He took on an expression of bored superiority and at once Solly disappeared and in his place we saw the snooty upstart Bubi Brill, wearing tennis shorts, quarreling with his hoarsely rasping father, who vented his spleen in rage—no, not just them: with a single gesture he also conjured his fat mother on her throne behind the cash register, unmoving as a sphinx, his sister Riffke lurking in the background, and the blasé, condescending salesmen of Brill’s large department store, leaning over tables covered with samples and receipt ledgers. The scene took place in the atmosphere of relaxed and unstinting openness Jews create with one another—the intimacy of an Oriental people deeply acquainted with life.
Bubi (bored and supercilious): “All right, Papa. We know this record by heart. Please, give me part of the business so I have something to do.”
Old Man Brill: “Here is where I do my business, here on the shop floor, bokher, and if you want to do business, then get to it! It’s nine o’clock. Customers will be walking in at any moment. Get out of your foppish rags, and hop to it!
Bubi (haughtily): “Excuse me, Papa, but this is a nebekhdike way to do business, with aprons and garter straps. Forgive me if I laugh.”
Old Brill (his voice cracking): “Ja, in this shop that’s exactly how we do business, with aprons and garter straps! He can’t sell half a garter, the scab, but he wants to make big deals, ten wagonloads of hazelnuts from Constantinople to Lemberg, perhaps—or hustle jewels! A lazy lounging nobody who gets drunk with officers and whores like a goy, with women and furs and champagne and Paris in his head. Mass-man in an automobile. He lets his old father with a hernia sell garter straps, while he wants to do big business. The swastika-louts that paint up on my shutters, this is how I live, they know why I have worked myself to the bone my whole life long, they know. For the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—that’s what they say. For domination over the earth, that’s what they believe. But I know the real reason why I’ve slaved away—dos iz emmes—I know. For a cavalryman, a playboy with film stars in his head. A man for whom the shop floor isn’t good enough, and the city isn’t big enough, not elegant enough, and the business isn’t profitable enough, and the whores don’t cost enough. That’s why I’m standing today on the floor here with my rheumatism, so that the swastika-men just need to wait for him to take over, the fop, for that the business should go bankrupt, and for me I should wind up a poor man and in debt. And for that I—I, Usher Brill, an old man with a bad diabetes—for that I’m supposed to put up an entire fortune and risk my neck? For the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and for domination over the earth, when the young gentlemen will no longer be around—that’s what for.”
Bubi: “Excuse me, Papa, what’s all this about investing? All I hear about is investing. What investments, may I ask? As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to invest a thing with this deal.”
Old Brill: “You think I’m going to tell it to you, bokher! Your little sister is a good girl, you understand. If she wants to get married, I’ll tell it to her, you understand, but not you. You can go look for your deals somewhere else, that’s what you can do.”
Bubi: “God knows, you don’t have to get so worked up, Papa. Anyway, Mama told me everything already. So I’m asking you: What investments are you talking about? First of all, isn’t old Paşcanu good for the few million? Permit me to say that the way I see it it’s purely a matter of brokering a deal. The profit is enough, at least for me. I leave it up to you. If you don’t want to do it, then I will. Or don’t you think Paşcanu is good for the money?”
Old Brill (with mock cheerfulness): “Listen to him ask the questions, the freeloader. He’ll broker a deal! He’ll leave it up to me! Look here, old Paşcanu’s fortune is in lumber, you meshuggener. Here—do you ever look at a newspaper? You studied abroad. Figure it out. Old Paşcanu is as broke as—as broke as a goy can possibly be. That’s what old Paşcanu is, you understand. I spend good money to send you abroad so that you can ask questions like a simple peasant? Old Paşcanu, I tell you, is finished, that’s what old Paşcanu is.”
Bubi: “Why are you getting so upset, Papa? In terms of psychology, that’s very interesting. If old Paşcanu is broke, then you don’t need to do the deal, right? I leave it to you.”
