‘Throw you out? Tekla, I’m your friend for life!’
‘Oh, thank you. What shall I do? I can’t go home to our village, because Bolek said if I did he’d come after me. He has a whole gang of thugs who served in the army and came back with revolvers and bayonets. He said he’d saved up a thousand zlotys and some French money besides, but my heart is no longer his. He can get plenty of other girls. He stank of vodka and he talked like a roughneck. I’ve grown unused to that kind of coarseness.’
‘Arele, when Mommy comes back and hears this, she’ll get nervous,’ Shosha said. ‘If the man is threatening with a knife, you mustn’t go to that place. But what will she do here? We hardly have space to lay our own heads. Mommy says each time she goes out to let no one in. She used to say the same when we lived at No. 10 – remember?’
‘Yes, Shoshele, I remember. Tekla is a decent girl and she won’t give anyone any trouble. I’ll take her away in a minute.’ In Yiddish I said, ‘Shoshele, I’m going with her for a while. When your mother comes back, tell her nothing.’
‘Oh, she’ll know it, anyway. Everyone in the courtyard looks out the window, and when someone who doesn’t belong here goes in or out they know it and start to gossip: “What’s she doing here? What does she want?” The younger women are busy with their children, but the old ones want to know everything.’
‘Well, I’ll be back around lunchtime. Tekla, come with me.’
‘Shall I bring my basket?’
‘Yes, bring it.’
‘Arele, don’t be late. When you’re late, Mommy starts to worry that maybe you no longer want us, and things like that. I start thinking all kinds of things myself. Last night I could barely sleep a wink. If she’s hungry, I can give her bread and herring to take along.’
‘She’ll eat. Come, Tekla.’
We walked out under the watchful gaze of eyes that seemed to ask, ‘Where is he off to so early with this peasant girl? And what is she carrying in the basket?’ I answered them in my mind, ‘You may try to solve the puzzles in the newspaper, but never the mysteries of life. For seven days and seven nights you could rub your brows like the Sages of Chelm and you’d still never figure out the answer.’
In front of the gate, I stood for a long time thinking what to do next. Should I try to find a room for her? Should I go with her to some coffee shop and look up advertisements for maids’ agencies? I would have let her stay with Shosha for a while, but I had never told either her or Bashele of my room on Leszno Street. They believed that I slept at the newspaper, and Bashele would begin a long interrogation. Suddenly I knew what to do. The solution was so simple I wondered that it hadn’t occurred to me immediately. I walked with Tekla to the delicatessen in No. 12, told her to wait for me by the door, and went inside to phone Celia. Only a few days earlier, she had bewailed the fact that ever since Marianna had left her, she hadn’t been able to find a decent maid. I heard Celia’s dull voice – one that seemed to say without putting it in words, Whoever it may be, I can expect nothing.
I said, ‘Celia, this is Tsutsik.’
‘Tsutsik? What’s happened? Has the Messiah come?’
‘The Messiah hasn’t come, but I have a maid for you.’
‘A maid? You? For me?’
‘Yes, Celia, and a part-time boarder in the bargain.’
‘Bless me if I know what you mean. What boarder?’
‘I am the boarder.’
‘Are you making fun of me?’
I told Celia what had happened. ‘I can’t stay in my room on Leszno Street any longer. A rowdy peasant is threatening Tekla and me.’ Celia did not interrupt me, apparently stunned by the turn of events. I could hear her breathing on the other side of the line. From time to time I glanced through the glass door to where Tekla waited. She stood with humble patience. She did not put down the heavy basket but held it in both her hands, pressed to her belly. At home on Leszno Street she showed big-city shrewdness, but overnight she seemed to have lost it all and become a peasant again.
‘Will you bring Shosha with you?’
‘Whenever she is able to stay apart from her mother.’
Celia seemed to ponder the implication of my words. Then she said, ‘Bring her as often as you want to. This is going to be your second home. Where you go she should go.’
‘Celia, you are saving my life!’ I exclaimed.
Again Celia paused. ‘Tsutsik, take a taxi and come at once. If I live a little longer, something good may happen even to me. If only it isn’t too late.’
Author’s Note
This novel does not represent the Jews of Poland in the pre-Hitler years by any means. It is a story of a few unique characters in unique circumstances. It appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward in 1974 under the title Soul Expeditions. A great part of it was translated into English by my nephew Joseph Singer. A number of chapters I dictated to my wife, Alma, and to my secretary, Dvorah Menashe. The entire work was edited by Rachel MacKenzie and Robert Giroux. My gratitude and love to all of them.
I. B. S.
Epilogue
1
Thirteen years had gone by. In New York, I had saved two thousand dollars out of my salary from the Yiddish newspaper. I had also received a five-hundred-dollar advance for a novel that would be translated into English, and I took a trip to London, Paris, and Israel. London still had craters and ruins left over from the German bombs. In Paris, I ate in a restaurant that obtained its food from the black market. In Marseilles I boarded a ship bound for Haifa with a stopover in Genoa. The singing of the young passengers rang through the nights – the old familiar songs, as well as new songs that had come out of the war with the Arabs between 1948 and 1951. After six days, we arrived in Haifa. It was an experience to see Hebrew signs over the stores and streets bearing the names of writers, rabbis, and leaders, to hear Hebrew spoken in the Sephardic style, to see Jewish soldiers of both sexes. In Tel Aviv I stopped at a hotel on Yarkon Street. Although Tel Aviv was a new city, the houses looked old and dingy. The telephone didn’t work properly, the bathtub seldom had hot water, and the electricity often went off at night. The food was bad.
