by Lily Brett
Ruth could still feel Martina’s presence this morning. Meetings with most people rarely lingered for more than a minute after they were over.
She could still feel Martina’s gaze on her. She had wanted to touch Martina last night. To hug her. As though they were more than strangers. As though they were something much more than strangers to each other. She had looked around the lobby this morning half hoping that Martina would be there. Of course, she wasn’t.
Ruth missed her. It was absurd to miss someone you didn’t know, she thought. She was sure that she and Martina could have become really good friends. But who knows? Ruth thought. People often seemed promising before you really got to know them. Then, all of their ordinariness appeared. Why was she so averse to ordinariness? she thought. There was so much about Ruth herself that was so ordinary. She wondered whether Martina would ever get back together with her husband Gerhard. Gerhard still seemed to have a pretty strong hold on Martina. Even though he had told her she was too German and the wrong number. The wrong number!
How ridiculous.
Ruth suddenly felt cold. She noticed that her legs were trembling. She steadied her legs.
“Are you cold?” she said to Edek.
“No,” he said. “I am hot.”
“That’s probably because you’ve just eaten,” she said.
“I am hot because they got the heating up pretty high in this place,”
Edek said. Ruth put both of her feet firmly on the carpet. The trembling began to settle.
“Would you go out with a German woman?” she asked her father.
“Are you crazy?” Edek said.
“I thought you wouldn’t,” Ruth said.
“It is not the German I am not going to do anything with,” said Edek.
“It is the woman.”
“I’m not asking you to do something with anyone,” Ruth said. “I’m just asking if you’d go out with someone German.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I am finished with all that stuff,” Edek said. “I am happy on my own. I can eat whatever I want to. I T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 2 1 ]
can have a piece of chocolate. I can read a book. I can watch television. No one tells me what to do. I am happy.”
“You’ll be happier with someone to share your life,” Ruth said.
“That is what you said when you said I should get married to Henia,”
said Edek.
“Henia and her boys had their own agenda,” Ruth said. “And we couldn’t have guessed how that would turn out.”
“You did say the marriage was a good idea,” said Edek.
“I was wrong,” said Ruth.
“You were wrong with the other women what you introduced me to, too,” said Edek. “Didn’t you learn from that that I am not interested?”
“What I learned from that,” said Ruth, “was that one of them was too fat, one was too ugly, one had a terrible face. What I learned was that they were not good-looking enough for you.”
“You have to have something to look at, that is for sure,” Edek said.
“What about the women?” Ruth said. “Do they have to have something to look at, too? Maybe you weren’t exactly their cup of tea.”
“This is a stupid saying,” Edek said. “To say someone is a cup of tea.”
“It’s probably not any more stupid than a lot of Polish sayings,” Ruth said.
“It is more stupid,” Edek said.
Ruth looked at her watch. They should leave if they wanted to go to Orbis. Orbis was the Polish Government Travel Agency. It was not renowned for its speed or efficiency.
“It is not so important for a woman what the man looks like,” Edek said. “For a woman it is more important what wages a man does earn.”
“That’s a sad reflection on women,” Ruth said.
“Why should they not enjoy the money, just like I enjoy to look at a nice-looking woman,” Edek said. Ruth knew that there was an answer but it eluded her.
“Remember that shocking woman you did want me to meet?” Edek said. He started to laugh.
“What shocking woman?” Ruth said.
“The one which did look like she did get her dress from a rubbish bin,” Edek said. “You remember it was at that party with all the permanent people?”
[ 2 2 2 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“The permanent people?” Ruth said. “None of us is permanent.”
“Nearly everybody there was permanent,” Edek said.
“Everybody?” Ruth said.
“Everybody,” Edek said. “Everybody was posh, posh. Very rich.”
Ruth started laughing.
“You remember her dress?” Edek said.
“They were not permanent people,” Ruth said. “They were prominent.”
“Prominent, permanent, what is the difference?” Edek said. “Do you remember the dress? It looked like a bunch of shmattes!”
