But now he was not so sure. He recalled Załuski’s words of two nights before. How do you know who you are if you don’t know where your family came from? At the time, the question had seemed tinny and clichéd. But since he had come to Zokof, propelled by mere casual curiosity, he felt the vastness of a loneliness he could not name, the disconnection his father’s rejection of his God had somehow caused for him. He wondered if a connection was even possible anymore. What did he know of the things that drove the lives of his family generations before? He didn’t know enough about their God to cry for his loss as Pop had. He didn’t know about God at all. He’d been a seed tossed on a foreign shore, left to grow wild by his own father. “Damn him,” he said, under his breath.
And yet Nathan felt a sweet tug in his heart at the thought that people who lay buried here, halfway around the world from the place he called home, surely shared the same genetic propensity for long, tapered toes and narrow-bridged noses that he had inherited from Pop and had passed on to Ellen. He took a deep breath of the forest’s penetrating smell.
What are their names, Pop? he thought. Did you think I’d become religious if you told me their names? Were you that uncertain a socialist that you had to make your family disappear?
A group of older Poles ambled down the path toward them, murmuring softly, nodding to one another as kindred souls do. They skirted Nathan and Rafael carefully, averting their eyes when Rafael said, in Polish, “It is written in the Talmud that a cemetery should not be used as a shortcut.” When he repeated this in English, Nathan was horrified, but also impressed at the risks the old man took in provoking his neighbors.
He looked down at his plaid shirt, blue tie, and Timberland shoes. Anywhere but in Poland these clothes and his mundane face simply identified him as an American. Just an American, not “the Jew” he felt he’d become here, a tag that had affixed itself to him. The more he tried to pull away from it, the more it stuck, making him feel like a specimen, a bug on a board.
He took in an uneven breath and wished he were home, safe among the harmless squalls of academia. But when he remembered his dream of Załuski in Harvard Square, dressed up as the Hassid doll, pointing at him, trapping him with that accusatory scale of gold, he knew Cambridge would never again be an entirely safe haven.
Rafael raised his head. “It’s time to say El Molei Rachamim for her. She must rest.” He swept his arm in an arc around the cemetery, a gesture Nathan took to mean that the prayer was for every Jew buried there. Rest? The dead are dead, he thought. He felt a hot wave of embarrassment break over his face at the idea of taking part in a primitive religious ritual. He didn’t know any prayers, and he’d be damned if he was going to make an ass of himself in front of passersby just to satisfy an old Jew. There, he’d said it, that word, even if only in the privacy of his head. Not the genteel Jewish, but Jew. Immediately, he felt deeply ashamed.
“I thought the prayer for the dead is called Kaddish,” he said, hoping to steer the discussion on to a more rational plane.
Rafael stared, as if unsure Nathan could be this ignorant. “Kaddish? A Jew doesn’t say Kaddish without a minyan, ten men.” Something about Nathan’s blank expression must have convinced Rafael he didn’t understand the distinction, because his tone softened as he explained, “Kaddish means holy. It is an ancient prayer, Aramaic, a prayer in praise of God.”
“Then why is it said at funerals?” Nathan asked, remembering how Lou Gersh had stepped forward and said it for Pop.
“Because at the funeral a man might think to blame God, reject God for the loss. But at such times he needs to remember what God has given us and to praise Him, out loud, with others. Kaddish a son says for his father, every day for eleven months after his death. Saying Kaddish for the father shows a man has done his work well, raised a son worthy of his name.”
Nathan nodded, painfully aware that Rafael knew he had not done this for his father.
Rafael stroked his beard. “El Molei Rachamim is the prayer for the dead. You know what’s meant by ‘sacrificing to the idols’?”
The question seemed a non sequitur to Nathan, but he grabbed it, hoping to forestall reciting El Molei Rachamim. “No, I’ve never heard the expression.”
Rafael nodded. “One of the great Talmudic masters, Rabbi Bunam of Pzhysha, said, ‘When a devout and righteous man sits at table with others and would like to eat a little more but does not because of what people might think of him—that is sacrificing to the idols.’”
