The World in Pieces

by Bart Midwood

  “Not even Mordecai?” said Lo Yadua.

  “You remember your Uncle Mordecai?” said Surah.

  “Yes, very well.”

  “He writes to you?”

  “No, but I remember. I liked him.”

  “But you were only a little boy.”

  “A little boy he too has a memory.”

  “Of course. But all these years!”

  “Enough, Surah. Just tell me why you don’t see Mordecai.”

  “I don’t know if I can say why. It’s complicated.”

  “You don’t like him anymore? Is that it?”

  “Mainly it’s that your father has anger, tremendous anger against Mordecai.”

  “Why do you say that?” said Anchel. “I don’t have anger against Mordecai. Or against anyone!”

  “I don’t mean to say that you have anger now, but you used to.”

  “But if you don’t have anger anymore against Mordecai,” said Lo Yadua, “why don’t you see him, Abba?”

  Here Lo Yadua had used the Hebrew word for father, Abba, which to my ears has intrinsically a tender affection independent of the speaker’s tone, and somehow, coming from my husband here, it startled me.

  “Whatever was between Mordecai and me,” said Anchel, “this is all dead.”

  “But he’s your brother,” said Lo Yadua.

  “Brother is just a word.”

  “Not just a word. A word with meaning.”

  “To you, but not to me!”

  That Anchel was discomforted and trying to suppress a rage, this we could all see plainly enough; and insofar as it was perfectly consistent with what already I had seen from him, he did not surprise me. What did surprise me was Lo Yadua and his protest. In retrospect I see of course that it was perfectly natural, this protest against Anchel’s cold dismissal of the brotherly bond, but still in the moment I was, as I say, surprised.

  “Mordecai has sons, daughters?” persisted Lo Yadua.

  “I told you,” said Anchel, “I know nothing of his life.”

  “Mordecai has three children,” said Surah. “Two sons and a daughter. The daughter is the eldest. Her name is Blima. After your grandmother.”

  In one instant Anchel went white like a ghost. “How do you know this, Surah?” he said.

  “There’s no need to look at me like that,” said Surah.

  “How is it you never told me this about Mordecai?”

  “I knew you didn’t want to hear about it.”

  “Well, you were right!”

  “So I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have disturbed you with it even now, but Lo Yadua asked. And I felt I had to tell him. Don’t you see how important it is to him? Just pretend you didn’t hear!”

  “But how do you know all this about Mordecai? Have you been visiting him? Maybe talking to him on the phone?”

  “Never! Everything I know I heard from Blanche.”

  “Blanche! What Blanche?”

  “The buyer. At work. I told you about her a thousand times. Blanche with the bleached hair.”

  “So what does this Blanche have to do with our Mordecai?”

  “Blanche has a brother-in-law who is in plumbing supplies. This brother-in-law he drives a truck, and he makes deliveries to a hardware store, Morty’s, on DeKalb Avenue. And Mordecai, our Mordecai, he’s the owner.”

  “Mordecai owns a hardware store?”

  “On DeKalb Avenue.”

  “And how is it that Blanche came to tell you about a hardware store on DeKalb Avenue? I cannot imagine such a conversation.”

  “This brother-in-law who drives the truck, Alfie is his name, he’s friendly with Mordecai. Sometimes, when Alfie makes a delivery, the two men have lunch at a diner. Also, on Wednesday nights they play pinochle together, with a few other men, and once a month they play at Alfie’s. Are you following this?”

  “Yes. Go ahead.”

  “Now Alfie’s wife, who is Blanche’s sister, she hates the pinochle, so one Wednesday a month Blanche visits and keeps her sister company. Well, so, on one of these nights, there was a little incident with our Mordecai. On this night he won a lot of money. More than two hundred dollars. At the end he got so excited that he swept up his chips too fast and knocked over a pitcher of ice coffee onto a nice pink carpet that was brand new. Just that day the carpet was laid, wall-to-wall, a fifteen-hundred dollar carpet. So Blanche’s sister she grabbed up the pitcher and raised it over her head like an executioner, and she said, ‘Mordecai Brody, you can thank my God in heaven this very instant that I am not going to kill you!’