Old Brill: “Deal! What kind of deal is that, I’d like to know? It’s a better deal to go caca in the Volodiak, you understand, you goylem? That would be a better deal.”
Bubi: “Why are you getting so riled up over nothing, Papa? In terms of psychology, that’s very interesting, so why is nobody supposed to know anything if it’s already dead in the cradle? By the way, there’s something I want to tell you: I, too, have my information, you’ll permit me—you understand. I, too, have my information, and I, too, glance at the papers now and then. Old Paşcanu isn’t standing in his smock and selling garter straps—not him. Old Paşcanu is a businessman of class. He doesn’t need to perform any schemes for credit or any other shmontses. But, as I said, I leave it to you. If you don’t want to, then I will.”
Old Brill: “With my money, you think? You scoundrel! I am supposed to stand here and sell garter straps, with my ailing heart, while you go do business with old Paşcanu …”
Bubi: “As I said, it’s no more than brokering a deal. Pure and simple. Again: I leave it to you. By the way, with your permission, I have to go to the club. Anyway, I find it psychologically extremely interesting that you are getting so worked up over this.”
Bubi—or, rather, little Solly, because he was once more himself—took his leave with an inimitably nonchalant wave. We were entranced and delighted, and, sparked by Madame Aritonovich’s example, we applauded enthusiastically.
Solly went up to Herr Tarangolian. “The show is over. Curtain. That’s all for this season.” Turning to us, he said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the theater is closed.”
Madame Aritonovich shooed us to work. “Allons! Go back to your work! To the barre!”
Herr Tarangolian gave Solly a ten-leo coin. Solly looked it over carefully.
“I’ll bet you know what deal your brother Bubi was talking about, don’t you? Or didn’t your Mama mention anything about it?”
Solly blinked at him through his carrot-colored eyelids: “Not for just a tenner, Herr Coco.”
Years later, when we paid Madame Aritonovich a friendly visit, we tried to compliment her by saying that the most beautiful thing that we had learned at her school, in the woefully short time we were there, was candor. Then we attempted to double the effect of this acknowledgment by explaining what we meant—an approach that is always prone to backfire—and added that she masterfully understood how to remove the sting and thus the embarrassment from any type of indiscretion, intended as well as unintended, by taking the matter in hand and immediately making it everybody’s business, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
“How can you be so indiscreet as to tell me that!” she said to us, indignantly.
12 Aunt Paulette Calls on Madame Tildy, While Papa Brill Visits Old Paşcanu
ALTHOUGH Widow Morar had attached herself so closely to Madame Tildy that she was living with her and hardly moved from her side, she was still not entirely lost to us.
Of course all the furniture in the Tildys’ house had been pawned, and the house had been acquired by another owner, but Madame Tildy kept living there for the time being. So Widow Morar stayed in our neighborhood and visited us—meaning, us children, and no one else—when Tamara Tildy was taking a nap, or when she had been sent by Madame Tildy on a mission that brought her to our house.
