Marek saw it too. “What’s this?” he asked. The three of them stared at the stone, as if they expected it to speak.
With the toe of his shoe, Marek gently knocked some of the dirt off the exposed part of the stone.
Głwacki let loose a flurry of words.
It seemed to Ellen that he was trying to explain something about the stone’s purpose as he pointed to various parts of the barn. She stared at the stone, obviously a gravestone, and felt sick.
“I understand,” Marek said.
The sun slipped behind clouds, throwing them into shadow. Głwacki looked down at the stone and seemed to smile. “Czy wy jestecie ydami?” he asked.
Marek didn’t respond.
Głwacki repeated the question.
Marek looked at Ellen. “We must offer him money,” he said in a measured voice. “Do you have fifty dollars?”
“Yes. What did he just say?”
“He wants to know if we are Jews. Do not say anything to him.”
Ellen felt as if someone had just grabbed her by the hair. The sting ran from her scalp down her back like an electric current.
Marek spoke quietly to Głwacki, apparently trying to force the man’s attention away from Ellen, who now seemed to interest him.
She evaded his inquisitive looks by peering into the barn. The slats of the outer walls were set so widely apart that long shafts of the now-gray daylight exposed the interior space, including a treacherous-looking hayloft.
Marek turned to her. “He says the stone is valuable to him because it is the right size to hold up the footings. I think the writing is on the other side, facing down. We must offer him more money. Do you have one hundred?”
She nodded, knowing the insult wasn’t Marek’s. The whole situation had become absurd to her, with Głwacki standing there, thinking he was entitled to restitution for a stolen gravestone. “Can’t you threaten to report him?”
“Americaska?” Głwacki indicated Ellen.
Marek nodded perfunctorily. He turned to her and, without expression, told her, “I cannot threaten him. We are strangers here. He says it was here, on his property, so he used it. If we return the stone to the cemetery and he steals it back, who will stop him? You must think of Rafael.”
Her dilemma made Ellen feel light-headed. Justice, the kind her father had taught her to believe in, required that this matter be heard in court. It demanded that she refuse to pay. But such justice would not serve Rafael or Freidl with either the necessary immediacy or in the long term. She smiled at Głwacki. “If a troll has to be paid so we can cross this bridge, I’m going to pay him. May he rot in hell,” she said sweetly.
Głwacki said a few more words to Marek but agreed to take the hundred dollars.
Ellen continued to smile, in the hope that denying the existence of any ill will between them would continue to move the transaction along more quickly.
Głwacki offered Marek a spade and dragged out a weathered piece of floorboard from the barn. With the spade, Marek began to slowly dig around the adjoining stones and dirt so that he could maneuver the gravestone free of the barn’s weight.
Ellen noticed Marek tense at what Głwacki said to him next. She grabbed the stone at its mucky end and steadied it while Marek did his work.
Głwacki picked up a broken ax handle near his feet and gave it to Marek, apparently with the suggestion that it be used to keep the space wedged open after the gravestone was removed.
Once the handle was in place, Ellen began to ease the stone out by rocking it from side to side. But the weight of the barn exacted a toll, and with each scraping sound, she imagined the letters and images on the other side were being defaced. That she would be responsible for ruining Freidl’s stone brought tears to her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of her hand, not wanting Głwacki to see her cry. It would not have mattered. He was standing a few feet away, in the reemerged sunlight, wholly immersed in cutting down the floorboard he meant to use in the stone’s place.
It took at least ten minutes before they had the stone dislodged. It came free with a heavy thump, revealing that straw and a piece of wood, not stone, had lain directly beneath it, insulating the face from the violence Ellen had thought she had done to it. “All right!” she shouted.
Marek picked it up and brushed off the bits of rotted wood that clung to both sides. The stone was a few inches in depth and about two and a half feet high. Their rescue almost complete, Ellen peeked nervously at the underside to see if this was indeed Freidl’s stone. But the stone was so encrusted with dirt, the engravings could not be seen. Perhaps Głwacki had stolen more than one gravestone, she worried. Yet this ragged, broken-off end was so similar in size and shape to the one she had seen in her father’s study, she felt almost sure it was Freidl’s.