“The bunch of shmattes was a dress that probably cost over a thousand dollars,” Ruth said.
“It did look shocking,” Edek said, and he roared with laughter at the memory. “One side of the hem went down to here, one side up here. The top was crooked. A tailor in Lódz would be out of a job if he did make a dress like that.”
A man at another table nodded to Edek. Edek waved to him. “He is on the same floor what we are on,” he said to Ruth. The man got up and came over to them.
“Your father told me how honored he is that you want to be in Poland with him,” the man said to Ruth.
“Really?” Ruth said.
“I said most children are not so interested to see where a parent does come from,” Edek said to Ruth. “My daughter is the cream of the crap,”
Edek said to the man. The man looked bewildered.
“You mean the cream of the crop,” Ruth said to Edek.
“That is what I said,” said Edek. “The cream of the crap.”
“Crop not crap,” Ruth said.
“That is what I am saying,” Edek said.
Ruth decided to forgo the elocution lesson.
“We’re having a wonderful trip,” she said to the man. Edek nodded his agreement.
“It sounds fascinating from what your father told me,” the man said.
What had her father said? Ruth wondered. He hadn’t said all that much to her.
“What did you say about our trip?” Ruth said to Edek.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 2 3 ]
“I did tell this gentleman that we did go to Kamedulska Street, that sort of stuff,” Edek said.
“You didn’t talk to me about it,” Ruth said.
“You was there,” Edek said.
“I would have loved to have heard what you were thinking and feeling,”
Ruth said.
The man shuffled his feet. Ruth looked at him. He looked ill at ease. He obviously did not want to be included in this family squabble. “It is a fascinating trip,” Ruth said to the man.
“You are behaving like a baby,” Edek said to Ruth. “Let us go.” He got up. “Nice to meet you,” he said to the man.
Ruth and Edek had been waiting in the Orbis office for twenty minutes before anyone took any notice of them. Ten or twelve Orbis employees were sitting in a row behind a glass partition. Like bank tellers in a bank.
None of them appeared particularly busy. Two of them were eating, one was on the phone, and one was leafing through a magazine. Not one of them looked up at Edek or Ruth. There were no other customers. Finally, Ruth had knocked on the glass. “One minute,” the woman said. She finished her cup of coffee and beckoned Ruth over.
Ruth explained that they wanted to change the date of their train tickets from Lódz to Kraków. They would like to leave on Wednesday instead of Thursday. The woman pulled out an enormous book and started looking through it. The book had very thin pages. There must be five thousand pages of train timetables in that book, Ruth thought. She took a closer look. The timetables were
in very fine print. There were thousands of them.
“I think we’re going to be here for a long time,” she said to Edek.
Thirty minutes later, Ruth and Edek were still standing there at the Orbis counter. Ruth was furious.
“It can’t be that complicated,” she said to the woman. Ruth had been glaring at the woman from time to time, but the woman hadn’t appeared to notice.
“It is not easy,” the woman said, and kept turning the pages.
“Maybe we’ll change these at the station?” Ruth said to Edek. “Or maybe I should just buy new tickets, and throw these away.”
“Calm down,” Edek said.
[ 2 2 4 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“I am calm,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“Maybe I will call Stefan and ask him to drive us to Kraków?” Edek said.
“Who is Stefan?” said Ruth.
“Stefan is the driver what took us from Warsaw to Lódz,” Edek said.
“He was a very good driver.”
“You want a driver to come from Warsaw to Lódz to pick us up and then drive us to Kraków?” Ruth said.
“Yes,” said Edek. “I think it is a good idea.”
“It’s a crazy idea,” Ruth said. “Warsaw is eighty-eight miles from Lódz, and Lódz is a hundred and eighty miles from Kraków.”
“How do you know such exact miles?” Edek said.
“I just know,” said Ruth.
“That is not so far,” said Edek. “In Australia people drive for sometimes one thousand miles.”
“On highways,” Ruth said. “And not in icy winter conditions.”