There was a notice in a newspaper announcing my arrival, and I began to receive visits from writers, journalists, old friends from Warsaw, distant relatives. Some of them had numbers tattooed on their arms from Auschwitz, others had already lost sons in the battles for Jerusalem or Safad. I heard the same horror stories about Nazi brutalities and the savagery of the N.K.V.D. that I had heard in New York, in London, in Paris, and aboard ship.
One morning as I ate breakfast in the hotel dining room, a tiny person with a milk-white beard that extended like a fan came into the room. He wore an unbuttoned shirt with an open collar, a straw hat, shabby trousers, and sandals on his bare feet. I was sure that I had known him once, but I couldn’t identify him. How can such a little man have such a large beard? I wondered. He approached my table with hasty steps. He had young black eyes that resembled the olives on my plate. He pointed a finger and said in a familiar Warsaw Yiddish, ‘There he is! Peace to you, Tsutsik!’
It was Haiml Chentshiner. I got up and we kissed and held each other for a moment. My face filled with beard. I asked him to have breakfast with me but he told me that he had eaten, and I ordered coffee for him. I had heard that he and Celia perished in the Warsaw Ghetto, but encounters with those supposedly dead had ceased to surprise me. Feitelzohn I knew was no longer alive, for I had read of his death in the paper years ago.
We drank the coffee and Haiml said, ‘Forgive me for calling you Tsutsik – it remains a term of affection for me.’
‘Yes, but I’m an old dog now.’
‘To me you will always remain Tsutsik. If Celia were alive, she’d call you the same thing. How old are you?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘Not so very old. I’m in my late fifties. It seems to me I’m as old as Methuselah. The things we went through during those years! Not one life but a hundred.’
‘Where wer
e you, Haiml?’
‘Where was I? Where wasn’t I! In Vilna, in Kovno, in Kiev, in Moscow, in Kazakhstan, among the Kalmucks, the Chunchuz, or whatever they’re called. A hundred times I virtually looked the Angel of Death in the eye, but when you’re fated to stay alive miracles occur. So long as a breath of life remains in the body, it crawls like a worm, and I crawled and avoided the feet that squash worms till I came to the Jewish land. Here again, we suffered war, hunger, steady danger. Bullets flew over my head. Bombs exploded a few steps away. But here no one went like a sheep to the slaughter. Our lads from Warsaw, Lodz, Rawa Ruska, and Minsk suddenly turned into heroes like the fighters in the time of Masada. Piff-poff! The greatest optimist wouldn’t have believed it possible. You probably know what happened to Celia.’
‘Not a thing.’
‘How could you, after all? How about going out on the terrace? I like to look at the sea.’
We went to the terrace and took a table in the shade. A waiter came over and I ordered more coffee and cookies. For a long time we both stared out to sea, which changed color from green to blue. On the horizon a sailboat rocked. The beach swarmed with men and women. Some exercised, others played ball, sunbathed, or lay under umbrellas. Some splashed at the edge of the water, others swam far out. A man urged a dog to go into the water, but the animal was unwilling to bathe.
Haiml said, ‘Well, a Jewish land, a Jewish sea. Who would have believed this ten years ago? Such a thought was beyond daring. All our dreams centered around a crust of bread, a plate of groats, a clean shirt. Feitelzohn once said something I often repeat: “A man has no imagination either in his pessimism or his optimism.” Who could have figured that the Gentiles would vote for a Jewish nation? Nu, but the birth throes are far from over. The Arabs haven’t made peace with the situation. It’s hard here. Thousands of refugees live in tin shacks. I lived in one of them myself. The sun roasts you all day like fire, and at night you freeze. The women are at each other’s throats. Refugees have come from Africa who’ve never seen a handkerchief – literally people from Abraham’s time. Who knows what they are – maybe descendants of Keturah. I hear you’ve become famous in America.’
‘Far from it.’
‘Well, you’re known. They used to read your books in the camps in Germany. Things were reprinted in the papers there. Each time I saw your name, I cried, “Tsutsik!” They thought I was crazy. Today when I saw the notice in Hayom that you were here, I began to jump in the air. My wife asked, “What happened – have you gone mad?” I got married again.’
‘Here?’
‘No, in Landsberg. She had lost her husband and the children were taken away from her to the gas chamber. I was wandering around alone. I didn’t have anyone to so much as make me a glass of tea. I remember your words: “The world is a slaughterhouse and a brothel.” At the time it seemed to me an exaggeration, but it’s the bitter truth. They consider you a mystic, while the fact is, you’re an out-and-out realist. Still, everything is forced upon us, even hope. The dictator on high, the celestial Stalin, says “You must hope!” And if he says you must, you hope. But what can I hope for any more? Only for death. Where is the sugar?’
