by Max Gross
“Why won’t you sleep next to me?” he asked her one night after he undressed for bed and sat watching her at her sewing table.
She didn’t look up from her work.
“What do you care?”
Ishmael considered this for a moment.
“A man has needs.”
She did not respond. Let him be angry. Let him simmer and stew, as she had these past weeks. Let him feel aggrieved. Why should it bother her?
“And a wife has duties,” he added.
The conversation died there, but Ishmael began to look at her with the same fury as she looked at him.
“This is not how a woman treats her husband,” he said the next evening when she again refused to come to bed. “Don’t forget who’s lord and master.”
Pesha did stop her sewing and looked him squarely in the eye.
“Lord and master?” she repeated. “Lord and master?”
Ishmael was unbowed by what he assumed was a taunt.
“Every man is lord and master of his own house.”
Pesha could no longer control herself.
“Lord and master?” she screamed. “You’re thinking of the wrong words. The one you want is ‘tyrant’! You’re a tyrant!”
If it was an insult, it didn’t bother Ishmael as much as the woman’s insubordination. Without a word he marched to the wardrobe and removed the trousers that she had patched a few days earlier. He spun around and marched them back to her.
Ishmael had split the right knee of the black trousers and Pesha had sewn it in white thread. The threading was loose, and rather than joining the two pieces together at the seam, she had merely tacked the upmost piece on top of the bottom. It was unwearable by anybody except a pauper.
“You see this?”
Pesha didn’t answer.
“You think you’ve been a decent wife when you give me this?”
In case she wasn’t getting the message, Ishmael grabbed her by the nape of her neck and pushed her eyes toward the trousers.
She let out a yelp, but it was more out of surprise than anything else.
“This,” Ishmael said, “is dreck.”*
He let go of her neck and, before she could figure out what he was up to, ripped the pants in two.
She didn’t say anything.
He took the severed fabric and tore it again, before looking at her and issuing his command:
“Fix them.”
Pesha didn’t move, but Ishmael had apparently decided that nothing would happen in the house until his trousers were mended. He stood above her and waited.
I imagine that many women in Pesha’s position would have succumbed to whatever he wanted. Ishmael was not a physically meek man. Quite the opposite. And laying hands on one’s neck can reduce anyone—man or woman—to tears. Moreover, the shredding of the garment had its own implied brutality; as if he were saying that what had been done to the trousers could be done to the wife.
“You . . .” Pesha began softly. “You disgusting pustule!”
A look of surprise appeared on Ishmael’s face. And when Pesha spoke next it was even louder and more thunderous.
“You revolting, slimy, stinking pig!”
If Ishmael was preparing to physically force his wife to repair his clothing, or whatever else he had in mind, her courage caused him to lose his nerve.
“You cunt!” he screamed back.
“You call yourself a man!”
The two of them went at each other for the next hour. They screamed and belittled and cursed. But Ishmael did not lay his hands on his wife—instead, the battle reached its zenith when he picked up the wooden rocking chair (which had served as Pesha’s bed for the last few weeks) and bashed it against the wall, wrecking it beyond repair.
The chair had been in the Rosenthal family for generations and had been entrusted to Pesha’s safekeeping. Seeing it destroyed brought tears to Pesha’s eyes. Ishmael was so surprised to see the effect on his wife (after he had called her a “cunt” and manhandled her he didn’t think there was any making her weep) that he wondered if he had indeed gone too far. He went to bed, but he didn’t sleep. She stretched out on the sofa and didn’t bother hiding her sobs.
They returned to silence for the next week. But it was only a matter of time before Ishmael’s virile urges reappeared.
“This has gone on long enough,” Ishmael said a little more than a week later. “It’s shabbos. It’s a mitzvah and a commandment to make a child.”
“Get away from me.”
He didn’t argue with her. Instead, he went to her side of the bed, picked up her jewelry box, dropped it on the ground, and stomped on it as if he were a groom cracking the glass goblet at a wedding. He crushed the box and ruined much of her jewelry.
