Shosha and I walked. We passed the almost empty Place. When we reached No. 13, across the street from No. 10, Shosha stopped. ‘Here we lived once.’
‘Yes, you say it every time we pass.’
‘You stood on the balcony and caught flies.’
‘Don’t remind me of that,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because we do to God’s creatures what the Nazis do to us.’
‘Flies bite.’
‘They must bite. This is the way God created them.’
‘Why did God create them this way?’ Shosha asked.
‘Shoshele, there is no answer to this.’
‘Arele, I want to look inside the gate of No. 10.’
‘You’ve done it a thousand times already.’
‘Let me.’
We crossed the street and looked into the dark courtyard. Everything remained as it had been twenty years before, except that most of the tenants had died. Shosha said, ‘Is there still a horse in the stable? When we lived here the horse was brown and it had a white patch on its nose. How long can a horse live?’
‘About twenty years.’
‘Why not longer? A horse is so strong.’
‘Sometimes a horse lives until thirty.’
‘Why not until a hundred?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘When we lived there a demon entered the stable at night and plaited little braids in the horse’s tail, and in its mane,’ Shosha said. ‘The demon mounted the horse and rode it from wall to wall all night long. In the morning the horse was wet from perspiration. It had foam on its mouth. It almost died. Why do demons do such things?’
‘I’m not sure it’s true.’
‘I saw the horse that morning. It was all wet. Arele, I want to look into the stable. I want to see if the horse is still the same.’
‘It’s dark in the stable.’
‘I see a light there.’
‘You see nothing. Let’s go.’
We continued to walk until we reached No. 16. Then Shosha stopped. This was always a sign that she wanted to say something. Shosha could not walk and talk.
‘What is it, Shoshele?’
‘Arele, I want to have a child with you.’
‘Why suddenly?’
‘I want to be a mother. Let’s go home. I want you to do to me you know what.’
‘Shoshele, I told you, I don’t want any children.’
‘I want to be a mother.’
We turned back and Shosha said, ‘You go away to the newspaper and I am lonesome. I sit there and queer thoughts come to my mind. I see funny faces.’
‘What faces?’
‘I don’t know. They grimace and say things I don’t understand. They are not people. Sometimes they laugh. Then they all begin to wail like at a funeral. Who are they?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘They are many. Some of them look like soldiers. They ride horses, too. They sing a sad song, a silent song. I am frightened.’
‘Shoshele, you’re imagining things. Perhaps you’re dreaming.’
‘No, Arele. I want a child to say kaddish for me when I die.’
‘You’ll live.’
‘No, they call me to go with them.’
We passed No. 10 again, and Shosha said, ‘Let’s look inside the gate.’
‘Again?’
‘Let me!’
Fourteen
1
Haiml’s father died and left Haiml buildings and real estate worth several million zlotys. Friends and relatives advised Haiml to move to Lodz, where he could keep a closer eye on his main properties, but Haiml said to me, ‘Tsutsik, a person is like a tree. You can’t chop it from its roots and plant it in other ground. Here, I have Morris, you, my friends from the Poale Zion. Somewhere in the cemetery here lie the bones of my little daughter. In Lodz I’d have to look at my stepmother’s face each day. The main thing is, Celia would feel unhappy there. Who would she have to talk to? Let there only be peace in the world and we’ll get through the years somehow where we are.’
At one time Feitelzohn planned to go back to America, but he had long since given up this plan. From Palestine a number of his friends wrote that if he were to come there, there was a good possibility of a position at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but Feitelzohn refused. ‘The German Jews run things there,’ he told me. ‘Many of them are more Prussian than the Prussians. I would fit in about as well as you would fit in among Eskimos. I’ll have to sneak through my years somehow without universities.’