“I see,” Nathan said.
“What do you see?” Rafael demanded.
“That...I...well...” Nathan looked away, thinking, Damn it, he’s playing me for the schoolboy again.
“It means it doesn’t matter if there are two Poles in here, defiling this cemetery like it was their park, or two hundred. It doesn’t matter if they look at you like you’re a meshuggener. They all think I’m a madman. What does it matter? It only matters that you do what a Jew has to do, whether you believe in your God or not. You say El Molei Rachamim for your Jews who lie buried here. Generation upon generation of them, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bones. Have you no respect? They haven’t been defiled enough? Say your prayer, Leiber. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?” The hard look of suspicion returned to his face.
Nathan’s cheeks burned with the shame he suffered when he felt a teacher’s disapproval. It always made him want to work harder, achieve more. Looking up at the trees, he felt trapped in the birdcage cemetery. How could he satisfy this man while retaining some semblance of his own integrity? His eyes fluttered down to the pile of stones at their feet. A Jewish woman is buried there, he thought. Her stone, with her name on it, has been destroyed. She could be a Leiber, for all I know. Maybe I could do this, a show of respect for Pop’s world, for everything they destroyed. The raucous cawing of the crows continued. “What a strange sound,” he said.
“Phff!” Rafael spat. “Those birds scare the Zokofers plenty. They think they’re the voices of our dead. They come here at night with bottles of vodka. Over there, at the entrance, they get shikkered and make wishes. They’re afraid to come inside after dark.”
“Why?” Nathan was intrigued by what might frighten the Poles about an empty cemetery and astonished at the idea that they would wish for something from Jews.
“Because every one of them knows the story about Freidl. They’re afraid of her ghost. She scares them even more than the magicians.” The hint of a smile crossed Rafael’s face.
“Who is Freidl?” The crude pile of stones hardly looked like a grave marking, much less the home of a ghost.
Rafael’s face fell like a clump of earth. “Are you really Itzik Leiber’s son?”
Nathan’s heart leaped when Rafael said his father’s name. “Of course I am.” Feeling slightly annoyed with himself for not having thought of it sooner, he reached into his coat pocket and handed Rafael the photocopy he’d made of a cardboard-mounted sepia photograph. “This is a picture of my father just before he left Poland. I found it in the strongbox in his bedroom wardrobe after he died.”
He pointed to the writing on the bottom of the card. “Here’s the name and address of the photographer. Pesha Goldman, 23 Nalewki, Warsaw.” He looked up at Rafael. “Do you recognize him?”
Rafael cradled the photograph between his hands and stared at it for a long time. Then he closed his eyes, tilted back his head, and began to hum a disjointed tune. His body swayed in concentration.
Nathan was afraid to interrupt him.
Finally, the old man straightened, opened his eyes, and turned the photograph toward the pile of stones. “God is merciful, Freidl.” Nodding approvingly, he handed the photograph back to the startled Nathan. “It is enough. Dayenu.”
Nathan didn’t know what to say. The man before him seemed to be on speaking terms with a woman who had known his father more than eighty years ago. Had he been driven mad by living as the last of his kind in a town that was clearly hostile to him? He touched R
afael’s arm. “Please understand, my father never told me anything about his life in Poland. He was very secretive about it. He never mentioned a woman named Freidl. I don’t even know the names of my relatives buried here.”
Rafael looked wounded. He seemed to be struggling to compose himself. Finally, he said, “So, Leiber, you must do better than he did. You must finish what he left unfinished. She must rest. It is your duty as Itzik’s son to help Freidl rest.”
“What did my father have to do with this woman? Who is she?”
“Later, Leiber. I’ll explain later, when it’s over. When you have said your prayer and we can say Dayenu.”
Nathan mulled over the word Dayenu, which he recognized from the song the family sang at their Passover Seder. Dai-dai-yenu, they would chorus, over and over, because they didn’t know the Hebrew stanzas. He remembered that when Pop was alive, he never sang it with them. “That word, Dayenu,” he said. “It means it is enough for us, isn’t that right?”