She looked at the broken box sadly, but as if it were a disaster she had been waiting for.
“I want a divorce.”
For the first time in weeks, Ishmael laughed.
“Over my dead body.”
After that, they split their time screaming at each other or brooding in silence, and Pesha couldn’t tell which she hated more. The only thing she knew was that he was a monster. The sole interruption of their misery came when Rabbi and Rebbetzin Sokolow attempted to mediate their marital woes—something that didn’t do anything good. The Rebbetzin asked her what she objected to in her husband, but Pesha didn’t know where to begin. It was not just Ishmael’s meanness (although that would certainly be enough), or even the fact that he wrecked things when provoked (with the implicit suggestion he might do the same to her), but the fact that he was silent. Pesha had never heard of a woman getting a divorce for boredom before, but it was surely as potent a complaint as a husband who’s an adulterer or refuses to lay off dice games.
But the Rabbi had instructed them to treat each other well, and Pesha felt she couldn’t argue with him. So she was reasonably nice to Ishmael. She roasted the chicken he liked, and sat at the table with him while he ate. But she was not about to return to the bed.
One night, as Pesha lay asleep on the sofa, she woke up when she sensed Ishmael near. She turned, and even in the dark she could see that he was standing next to her naked, his loins engorged. Before she could say anything, his hands were on her nightgown, searching for an opening.
She shrieked, and with every ounce of strength she possessed, she kicked—landing a blow to the groin.
He slumped over on the ground, in agony.
Pesha was so terrified that she jumped up and ran for the front door. But, as wounded and miserable as Ishmael was, he stood up and grabbed her.
In a moment of rage, he threw her to the floor, blackening her arm. For a moment, she was convinced that he would kill her. The look in his eyes was unlike anything that Pesha had ever seen. But, apparently, he was in too much pain for anything more exertive than the initial attack.
He hobbled to bed, where he dressed himself and went to sleep. She huddled in a corner with her back turned to the monster. But she did not close her eyes. A few days later Pesha moved to her father’s house.
The only thing that she preferred about being with Ishmael as opposed to her current predicament was that she knew how to properly curse him out. There was great pleasure in that.
Pesha resolved to learn Polish if only to properly tell all the prostitutes off.
She asked Kasia for a spelling book, or a phrasebook—anything to teach the basics—but was summarily denied.
“And why would you want to learn the lingo, my dear?” Kasia asked. “I’m here to translate for you.”
“But you can’t be around all the time.”
The little dwarf shrugged. “I’m around enough. And you know plenty, Teresa. More than you realize. Besides, learning a language is an undertaking. You wouldn’t want to be distracted from work, would you?”
Pesha didn’t need to be told twice that she would receive no further assistance.
But when Kasia wasn’t around, Pesha would hold up a teacup at the breakf
ast table and ask Luba (the friendliest one in the brothel) what the word was in Polish.
“Huh?”
Pesha smilingly shook the teacup.
“Filizanka?” Luba asked.
“Filizanka,” Pesha repeated. She wrote it down and muttered “filizanka” to herself all day. The other prostitutes shook their heads at this latest incarnation of bizarre behavior.
However, Luba didn’t have the patience or the inclination to teach. After a week of Pesha pointing to the butter on the table (“maslo”); the napkin (“serwetka”); the saltshaker (“solniczka”) and watching her scribble the words down in Hebrew lettering, Luba stopped answering.
“My translation services are over,” Luba finally declared—not that the idiot would understand.
Pesha wondered if she might learn something from television. She sat next to Ling, the house gatekeeper, and watched soap operas with her—but Pesha could make little sense of the moist eyes and pinched, worried faces of the actors on the screen. It seemed like a waste of time.