We all lived for the present – the whole Jewish community. Feitelzohn compared this epoch to the year 1000, when the Christians in all Europe awaited the Second Coming and the destruction of the world. So long as Hitler didn’t attack, so long as no revolution or pogrom erupted, each day was a gift from God. Feitelzohn often recalled his beloved philosopher, Veihinger, and his philosophy of ‘as if.’ The day will come when all truth will be recognized as arbitrary definitions, all values as rules of a game. Feitelzohn toyed with the plan of building a play-temple for ideas, for samples of cultural diversions, for systems of behavior, for religions without revelations – a kind of theater where people would come to act out their thoughts and emotions. The audience would be the performers. Those who hadn’t yet decided what kind of games they preferred would participate in soul expeditions with him or with someone of his caliber to discover what would amuse or inspire them most.
I heard Feitelzohn say, ‘Tsutsik, I know very well that it’s all sheer nonsense. Hitler wouldn’t accept any other game but his own. Neither would Stalin, nor even some of our own fanatics. But I lie in bed at night and imagine a world of all play – play-gods, play-nations, play-marriages, play-sciences. What happened to mathematics after Lobachevsky and Riemann? What is Kantor’s or the “set of all sets” or Einstein’s theory of relativity? Nothing but wordplay. And what are all these parts of the atom that grow like mushrooms after a rain? And what is the receding universe? Tsutsik, the world goes in your direction – everything is becoming fiction. Why are you grimacing, Haiml? You’re more of a hedonist than I am.’
‘Hedonist shmedonist,’ Haiml answered. ‘If we’re fated to die, let us die together. I have an idea! In the Sochaczów studyhouse the greatest joy came on the second evening of a holiday. Let us establish in our house that every day should be the second evening of a holiday. Who can forbid us to create our own calendar, our own holidays? If all life is nothing but make-believe, let us make believe that every night is the second night of a holiday. Celia will prepare a festive meal for us, and we’ll make kiddush, sing table chants, and talk about Hasidism. To me, Morris, you are my rebbe. Your every word is filled with wisdom and love of God as well. There is such a thing as heretical fear of God. You can sin and still be God-fearing. Sabbatai Zevi wasn’t the liar he was made out to be. The true Hasid isn’t so afraid of sin. You can frighten a non-Hasid with Gehenna and the bed of nails, but not us. Since everything is supposed to be a part of the godhead, why is Gehenna inferior to paradise? I’m looking for pleasure, but to be joyous today people need noisy music, vulgar chansonettes, women in chinchilla furs, and who knows what else, and even then gloom prevails. I go to Lurse’s, to the Ziemianska. They sit there gazing into magazines with pictures of whores and dictators. There’s not even a trace of the bliss we used to have in the Sochaczów studyhouse, with its torn books, a kerosene ceiling lamp, and a bunch of bearded Jews with untidy earlocks and ragged satin gabardines. Morris, you know it, and Tsutsik, you know it, too. If God needs a Hitler and a Stalin and icy winds and mad dogs, let Him have them. I need you, Morris, and you, Tsutsik, and if there is no merciful truth, I take the lie that gives me warmth and moments of joy.’
‘One day we will move in with you,’ Feitelzohn said.
‘When? When Hitler stands at the gates of Warsaw?’
Haiml proposed to Feitelzohn that he publish the magazine he had been planning for years and write a book about the rev
ival and modernization of the play called Hasidis. Haiml would finance both and have them translated into a number of languages. All great and revolutionary experiments had originated and been conducted in precarious circumstances, Haiml contended. He suggested that the first temple of play be built in Jerusalem, or at least in Tel Aviv. The Jews, Haiml said, unlike the Gentiles, hadn’t spilled blood in two thousand years. Jews were perhaps the only group that played with words and ideas instead of with swords and guns. According to Jewish legend, when the Messiah came, Jews would go to the Land of Israel not on a metal bridge but on one made of paper. Well, and could it be mere chance that the Jews dominated Hollywood, the world press, the publishing houses? The Jew would bring the world deliverance of play and Morris Feitelzohn would be the Messiah.
‘Before I become the Messiah,’ Feitelzohn said to me, ‘maybe you could lend me five zlotys?’