“It is not so icy,” Edek said.
“You want him to come to Lódz to pick us up, drive us to Kraków and then drive himself back to Warsaw?” she said. “That’s nearly four hundred miles. Anyway, I don’t want to drive a hundred and eighty miles with someone who’s got up at four A.M. to drive to us.”
“We could book him into a cheap hotel in Lódz,” said Edek. “Then he could come the night before and he will be like new for us in the morning.”
Ruth felt exhausted. She glared at the Orbis woman again.
“It would be very expensive,” she said to Edek.
“We can afford it,” he said. “We can afford what we like,” he said, in a very loud voice.
“You really want to drive to Kraków with Stefan?” Ruth said.
“It was a very comfortable Mercedes, wasn’t it?” Edek said. “You said yourself how comfortable this Mercedes was.”
“Okay,” said Ruth. “But we haven’t got Stefan’s number.”
“I got his number,” Edek said.
Edek ran toward his parka, which he had left on a chair. He came back holding a business card. “See,” he said. “I got his number.” He looked so happy. Why shouldn’t they get Stefan to drive them to Kraków? Ruth thought. She would ask Stefan to drive them to the moon, if it made Edek T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 2 5 ]
this happy. Edek looked overjoyed. She would ask Stefan to move in with them, if it would keep her father feeling so joyful.
“Ring Stefan up and see if he’ll do it.” Ruth said.
“He will do it,” Edek said. “He will be very happy to do it.”
“How do you know?” said Ruth.
“I did already suggest it to him when we was driving to Lódz,” Edek said. “ ‘It would be a pleasure,’ Stefan did say.” Ruth started laughing.
Edek looked pleased with himself.
“We’ll go by car,” Ruth said. She turned to the Orbis operator. “Fuck your timetables,” she said.
“That is not such a nice thing to say,” Edek said to Ruth.
“It’s nice enough,” Ruth said.
Chapter Ten
O n the corner of Pilsudskiego Street and Kopcinskiego Street, Edek asked an elderly woman for directions to the Jewish Center.
“It is on Zachodnia Street,” Edek said to her, in Polish. Ruth stood and waited. The woman was the fourth person they had asked. Ruth knew, from the map, that they must be close to Zachodnia Street. She had made a note of the exact address because she hadn’t expected many locals to know where the Jewish Center was. She didn’t think Poles would be making pil-grimages to the Jewish Center. But this woman knew. Ruth heard the woman refer to “People of Moses’ faith.” Why didn’t she say Jewish? Ruth thought. Why did she keep repeating “People of Moses’ faith”?
Ruth had called the Jewish Center that morning. A youngish-sounding man had agreed to give her ten minutes. He was the director of the center, he said. “Be here at 11:10 A.M.,” he said—11:10 A.M., she thought. This man must have a hectic schedule. “I’ll be there at 11:10 A.M.,” she had said to him. She had told him that she wanted a guide to take her through the Jewish Cemetery. “I need more notice to organize a guide,” he had said. “I need several days.”
“Not many people’s plans include a month in Lódz,” she had said to him. “I need a guide in the next day or two.”
“I don’t think I can do anything,” he said.
“I’ll come to the center anyway,” Ruth had said. She was puzzled at his T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 2 7 ]
lack of helpfulness. Maybe he was overrun by Jews wanting to visit the Jewish Cemetery. The cemetery was locked. Even people who didn’t want a guide had to go to the center to pick up the key. Maybe being keeper of the keys was proving to be too much.
“Okay, okay, I know where the Zachodnia Street is,” Edek said. “Follow me,” he said, and ran off. Ruth was too tired to run after him. Why did he have to run? No one else in the streets of Lódz was running. Ruth sped up. She had lost sight of Edek. She was agitated. Where was he? Why couldn’t he do anything at a normal pace? She looked in each direction at every intersection she passed. There was no sign of Edek. How could he have gotten so far ahead of her in such a short time? She continued walking. It was 10:40 A.M. They had half an hour. She didn’t want to be late.