She learned “Co to jest?”—what is this?—and she took it with her on her outings, which weren’t monitored. (Even though Pesha wasn’t trusted, per se, so long as she was back by dark nobody fussed much with where she spent her daylight hours.)
Pesha largely wandered the streets. “Co to jest?” she asked, holding up a lemon at the grocer. Sometimes they would answer. More often they would look at her bizarrely.
But then one day she struck gold. She found a little bookshop along Poznanska Street called Pan. The bookshop was intended for children, and the walls were decorated with fresco scenes of rainbows and elves, a peasant girl being fitted with a pair of crystal shoes, two children leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in a dark wood, and a tiny girl in a red cloak staring intently at a lascivious wolf dressed in bedclothes. Pesha wandered in to look at the walls when she saw a blond woman seated on the carpet holding up a picture book before a three-year-old.
“Kot,” the woman said. “Kot. K-O-T. Kot.”
The woman showed the child—a little girl, blonder and plumper than her mother—a picture of a white-and-orange cat.
“Czy mozesz powiedziec ‘kot’?”* the mother asked.
“Kot,” the child answered.
“Dobrze.”**
Pesha sat in a nearby corner and watched in fascination, careful not to give away that she was eavesdropping.
“Pociag,” the mother said.
She showed her daughter an image of a train.
“Pociag,” the mother repeated again. “P-O-C-I-A-G.”
“Pociag,” the little girl repeated.
“Dobrze.”
And Pesha continued watching for the next hour as the mother taught her child these words. When the mother gathered her belongings and left, Pesha settled into her spot on the floor and began rummaging through the picture books on the shelf.
She stayed at Pan until it closed, and returned the next day, right after breakfast, staying through lunch until closing time. Pesha tentatively began sounding out words for herself.
On the third day, the mother and her chubby daughter returned. Pesha silently listened as the mother taught her daughter about the barnyard: kurczak (chicken), krowa (cow), rolnik (farmer).
When Pesha got home that night, she happened upon Zofia in the hallway. As if overtaken by impulses that she could not fully control, she pushed Zofia up against a wall. The girl was too surprised to react.
With a little sparkle in her eye, Pesha spat:
“Swinia!”***
19
Bolt
One night, several months after the charges against Pesha were dismissed, an older, stooped fellow with a cane and a gray mustache shuffled into the cathouse.
Kasia was tending to the front (Ling, the normal greeter, was at the drugstore picking up paper towels and disinfectant) and greeted the old man warmly; more warmly than normal, given that the elderly were entitled to respect.
“Good evening, my dear man,” she said with a grin. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had the pleasure.”
The old man shook his head vigorously. “No, no,” he said. “First time here.”
He was dressed formally with white gloves on his hands and polished shoes on his feet. His jacket and trousers were houndstooth and faded, as if they were purchased several generations ago. He wore a burgundy bow tie and a gray fedora. A pair of thick, brown-framed glasses enveloped and distorted the caller’s eyes.
“What can we do for you tonight?”
“A friend,” he started—but then corrected himself, “an acquaintance, actually, told me that there was a girl here who was the most beautiful in all of Warsaw. I wanted to meet her.”
Of course, Kasia had accommodated plenty of dirty old men before. They usually looked more spritely than the creature hunched before her. The story she generally heard was that their wives had decided that they were no longer interested in carnal matters, and—they pleaded, self-pityingly—there was no convincing them.
However, they rarely waited until they were as aged and delicate as this man to scratch that particular itch. Even men who looked a decade or so younger and in good physical condition had to swallow a couple of Viagra pills if they expected to perform. What, Kasia wondered, would a codger propped up on a gigantic wood cane do with a young girl?
But business was business, and Kasia was not about to send him on his way. “Which girl did you mean, my good man? All the girls here are exceptional.”
The old man looked momentarily vexed, as if he hadn’t expected additional inquiries.
“I don’t know her name. I just know she doesn’t speak much.”
Kasia nodded.
“I think I know who you want.”