Rafael nodded. “For the rabbis, this is a special word, Dai. They say when we look at the name of God, Shaddai, it is really two words. Sha, which means that, or that says, and Dai, which means enough. Together, it means that ours is the God who says enough. He is a God who defines by walls, the beach that separates the water from the land, the six hundred thirteen commandments he gave to the Jews to bind them to His law, and the wall separates us from Eden, where there is the tree of eternal life. The rabbis say it is the walls that define us.”
“Interesting,” Nathan said, professorial again.
“But not so interesting as what you want me to tell you about Itzik, yeh?”
Nathan smiled. “Yeh.”
Rafael turned his palms upward, resignedly. “So sit,” he said, pointing to what appeared to be the remnants of a stone wall, fifteen or twenty steps away. His command, authoritative but inviting, comforted Nathan. It reminded him of his beloved law professor Irwin Feingold, preparing to do battle with an idea in the Jewish way, indifferent to chivalrous conventions. And like Feingold, Rafael shared with his student a sweet, conspiratorial look.
Nathan, feeling more in control standing than sitting, braced one leg against the stones. A sharp rod of restless anticipation jabbed at his gut. That great luminous wall of glass that Pop had stood behind all his life, which had reflected but refused entrance to his son, was about to be shattered. And he, Nathan, was going to splinter that glass with his questions until he’d broken a hole big enough to let the stagnant Polish air out. And let him in.
16
THE TWO OR THREE FEET OF STONE WALL TO WHICH RAFAEL HAD pointed had almost been reclaimed by lichen and moss. Rafael seated himself slowly and tamped the earth to set his footing. His black shoes were dirty and scuffed. The rays of the noontime sun shone on his long black coat, revealing that it too was worn. Nathan glanced at the cuffs, the unraveling threads and the frayed material beneath, and could hardly stand to imagine what it would be like to live as an uncared-for man.
“There is a story they tell in Zokof about a farmer called Jan Nowak,” Rafael began, his voice gruff but vigorous. “The Nowaks were here since the days when they belonged to the landowners. Rough people, illiterates, you understand?”
Nathan understood. But he hoped Rafael would quickly get to the point because he was acutely aware that his time in the cemetery was being measured on Tadeusz’s clock.
“The Nowaks were not just another peasant family. Jan Nowak’s father, Karol, was famous all over Poland. One day, plowing his field, he said he heard a voice. It told him to go to the Tatra Mountains. This from a man who had never left Zokof in his life. But he went. When he came back to Zokof, he said the Virgin Mary appeared to him in the mountains. He said she gave him a wooden cross to wear around his neck. Naturally, people believed him.”
Nathan affected that special skeptical look he’d perfected from years of teaching.
“What, Leiber?” Rafael snapped at him. “So you don’t believe. A Virgin Mary and a cross is nothing by us. But let me tell you, a story like this you don’t dismiss either. It has a life of its own.”
Nathan hadn’t expected that his skepticism would so offend Rafael. “I’m sorry. Go on,” he urged, relieved to know Rafael understood that the story’s importance lay in its context, not in some literal belief.
“After Karol died, Jan wore the cross. One night, when Jan and his wife rode home in their wagon, people say he came upon the devil himself. Only that night, the devil was disguised as a fire inside a lantern—a lantern, I should tell you, carried by three Jewish children.”
The collision of the words devil and three Jewish children took Nathan by surprise. “What did you say?” he asked.
Rafael turned his attention to the tips of his scuffed black shoes. “It is said that the children danced around the lantern, called out prayers to the devil in tongues. Jan raised his whip. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ he said. Then he beat the children without mercy, until they dropped the lantern. Jan reached for it, to smash it and put out the evil flame. But the devil was too quick for him. He jumped from the fire and turned himself into a young Jew. The Jew grabbed Jan by the arm and threw him beneath the wheels of his own wagon. The horse bolted, pulled the wheels over Jan’s head, and killed him.”
Nathan thought this sounded like a Sholom Aleichem story. He was intrigued that Pop had really lived in a world like that. But he was also feeling edgy at the time being lost.