She was just reaching a main street, which she hoped was Al. Kosciuszki, when Edek came around the corner and almost knocked her over.
“What are you doing?” she said to him, when she regained her footing.
“You’re lucky it was me you bumped into, and not some Pole.”
“What are you talking about?” Edek said. “I knew it was you.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Ruth said. “You can’t see around corners.”
“Did we come to Lódz to argue about such stupid things?” Edek said.
“No,” she said. “You’re right.”
“I did smell your perfume,” he said. “You wear always the same perfume. I could smell the perfume from Kosciuszki Street.”
“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Ruth said.
“Forget about it,” said Edek. “We are very near to the Lódz-Fabryczna, the railway station.”
“Oh, good,” said Ruth. “That station is not far from Zachodnia Street.”
“I know this,” Edek said. “That is why I am telling you. Zachodnia Street is off a street what the station is on.”
“Dad,” she called out to him, as he ran off. She gave up. She had wanted to ask him if they could walk together. But he was gone. She relaxed a bit. At least they wouldn’t be late. She checked the note in her pocket. The Jewish Center was at number 78 Zachodnia Street.
Before she could put the piece of paper back in her pocket Edek had returned.
“The Lódz-Fabryczna is not there,” he said.
[ 2 2 8 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“It’s still in the guidebooks,” Ruth said. “It’s the main station in Lódz.
They can’t have got rid of it.”
“Of course they still got the station,” Edek said. “But it is not there.”
“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place,” Ruth said.
“I been there many times as a boy,” Edek said. “I know where it is.”
“That was a while ago, Da
d,” she said.
“You do not forget where a station is,” Edek said.
“Maybe they moved the station?” Ruth said.
“Maybe,” he said. “I try one more place.” He was gone before she could object.
Ruth felt old. What was wrong with her? It was pathetic not to be able to catch up with an eighty-one-year-old. But then Edek was not your average eighty-one-year-old, she thought. Maybe pitched against a more normal eighty-one-year-old, she might be able to hold her own. In the distance, she saw Edek waving to her. She ran up to him.
“I did find the Lódz-Fabryczna,” he was shouting. “I told you I did know where it was. I will show you, now, where Zachodnia is. The woman in the street did explain it to me pretty good.”
“Dad, can you wait for me?” she said.
“Hurry up,” he said, as he streaked ahead of her.
One minute later, she could no longer see him. Edek’s darting and dashing and rushing was demented, she decided. It was unnatural. Human beings were not meant to speed and careen from one place to the next.
There was no need. There was no urgency, no emergency, no crisis, no race. Finding the right street was not a matter of life and death. She looked around her. She couldn’t see Edek anywhere. She thought it would be a miracle if she and Edek managed to arrive at Zachodnia Street together.
Suddenly, Edek reappeared. He was out of breath.
“Something is wrong,” he said. Ruth felt alarmed. She knew that a man his age shouldn’t be running around like that.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” she asked, trying to sound unworried.
“The streets are not where they should be,” Edek said. Ruth was relieved that geography and location were still what was wrong.
“Maybe it’s us who are not where we should be,” she said. But Edek T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 2 9 ]
didn’t want to listen. He was gone. She didn’t care. She slowed down. It was she and Edek who were in the wrong place. What were they doing here? She should be in New York. In her office, where compared to this nothing seemed crazy.
Even the most unruly occurrences in the offices of Rothwax Correspondence seemed tame and subdued next to this. The indexing and cross-indexing of letters and files and folders seemed easy. The puzzling requests from clients seemed moderate and manageable next to this. This was madness. New York, with its erratic inhabitants, its crowded streets, its deviant traffic, and aberrant pedestrians, seemed like the Sea of Tranquillity to Ruth. An oasis of order and clarity. What was the Sea of Tranquillity? she wondered. Was it a geographical location or a poetic phrase? She thought it might be a heavenly body, or something celestial. Anything to do with tranquillity was clearly not her area of specialty. She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven. She was so tired.