Much as I struggled to concentrate on the prospective brides being set before me, my attention began to blur and I was forced to confess that none of those sad and trusting faces captured my heart. None even aroused a flicker of a sinful thought.
Leibush angrily scooped up his gallery of clients and made ready to leave, accusing me of having too high an opinion of myself. Which I couldn’t dispute. My palate may well have been jaded from months of exposure to snowy-fingered beauties, like Slava, and the formidable Madame Divanovsky, both now forever beyond my horizon.
But in an effort to convince Leibush that I was not a hopeless bachelor, I agreed to meet a few of his clients for a coffee or a walk in the Botanical Garden. But even the briefest of conversations revealed their outlook to be so cruelly stunted by poverty, their modest demands on life so uncertain, their minds so ill-schooled in either sacred or secular writings, that I felt able to talk with them only in the most general and stilted terms.
In the end, I was left with but one possibility, a well-dowered redhead from Łódź. Although we had not yet met, her photograph intrigued me with the ironic curl of her lips and the twinkle of what could portend either a spirit of mischief or a temper as clipped as the fuse of a grenade.
Seeing me take a second look, and then a third, Leibush cautioned me shrewdly that this creature needed a “real man” to tame her.
Stung by his suggestion and the challenge, I demanded to meet her at once, but she had to come to Warsaw since, as I asked Leibush to explain, owing to a small misunderstanding with The Law, it was not altogether safe for me to travel.
But nothing would move The Redhead to meet me in Warsaw, a stand I found admirable, if inconvenient.
For several days, telegrams, phone calls and letters flew back and forth like mortar shells from opposing trenches. But the more eagerness I showed to meet this principled young woman, the more her father was convinced that I was not only a wanted criminal but a fortune-hunter holding out for a larger dowry.
Determined to prove him wrong, I impulsively took a train to Łódź and, unannounced, knocked on his door.
To my surprise, The Redhead’s father seemed neither startled nor offended to find me on his doorstep. In fact, he’d been expecting me, thanks to a mysteriously prophetic telegram from Leibush.
The Redhead, on the other hand, needed some time to be persuaded that my blunt arrival did not indicate a “lack of respect.”
For my part, while I found her somewhat bossy as well as a few years older than advertised, I considered her a definite possibility. In part, because Leibush had made me fear that I was holding out for an unattainable ideal, and this young woman with her pretty features and charmingly scolding voice, may have been the best I could hope to do.
Especially when, after a day or two of cautiously becoming acquainted, she confided in a whisper that she also found me not unacceptable.
My talks with The Redhead’s father, under Leibush’s prodding, soon turned to such practical details as the size and location of the grocery store that would be my means of supporting a family. Train schedules were consulted to arrange for my parents to come to Łódź and meet their future in-laws.
But one thing held me back. A totally crazy idea. Which was that I had never thanked the girl from the railroad station in Warsaw, the one who had picked up the piece of paper that I dropped on the way to my execution. The girl who had saved my life.
I tried to explain this to my almost-fiancée, but she lost patience with my “indecisiveness” and snapped, “Then why don’t you go and marry her?” And shut the door in my face.
I returned to Warsaw with a delirious sense of freedom, and promptly asked my brother and his wife for the name and address of the girl who had delivered my note.
Silence.
In all the confusion, neither one of them had thought to ask the girl who she was or where she was from. I was incensed by their negligence.
I suddenly also had Leibush under foot, complaining that, after all his efforts, I had gone back on my word, and he was not at all certain that my reputation, at least within the borders of Russian Poland, could still be salvaged.
My brother, too, was annoyed. “Fine. I should have asked her name. But I thought it was more urgent to get you a good lawyer. Tell me I was wrong.”
“Well, what did she look like?”
“You saw her, too. Didn’t you notice?”
“I was on my way to get shot. I had other things on my mind.”
“You can’t just play with a young woman’s feelings,” Leibush insisted.
“What young woman?” Mordechai asked.
“The one from Łódź!” Leibush said.
“She threw me out,” I added.
“Nonsense. Her father said if you went back and apologized, she might reconsider. Shall I send a telegram?”
“Yes. No. Wait; I’m not sure.”
“You would rather go chase after some unknown female from the railroad station? You know what kind of women hang out at stations?”
“Novy Dvor,” my brother’s wife burst out. “That’s where I think she said she was from.”
“Novy Dvor,” the matchmaker said mockingly. “Two hours by train. Ever been there? A nothing of a town. And when you get there, you’ll do what – go from door to door and ask for a girl whose name you don’t know? For a boy from a fine family like yours to go prowling after a female who picks up letters from criminals. . .”
