by Lily Brett
“You told me that story,” Ruth said. “I went out on the balcony when I came here last time.”
“Probably even the balcony is not very nice now,” said Edek.
“It was a bit dirty and run-down,” she said.
“What for do we need to stay?” said Edek. “Maybe I tell him to forget the tea?”
Ruth looked around her. The crumbling walls and broken windows were at odds with the building’s past. In the past this building had housed excitement and laughter, excitement and tenderness, excitement and love.
She had felt the excitement on that first visit. And she could feel it now. It wasn’t eroded by the disintegration or the neglect. She felt much better. It was still there. Still in the air.
“If you stand still, Dad, you can feel the past,” she said. “You can feel the life.”
“Don’t speak like that,” Edek said. “It will be no good for both of us.”
He looked as though he was about to cry.
“The tea is nearly ready,” the old man called out. “Please sit down.” A sofa piled high with clothes was against one wall. A rocking chair faced the sofa. The rocking chair was covered with cat’s fur. Ruth had noticed a large cat asleep in the kitchen. She moved the clothes and cleared a space for herself and Edek. Edek looked at the sofa. His face crumpled. He started to cry.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Ruth said. He shook his head. He looked embarrassed to be crying. He tried to stop. But his tears were insistent. They kept coming. Ruth felt sick. She shouldn’t have put her father through this.
“We can go now, Dad,” she said.
“He is already making the tea,” Edek said. He wiped his eyes. “This couch was our couch,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said. And she started to weep. Edek sat down on the couch. “Do not cry,” he said to her. She sat down next to him. She put her hand in her father’s hand. They sat on the couch, holding hands. “Do not cry, please,” he said to her, after a few minutes.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 1 6 3 ]
The old man arrived with three stained cups, a pot of tea, two teaspoons, and a sugar bowl on a tray. He put the tray on top of a cardboard box.
“Thank you very much, sir,” Edek said. “It looks very nice.” Ruth wiped her eyes. She was glad there wasn’t much light in the room. She didn’t want to see the cracked, old cups with any more clarity.
“Ask him when he moved in here?” Ruth said to her father. Edek asked the old man the question.
“Approximately 1940,” the old man said.
“It must have been minutes after all the Jews were moved out,” Ruth said.
“Do not speak like this,” Edek said.
“He can’t understand me,” said Ruth, and she held her cup of tea up and smiled at the old man. Bardzo dobrze, she said to him. He nodded, pleased with her compliment about his tea. “It’s disgusting tea,” she said to her father.
“Ruthie, please,” he said.
“Ask him what happened to all of the things that were in here and in all of the other apartments,” she said to Edek.
“It is not necessary to ask this,” Edek said.
“Please, Dad,” she said.
Edek asked. “He said his wife will know all of this. She was in charge of the rents in the building. She will be back at four o’clock,” Edek said to Ruth.
“Ask him if he wondered what happened to all the people who lived here?” Ruth said. Edek asked. Ruth could understand the old man’s reply.
“I heard they moved somewhere else,” the man said.
“Ruthie, what good is this?” said Edek.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “There must have been so many photographs, books, documents, left. Ask him if he saw any.”
“My wife knows all of that,” the old man said. “If you are extra nice, she will talk to you.”
“What does he mean extra nice?” Ruth said.
“He said his wife is not such an easy woman. We should maybe bring some chocolates and some flowers.”
“That’s no trouble,” said Ruth.
“You really don’t want to think of owning this building,” the man said
[ 1 6 4 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
to Edek. “This building is nothing but trouble. The owner can’t sell it.
Everything is broken. People don’t pay their rents because nothing gets fixed. There is no heating. It is terrible.”
“Tell him we’re not going to take this flea-hole from him,” Ruth said.
“I can promise you, sir, I have no interest at all in owning this property,”
Edek said.
“You don’t even want to think of it,” the man said.
“Ask him who the owner is,” said Ruth. The man shook his head. He said that he didn’t know. Ruth and Edek got up. “Is sixty zloty enough?”
Edek whispered. “It’s enough,” Ruth said. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of him.” “We will be back at four o’clock,” Edek said as he shook hands with the old man. Ruth was surprised. She had been sure that her father was not going to want to return.
Edek and Ruth walked along Kamedulska Street. They passed an empty block of land.
“My father did have a yard for timber, here,” Edek said. He sounded very flat.
“Mum told me about the timber yard,” she said.
“You want to walk to Pomorska Street where Mum did live?” Edek said.
“Yes, please,” she said. “I’d love to.” They walked quietly, without speaking. Ruth was exhausted. Her father must be totally wrung out, she thought.
“I love you, Dad,” she said.
“I love you, too,” he said.
On Poudniowa Street, Edek pointed to an empty storefront. “It used to be here the bakery,” he said. “On Friday I would take our cholent to the baker to go into the oven after the bread was finished. The next day was Shabbes and we couldn’t cook. You know Shabbes, the Sabbath?”
“Of course I know Shabbes,” Ruth said.
