“No, Yiddish,” I set the facts straight.
“Yiddish! Yiddish!” she exclaimed. “I’ve always been intrigued by languages. The French speak French, the Turks Turkish, the Jews Yiddish, and Americans will soon be speaking American. It’s a curious thing, but quite natural. Each of us speaks in our own tongue, in the language in which we were nurtured. It’s as personal as breathing, no translation required, you just open your mouth and out come the words of your native folk songs and lullabies. I like these old, plain words, like bread, water, butter, milk, cows, grass, heaven, heart, sun, stars, and love. I hate fancy, pretentious words. Each language should stay simple and pure, sealed from others, and resist all those foreign, illegitimate imports—those careerists that invade and poach on other languages. A grandchild should be able to speak exactly with the same words as its grandfather.”
She took a few quick drags on her cigarette, tossed it away, and resumed: “I once went back to a little village in Sweden, to seek out my origins. My parents were born in Wisconsin, but my grandfather, my father’s father, returned to his birthplace as soon as my father and the other children were able to stand on their own two feet. He could never get used to the new land. In that little Swedish village, you didn’t even need an address to find my grandfather. He kept pinching my cheeks, but his second wife, my step-grandmother, shot me angry looks. She may have been afraid that I’d come for my inheritance and was concerned about providing for her own children whom she’d had with my grandfather. Several of these children—I didn’t count them—were even younger than I. Other branches of the family came to see me, six-foot-tall uncles with thick mutton chops that looked like they’d been pasted on. They drank to my health, laughed very loud, and talked a great deal, even though I couldn’t understand a word. At night a strapping, idiotic boy, a relative, stole into my bed. I don’t even remember how we were related. He stank of sweat and leather, and I quickly decided that with such an idiot, it was the better part of wisdom not to put up a fight. Why scream theatrically and create a scandal in a small village? Better to submit for a few minutes and be rid of him. But it seemed that young man was so smitten that the next day he wanted nothing else but to marry me. He even sent my grandfather over as matchmaker. My grandfather pinched my cheeks and kept talking up the match in the broken English he still retained. I fled from there without even saying goodbye.”
My thoughts ran along parallel lines, and I said: “I, too, came close to fleeing from the city of my youth, but there was no escape. I wanted to become a new man in a new land. Instead I was a hybrid. I couldn’t forget that I had left behind a mother and a father on the other side of the ocean. For a long time, I wandered around in an unfinished state, trying to toughen myself up. I had fled as you would from a place of horror, because that’s what it was. A Jewish child in Lublin was raised on terror. The Gentiles of our town filled us with terror with their frightening images of the crucifixion. Many of our own festivals did the same, the candles representing flickering souls. Our funerals were scary affairs, with the corpses returning as the living dead to frighten the children. Even in dreams you had to keep your wits about you and remember how to respond when a corpse grabbed you by the hand, saying, ‘Come with me!’ In our building, in the basement, there lived a Jewish baker, who also attended to the dead. He washed corpses for burial, preparing them for the hereafter, where all of us must stand in Final Judgment. With the same hands that washed corpses, he kneaded dough for the rolls that my mother bought each morning. For me these were rolls of death and they often stuck in my throat. But worst of all were our dark, black, tearful funerals. If you’ve never as a child seen a small-town Jewish funeral, then you don’t know the meaning of terror. Even the dogs howl in fear, because the Angel of Death is abroad, and the Angel of Death, as every Jewish child knows, has a thousand eyes, and pulling the heavy quilt over your head is of no use at all. I remember that once my mother fell sick—she was never very strong—and I prayed to God—I don’t know if half-asleep or dreaming—that if she could not be spared, let her be granted a few more years, at least until the time when I would leave for America. (Even as a child I dreamed of going to America.) I thought I would never live through a funeral in my own house, my mother’s funeral. Now my mother is very sick. She summons me home, who knows for what reason, probably for the funeral that awaits my arrival. I’ve already covered two-thirds of the journey. I wanted to escape my mother’s funeral. But how could I? This is my fate, I have no choice but to go. Look, it’s getting late. Come see me to a taxi. I mustn’t miss the train.”