  “Well, that’s the story that Blanche told me. For Blanche the point was the funny remark of her sister, but for me the point was the name, Mordecai Brody, which, as soon as I heard it, gave me goosebumps.”

  “This Blanche,” said Anchel, “she noticed that this was the same last name as yours?”

  “Of course. But I told her it was a common name, that there were thousands of Brodys in New York. But also I asked her what she knew about him, just in case maybe he was a distant relative. So she told me what she knew, just a few details, and I told her no, no such person was in our family, and that was the end of it, I swear!”

  “What were the few details?”

  “Just that he owns the store on Dekalb Avenue. And that he has three children, the oldest a daughter, named Blima, who he is always boasting about, because she’s a Phi Betta Kappa, very good with languages, and a great beauty.”

  “That’s all the details you got?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’s a different Mordecai Brody.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Except that if the daughter is a Blima, this must be our brother.”

  “Or maybe not. So forget it, Anchel.”

  “You never went to see him?”

  “Why would I go?”

  “You never called on the telephone?”

  “Never.”

  “Would you swear to this on our mother’s grave?”

  “Anchel, what are you saying?”

  “Swear, Surah!”

  “My God, how can you talk to me like that in front of strangers?”

  This word “strangers” it took us all aback, even the speaker herself, but especially Anchel, who blinked his eyes, just like Charlie Chaplin, when he is jolted out of a daydream.

  A moment later he got up and started to leave the table, with tight lips and a set jaw.

  “Where are you going?” said Surah.

  “To get a drink of water,” said Anchel.

  “Sit,” said Frieda. “I’ll get it. You want from the tap or cold from the fridge?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I can get it myself.”

  “Tell him he can’t go into your kitchen, Frieda,” said Surah.

  “Surah, darling, what are you saying?” said Frieda.

  “He always does this. As soon as there’s the least bit of unpleasantness, he disappears. For a whole hour he could hide in a kitchen or a bathroom!”

  “Quiet, Surah,” said Anchel.

  “No! All my life I’ve made excuses for you, Anchel, but this time I won’t. Halfway around the world we’ve come to take care of this problem, you and I, and now we must be together with it.”

  “Why are you making such a fuss? I’m not going to Mars, just the next room.”

  With this Anchel went into the kitchen, and right away we heard the tap running; then in half a minute he came back, sat at the table and showed us a nice crystal goblet nearly full to the brim with water.

  “You see?” he said.

  Then he lifted the goblet to his lips, tilting his head back ostentatiously, and drank.

  Now here Surah she began to make excuses, saying that we shouldn’t take the argument between her and Anchel too seriously, that it was probably the result of the change of climate, or the water, or a virus, who knew what! On and on she went in this vein until finally Anchel lost patience and ordered her to get back to the problem with the Christophers.

/>   At this open display of aggression from Anchel, first a look of surprise crossed Surah’s face, then a shadow of resentment, and then she took up again the thread of the story.

  She said, “In the end, thank God, Bob and Myra did call. As usual first Bob and Anchel talked, then Myra and I. It was all very friendly. And Myra she invited us to play cards. Well, I can’t tell you how happy and relieved Anchel and I were. But of course none of you can possibly understand this, our happiness and relief over such a simple invitation, to play cards, with friends.”

  “Why do you suppose that we cannot understand?” I said.

  “Because look at you here, all of you, with a whole big community. If you lose one friend, it’s not so important.”

  “It’s not important when we lose a friend?”

  “Important, yes, but not so important. Still you have many others, a whole kibbutz full of friends. But in America the life is different. There people make their own lives, each alone. There everyone is an individual.”

  “Here too we are individuals.”