2
I stayed the night with Haiml and Celia. For some time, my relations with Celia had become platonic. There were times when I ridiculed this word and what it meant, but neither Celia nor I had had much interest lately in sexual experiments. Both she and Haiml still tried to persuade Feitelzohn and me, with Shosha, to move into their apartment and live like one family. Lately, Celia had turned gray. Haiml had mentioned that she was under a doctor’s care and that in normal circumstances she would have gone to Carlsbad or Franzenbad or some other spa, but he never said what was wrong with her.
That night, as so often before, the conversation ended with the question why were we not leaving Warsaw, and each of us gave more or less the same answer. I couldn’t leave Shosha. Haiml wouldn’t go without Celia. Besides, what was the sense of running away when three million Jews remained? Some rich industrialists in Lodz had run away to Russia in 1914 and three years later were murdered by the Bolsheviks. I could see that Haiml feared more the bother of travel than the persecution of the Nazis. I heard Celia say, ‘If I felt that I still had the strength to begin over, I wouldn’t remain here another day. My mother and grandmother as well as my father all died at my age – in fact, younger. I keep myself going only with the force of inertia, or call it what you will. I don’t want to go to a foreign land and lie sick in some hotel room or hospital. I want to die in my own home. I don’t want to rest in a strange cemetery. What more can Hitler do to me? I don’t recall who said it, that a corpse is all-powerful, afraid of no one. All the living want and ever hope to achieve the dead already have – complete peace, total independence. There were times when I was terrified of death. You couldn’t mention the word in my presence. When I bought a newspaper, I quickly skipped over the obituaries. The notion that I would one day stop eating, breathing, thinking, reading, seemed so horrible that nothing in life agreed with me any more. Then gradually I began to make peace with the concept of death, and more than that – death became the solution to all problems, actually my ideal. Today when I’m brought the newspapers I quickly turn to the obituaries. When I read that someone has died, I envy him. The reasons I don’t commit suicide are first, Haiml – I want to go together with him – and second, death is too important to absorb all at once. It is like a precious wine to be savored slowly. Those who commit suicide want to escape death once and for all. But those who aren’t such cowards learn to enjoy its taste.’
We went to sleep late. Haiml began to snore immediately and I could hear Celia turning in her bed, sighing, murmuring. She put on the night lamp and put it out. She went to the kitchen to make herself tea, perhaps to take a pill. If everything was nothing but a game as Feitelzohn maintained, our love game was over, or at least postponed indefinitely. It was actually more his game than ours. I always felt his presence when I was with her. Often when Celia talked to me she repeated almost literally things he told me. She had acquired his sex jargon, caprices, mannerisms. She called me Morris and by some of his pet names. Whenever our love play failed, Feitelzohn was lying between us. I even imagined that I could smell the aroma of his cigar. It was dawn when I fell asleep. The morning came up cloudy and a bit damp – it had rained in the middle of the night – but there were signs that it would be clearing later. After breakfast I went to Shosha’s and stayed there for lunch. Then I left for my room on Leszno Street. Although it would have been quicker to go down Iron Street, I walked on Gnoyna, Zimna, and Orla. On Iron Street you were vulnerable to a blow from a Polish Fascist. I had laid out my own ghetto. Certain streets were always dangerous. Other streets you could walk boldly by day but not at night. Still others had remained more or less safe for the present. The corner of Leszno and Iron Streets always posed a measure of danger. Although I had turned away from the Jewish path, I carried the diaspora upon me.
As I came closer to the gate, I started to run. Safe inside, I caught my breath. I climbed the three flights of stairs slowly. I had lots of work to do this day and in the days to come. I was behind with my novel for the newspaper. I had promised a story for a literary anthology. I had started another novel about the Sabbatai Zevi movement in Poland. This was intended to be a serious work, not for serialization in an afternoon daily. I rang the bell and Tekla opened the door. She was polishing the corridor floor and had her dress tucked up over her bare legs.
She smiled and said, ‘Guess who called three times last evening?’
‘Who?’
‘Guess!’
I mentioned several names, but she shook her head. ‘You give up?’
‘I give up.’