On the way to look for a taxi, as we again passed by the Dome, I ran into a young painter, a New Yorker, who had been living in Paris for the last few years and would come occasionally back to New York to visit family. “You’re here in Paris?” he said. “Finally! When did you get here?”
“Just now,” I answered, “and I’m also just about to leave.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Paris and I will never forgive you.”
“I’ll be back.”
“In that case … ”
The Wisconsin teacher looked at both of us, glad for the opportunity to extract herself from the too hasty intimacy that had sprung up between us. She stood there, staring coldly at me and the painter. My friend stared back at her with the open-faced audacity that only a painter can pull off and said to me in Yiddish, “Who is that … that … shikse?”
“From the ship.”
In New York, I had probably exchanged no more than ten words with this painter, but now, standing outside the Dome, he suddenly seemed so dear to me, as if a good deal of the reason for my coming to Paris was to see him. This had nothing to do with any feelings of loneliness on my part, but was owing rather to the warmth he exuded. In New York we considered him somewhat affected, with his long hair, his mincing steps and overly polite way of talking. Here, in the vicinity of the Dome, he seemed remarkably natural. Even his little steps didn’t suggest weakness but their opposite, as if he was eager to conserve his strength. “A shikse from the boat, and straightaway to the Dome? There’s something improper going on here,” he said in a talmudic chant. He then spoke to me in English, overwhelming the Wisconsin teacher with the sudden switch from the stream of Yiddish to perfect English sentences. “So what’s happening in New York?” he asked. “How are all the good and decent people faring?”
“I’ll tell you everything on the way back,” I said. “It’s almost eleven and I don’t want to be late for my train.”
His face took on an earnest, worried look, as if he’d suddenly assumed all my cares. He summoned a taxi and told the driver to take me to my hotel, not far from the Gare St.-Lazare. The Wisconsin teacher stood a few steps away, looking uneasy and forlorn, having been shut out by the unexpected encounter with the painter. I recognized her bewilderment and called out to the pair, one foot already in the taxi, “Introduce yourselves, a painter from New York, a French teacher from Wisconsin.” The painter was hurrying me along, “You’ll be late for your train. We’ll introduce ourselves.”
Before the taxi door closed, I saw the two of them standing together, without me, and noted the strong contrast between the two strangers I was leaving behind, whom I had thrust upon each other—she, tall, blonde, vigorous, the essence of Gentileness; he, short, dark, and unmistakably Jewish. She suddenly broke away and sprung over to the taxi, again looking bewildered. “I hope,” she stammered, “that all goes well with your mother.” She spoke with tenderness and sincerity, sending warm greetings from a woman from Wisconsin to a town in Poland. It wasn’t what she said that touched my heart so much as her spontaneous, deeply felt gesture of concern, setting aside her self-absorption. She had spoken as warmly as it was possible for her to do. She remained standing as the taxi started to pull away, her eyes downcast, looking as if she wanted to add something that she couldn’t quite express. And as the taxi swerved to the left and the right, almost knocking down tens of pedestrians, a thought crept i
nto my mind, that maybe the right thing to do would be to turn around and spend another day or two in Paris. Even when I was already in the waiting room at the station, I still couldn’t rid myself of the feeling of an opportunity missed.
3
Aboard ship, thoughts of my old home had stayed pretty much in the background. They came to the fore only at those moments when I felt troubled and confused and began to conjure up scenes from my past, to reassure myself that I wasn’t rootless. Mother, father, brothers and sister—all belonged to the past. To be sure, my mother’s illness bobbed up constantly, like the refrain of a sad song, but she herself was no longer quite real to me. Each time I called her to mind I had to uncoil a great ball of memory, rolling it out to considerable length to reach back to my beginnings. I had sent a cable to Poland from the ship, but that was prompted in large part by the wish to play with the magic of technology. Nevertheless, the wireless dispatch created a thin bridge between me aboard ship and the family back home. The bridge held fast for a while and then disappeared like a mirage.