“The cholent did stay in the baker’s oven all night,” Edek said. “The next day when Shabbes was over we did pick up the cooked cholent. My mother told me always to be sure it was our cholent that I did pick up, because we had plenty of meat in our cholent.” Edek smiled at the memory of the cholent.
“Your cholent had more meat in it than most of the local people’s cholent?” Ruth said.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 1 6 5 ]
“Much more meat,” he said. “Some people’s cholent had no meat. As a matter of fact I did once pick up the wrong cholent. It was in a pot what was just like our pot. It had no meat in it at all. My father was not very happy with me.” Edek seemed to have cheered up, talking about the cholent. “Two more streets and we will be in Pomorska Street,” he said.
Ruth recognized the building her mother had lived in as soon as she saw it. She hadn’t been able to look inside when she had last been in Lódz. No one had been home in the ground-floor apartment that Rooshka had lived in. Ruth and Edek peered into the hallway. It was dark and quiet. The only sign of any occupants was the washing strung out on lines in the courtyard.
You could see the washing from the street. The windows in her mother’s old apartment were covered with layers of improvised drapes. Squares of an old blanket, pieces of faded lace, part of a used tablecloth.
“They put this stuff on the windows to keep out the cold,” Edek said.
“It looks pretty bad,” he said, after a few minutes. They walked through to the courtyard where Rooshka had spent many hours studying and doing her schoolwork. The courtyard was bleak and barren. Filled with lines of washed and worn, torn, and faded clothes.
Edek put his hands over his eyes. “There is nothing left,” he said.
“Mum used to study here,” Ruth said.
“I know,” he said. “I did used to visit her. I used to beg her to come out for an ice cream with me. But she always said no. She said how would she b
ecome a pediatrician if she went out all the time for ice creams with me.”
“Where in the courtyard did she sit?” said Ruth.
“Just here,” said Edek, pointing to two steps. “She was always here.
Every night, after school. She was so happy to do her studies. Not like me.
She was a lovely girl, your mum.”
“I know,” said Ruth. Edek walked up to one of the windows of the Spindlers’ former apartment. He tried to look through a crack in the window.
“It’s pretty decrepit, isn’t it?” Ruth said.
“It is good Mum did not see this,” said Edek.
Chapter Eight
R uth was sitting in the lobby of the Grand Victoria Hotel. She felt terrible. Her head ached. Her body was tired. Lethargic.
Why did her body feel so tired? she wondered. She was exercising less than she did at home. She wasn’t running as much, and she wasn’t lifting weights. Yet, she was more tired. She was exhausted.
Her father was upstairs, in his room. He was reading one of his detective fiction books. The One-Armed Alibi. She hoped that The One-Armed Alibi was taking Edek’s mind off his visit to Kamedulska Street this morning. The cover of the book hadn’t looked enticing. A man, with a bloodied stump of an arm, was being strangled by an even stranger-looking man.
Still, she thought that nothing her father was reading about could be stranger than this trip. Ruth had wanted Edek to have a nap. But Edek had insisted that he was not tired.
“You’ll feel better if you have a short nap,” she had said.
“I feel fine,” he had said.
“Well, at least read quietly in your room for an hour or so,” Ruth had said.
“You speak to me like I am child,” Edek said. “I don’t sleep during the day in Melbourne. Why should I sleep during the day in Poland?”
“Because it’s more stressful being here,” she had said.
“For me, the stress did happen a long time ago,” Edek said.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 1 6 7 ]
Ruth had felt worried about her father. He hadn’t eaten any lunch. “I’m not hungry,” he had said when she suggested they stop for lunch. He looked well enough. Maybe no one would want to eat lunch after the sort of breakfast Edek had had. Her father looked in pretty good condition, she thought. Especially considering the fact that he never exercised and ate with abandon. He seemed to be in better shape than she was.
She had showered, again, before coming down to the lobby to do some work. Working reassured her. She was composing a list of possible new subjects for letters. She thought she would try to expand her range of business letters. Business letters were so much less taxing than personal letters.
People, Ruth found, needed help with the briefest of letters. A simple acknowledgment of the receipt of a letter could be rendered useless or incite a fury in the recipient with a lack of information or the wrong tone. It was important, in these letters of acknowledgment, to be brief and concise, but never brusque, abrupt, or terse. The letter should identify the correspondence which was being responded to, and state the action that would be taken. This way, people would know that their query or complaint or request had been heard.
Letters of resignation were also an area in which it was easy to trip and fall. There were lawyers all over America who could be consulted about the legalities of a resignation. The lawyers looked after the client’s legal position but seemed to lack an understanding of the emotional aspects of a letter of resignation. Ruth had written out a set of rules, for Max, for this category. Letters of resignation seemed to incite people to make inflamma-tory statements. A course that was clearly not in anyone’s best interest. It was crucial, Ruth felt, that a letter of resignation should have no accusations or recriminations. Threats and blame were to be avoided. And, if at all possible, a complimentary line or two should be included. Ruth had had a lot of success with her letters of resignation. Twice, clients had told Ruth that their resignation letters were so effective that they had eliminated the difficulties that led to their intended departures.