‘Right here.’
‘This coffee tastes like dishwater. How long is it since I’ve seen you – thirteen years? Yes, in September it will be exactly thirteen years. Shosha is no longer alive, eh?’
‘Shosha died on the second day we left Warsaw.’
‘Died? On the way?’
‘Yes, like Mother Rachel.’
‘We knew nothing, nothing. News came from others. There were Jews in Bialystok and Vilna who became mail carriers, messengers. They brought letters to wives across the borders. But you vanished like a stone in water. What happened to you? I first found out you were alive in 1946. I came to Munich with a large group of refugees and someone gave me a newspaper published there. I opened it and saw your name. It said that you were in New York. How did you manage to get to New York?’
‘Through Shanghai.’
‘Who sent you the affidavit?’
‘Remember Betty?’
‘What a question! I remember everybody.’
‘Betty married a Gentile, a colonel in the American Army, and he sent me the affidavit.’
‘You knew her address?’
‘I learned it by chance.’
‘Well, I’m not religious, I don’t pray, I don’t observe the Sabbath, I don’t believe in God, but I acknowledge that some hand guides our world – this, no one can deny. A vicious hand, a bloody hand, occasionally merciful. Where does Betty live – in New York?’
‘Betty committed suicide a year ago.’
‘Why?’
‘No one knows.’
‘What happened to Shosha? If it’s painful for you to talk about it, you don’t have to tell me.’
‘I’ll tell you anyway. She died exactly as I saw it in a dream a few years before. We were walking along a road that led to Bialystok. It was toward evening. The others walked fast and Shosha couldn’t keep up. She began to stop every few minutes. Suddenly she sat down, and a minute later she was dead. I had told this dream to Celia. Maybe to you, too.’
‘Not to me. I would remember it. What a sweet child she was. In her own fashion, a saint. What was it, a heart attack?’
‘I don’t know. I think she simply didn’t want to live any more.’
‘What happened to her sister – what was her name, Teibele?’ Haiml asked. ‘And how about her mother?’
‘Bashele perished for sure. About Teibele, I don’t know what happened. She might have run away to Russia. She had a friend – a bookkeeper. Perhaps she’s here, although it doesn’t seem probable, since I have heard nothing from her in all these years.’
‘I’m afraid to ask, but what happened to your mother and your brother?’
‘After 1941, the Russians saved them by taking them in a cattle train to Kazakhstan. The trip took two weeks. I met a man who was with them in the same train, and he told me the details. They are both dead. How my mother could last several months after the experience of this trip, I still don’t grasp. They were taken to a forest in the middle of the Russian winter and told to build themselves log cabins. My brother died almost immediately after he arrived.’
‘What happened to your Communist girl friend, what was her name?’
‘Dora? I don’t know. Got crushed somewhere, either by the do-gooders, or by the do-badders.’
‘Tsutsik, I’ll be right back – don’t go away.’
‘What a thing to say!’
Haiml left and I turned toward the sea again. Two women splashed each other and lost their balance from the force of their laughter. A father and son played with a balloon. A Sephardic Jew in a white cloak, barefoot, and with a scraggly white beard and earlocks dangling to his shoulders, went around begging from the people on the beach. No one gave him anything. Who would go begging on a beach? I wondered. He was probably not in his right mind. At that moment I heard my name called on the public-address system. I was wanted on the telephone.
2
I came back from the phone. Haiml sat at the table, facing the door with a childish eagerness. When I came out, he made a move as if to stand, but kept his seat. I sat down and he asked, ‘Where did you go?’
‘I was called to the phone.’
‘When you come here, they don’t leave you alone for a minute. Well, there were notices about you in the newspapers, but how did they know it when I came? People called whom I thought were long buried. Every such meeting was like the resurrection of the dead. Who knows? If we could live to see the miracle that the Jews have a country again, maybe we shall see the Messiah come, after all? Maybe the dead will be resurrected? Tsutsik, you know I’m a freethinker. But somewhere inside me I have the feeling that Celia is here, that Morris is here, that my father – may he rest in peace – is here. Your Shosha is here, too. How is it possible, after all, that someone should simply vanish? How can someone who lived, loved, hoped,
and wrangled with God and with himself just disappear? I don’t know how and in what sense but they’re here. Since time is an illusion, why shouldn’t everything remain? I once heard you say – or quote someone – that time is a book whose pages you can turn forward, not back. Maybe we can’t, but some forces can. How is it possible that Celia should stop being Celia? For Morris to stop being Morris? I live with them, speak with them. At times I hear Celia talking to me. You won’t believe this, but Celia told me to marry my present wife. I lay in that camp near Landsberg, sick, hungry, lonely, dejected. Suddenly I heard Celia’s voice: “Haiml, marry Genia!” That’s my wife’s name, Genia. Sure, you can explain this psychologically. I know, I know. Nevertheless, I heard her voice. What do you say to that, eh?’
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