With Marek’s help, Głwacki shoved the replacement board into place. He had become rather talkative. The pulsing of Marek’s jaw indicated to Ellen that he was not pleased with what the old man was saying, although he offered noncommittal interjections and nodded agreeably. She almost panicked when Głwacki grabbed a dry rag from the barn floor and took the sty-soggy end of the stone from Marek. When he merely wrapped it in the rag and handed it back, she exhaled sharply with relief.
Marek pulled the package to his chest and told Ellen that she should pay Głwacki. Without wiping her hands, she counted out the hundred dollars. “Money touched with shit,” she said pleasantly, and handed him the cash, which he pocketed efficiently.
“Good day,” they each said politely. Ellen eyed the distance to the Fiat, planning a clean extrication from the situation.
Głwacki tipped his cap; his odd smile returned.
All the way to the Fiat, Ellen’s heart beat violently.
Marek opened the trunk and laid the stone in a nest he fashioned from sheets of newspapers and scraps of cloth.
Głwacki stood at the door of his barn and watched them drive away.
When they were out of sight of the farm, Ellen turned to Marek. “What was he saying?”
Marek shifted his hands on the wheel and tightened his grip. Like hers, they were unnaturally red and covered with cuts from the digging and scraping.
“He said he had people coming around before, asking for Jewish gravestones. Some of them offered him money. Not enough money, he said. Some wanted just to take pictures. I knew he was saying this because he wanted me to make him an offer. He had his price. He wanted one hundred American dollars. He knew you are a Jewish girl. He knew you had this money. He said I bargain like a Jew.”
“How did you explain why you wanted the stone?”
“I said I was a student of local history and I heard he had one of the gravestones from the old Jewish cemetery. I said I like to collect these things.” Marek shrugged. “That must have been why Głwacki decided to tell me a story about the war. The Jews had all the gold, he said. The Poles had only dirt. Two Jews came and offered him their gold. He said he didn’t take it. It was too dangerous to hide Jews. He had a wife and children. But they hid in his barn anyway, and he let them stay above, in the hayloft. It was winter and very cold.”
Ellen thought of the widely set slats and how the snow must have blown in.
“He was saying this as if it was shameful to him, to hide Jews. Then four days later, the Nazis came. He had to give them up. He had no choice. He said, ‘A Jew wasn’t worth a fly on a pig’s ass.’”
Ellen blanched.
“He said their names, the two Jews. He knew them from town.” Marek bit his lip. “I think there was more he did not tell me. He talks in a circle. He makes excuses, even though I did not accuse him.” He wiped his cheek with his sleeve and glanced nervously at Ellen. “He said he found the stone on his property. This must be a lie. How could it come here? Rafael said he took it from the town, remember?”
“Yes.”
“He said it keeps away the ghosts. The two Jews, I suppose. I asked him, then why sell now? I didn’t understand his answer. Something like
if the stone goes to Jews, he has protection anyway, I think.” He shrugged. “But it is more possible he only wanted more money, that he was looking for the highest price, for his hundred dollars American.”
Marek glanced furtively at Ellen, as if he was afraid she thought he had betrayed her by letting Głwacki get his price.
Sensing this, she said, “Don’t worry about Głwacki. We got the stone. That’s all that matters.”
He nodded, but he still looked upset. “We must stop and clean the stone. We cannot bring it to Rafael so dirty,” he said.
Ellen agreed. “And we better get the pig stuff off our own hands too.”
They stopped beside a well. A breeze blew back Marek’s long hair as he got out of the Fiat. Ellen met him at the back of the car. They stood beside each other, looking at their reflections in the rear window. “I’m sorry about what I said before, at Rafael’s house,” she said.
“Yes. I am sorry also,” he whispered.
“This was so incredibly generous of you.”
