“Thanks,” she said. “But before we move on, I want to say good-bye to her.”
Rafael wagged a scolding finger. “Say your good bye at the grave. Say El Molei Rachamim. But the rest, that is finished. She will not come to you again in dreams. Remember her, but do not call for her.”
His vehemence unnerved her. “Why not?”
“Because it is written, ‘Do not turn your face to ghosts, even of favorable spirits do not inquire. They will defile you. Turn only to your God.’” His face had a tense, hard look. “‘Turn to your compassionate God.’” The anger and sarcasm in his voice were undeniable.
“How can you tell me not to turn to ghosts when it was you who brought her to me?”
Rafael looked down at his dusty, worn shoes. “Because I am not a good Jew. Even your grandfather knew not to turn to her. It was to God he prayed for mercy, not to a woman one year in her grave. A Jew’s duty is to life.”
Ellen’s face flushed. “You are a shayner Yid. There is no more beautiful Jew, no one like you, and there will never be anyone like you.”
“Do not praise me as the people praised Moses,” said Rafael, scowling. “What kind of Moses am I who has no one to lead?”
“No one? You led four. My grandfather, my father, me, and Marek. It’s enough for us.”
Rafael looked utterly shocked.
Somewhere in the forest Marek let out a whoop of joy.
“He’s going to ruin his musician’s hands building that wall for you,” Ellen said.
Rafael nodded helplessly. With Ellen’s help, he hoisted himself up. “Well, let us go see your langer loksh then,” he managed to say.
Together they walked toward the entrance of the cemetery. When they reached it, Ellen saw that the path had been swept of all liquor bottles and trash. To the right of the entryway, a wooden structure, like a birdhouse with the front side open, had been planted. Inside, a typed piece of paper had been sealed to the back wall behind a sheet of glass. She stepped closer and was astonished at what it said, in Polish and in English: In Memory of the Jews of Zokof, Who Have Resided Here Since 1554.
As they entered the cemetery, Rafael said nothing about the memorial, but Ellen could see that he was moved. They reached the lamppost and found Marek climbing a shallow embankment on the western side of the cemetery. He looked gleeful as a child, clutching a large, muddy, flat stone.
“This is from the old wall! I found it in the riverbed,” he called. The knees of his pants were muddied and torn. “It is wet down there,” he said, wiping himself off.
Ellen smiled at the thought of water running in the riverbed again. It seemed a good sign. “Your memorial out there is beautiful. Thank you,” she said, pointing toward the entrance to the cemetery.
“I did it in memory of my Uncle Leszek,” he said shyly.
The three of them tramped the short distance to the place where Freidl’s little pile of stones lay.
Marek smiled secretively at Ellen. “I have to get something from the car,” he said, and bounded off again.
The songs of sparrows and starlings drifted into the cemetery from outside. Rafael looked at the pile of stones and, almost imperceptibly, began to rock forward and back. “I want you should know something,” he said. “Years ago, Freidl told me that if the day should come that her soul rests again with her body, she wanted I should be buried next to her when my time came. I protested. I told her a man and a woman do not lie side by side in the grave. How would it look? I was a stranger to her in life. I was a small child when she went to her death.”
Despite the solemnity of the subject, Ellen was amused by his sense of propriety. “What did Freidl say?” she asked.
“She said better she should lie with a wise man in hell than at her fool husband’s feet in paradise.”
Now Ellen grinned.
Slowly, so did Rafael.
They were laughing when Marek reappeared, struggling with the long cloth covered object in his arms, looking at them quizzically.
“We have something we want to show you,” Ellen said as Marek set the heavy object down against the tree and pulled the cloth from its surface.
Rafael’s face went pale, and Ellen thought for a moment that this might have been too much for him. “You brought it back,” he said. His voice was gruff with emotion as he pointed to the top of the gravestone that he had given to her father to take to America.
“It belongs here.”
“You put it with the part from Głowacki.” He could barely get the words out. It seemed difficult for him to focus on anything but the reunited gravestone, now contained within a stone frame. Between its two original parts was a newly engraved section. łukasz Rakowski had decorated Ellen’s inscription with a carved bookcase, a fish swimming against an oncoming stream, and a timbrel. Small metal swirls, resembling sparks, were embedded in the background.
Rafael squinted at the new section. “What did you write there? It is difficult for me to see it,” he said.
“It’s in English, but I also had the rabbi at the Lauder Foundation in Warsaw translate it into Hebrew. See?” She pointed nervously at the writing. “I’ll read it to you.”
Precious guardian, now among the great line of women after Miriam
Who awakened a family with your Tune
And with an open heart and a deep well of knowledge taught your children to love God
We have returned, and will return.
Rafael nodded decisively. The image of his face as he stood in the forest was so inextricably bound to her memory of Freidl, it made Ellen cry.
They dug a hole and set the stone in place. Marek stood to the side as a witness, his hands clasped before him. Ellen lit a Yahrzeit candle, Rafael placed a pebble on top, and together they recited El Molei Rachamim.
Not long after, as they left the gravesite, Ellen grabbed a handful of grass and opened her palm. The wind blew the blades around the trees and sent up a warm summer smell of earth and living things.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the counsel of my husband’s family, the Lipsmans, and their extended family, the Goldfarbs, the Bulkas, and the Strums, Polish Jews who, unlike my family, did not come to America in time to escape the calamity that befell their world in the 1930s and 40s. Their generosity in sharing an intimate knowledge of Polish Jewish relations and the flavor of their childhoods, their explanations of Polish and Yiddish linguistic subtleties, their assistance in explaining how life was in a town like Zokof, whose fictional name was their creation, all inform this story. So, too, did a trip to Poland I made with several of them and their grown children, in the 1990s, when we visited their hometown of Zwolen, whose cemetery, forested and bereft of gravestones, was haunted by the cacophony of the crows nesting above.
For years of devoted, ruthlessly honest editing, I thank the angels of my writing group, Carol Abrams, Ann Bronston, Carrie Hauman, Truusje Kushner, Jeanne McCafferty, Sandi Tarling Powazek, and Linda Temkin. Their spirited engagement with the book’s characters convinced me that this is a more universal story than I had originally thought.
I thank my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for staying up all night reading my manuscript the day she received it and for her passionate work ever since on its behalf.
For her early enthusiasm and for her insightful suggestions about the manuscript, I can forgive my editor, Judy Clain, her lack of interest in dance. Thanks, too, to all the dedicated people at Little, Brown who have put so much effort into giving this book its final form and delivering it to the public.
I want to express my special appreciation to my rabbi, Jeffrey Marx, of the Santa Monica Synagogue. His weekly Torah study classes and far-ranging knowledge of all things biblical, historical, and obscure, secular and religious, have been invaluable resources for me both as a writer and as a person.
No acknowledgments could be complete without recognizing the role family has played in bringing this novel to life. Special thanks to my mother,
who brought dance, music, art, and adventure into our family life, and to my father, whose lifelong social and political activism has been an inspiration to me and to my sister, Amy. No less important, I thank my husband, Walter Lipsman, who among other acts of kindness, if not bravery, sent me off to Poland, leaving him with our five-year-old and eight-month-old daughters, Ariana and Maya, in tow. If this story contributes to their understanding of the world, it will have more than met its intended purpose.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LISA PEARL ROSENBAUM has worked as both a choreographer and a lawyer. She studied religion and philosophy at New York University and completed postgraduate work in international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Walter Lipsman, and their daughters, Ariana and Maya. This is her first novel.
A Day of Small Beginnings Page 43