When Pesha said she was hungry, they shared a bag of popcorn and had the same ticklish reaction to the dryness, saltiness, softness, and crunchiness of each kernel.
He almost said the words “I love you”—but stopped himself at the last moment, too terrified of what she might say in response.
Pesha went to look at a table of handbags while Yankel meandered around a table filled with pipes, cigarette cases, and Zippo lighters, when he heard a voice say: “Hey!”
He looked up and found the blond prostitute with the puppyish eyes from the Srodmiescie cathouse smiling at him.
“I thought that was you,” she said.
Never had such a feeling of dread swept over Yankel. He instinctively turned around to look for Pesha, but did not see her, which filled him with both relief and panic at the same time.