He looked at the ground, embarrassed. “Generous is not a good word for any of this,” he said. “This taking of a person’s memory and throwing it in pig’s dirt. I think the whole town must know he has this gravestone.” He seemed so shaken that she put her arms around him.
He opened the trunk and took out the stone, cradling it until he could remove the rag Głwacki had given him. He threw it on the ground like a soiled diaper.
She touched the stone, trying to conceive that her grandpa Isaac had broken it in two, that this was indeed the lower half of Freidl’s stone.
They scrubbed it with well water until every lettered indentation was clear of dirt and they could see that on its face, its borders were carved with what appeared to be the bases of two candlesticks. Between them were several lines of large Hebrew letters.
“You should bring back the other part, so they can be read together,” he said.
She passed her hand over the Hebrew inscription at the center of the stone. “I wish I could read the words.”
Marek held her. Her whole body began to shake from the tension of the afternoon. He soothed her, told her she had been very patient with Głwacki and even with him. She smiled at him. He told her that Rafael would be so happy to see them, that they should go to him now. And she agreed. All during their drive back to Rafael’s house, he caressed her wrist with his thumb.
When Rafael saw them park in front of his house, he opened the door and raised his hands above his head, shaking them, as if he didn’t know what else to do with them.
Marek took the stone, now wrapped in clean cloths, from the trunk of the Fiat and held it up like an offering.
Rafael began to weep.
Ellen ran to him. Marek followed, and together they went inside in a triumphant procession. Marek laid the still-covered stone on the table. Rafael stood before it, rocking back and forth, stroking his beard, unable to take his eyes away but not touching the stone, as if it was too much for him to unveil it yet. “Głwacki gave it to you, or you had to pay?” he finally asked.
“We paid,” Ellen said.
“We would have taken it if we had to,” Marek added indignantly.
Rafael said nothing.
“I’m sorry we were away so long. It was very dirty; we stopped to make it clean,” Marek said.
Rafael turned to him. “This was a great mitzvah you did. A blessing. I did not think he would give it back. Never.” He frowned. “For Głwacki, this means he has lost his fear. They say Lipman and Kravitz used to cover his dreams with their ashes, aleichem-sholem.”
Marek bit his upper lip. “Those are the names he said to me. He said the Nazis got them, the two Jews that hid in his barn. He said he did not take their gold.”
Rafael rubbed his eyes tiredly. “He took their gold. He took what they had. And after, he went looking for Nazis that he could denounce them to get them out of his barn.”
Marek looked at Ellen, who had turned pale realizing that Głowacki, the man she had just met, had done this. She remembered his smile.
Yet she thought it strange that Rafael was taking the time to talk about Lipman and Kravitz when, after almost a century, Freidl’s stone had just been returned. Perhaps it was his way of coping with the enormity of a moment he had spent so much of his life anticipating. She uncovered the stone so he could finally see it.
He began to rock from the waist up. Boruch atah Adonoi, Eloheinu melech ha-oylom ha-Tov v’ha-Mayteev. He rocked. He threw his whole body into his prayer, overtaken by his lament.
Ellen shivered, anxious that he was preparing himself, bolstering his will to let Freidl go. She realized too that he now probably saw the Angel of Death as close as the end of his nose, as he had said. “Rafael, what do the words on the stone mean?”
Rafael, oblivious to her, continued to rock and pray.
“Rafael!”
Startled, he opened his eyes.
“I can’t read the Hebrew,” she pleaded with him.
He became still and pointed to the words on the stone. “‘She died on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan in the year 665.’ This would be for the Jewish calendar year 5665, 1905 to you. He continued his translation, pointing to where the corresponding Hebrew words appeared. ‘May her soul be bound up in the knot of life.’” One of his hands began to tremble, then the other.
Ellen was afraid he might be having a stroke. “Rafael, what’s the matter?” she said. “Marek, help me get him to his chair.”
With one sweep of his arm, Marek grabbed the chair and steadied Rafael so that he could sit down. “I will get you a glass of water,” he said, and went to the kitchen.