“I was the ‘criminal,’” I reminded him.
“So, who’s blaming you?”
My brother, trying to calm me down, remembered that we had a great-aunt in Novy Dvor named Hana-Tova who, as it happened, had done rather well as a matchmaker in her younger years.
Leibush scoffed, “Hana-Tova! Who doesn’t know Hana-Tova? Fifty, sixty years ago, sure, she would have matched you up in five minutes. But now? Listen, we all get old.”
He finally left, vowing, unasked, to bring me a favorable answer from the girl in Łódź. “I will remind her father what the Almighty said to Eve when he presented her to Adam. You remember the verse? ‘And he shall rule over you.’”
Since I could well imagine how The Redhead would respond, I raised no objection.
To fill the profound silence left by Leibush’s abrupt departure, my brother shyly opened his billfold and showed me a muddy scrap of paper.
“What’s this?”
“You don’t recognize it?”
It was the very piece of paper on which I had blindly written my desperate appeal. He carried it with him as a reminder of the brother he had never expected to see again.
I squinted at it in the afternoon light, and could barely make out the scrawl. It could have been written by a cripple or a blind man. I didn’t even recognize the handwriting. The text, however, had a familiar ring: “Jews, have mercy and run quickly to 72 Pavia, Apartment 5. I am on my way to execution get me a lawyer whatever it costs tomorrow will be too late.” To which I had courteously added, “thank you,” but forgotten to sign my name.
I was astonished at the letter’s length, scribbled in Egyptian darkness. Only, what had made me address the letter to Jews, alone? Had I not considered that gentiles also had compassion? But I suppose, in my despair, I could not picture anyone but a Jew bending down to pluck a scrap of paper out of the mud.
At once, I was filled with determination to find this remarkable girl, regardless of the obstacles.
Evening. Friends and cousins, intrigued by my romantic quest, gathered in Mordechai’s apartment. Each knew exactly what I should do when, and if, I located this mysterious creature.
A neighbor said it would be a nice gesture to present her with a pair of silver candlesticks.
Dvora objected that such a gift might be taken as a marriage proposal. “And what if she says ‘yes?’”
A cousin said the most respectable thing would be to bring her flowers, and maybe a postal order for 50 rubles. Someone else wondered why twenty rubles wasn’t eno
ugh. This started a dispute between those who thought 50 was too extravagant and those who considered it too little.
Another relative pointed out that giving someone a material reward for a mitzvah diminished his or her reward in the World to Come.
I broke in to remind them I still didn’t have a clue as to who she was or where she lived.
Dvora said, “Why not ask her cousin?”
I exploded out of my chair. “What cousin?”
“She mentioned that she had come to Warsaw to visit a cousin named Golde, a wig-maker, who lived on Smocza, corner Gesia.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?”
Turning away, she said, “So who listens to a woman?”
Mordechai claimed not to have heard the girl say any such thing. But the rest of us, smelling a challenge, jumped up and clattered down the stairs, headed for Smocza.
Like any intersection, this one had a building on each corner, five stories each, two apartments per story, a total of forty apartments, not counting attics and cellars.
Smocza being that kind of a neighborhood, some of the people who answered my knock either mistook my intentions and closed the door in my face, or offered me a ready substitute – a hairdresser, a manicurist, even a dress-maker, although none were named Golde.
At the third house, a severe young housewife said, “I am a wig-maker, but my name is Guta, not Golde. Also I don’t touch men’s hair.”
Before she could shut the door on me, I hastily asked, “Do you have a cousin in Novy Dvor?”
“What has that to do with you?”
“Last year she did me a great kindness, and I want to thank her.”
“It took you a whole year to remember?”
“I was away. In Siberia.”
“For what?”
“For nothing. I was innocent. It’s not your business, anyway.”
She suddenly widened her eyes and leaned forward to stare at me in a better light. “Are you the young man in chains who was on his way to being shot?”
“That’s me!” I said, perhaps too proudly. “What is her name?”
Guta wrinkled her nose. “You couldn’t find a clean piece of paper to write on?”
“I was in jail.”
“She showed it to me, for my opinion. Did I think it was a joke? I told her it’s either a joke or written by a lunatic.”
“I am the lunatic! Now can you please tell me her name and where I can find her?”
“It would do you no good.”
“Why?” I had a sudden sense of fear I would learn, as I had twice in the recent past, that I was too late.
“Her father doesn’t let her meet just anyone.”
“All I want is to look at her face and say, ‘thank you’.”
“It starts with an innocent ‘thank you’, and who knows where it ends up?”
“And what if it does?”