However, once I debarked from the ship, my old home became my destination. What had once been the past now lay ahead, with all the tantalizing mysteries of the future, a future I was impatient to confront. I was even prepared to forgo weeks and months of my life in order to bring that future closer. This is how an invalid must feel, who is willing to age a few months so that he might crawl out of his sickbed and see the sun, or a father, willing to give up a few years so that he might see his children’s futures. There are too many such instances in a human life, when one doesn’t live in the present but wants to vault over time into a dubious future. Everything following the ship led directly homeward. I knew full well that what awaited me was a roomful of sorrow, and yet I wanted to push on ever faster. Was this so as to have it over and done with? I hardly think so. I longed to be home, I envisioned my homecoming—riding in the public carriage from the train station, standing at the door. But never, in my imaginings, did I dare to cross the threshold. That moment I did not want to spoil by anticipation.
I grew anxious and impatient. I knew that back home they were holding up the last act for my arrival, waiting for me to ring up the curtain. The last act was unavoidable, but the whole household was awaiting my presence, loath to end the play without me. The ending was predictable, and yet I was afraid lest, God forbid, I miss a drop of what my nearest and dearest were about to experience. How long could they hold out, waiting for me to arrive? If on the ship I had strolled leisurely about the deck as if it were a long, sunny valley leading nowhere, with my memories of the past cold and remote, I was now in such a state of impatience that I didn’t want to see anyone. Everything appeared as an obstacle on the way to my goal. I no longer wanted to join a world of strangers and to engage in conversations that would have consequences. All this now seemed a waste of time. I decided to see how far it was possible to restrict myself to my own company. I sensed, even though I didn’t know how it would happen, that I was on the verge of some meaningful event that would open my eyes to much that was still unclear. Now that I was finally on the right road, I felt I must not stray.
The steady clack of the train’s wheels calmed me somewhat, precisely because the train, speeding toward my mother, seemed to have taken on my restlessness. When I closed my eyes, I might have been traveling on the very same train that, on a certain night twenty years before, shortly after midnight, bore me away from home. It was now also just past midnight and it would have been something of a consolation had this, miraculously, happened to be the same train. But when I opened my eyes, all such sentimental thoughts vanished. There was no comparison to the train of twenty years ago. That train I would have recognized, skinned alive!
Next to me sat a priest dressed in loose robes with a wide cowl that looked warm as a blanket, and with sandals on his bare feet. He had a long, yellowish beard and his unusually large rear took up so much room that I was squeezed into a corner. The other passengers in the cheerless compartment had all nodded off. Only the priest was awake, contentedly reading a French newspaper and from time to time stroking his beard with one hand, in good Jewish fashion. The dozing passengers had all retired into themselves, as if to sleep away their troubles, as well as to avoid contact with one another. I had no choice but to close my eyes, too, though I had no desire to sleep.
I was roused from my dreams by a cold shudder that passed through my body, rattling my sleepy bones. The priest was no longer seated beside me, his place taken by a slender man of a totally opposite demeanor, with a small head and thin, pursed lips. His hands, resting on his knees as though he were sitting for a formal photograph, were so thin and transparent that one could make out every bone. When I opened my eyes, he looked at me, then quickly turned away, pursing his lips until they disappeared, as if to prevent them from uttering a single word.
It was now lighter outside and easier to make out that many in the compartment were not strangers to one another. A woman who lay stretched across a seat began giving orders to the man beside her, sitting scrunched into the narrow bit of space she had left him. Sleepily, the man was doing her bidding. On another seat, two men were asleep, propped up against one another. It was hard to tell whether they were friends, or strangers whom travel had brought into intimacy, possibly even an “Aryan” and a “non-Aryan.” A woman in a far corner had one eye half-open. She was struggling to open both but didn’t want to be the first to disturb the harmony of slumber that still prevailed. With great difficulty I stretched my limbs that had fallen asleep. I got up and, treading carefully, as if I were walking on sand on rubber soles, dragged my still lifeless, bloodless feet into the narrow corridor.