‘Miss Betty.’
‘Betty from America?’
‘She is here in Warsaw.’
I was silent a moment. Feitelzohn had learned from one of the American tourists that Sam Dreiman had died and left Betty a large share of his inheritance, and that Sam’s widow and children had contested the will. Now Betty had come to Warsaw. And when? At a time when every Jew in Poland was dreaming of escape. Even as I stood there marveling, the telephone rang and Tekla said, ‘It’s her. She said she’d call in the morning.’
3
Although it didn’t seem to me so long ago since Betty had returned with Sam Dreiman to America, I barely recognized the woman I faced that day at the Hotel Bristol. She looked years older, middle-aged. Her hair had become thin and was no longer naturally red but an ugly mixture of yellow and red. Her face beneath the rouge and powder appeared somehow broader and flatter; there were wrinkles, and traces of hair on her upper lip and chin. Had she been ailing all this time? Had she grieved so over Sam’s death? Something had happened to her teeth, and I noticed a spot on her neck she had not had before. She wore a kimono and slippers. She measured me from head to toe and back, then said, ‘Already completely bald? Who wore you out so? I thought you were taller. Is it possible at your age to start shrinking? Well, don’t take it seriously, I live entirely by my impressions. I lack all sense for what they call objective truth. I hardly recognized Warsaw. Even the hotel didn’t seem the same. Before we left Poland I collected a whole stack of photographs of you and the others, but they got lost along with many of my papers. Sit down, we must talk. What can I offer you? Tea? Coffee? … Nothing? What’s the sense of nothing? I’ll order coffee.’
Betty ordered coffee by phone. She spoke in a mixture of Polish and English.
She sat down in an easy chair facing me and said, ‘You’re probably wondering why I came, particularly at such a time. I wonder myself or, to put it more accurately, I’ve stopped wondering not only about what others do but about my own actions as well. You probably know that Sam is dead. He went back to America and I believed he was well. He threw himself into his business as energetically as ever. Suddenly he dropped dead. One second he was alive, the next he was dead. For all my grief, I envied him. To people like me, death is a long process. We begin dying just as we’re starting to mature.’
Her voice had also changed – it was hoarser, somewhat shrill. The waiter rang and rolled in a silver service on a cart. It had coffee, cream, and hot milk. Betty handed him a dollar.
We drank our coffee and B
etty said, ‘Everyone aboard ship kept asking the same thing: “Why are you going to Poland?” They were all going to Paris. I told them the truth, that I have an old aunt in Slonim – the very city whose name I bear – and I wanted to see her before she died. They all believe that today or tomorrow Hitler will start the war, but I’m not so sure. What good would a war do him, since whatever he wants they bring him on a silver platter? The Americans and the whole democratic world have lost the most valuable possession – character. There’s a form of tolerance that’s worse than syphilis, worse than murder, worse than madness. Don’t look at me that way. I’m the same person. It’s just that in the time we were apart I lived whole ages. I suffered a complete nervous breakdown. I often heard the term used but didn’t know what it meant. In my case, it showed itself in total apathy. One night I went to bed ostensibly normal, and when I woke up I was alive physically but I was neither hungry nor thirsty, nor did I have the slightest urge to get up. You should forgive me, but I didn’t even want to go to the bathroom. I lay all day and my mind was blank. After Sam’s death I had started smoking heavily. I drank too much, too, although alcohol had never been a passion with me. Sam’s Xanthippe and his greedy children took me to court over his will and their lawyer was something it would take the devil himself to invent. Just looking at his face made me sick. I gave up everything and fled for my life. When the actors found out that Sam had left me part of his fortune, they became as tender with me as they would be with a boil. They even offered me membership in the Hebrew Actors Union. I was promised leading roles and whatnot. But my ambition for the stage was gone. What is theater, anyway? False mimicry. Literature is the same. Sam – may he rest in peace – never read anything, and we often argued about this, since I was a voracious reader from childhood. Now I’m beginning to understand him. Why didn’t you answer my letters?’
Shosha Page 24