  “Of course. I don’t mean to say you’re not individuals.”

  “But you did say that, didn’t you?”

  “Listen, Ila, you just don’t understand. You can’t possibly understand!”

  “But what? What is it that I can’t possibly understand?”

  “The loneliness, Ila. The terrible, terrible loneliness!”

  “Forgive me,” I said, immediately ashamed of having provoked such a pathetic outburst about loneliness. Who do I think I am? I thought. Do I think I’m a Socrates, who has a need to go and nag this poor woman for clarifications?

  Well, no, it was just that I was exasperated, fed up already at having heard so often from outsiders how we on the kibbutz were somehow not quite individuals; and at this moment I couldn’t resist registering something, at least a little something, so that Surah’s insult would not go by too easily and without resistance, specially as it came from a woman who was herself so caught in collective ideas that individuality in her mind had come to be equated with loneliness; and not, mind you, the loneliness of independent thought or moral courage, but a purely biological, creaturely loneliness, the loneliness of a sheep separated from the flock.

  Don’t misunderstand me, Mister Midwood. For Surah’s loneliness, her suffering, I had only compassion, believe me; but that she was using this loneliness to certify herself as an individual, and also to assert a moral superiority, not only over her own son, but over the whole collective heroic effort of my fellow kibbutzniks, with this I had no patience. Forgive me!

  All the same we shouldn’t forget that this loneliness it was real; so it is important to have a sense of it to understand what follows here.

  After six anxious weeks finally comes the night to play canasta.

  Bob Christopher, as soon as he opens the door to greet his guests, he announces: “We’re going to Israel!”

  “And he has the plane tickets in his hand,” said Surah. “And he puts them right in our face. And he gives that big smile of his where he shows all his teeth, which are not so good. At first Anchel and I we don’t know how to react. During the time since we got the invitation, we made up our mind that we shouldn’t talk anymore about Israel, because what was the point of making a competition? But now Bob he put us in a position where not to talk about Israel would be a terrible insult, because now he was begging us to talk about it. And what is the first thing he wants to know? It is the name of the kibbutz that we visited in 1936. So, since Anchel had already boasted that we still had connections here, we had to tell the name. Also we told your name, Cesare. And yours, Frieda. And yours too, Lo Yadua. And now, soon, Bob and Myra are coming to visit. Two weeks from now.”

  Surah spoke these words “two weeks from now” quite portentously, and with a grim conspiratorial expression in the eyes, assuming apparently that we understood the conspiracy she had in mind, but we did not understand at all and so we responded with a puzzled silence, which unsettled her; you could see this.

  “So now I see why you came!” said Cesare, clearly trying to break up the uneasy tension. “You came for the competition! As soon as your Christophers told you they’re coming to Israel, you ran out and bought tickets too and got here first!”

  “My God, Cesare,” said Surah, “what are you saying!”

  “I’m making a joke.”

  “To compete with the Christophers is the last thing that Anchel and I want to do!”

  “But listen, Surah, let’s be quite frank here,” I said impatiently. “You did after all go out and buy airplane tickets after the Christophers showed you theirs, so no matter what is the case, they’re bound to see your visit to Israel as a competitive act.”

  “The Christophers won’t see our visit as anything at all,” said Surah. “In fact they know nothing about it. We told them we’re going to Florida.”

  “This is a little extreme, Surah. Forgive me, but I must say this. I can appreciate that you lied to your friends to avoid competition, but still such a lie cannot possibly succeed. Once they arrive, they’re bound to mention your names, and then someone here will be bound to mention your visit. This would be only natural.”

  “I know that. But if you, and Lo Yadua, and Cesare, were maybe to tell the others, perhaps at a general meeting, if you were to tell them something about the situation, I’m sure everybody here is capable of keeping a secret.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Cesare. “I think I’m not understanding you correctly.”

  “What’s to understand? Just tell them not to mention that we were here.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious, Cesare!”

