by Lily Brett
Edek reemerged. “I cannot find the Zachodnia Street,” he said. “I do not know what is wrong with me.”
Ruth didn’t answer. She thought he was only questioning his sense of direction. “The Zachodnia Street was a street what I was on many times,”
Edek said.
“Maybe we should go back to the hotel?” she said to Edek. “We’re not going to make our appointment anyway. The man from the center was specific about the time we had to be there.”
“Beggar him,” Edek said.
Ruth was surprised. Edek rarely swore. This was his version of swearing.
“Beggar him” was something Edek had condensed from the word “beggar”
and the Australian expression “bugger him.” A phrase that originated, Ruth thought, from the verb “to bugger.” “Beggar him” was one of Edek’s worst obscenities. Edek didn’t know that he had distorted and blended two different words. He didn’t notice the lack of potency the phrase possessed.
Ruth had once tried to explain it to him, but he had dismissed her. He thought she was being pedantic. Ruth thought that maybe he just didn’t want to know what “to bugger” meant. She decided it didn’t matter. People got the general gist of what Edek was expressing. “Beggar him,” Edek said again.
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They walked along whatever street it was that they were walking on.
Suddenly Edek turned and shouted. Ruth got a terrible fright. She had been thinking about herself and Edek, and the mess they seemed to be in, in the middle of Lódz.
“Taxi, taxi, taxi,” Edek was shouting. He was in the middle of the street now, and waving his arms. The taxi he had spotted stopped.
“You gave me a terrible shock,” Ruth said when she got to him.
“I did get a taxi for you,” Edek said. “A Mercedes.”
They got into the cab. Edek gave the cab driver the address. “We need to be there in a big hurry, sir,” he said to the driver. Edek had assumed his excessively obsequious manner again. “We’re paying him,” Ruth said to Edek. “We don’t need to lick his ass.”
“What sort of person speaks like this?” Edek said. “ ‘Lick his ass.’ It is lucky for us that he doesn’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t care,” Ruth said.
“Sir,” Edek said. “If you can make it quick, there will be a big tip for you.” Ruth grimaced and sank back into the seat. Edek would have paid out the equivalent of a year’s income in tips and bonuses before he left Poland.
Edek was counting his zlotys. “Give me a few more zlotys,” he said to Ruth.
“So you can distribute them among the Poles?” Ruth said.
“For what are you in such a bad mood?” Edek said.
“This is no picnic,” Ruth said. “Do you think I should be cracking jokes and slapping my thighs?” She wasn’t sure that Edek understood what slapping a thigh meant. Edek understood enough to take offense.
“It is not such a picnic for me, too,” he said.
They drove in silence. Ruth could smell the driver. She could smell the smell of sweat and other body odor, and unwashed hair and unclean clothes. Why didn’t Polish men wash more often? You’d think the driver of a Mercedes would want to smell more like a Mercedes driver and less like a local vagrant, Ruth thought.
They drove past two pieces of anti-Semitic graffiti, one after the other.
Stars of David, with the losing soccer team’s emblem emblazoned across the star-shaped symbol of Judaism. Ruth pointed them out to Edek. “They got rid of their Jews,” she said to Edek. “But they couldn’t get rid of their T O O M A N Y M E N
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anti-Semitism.” She shook her head. “They got rid of almost two hundred and fifty thousand Jews from this area. Wasn’t that enough? What are they carrying on about?”
“Don’t talk about this stuff,” Edek said. “The driver, he sees what we are looking at.”
“So what?” Ruth said. “He knows he’s anti-Semitic. He doesn’t care.”
“It is only children,” the driver said. “Just children.”
“Jesus,” Ruth said. “What sort of kids are they bringing up?”
“My daughter is not really a troublemaker,” Edek said to the driver, in English.
“If you want him to understand,” Ruth said to Edek, “you’d better repeat it, in Polish.”
“Oy, cholera, ” Edek said, and began a long explanation of Ruth’s bad mood to the driver. The driver nodded his head, sympathetically.
Ruth and Edek had been in the taxi for over five minutes. They were two or three miles from where the cab had picked them up. Ruth knew that she and Edek had started out quite close to Zachodnia Street. How had they become so lost? No wonder she was tired. They had walked for miles.
“The Poles did used to throw stones at me, in this area,” Edek said in a low voice to Ruth.
They arrived, finally, at 78 Zachodnia Street. Edek tipped the driver an inordinately large number of zlotys. The driver got out of the cab and bowed half a dozen times to them. Number 78 was a large vacant allotment of land. An old building was at the very back of the block. They approached the building. A smell of boiled cabbage permeated the air.
“Can you smell boiled cabbage?” Ruth said to Edek.
“Yes,” he said. “It is not very nice.” They reached the building. Ruth looked inside a dark doorway.
“I think we have to go inside and up the stairs,” she said to Edek.
“This is the Jewish Center?” Edek said. “Are you sure?”
“I think I’m sure,” Ruth said.
She and Edek walked up the dank, dark staircase. The smell of cabbage was overwhelming. The air was so damp that Ruth thought that the cabbage must still be being boiled. It was so dark it was hard to see where they were going. This was the headquarters of the Jewish community of Lódz?