“All this time,” Rafael continued, “Jan’s wife stayed in the wagon. She said the Jew tore the cross from Jan’s neck. She said he spoke in the devil’s tongue and howled with joy when he broke the cross in half. Then he ran here to this cemetery.”
“Is this kind of story common in Poland?” Nathan asked.
Rafael glared at him. “Stop with the questions, Leiber, and listen to what I’m telling you.”
Chastened, Nathan held his tongue.
“When the people from town heard about Jan’s death, they gathered to avenge him. They lost their fear of the magicians buried below. They followed the sound of the boy’s howling to this cemetery. They looked everywhere, but the Jew had vanished. In his place, a menacing old Jewess appeared over her gravestone, which lay broken in two. She chased the townspeople from the cemetery. They say one brave peasant grabbed the top part of her gravestone, on which her name was written, and carried it out. He thought if he smashed the stone, he could destroy her. But the spirit pulled the stone from his arms. It fell into a stream, where it was covered with leaves and lost. They say that gravestone is why the stream dried up and that the old Jewess’s spirit is still here in Zokof.”
“That’s quite a story,” Nathan said patiently. “But what does it have to do with my father?”
“Quite a story, you call it? Yeh. Every mother and father in Zokof knows it by heart. To their children they say, ‘Watch out, the old Jewess will come for you in the night!’”
Nathan laughed.
But Rafael was angry. “What? You think this is some kind of game we’re playing here, Leiber? I read the papers from Warsaw. You American Jews come to Poland to dig around for roots. This is no museum for you to pretend everything is in the past. Let me tell you, nothing is past in Poland. For us, the past is more unfinished here than anywhere else. Here, every story has a consequence. Understand?” He rose unsteadily and rubbed his temples with both hands as he took a few steps in the tangled underbrush. “Oy, Gottenu,” he said, then sighed.
“Look,” Nathan said, “I don’t deny that people retell myths about their past, it’s just that I want to find out more about my father’s life.” But he was shaken at hearing the word Gottenu again. The last time he’d heard it was at Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.
Rafael wound his fingers into his beard. “Then listen to what I will tell you, Leiber. The boy, the one they say had the devil in him. Him, the Zokofers remember especially. His name was Itzik Leiber.”
Nathan stared. “My father?”
“Yes. He was here! Your father.”
“In this cemetery?”
“In this cemetery. On the night Jan died. Yeh. The only question to ask now is, is there any truth in it? I told you the Polish story. Now I will tell you the Jewish story, as it was told to me.”
Nathan, not knowing what else to do, sank onto the bough of the fallen tree and waited.
“The Jews always began the story like this.” Rafael held up his hands, as if about to conduct an orchestra. “When Itzik Leiber’s father abandoned his family, the boy drove the rabbis from his mother’s house. People said it was because the father, Mordechai the Ragman, beat his wife for the whole town to see, but made a tsimmes of his piety. In time, they called the boy Itzik the Faithless One.”
“That’s him!” Nathan said, proud that his father had earned a nickname in town, although he couldn’t imagine Pop actually throwing a rabbi out of the house. The man he knew ranted and railed against rabbis, put on a real performance for the family, but only behind closed doors.
Rafael again studied the tips of his shoes. “Everyone knew the Leibers didn’t have two kopeks to put together. But after Mordechai left, Itzik refused help for his family from the shul. Imagine!”
Nathan may have been shocked that his grandfather was a wife beater, but he was not surprised that his father would not take help from the shul. When Nathan was a boy, his father had refused help from the shul during a bakers’ strike. His mother had to accept the money in secret and put it into her “private account,” as she called it. Nathan had called it her “protection from Pop” money.
Rafael looked at him. “Now, my legal scholar from Harvard University, tell me, what should a Jew think of a man like Mordechai the Ragman, who boasts of his devotion to God but violates his obligation to his family?”
Nathan thought about it. “I’d think he was a hypocrite. But”—he frowned—“I’m not a religious man. It would be my guess that religious people would think his first obligation was to God.”
A Day of Small Beginnings Page 12