The old man was led into a small bedroom where Kasia told him he could wait. “The girl you want is indisposed at the moment,” Kasia said. “But she will be with you in a few minutes.”
And with that, Pesha was summoned to Room 4. “Be careful,” Kasia warned in German. “This one is old. You don’t want to break him.”
Pesha dutifully entered the room without looking at the dandified, elegant gentleman. She went straight to the bed and under the covers. Without looking up, she blindly tossed a black brassiere and a pair of underwear on the floor.
She was a sad sight, truly. And the elderly gentleman who had rented her time and affections for the hour was moved by her unhappiness. He slowly inched toward the bed and sat on top of the covers, still fully dressed.
He removed one of his white gloves and touched Pesha’s shoulder.
She turned her chin, slightly, and looked at his bare hand. It was surprisingly unwrinkled for a man so old.
“I don’t want to do anything to you,” the caller said. “I just want to look at you.”
Pesha didn’t understand this so she said nothing, just waiting for the moment of consummation. But when it didn’t come, she turned and looked in the eyes of the man who was sitting on her bed.
He was at once familiar and unfamiliar. He merely stared at her. And even though his eyes were hidden behind a pair of thick spectacles, she could have sworn he was weeping.
“Pesha,” he said, in a fully recognizable voice. “Forgive me.”
He ran a hand up to the top of his head and removed his hat. He then pulled off the glasses, a false nose and mustache, and revealed himself. It was Yankel.
They both shed tears as they held each other. She, still underneath the blanket, only her arms visible as they grasped him closer; he, still in his costume, clutching the cane—not wanting it to fall to the floor and possibly rouse the old crone.
“Please, my darling,” Yankel sobbed. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry.”
And this went on for many minutes—their rush of passion and emotion at seeing each other after so long an absence; their mutual regret (his for betraying her; hers for making him think that she didn’t love him); their uncertainty for the future. They
apologized profusely to each other. They kissed each other. They whispered, “I love you,” to each other for the very first time.
“I’m going to take you out of here,” Yankel said. “Tonight. Right now.”
She shook her head.
“There’s no going anywhere,” she replied. “I’ll die here.”
Yankel laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. You’ll leave here tonight.”
“How? I’m a prisoner.”
“You’ll come out with me.”
You had to give Yankel credit for bravery. It’s not just that he was slender and short that made this promise unlikely; it was the fact that he was dressed up like a child at Purim. He had been able to deceive the guardians of the cathouse because he so clearly inhabited the role he was playing—he was frail, gentle, unthreatening. The thought of him standing up to a physical menace was simply absurd.
Pesha loved this devil-may-care daring, but she still allowed a little laugh to escape before covering her mouth with her hand.
“Don’t laugh,” Yankel said. “I’ve been plotting this out. They all think I’m an old man. So I’ll limp my way out the doorway. And just as I get to the door—whack! I’ll hit the guard with my cane. Feel this thing.”
He handed Pesha the weapon in question. It was heavier than it appeared.
“Then we make a run for it. I’ve got a taxi waiting around the corner. You just have to make sure you follow me close. As soon as I get to the front door, you should hurry after me—even before I whack the guard with the cane.”
I have often wondered what made Yankel and Pesha fall so deeply in love with each other so quickly. The first answer I have been able to come up with was proximity and familiarity—Pesha and Yankel shared a past, even if they hadn’t shared it together. They knew each other’s sufferings and loneliness. They knew where the other one came from and they shared the same sense of befuddlement at where they wound up. And I’m sure Pesha’s bewitching beauty was all the encouragement Yankel needed to fall in love.
But Pesha was a different story. She was more particular. She would never accept a match of convenience and mere familiarity. Whatever else could be said about her, she was starkly unwilling to compromise her affections—if she had, she never would have divorced her husband or left Kreskol. I have come to the conclusion that there was another element that explained her passion for Yankel. I think she loved his courage.