The heart of Jewish life in Lódz? What a heart, Ruth thought. She suddenly
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felt very depressed. This was not what she associated with being Jewish.
Where was the warmth? Nothing about this place was Jewish.
Ruth was shivering. It was very cold in the building. “Are you cold, Dad?” she said.
“No,” Edek said. “Where are we?” he said after a minute. He seemed as dazed as Ruth to find that this dark run-down damp place was the center of Jewish Lódz. Ruth knocked at a partially opened door at the top of the stairs. She looked at her watch. It was 11:13 A.M. They were only three minutes late. Inside, a man in his thirties, dressed in the black clothes of a religious Jew, sat at a desk. He was shuffling papers. He had an air of business about him. “Come in,” he said, in a perfunctory manner. He didn’t look up.
The room was not very large and was sparsely furnished. A woman was typing at a table against one wall. There was another room off to the left.
Ruth wondered if that was where the cabbage was being boiled. She and Edek stood inside the door. The woman smiled at them. “We’re here to arrange a guide for the cemetery,” Ruth said to the woman. The woman, she had decided, looked more approachable than the man. The woman shook her head. It was clear she didn’t speak English.
“Let’s go,” Edek whispered to Ruth.
Ruth looked around the room. Two rolls of fax paper were on a shelf, together with a photograph of an Orthodox Jew. Ruth didn’t know who the Orthodox Jew in the photograph was. This was the most sparse and spare Jewish Center she had ever seen. What furniture there was, was old. It looked so depressing. So bereft of life. Maybe her father was right. Maybe they should go.
She knew the center had two hundred members, a prayer house somewhere in the building, a canteen, and a kosher kitchen. The cabbage that they could smell must be kosher. They served thirty free meals a day, Ruth had read, and provided the community with matzoh at Passover. The center’s aim was to maintain and support the religious and cultural traditions of the Jews of Lódz. How did
you do that when there were no Jews left? It was an impossible task, Ruth thought. Not one that could be carried out with the help of boiled cabbage.
“We are to arrange for a guide,” Ruth said again, in the direction of the man. “I rang you earlier.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I will try to contact him.”
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“Please,” Edek whispered to Ruth. “He is busy. Can we go?”
“We’ll wait for another few minutes,” she whispered to Edek.
“I do not want so much to go to the cemetery,” he said.
“Just another few minutes, and we’ll call it quits,” she said.
The woman looked up from her typewriter and smiled at them. Ruth and Edek smiled back. The man continued to shuffle papers. Ruth looked at her watch. It was 11:24 A.M. “How many Jews do you look after here?”
she said to the man.
“We feed about thirty a day,” he said, not looking up.
“Are most of them old?” Ruth said.
“All of them,” he said.
“Men and women?” Ruth said.
“Most of them are men,” he said.
So this was what the Jewish community of Lódz had been reduced to, Ruth thought. Thirty poor, old men, who had boiled cabbage for lunch. It was heartbreaking. “I think we’ll go, Dad,” she said to Edek. She noticed a photograph of the American philanthropist, businessman, and cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder on the wall. She knew that the Jewish Center of Lódz was supported by the Ronald Lauder Foundation.
“This is the worst Jewish place I saw in my life,” Edek whispered. Edek looked depressed. The lack of any welcome had probably added to her father’s distress, Ruth thought.
“You’re supported by the Ronald Lauder Foundation, are you?” Ruth said to the man.
“Yes,” he said.
“I was at his home, in New York, recently,” Ruth said.
The man dropped his papers, took off his glasses, and faced Ruth. He looked about thirty or thirty-five, Ruth thought.
“You were just at Mr. Lauder’s house?” the man said.
“Yes,” said Ruth. It wasn’t a lie. She had been to the Lauders’ spectacular art-filled New York apartment. She had been served the sort of food that should be canonized and memorialized, not eaten. Each dish had been more dazzling, more aesthetically pleasing, than the dish that had preceded it. Ruth thought that she saw several of the guests genuflecting over the wines that were served.
Ruth had touched the van Gogh painting hanging in the Lauders’
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library. She had followed the brushstrokes with her fingers. Traced Vincent van Gogh’s movements. Nobody had noticed. Ruth had known that she would never get that close to a van Gogh again. Ruth was at Ronald Lauder’s apartment for a book launch that the Lauders had hosted for a friend of a friend of Ruth’s.
“Mr. Lauder has a beautiful apartment,” Ruth said to the man. The man came up and shook hands with Edek and Ruth. “Sit down, please,” he said.
“We are so grateful to Mr. Lauder. Mr. Lauder makes it possible for us to feed old Jewish men and look after them. Mr. Lauder is trying to rehabilitate the Jewish community of Poland.”
Ruth wondered if “rehabilitate” was the right word. The Jewish community was not damaged or diseased. It was destroyed. It was nonexistent.
She decided this condition was still open to the possibility of rehabilitation.
Ronald Lauder could also have used restore, reconstitute, or rehabilitate.
They would all do, she decided. She wished she didn’t get sidetracked by words and their meanings.