Ellen kneeled before Rafael, and he leaned toward her, his torso almost collapsed over the arm of the chair.
“Her way back to the grave, to rest with her body, God has blocked with cut stones, as it is written in Eicha—Lamentations.”
He raised his right hand and dropped it, dejected. “Another year has come. We are nearing the ninth day of the month of Av, Tisha Bov, when a Jew reads Eicha.”
Ellen swallowed hard. Was she not a Jew because she did not know, had never heard of Tisha Bov? She promised herself to read Eicha, Lamentations, when she returned to Kraków. She looked at Rafael and imagined death itself was on his breath. It had deepened his voice so much that it was difficult for her to understand him.
“Please, don’t go,” she begged.
Marek stood still in the kitchen doorway, as if he knew he should not intrude upon them.
Ellen reached for the glass of water he held in his hand. He gave it to her and retreated to the kitchen.
Rafael took a sip. It seemed to revive him slightly. “Do not forget what you owe to Freidl,” he said.
“What should I do for her then?”
He closed his eyes. “Once, she told me, her father came to her, on the echo of a ram’s horn. It passed her so fast, like a comet. He said, Be vigilant and await the coming of Aaron’s sister, Miriam. Return her timbrel, and she will make an opening for you to return.” He cleared his throat several times. Then he opened his eyes and gazed at Ellen.
“Freidl showed me something in the Torah about Miriam,” she said, hoping to engage him, to bring him back. “I’ve been reciting it to myself so often, I’ve memorized it. It goes, Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously./Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.” She looked at him hopefully.
Rafael made an effort to smile. “Years ago,” he said quietly, “Freidl asked me, Why Miriam? I had no answers for her. For years, I studied the holy books. I asked, Why was Miriam so important for her in the eyes of God? I thought maybe it had to do with your grandfather hurling Jan Nowak, the horse and driver, yeh, into the sea of death.” He shrugged. “But then you, Ellen Leiber, granddaughter of Itzik the Faithless, arrived in Poland to dance.”
He cast his hands upward weakly, in what seemed sheer amazement. “Who can understand God’s plan? To dance!”
Rafael put his hands on the table and spread his arthritic fingers. “You are her Miriam.” He managed to give her a wink.
But Ellen was skeptical. “Do you really think Freidl will be returned to her grave with a dance and a timbrel?”
“I do not think it. I can only believe it,” he said. “What else can I believe, with what I have seen in my life?”
Ellen looked at the stone, frustrated to tearfulness at not knowing what to do. From the corner of her eye she could see Marek’s shocked expression.
“I think you must join the stones again,” Marek said. “I think you must bring back the top half from America.”
Rafael sniffed. “Advice from the shaygets?” he said. “In America the stone is safe.”
But Marek insisted. “It does not belong in America. It belongs in Poland, where she belonged.”
“And what will protect it from the vandals? The bones and remnants of Zokof’s Jews?”
“We will protect it. It will be safe,” Marek assured Rafael. “We will talk to the city fathers. They should know about it. They should make this their memorial too, like the one in the town square.”
“But who’s going to make a memorial of Freidl’s stone?” Ellen asked.
“I know the man who can do this,” Marek said. “My family knows him. He is a stonemason, and he worked on the Jewish memorial at Kazimierz Dolny a few years ago. People say he is a Jew because he does not go to Mass. Like a Jew he goes on Fridays, they say.” He paused, looked away.
“What’s the matter?” Ellen asked.
“I remember my father defended him. He said, ‘We all know ukasz Rakowski is a Catholic. People should not blacken his name.’” He glanced quickly at Rafael, and away again. “I never thought about it, that what my father said is an insult to someone who is not Catholic, maybe even to ukasz. Because ukasz never said yes or no. He just rubbed his hands, the way he does.” Marek shook his head. “I do not know if ukasz is a Jew or a Pole, but I think if I ask him, he will make a monument for Freidl that will show people she is someone important.”
A Day of Small Beginnings Page 37