Dew-soaked fields, small villages nestling among rocky hills rushed past the window. The sky was overcast, with a hint of rain. Standing beside me was a short, broad-shouldered man, in his early forties. He stared out the window at the passing fields, forests, villages, all the time turning his head to me as if he wanted to tell me something, but each time looking away and again fixing his gaze on the misted window. At last he said something in German, and when he saw that I didn’t answer readily, switched to broken English, carefully feeling his way through the language, asking me if I was an American. He was dressed in a suit, the very picture of propriety, his trousers so perfectly pressed that it was a miracle how he had managed this so early in the day, when everybody else was still tumbling about in a state of dishevelment. He was fair-haired, but not that arrogant German blondness which wouldn’t have suited his whole, modest appearance. His dirty-blond hair was sprinkled with gray, and his large face was set off with a pair of sad, nearsighted eyes. He was a businessman, returning home from Paris, who had once done considerable business in America. “Now,” he chuckled, as if wanting to make a joke, “America has stopped doing business with us. But Canada is still a good customer.”
“Do you mean the American boycott?” I asked, with as much feigned indifference as I could muster.
He laughed again, seeming to take pleasure in the fact, as if it were all child’s play and he the adult was watching from the sidelines. “Ja, boycott! Boycott!” he confirmed.
“So, how’s it going?” I asked cautiously, seeking to gain his confidence.
“Not very good! Much poverty among the workers, many factories shut down. My own silk factory had to lay off half its workers.”
“How will it all turn out?” I asked, growing bolder.
He shot me a look and broke out in helpless laughter, almost choking on his gasps. “We mustn’t talk about this! No talking! It’s better that way. No talking!”
Again exercising caution, I retreated to a more innocent line of questioning, until another opportunity to ensnare him might present itself. But he would no longer let himself be caught. When he sensed that we were on the verge of a dangerous subject, he had only one response: “No talking.” He laughed some more, to indicate that he was sorry he was being so impolite, his laughter ending in a somewhat hysterical scr
eech, the kind some people make upon hearing bad news. He explained to me that it wasn’t in his nature to be impolite, but there were certain things one couldn’t talk about. He even tried to pull back from his former indiscretion, that factories had gone under throwing workers into poverty. “Things will probably get better,” he said.
The passengers were now waking up and the corridors starting to bustle. From all sides people appeared, wrapped in bathrobes. Outside the washrooms, passengers gathered impatiently, cursing the villains who had laid siege to the facilities and who were taking their leisurely time going about their business. In the morning light, the German’s face looked even more familiar and likable, his brown eyes ever ready with a smile. His broad shoulders bespoke power, but his large face, for all its severity, had an air of gentleness.
Men and women called out in a New York–accented, Yiddish-inflected English, and the German said to me, in almost awestruck tones, “Many Americans going to Europe now.”
“It would seem so,” I replied.
A tall Jew in a short robe walked by, looking me straight in the eye. “You forgot your razor,” a woman called after him.
“That’s right,” he answered and turned back, again looking me in the eye.
“What about your towel?” the same woman’s voice cried out.
“Dammit!” the man said, and went back again. On his return, towel in hand, he passed by once more, and after giving me a searching look, finally said, in English, “Good morning,” making it sound like a Yiddish greeting, with overtones of, “Ah, a Jew!” I returned his salutation.
We were now passing through Belgium. Mining towns whizzed by, with soot-covered houses and men going to work, carrying lunch pails. Various pieces of machinery dotted the rusty ground. The train sped on. The German stood looking out the window, mumbling to himself about Belgium’s coal and iron mines, its copper and zinc, its textile industry. The conductor, sporting a neat, waxed mustache, who had been going back and forth, now stopped and beckoned to me and the German. We acceded to his mysterious invitation and followed him into another car, where he proceeded to open a window and told us to look out. The train was passing through steep cliffs, creating a gloom, like the darkest of tunnels. We looked out and saw nothing, but the conductor’s face lit up with anticipation. Suddenly, he cried out, “Le roi—the king!” The German and I stuck our heads out the open window, but still couldn’t see to the top of the high, terrifying cliff. The train slowed down as it passed the giant wall of rocks, stained in a variety of rusty hues. Suddenly we saw, at its foot, bunches of flowers and an inscribed date, “February 17, 1934,” along with some other words which we couldn’t make out because the train had again picked up speed. However, I immediately realized that what we had just passed was the site where King Albert of the Belgians had ended his rock-climbing career. I was at a loss to understand what he might have been looking for in this desolate spot, except perhaps death.
The Glatstein Chronicles Page 20