“I’m coming to you, my little ones,” she said, with closed eyes and a golden smile, “to no one but you, because you have no part in their disgraceful behavior, trampling on my mistress and slinging mud on her and laughing cruelly because she’s suffered such a fate. In all other faces I see scorn, but not in yours. We are living in an empty room, and no one will take her. She doesn’t have a blanket, and she’s always cold, she can’t help being cold, even with
the sun at its warmest, that’s how refined and delicate she is. I have to take her in my arms to warm her up; I hold her like my own child. They took away her brushes, they were made of gold with the finest marten bristles, she can’t use any other, her hair is as delicate as a spiderweb and any other kind of bristle tears it out and makes it stand on end and spark and burn with every stroke. This makes her cry—is her hair supposed to mat away into elflocks? So I comb it with my fingers, I put each hair in order. But my fingers are hard and tough from all the hard work I’ve done my entire life, a widow all alone with three sons, mouths forever hungry, a challenge for a poor woman to fill. My hands are heavy and clumsy; she frequently loses her patience and hits me. She flies into a rage and throws herself on the floor and curses the major, who plunged her into misfortune, or else she’s perfectly still and holds her head at an angle as if she were listening closely and says to me: What do you think, is it nice where he is? I sense that it’s a nice place, she says, that he’s happy, yes I can feel that he is happy. Why does he get to go where I belong? Why is he in a place where there is peace and not me? Don’t you see that he betrayed me? Now he is where I should be, among all the others who are allowed to dream, who smile at each other and don’t even realize they are speaking, because they don’t need any answer, they don’t see whether a face returns their laughter or not, they don’t see any face at all. After all, they have themselves, they enjoy hearing their own voices, as if someone else were speaking to them, and they’re happy to hear that this other person says exactly what they want to hear and how they want to hear it; they have this person say happy things and bad things, let him curse and rage and are happy that he does exactly what they want; they are delighted. They ask him something and hear him ask the same question and they already know the answer, but they don’t want him to know their questions and answers, and so they ask faster and faster, and still he’s always quicker than they are, and they hate him and they get angry and shout and throw themselves on the floor to escape and roll around on the ground to shake him off—like your husband, Morar, when he wanted to drink death from his rifle. But you suck and suck at the cold iron muzzle and death doesn’t come; in order to die you have to let go a shot that erases your face, and this is what I am afraid of—so she tells me—I don’t want to be without a face, you hear, I don’t even want to be dead without a face, I am afraid, you hear, it’s horrible to destroy your face, even dead people need a face. I am afraid … And she clings to me and whines and yammers. That’s what I came to tell you, because you asked me what it meant to lose face. She doesn’t want to be without a face. I’m telling you this as a great secret, I won’t talk about her with anyone else, because the others spit on her, they’re full of scorn because of her misfortune, but you, you know better. I just rushed over to tell you that, because I have to get back to her, she sent me to fetch poison for the dogs she can’t feed anymore and who whimper for him all day long. No other man is to have them, and because they’re going crazy with worry we’re going to kill them, we’ll mix the poison in some ground meat and feed it to them—here, you see? The very best meat, almost four pounds. They almost chased me out at Dobrowolski’s when I told them we needed it for the dogs. Nothing to eat themselves and she cheats people so she can feed her dogs with roast meat, they cried. That’s the way they are—they don’t know a thing. They don’t know that this is the last blessing this earth has for the poor animals, and they curse you for giving it to creatures who are marked to die, because people are cruel and don’t understand anything. But they go on bathing their arms in blood up to their elbows and hacking the smoking flesh into pieces. They don’t know. That’s what I came to tell you, not the others, who don’t understand a thing.”
“And what about him?” we asked. “Is it true that he is happy?”
“If she feels it then it must be true,” said Widow Morar, smiling with her gold mouth. And he was. We later found out that it was true.
“You are surprised, even indignant, because they didn’t release Tildy long ago,” said Herr Tarangolian. “Permit me to say that for the moment it’s best for him to stay where he is. You can be assured he is being treated with the utmost consideration, with great courtesy and tact. The head of the institution, Dr. Kobylanski, is an unusually reliable man. And he has found in Dr. Schlesinger someone who can attend to Tildy with great sensitivity …”
“Yes, but none of that excuses the fact that a gross injustice has been committed, that it was all completely unwarranted!” exclaimed our Aunt Elvira. “You can’t just pack a man off to the asylum because he makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“My dear friend, if you had to decide his case, would you send him home right now?” asked the prefect, with an ironic look.
“You don’t expect us to believe that they’re keeping him there out of kindness, do you?” asked Aunt Paulette, the youngest.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything. I only said that he is being treated with consideration and tact.”
“So he has no idea what’s happening outside the walls of his confinement?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“But that’s even more horrible, if that’s possible! Isn’t anybody thinking about his poor wife?” Aunt Elvira was outraged.
“On the contrary, everyone is thinking about his wife.” Herr Tarangolian seemed to enjoy the general silence that followed his words.
“Permit me,” he said after a while. “Could he be of any help to her?”