“You were in Mr. Lauder’s apartment?” the man said again.
“Yes,” she said. “Quite recently.”
“My daughter mixes with everybody,” Edek said. He looked very pleased to be making this announcement. “My daughter is very rich, herself,” he said. Ruth nearly started laughing. She restrained herself.
“Not as rich as Mr. Lauder,” she said.
“Please have a cup of coffee,” the man said. He told the woman to put on the kettle.
“No thanks,” Ruth said, at exactly the same time as Edek was saying,
“Thank you very much.”
She shook her head at Edek. She didn’t want to stay in this place one minute longer than she had to. “No thank you,” Edek said. “We did just have a coffee.”
“We’d like a guide for the cemetery,” Ruth said.
“Of course, of course,” the man said. “For which day would you like a guide?”
“Today,” Ruth said. “This afternoon.”
“I can organize it for you,” the man said. “I will arrange for our best guide. He is very familiar with the archives of the cemetery. We look after the archives in this office, thanks to Mr. Lauder.”
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“Could we have the guide at two-thirty P.M., for a couple of hours?”
Ruth said.
“You want to be in the cemetery for two hours?” Edek said to Ruth.
“I just want to make sure we have enough time,” Ruth said.
“What is there to do in a cemetery?” Edek said. “You walk in, you have a look, and you seen the cemetery.”
Edek turned to the director of the center. “Tell the guide we will need him for half an hour maybe, one hour maximum.”
“We’ll have two hours,” Ruth said.
“What for?” Edek said. “Everyone in the cemetery is dead. You cannot stay and talk.”
“Maybe you want to pray in the cemetery?” the director said.
“We don’t pray,” Ruth said. The man looked startled.
“You have to explain to him,” Edek said. “You cannot say just we do not pray.”
“You can explain how you and Mum and your parents were brought up as Orthodox Jews,” Ruth said to Edek. “You can tell him that you decided there was no God after watching Nazis play football with babies, and bang babies’ heads against walls. I don’t want to go into it.”
“I will ring the guide straightaway,” the man said. He walked briskly to the phone.
“Why do you make trouble?” Edek said.
“I don’t like him,” said Ruth.
“You make trouble with everybody,” Edek said. “In the taxi you did want to make the driver feel bad. Here you do want to make this poor man feel bad.”
“Why shouldn’t I make taxi drivers feel bad?” Ruth said. “If they feel bad it’s only for one minute. They don’t really think about what it means to have no Jews left in Poland, but plenty of anti-Semitic graffiti.”
“What did this man here do to you?” Edek said.
“He didn’t make us feel welcome,” said Ruth.
“That is true,” said Edek. “You was really in this Mr. Lauder’s home?”
Edek said.
“I was,” Ruth said. “There was me and a hundred other people.”
Edek laughed. “You are a clever girl,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
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“Excuse me,” the director called out. “Can the guide meet you at your hotel?”
“Of course,” Ruth said. “We’re staying at the Grand Victoria.”
“That is perfect,” the director said. “The Grand Victoria at two-thirty P.M. sharp.” He made the arrangements with the guide and hung up.
“Marek is our best guide,” the director said to Edek and Ruth. “Marek will show you the funeral home, which was built in 1898. He will show you how the bodies were brought into the hall from the doors on the west side of the building.”
“You want to see this?” Edek said to Ruth. Ruth nodded.
“Marek will show you everything.”
“Thank you very much,” Ruth said.
“Thank you very much,” said Edek.
“I am glad that you were able to visit ou
r center,” the director said.
“Could I ask you a question?” Ruth said.
“Of course, of course,” he said.
“Why would you want to rehabilitate Jewish life in Poland?” she said.
“I’m not trying to undermine what you are doing here, in helping these elderly Jews, but why would you want to reestablish Jewish life here?”
“It is very important that Jewish people have a home in Poland,” he said. “We have to build up Jewish life in Poland once more.”
“But why?” Ruth said. “Poland is not a conducive place for Jews. Why would you want Jews to live here? Poles don’t like Jews. There’s anti-Semitic graffiti in the streets. You must have seen it.”
“Of course I see it,” he said.
“And you must see more than that if you’re walking the streets of Lódz looking like a Jew,” she said.
“I cover my yarmulke with a cap,” he said.
“So you want all Jews to have to cover their yarmulkes with their caps?”
Ruth said. “What sort of a Jewish life would that be?”
“Ruthie, Ruthie,” Edek said. “Do not get so excited.”
“I’m not excited,” Ruth said. “I’m disturbed. I can understand why it is important to look after those Jews that are left, but I don’t understand why you want to create a Jewish community here.
“And where are you going to get the Jews from? Your current members are obviously too old to procreate. And you’re not going to get any Jews T O O M A N Y M E N
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that I know to migrate to Poland. Apart from the intrinsically unattractive prospect of living in Poland, a lot of Jews view Poland as one large gravesite.”
“Ruthie, this is not a nice thing to say,” Edek said.
“Well, it is one large gravesite,” Ruth said.
“I didn’t mean this, I did mean it is not nice to say it is no good, the life in Poland,” Edek said.