Word of mouth was how most clients came to Rothwax Correspondence. Ruth had covered enough territory, on paper, to have traversed most of several of her clients’ lives. She had written holiday greetings letters, the accepting and declining of invitations, birth announcements, sympathy let-
[ 1 6 8 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
ters, and letters of apology for her clients. Ruth felt that she knew these clients better than most people knew each other.
Ruth wrote on her list letters to public officials. She must write a few more prototypes in this category. Rothwax Correspondence was receiving more requests for letters to public officials. A letter to a public official could be very effective or have no effect at all. The right letter made a big difference.
Ruth added to her list praise-for-staff letters. She thought that this category could prove useful to many businesses. It seemed, to Ruth, so easy to spread goodwill. One brief letter of praise every other year seemed to bring results that far outweighed the effort involved or the money expended.
Ruth added answering reference requests, welcoming new customers, mul-tidenominational holiday greetings, and rejecting-a-job-applicant letters to her list.
Ruth had had requests from parents to write letters on behalf of their children. She usually said no. She felt insincere adopting a six-year-old’s tone. More fraudulent than she ever did voicing an intimacy or intensity for an adult, as part of a business transaction. Ruth had also turned away a large volume of business writing college application essays for the children of clients. So many highly reputable and successful clients doubted their children’s ability to write a good essay. “Wouldn’t it be morally compromising if I wrote the essays?” she had asked one of her clients, the head of a large charitable foundation. “No,” he had replied. “Not any more morally compromising than if I helped him to write the essay.” “But you would only be helping him,” Ruth had said. “I would be writing the essays.” “What if I bring in his half-written essays and you polish them up?” the client had asked. Ruth had refused. She didn’t want to pass herself off as a teenager, even if it was only on paper. But writing college essays was clearly a market somebody could move into. Ruth wondered if it was common for kids not to write their own essays in America. Probably only among the middle class and the wealthy, she decided.
A fax from Max had been waiting for her at the Grand Victoria Hotel when she got back from Kamedulska Street. Ruth had been surprised to hear from Max on a Sunday. Max was obviously taking her responsibilities as acting head of Rothwax Correspondence seriously. In the fax, Max had told her that Bern’s mother was coming in for a handwriting test on MonT O O M A N Y M E N
[ 1 6 9 ]
day. This had been Bern’s idea. According to Bern, Max said, his mother had very good handwriting. “I’m going to give her a speed and accuracy test,” Max had said in the fax. Speed and accuracy? What did Max think she was running? IBM? “Everything is under control,” Max had added.
What did Max mean? How out of control could a business become in this brief period of time?
The lobby of the Grand Victoria was mostly occupied by men. They were not the usual run-of-the-mill businessmen found in hotel lobbies. They looked more like criminals. They were middle-aged and skewered and circled with gold necklaces and bracelets and an occasional earring. Most of them wore large rings on their fingers. They were all smoking.
Several of the men had young women by their sides. Very young women. The young women looked adoringly at the men and sent them fetching glances whenever the men looked back. The women batted their eyelashes and patted the men on the arm or shoulder. Two of the young women were staring at Ruth. It was probably her computer, she thought.
They probably didn’t see too many businesswomen.
“You are having trouble with your father?” a voice said.
“Oh, no, not you,” Ruth said. “N
o, I’m not having trouble with my father. I’m working. Why don’t you disappear?”
“I can help with this trouble,” Höss said.
“Troubleshooting would not, I think, be your strong point,” Ruth said.
“I know what the problem is,” said Höss. “You do not know what you need to know.”
“Most of us don’t,” she said.
“I know what the problem is,” Höss said again. “And I know the answer.”
“Your answers are not the answers I’m looking for,” Ruth said. “Anyway I am not having trouble with my father. We have both simply embarked on an extremely troubling trip.”
“You do not know what you need to know,” Höss said.
“Neither do you,” she said. “You’re stuck in Zweites Himmel’s Lager.”
“Let me help you.” said Höss.
“You could just disappear,” Ruth said. “That would be a big help.”
[ 1 7 0 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“Ha, ha, ha,” said Höss. He thought it was a joke.
Ruth was irritated. “It’s not a joke,” she said. “I want you to go away.”
He laughed again. What aspect of what she was saying could possibly appear humorous? She couldn’t read Höss’s laughter. It sounded like ordinary laughter. Was he laughing at her? Was he remembering an old joke?
Why didn’t she twist her heel into the floor? Why was she allowing him to stay? “Piss off,” she said to Höss.
“Why are you being so difficult?” Höss said.
“Piss off,” she said. “Can’t you hear me? Are you going deaf in your old age?”
“I can hear very well,” Höss said. “And I am feeling remarkably well.
My bones do not bother me so much. I feel youthful. Almost like my old self, again.”
“Your old self?” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t head in that direction if I were you. No one in their right mind would want to return to your particular old self.”
“Really?” said Höss.
“You’ll be in hell forever if you can’t understand that,” Ruth said.