“That’s not the question. But at least he ought to be given a chance to try.”
“Unfortunately that’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
Herr Tarangolian shrugged his shoulders and busied himself with his cigar.
“Won’t Major Tildy demand accountability when he’s dismissed?” asked our mother. “A man of his character will consider this the worst thing that could be done to him, obstructing the performance of his duty.”
“Demand accountability from whom?” asked Herr Tarangolian.
This time the silence proved a little embarrassing, full of hidden shoals—there was too much being unsaid. Our temperamental Aunt Paulette couldn’t bear it any longer.
“I hate you, my dear old friend! Admit that you have your hand in it. And not for Tildy’s sake. You’re no angel. But because he’s in your way somehow, because he doesn’t fit into one of your intrigues. The notion that he’s being spared out of consideration while he’s actually being kept locked up in a nuthouse as long as possible is a perfidious hypocritical pretext. Admit it—you are a devil.”
“I don’t feel close enough to the beyond to say which category suits me best,” said Herr Tarangolian. “The only thing I know for sure is that you, my dear young friend, look as much like an angel as a human being possibly can—although perhaps one of Lucifer’s entourage …”
“A fallen angel, in other words,” said Aunt Paulette drily. The comment unleashed a palpable wave of embarrassment.
Herr Tarangolian acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “Ach, my child,” he said. “Be annoyed, be indignant, wax righteous with anger, champion all that is noble and good, or else the opposite—at your age everything is beautiful.”
“Do you know much about the institution?” asked Uncle Sergei, interested. “What I mean is: Do they not have methods? Straitjackets for raving madmen and such like? Or perhaps they are using certain therapies such as electrical shocks?”
“You can rest assured none of that will be applied to Major Tildy,” the prefect said with enigmatic irony.
“Naturally!” exclaimed Uncle Sergei in all his disarming naiveté. “I am asking only out of curiosity, medicinally speaking, you know.”
“Naturally,” said Herr Tarangolian.
“I have the picture you requested of Aida’s grave,” our mother said. “The gravestone is up now. My relatives wrote that it turned out very nice.”
“You are kindness in person,” Herr Tarangolian mum
bled, moved, as he kissed her hand …
Aunt Paulette reclined her bobbed hair against the seat back and stared up at the ceiling with arched eyebrows.
“You have very beautiful throat,” said Uncle Sergei.
“Are you tempted to sink your teeth into it?”
“Paulette!” said our mother. “If I might ask, would you help the children with their schoolwork this afternoon—or better yet, why don’t you go up right now, you’ll have the whole afternoon to yourselves.” She turned back to Herr Tarangolian: “It’s really a terrible shame that Miss Rappaport couldn’t come back …”
Aunt Paulette got up. “A terrible shame,” she said. “And no one has more cause to regret it than I do.”
She shooed us upstairs. “Incidentally, even when the dear departed Rappaport was with us the brood was always sent out only when it was too late.”
“An excellent educational method,” said Herr Tarangolian. “Children can never be corrupted early enough. On that matter I agree entirely with my friend Fiokla Aritonovich.”
“Paulette, please!” said Mama.
Aunt Paulette opened the door and let us out with an ironic bow. She didn’t exactly hate us, but she made no secret of her indifference toward us, and of the fact that recently we had become downright burdensome. It was also clear that it was only reluctantly that she undertook the task of helping us with our homework and otherwise standing in for the absent Miss Rappaport. But perhaps she was simply venting her general displeasure at us. She was twenty-five years old, very pretty, full of joie de vivre, and unspeakably bored in our household, which was anything but companionable. Apart from Herr Tarangolian and the occasional relative from the countryside, no one came to visit us, and it didn’t occur to anyone to pursue some social connections or visit friends in town. Although the household was large and busy—we were still a large family, including the help, and we did include them, a whole tribe—nothing could hide the fact that the empty space around us was expanding to the point where we felt entirely alone and utterly isolated.
An Ermine in Czernopol Page 22