  “But if this is so important to you, why didn’t you wait a little and come after the Christophers? Already you waited twenty years, so why not another few weeks? Then you wouldn’t be coming to us with such a crazy request, that everyone on the kibbutz should make a lie so that you and Anchel can play canasta with a CPA!”

  “It’s not for the canasta, Cesare. It’s for the friendship. Besides, nobody is asking anyone to lie. Just to keep silent.”

  Surah turned to Lo Yadua.

  “Yes, Ima?” he said in response to her gaze.

  “Ima?” said Surah wryly.

  “It means in Hebrew ‘mother,’” I explained.

  “Yes, I know. I know this word. Such a nice word. It’s just that Lo Yadua has never before called me this.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lo Yadua. “It just slipped out.”

  “What’s to be sorry about? I like this word.”

  “I said that it just slipped out!” said Lo Yadua with a flash of anger.

  “Don’t trouble yourself about it then. Call me whatever is comfortable for you.”

  “Surah. Surah is comfortable.”

  “Then that is best. And now I have to ask something of you.”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “In America, you see, Anchel and I are known not like here as husband and wife, but as brother and sister.”

  “Yes, I know this.”

  “It’s easier for us.”

  “Of course.”

  “To lie and pretend we are husband and wife, as we had to do in the dining hall with Rubin, it puts a big strain on us. For a short visit, though, it’s not so bad, so we do it, for your sake, so that you won’t be embarrassed. So that you can have a normal life.”

  “This is very good of you, Surah.”

  “Well, we try. We’ve always tried, your father and I, to do what was best for you.”

  With this outrageous statement she paused, putting before us an opportunity to attack her on a point so vulnerable that one well-aimed reply, believe me, could have killed her as swiftly as a bullet in the heart. To fire such a bullet, though, you need to be ruthless, which in that circumstance none of us could be, and this she knew. Instinctively she knew, on a deep primitive level, without intellect, like a serpent. And so, in the face of our passivity, she gave
quickly a crooked little smile, purely involuntary, and then proceeded to say that since she had done so much for Lo Yadua, now she was going to ask him to do something for her.

  “Not a big thing,” she said. “Your father and I, we just want you to go along with a little fairy tale, to save us some embarrassment with the Christophers, who are under the impression that you’re our nephew, not our son.”

  “But who then did you tell them is my mother?”

  “Our elder sister. Who died.”

  “But you never had an elder sister. Did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  Here now was a silence where Lo Yadua he just gazed stupidly at his mother with God knows what in his mind, until Cesare he made a protective intervention, saying gently and with obvious restraint: “Tell me, Surah, who did you tell them is the father?”

  “We told them that he too died,” said Surah. “That both the father and the mother died when Lo Yadua was young.”

  “How young?”

  “We didn’t say. All we said was that he was well cared for on the kibbutz and that in a sense the kibbutz itself had become the parents, which is anyway perfectly true. I read in a magazine that in many primitive communities this is the case, that the community itself becomes the parents.”

  “So, you see our kibbutz as primitive?”

  “No, Cesare. My God, I’m talking about a magazine article that had nothing to do with your kibbutz. Why are you so touchy about every little word?”

  “Maybe it’s a neurosis I have. I don’t know. You will have to ask Ila. She is the expert on such matters. But, one other thing I want to say. About the kibbutz as the parents. There is something in this idea. Something true in it, as you say. But also you must know that Frieda and I, we too have been something like parents for your son. Frieda more than me. Frieda has given much motherliness, specially in the old days, when Yaddie was a boy.”

  “I know, Cesare, and believe me, nobody discounts what you and Frieda did for Lo Yadua. But all that, it’s not the question at the moment.”

  “And which question are you talking about, Surah?”

  “The question about the Christophers.”

  “Yes, well, but you already asked this question.”

  “But I’m not getting an answer! Lo Yadua, why are you just staring at me and not giving me an answer!”