“Take my word for it; you’re not the type he’s looking for.”
Before I could knock my head against the doorpost, Dvora smoothly intervened, “You are quite right. My brother will write her a nice letter. If you will kindly give us her name and address.”
With a suspicious glance in my direction, Guta said, “Her name is Bryna Migdal. I don’t know her address because I don’t need to; I recognize the house.”
I raced blindly down the unlit stairs, five at a time. Out in the street, I tried to hail a cab to the station. While I frantically waved my arms, as if that would make a cab suddenly appear, Dvora took my arm and dragged me back to her apartment so I could polish my boots and put on a clean shirt.
Somehow, Leibush already knew I was going to Novy Dvor, and before I reached Mordechai’s door, he was waiting there wearing a benign smile to let me know he was traveling with me, at his own expense.
“What for?”
“To handle the negotiations.”
“What negotiations?”
“Don’t be a child. You’re single, she’s single. Who knows what can happen? A look leads to a word. A word leads to another. If you don’t have someone to stand up for your interests, you’ll end up with nothing.”
“How do you know she’s single?”
“If not, I have two other girls for you in Novy Dvor. Twins. I already spoke to the father. . .”
Even as my brother politely escorted him out, Leibush assured me that, when I came back, he would surely have at least a “hopeful” decision for me from The Redhead in Łódź.
The train was marked Express, but its speed could not keep up with my racing heart.
Resting on my lap was a gift, heavily wrapped. I won’t tell you what it was or how much it cost, but it was not a pair of silver candlesticks.
To contain my impatience, I strode up and down the rattling corridors. This got me to my destination no more quickly, but got me there with tired feet.
I didn’t have my great-aunt, Hana-Tova’s, address, but my driver not only knew where she lived, but confided that she had the largest Jewish-owned store in Novy Dvor, employing as many as two shop-assistants at the same time.
Although I had not seen Hana-Tova since childhood, she remembered me at once. That is, she had heard that one of her nephews named Yakov had been, for some whimsical Czarist reason, sent to Siberia. And she was not only pleased to see me back, but also touched that I had traveled all this way to let her know.
Her next question was, “Are you married yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t had time.”
She did not consider this a serious answer. She was all the more intrigued when I explained that I had come to Novy Dvor to meet a particular girl.
“Who?”
“Bryna Migdal. Maybe you know her?”
She looked me up and down with what I took to be sympathy, if not pity. “How did you hear of her?”
“She saved me from being shot.”
My great-aunt nodded shrewdly, as if that were the most natural thing in the world for this particular girl to have done.
Elya, her husband, strolled in from the storeroom as our voices had awakened him. Hana-Tova introduced me as “Shloime-Zalman’s son, just back from Siberia.”
He shook my hand. “And what are you doing in Novy Dvor?”
“He wants to meet Bryna Migdal.”
My great-uncle sighed and patted my arm.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. What should be wrong?”
At dinner, I told them how this total stranger had, no doubt at some inconvenience, saved me from the firing squad. And that, indicating the parcel on their sideboard, I had come to express my thanks.
“Fine. I’ll have it sent over,” said Hana-Tova.
“Why can’t I give it to her myself?”
Uncle Elya sighed once more. “Don’t take this as anything personal, but her father, like any good Hasid, holds to certain standards for the sort of young man he will allow his daughter to meet.”
I kindly challenged my uncle to point out in what respects I fell short.
Both he and Hana-Tova assured me, with all possible delicacy, that it was not simply a matter of my fine English suit being of a color other than black, nor that the brief train ride from Warsaw had allowed me insufficient time to grow a beard. It was just that, through no fault of my own, I had spent some years in a world of lawless, violent men, shedders of blood, and probably was forced to do this-and-that and who-knows-what-else to stay alive. And while Elya could see that none of this had left its shadow on my soul, a man of such penetrating insight as Rabbi Migdal might, at the very least, regard me as a man who, begging my pardon, had seen something of life.
“And why should that be held against me?”
“No one is holding anything against you. It is just that Jews in Novy Dvor are serious people, and a young man cannot simply walk in off the street and hope to be introduced to a treasure like Bryna.”
Having nothing left to lose, I shifted to the offensive. “T
hen why is she not married, yet? Could it be there is something wrong with her?”
“Heaven forbid,” Hana-Tova said. But I didn’t fail to spot her anxious eye consulting with her husband. She finally confessed, “Since we know what kind of a family you come from, and I can see your interest is not frivolous, it would be only fair to mention one small blemish, at least in some peoples’ eyes, especially since she, herself, makes no secret of it.”
The Accidental Anarchist Page 33