by I. J. Singer
No, he could do nothing to avert the coming calamity. He would let his ship drift until it struck a rock and sank.
The men with whom he did business tried to comfort him. “Let the madness go on, Mr. President. Maybe it will all turn out for the best. For now, things are booming, and everyone is getting by. Let tomorrow be God’s sorrow.…”
But Ashkenazi wouldn’t let himself be lulled by such easy optimism. That was what had brought down his father-in-law, Haim Alter. That was for idlers, dreamers, Utopians. The catastrophe was coming, and no blind, silly faith would avert it.…
Just as in the past the clatter of machinery had represented cash falling into his pocket, now it symbolized yet another nail being hammered into his coffin.
Still, he rose each morning at dawn to go to his office, and he stayed there late into the nights. His sickly, half-paralyzed wife remonstrated with him: “Max, get more rest. The ‘golden’ business won’t run away, God help us. Think of your health first.”
“I can’t stay in bed while the factory is operating,” he explained, and dressed hurriedly to get to the plant in time with the first worker.
The servant brought him a magnificent breakfast on a silver platter, but all he could get down was a crust of bread and a half glass of milk, the meal of the lowliest beggar. The only things that kept him alive now were his work and his premonitions of the future.
Seventy
JUST AS HE HAD MISCALCULATED in business, Max Ashkenazi also miscarried in his effort to straighten out his personal life.
He did everything he could to begin a new existence, one that would make up for his previous mistakes. He had sworn to do this in Petrograd, then in the prison dungeon, and finally during the seven days of mourning for his brother. It was because of him, Max, that his daughter had been left a widow, and he resolved to pay her back for all the grief he had caused her both intentionally and unintentionally. He had also determined to bring back his son from abroad in order to be a father and a protector to him. And lastly, he was anxious to do right by Dinele, to make up for all his sins against her so that her final years, at least, would be serene and untroubled. But the house that he had so mercilessly destroyed would not let itself be put together again. The glue that would cement the broken shards simply didn’t exist.
The moment the palace was his again, he insisted that his daughter move in with him. He didn’t need such a huge place just for himself and his wife. More than ever he was appalled by the vastness of the rooms, the emptiness of the unused wings. Loneliest of all was the huge table in the dining hall where the couple dined in morose solitude.
Ashkenazi yearned for the warmth and friendliness his daughter and granddaughter would introduce to the glacial rooms. Priveshe’s laughter rang like the bell of a merry sleigh when she raced through the spacious halls. But even though both Max and his wife begged her to move in with them, Gertrud declined.
Max suspected that her reason was that she didn’t want to leave Dinele alone. He discussed the matter with his wife, and she agreed to apportion a separate wing of the palace to the two women. The present Madam Ashkenazi had nothing against her husband’s first wife. They were all of an age when such things as jealousy were forgotten, and all that remained was the easy camaraderie of birds seeking to flock together. But Dinele, too, refused the offer.
Deeply disappointed, Max sent his ex-wife and daughter large amounts of money so that they would lack for nothing. He also saw to his brother’s estate so that Gertrud would suffer no financial worries in the future. But for all that, she wouldn’t move into his palace or get close to him.
She pitied her father now and sympathized with his loneliness, but she felt no love for him. The years of estrangement wouldn’t allow themselves to be erased overnight. She even nursed hidden resentments against him. It was because of him that she had lost her husband. All her father had ever brought her had been anguish and misery. She wasn’t religious, but she was superstitious, and she believed that her father had always been a jinx to her. She didn’t reprove him, for she saw how miserable he was. Life had paid him back for all his sins. Apparently there was such a thing as justice and retribution in the world.
Her mother urged her to take little Priveh to visit her grandfather. “He is still your father,” she reminded her. “He keeps calling. He even sent his car around for you.”
When, on rare occasions, Gertrud did come to visit, her father put all his business affairs aside. He gave her presents and embraced her. He took little Priveh on his scrawny lap, crawled on all fours on the rug for her, and barked like a dog. That which he had neglected to give his own children, he now gave to his grandchild in excess. His elderly wife hugged the little girl in her half-paralyzed arms, kissed her plump little hands and every ringlet on her head.
After she and her mother left, the palace seemed lonelier than ever.
Next, Max launched a vigorous effort to bring his son home. He sent money, letters. After lengthy urging, Ignatz came. Max didn’t recognize him. Before him stood a burly, mature man with nothing of the boy he remembered. His voice was grating and deep, coarsened by the years of military service. Max had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. Ignatz barely responded to the greeting. He spoke mostly French, which his father didn’t understand. He was the quintessential soldier. A deep scar ran down his face, emphasizing his tough, un-Jewish appearance. “Caught this at the front,” he explained with a laugh, as if recalling some happy memory. “The bastard sliced me good and proper.…”
Ashkenazi recoiled from the brutal stranger. He felt even more alienated around the woman his son had brought with him. She was swarthy with high cheekbones and black eyes lacking even a trace of Jewish origin. She wore long earrings and lots of bracelets over her brown wrists and revealed thin, shapely legs beneath her short skirt. She understood nothing but French. Ashkenazi suspected that she was a native of one of the French African colonies. He flushed when she kissed his cheek with a passionate “Mon père! Mon père!”
She carried around a tiny dog, constantly kissed his black button nose, and addressed him in fervent endearments spoken in some strange tongue. She was totally without inhibition. She would rush up to Ignatz, shower him with kisses, whisper endearments, and generally carry on in an indecent manner. Knowing his son’s violent temper, Max avoided asking Ignatz any questions about her.
After a few days Max began to discuss practical matters with his son. He offered to take him in, teach him the textile business so that there would be someone to carry on the House of Ashkenazi after he, Max, was gone. But Ignatz refused to set foot inside the factory. He spent his days fencing, swimming, playing with the dog, and squabbling with the woman. During their frequent, violent quarrels she screamed until the windowpanes rattled. Max didn’t understand a word of the flood of invective that escaped her, but he sensed the passion behind it. Normally Ignatz didn’t answer. But when her voice grew too shrill and she flew at him with her nails, he knocked her down like any gentile laborer.
Max’s blood ran cold. He felt deeply embarrassed before his wife and servants. But the dusky woman didn’t seem to mind too much. The moment she finished sobbing, she powdered her face, applied lipstick and mascara, and began to kiss and fondle Ignatz with the same fervor with which she had attacked him minutes before.
At mealtimes she wolfed her food and drank glass after glass of wine. Ignatz often borrowed his father’s car and raced it through the countryside, terrifying peasants and livestock alike. The police kept charging him, and whenever Max needed the car, it wasn’t available.
Worst of all were Ignatz’s insatiable demands for money. He consorted with all kinds of unsavory characters, gambled heavily, frequented cabarets, ran around with officers, and got drunk. Night after night he was brought home senseless. He also abused the servants and threw magnificent tantrums.
When Max tried to remonstrate with him, Ignatz threatened to leave for Paris.
“What will you do there?” his father a
sked.
“I’ll join the Foreign Legion,” Ignatz grunted, glaring with hate at his father. “I’m sick of everything anyhow.…”
But Max wouldn’t let him go. Again and again he gave him money and bailed him out of trouble, hoping for some change in his son’s attitude. But nothing pleased Ignatz. He detested the meals served him; he despised Lodz, its people, its language. He talked only of Paris. His woman skulked about even surlier than he. Once in a while a cloud seemed to lift from Ignatz’s eyes. He was pleasant to his father and brought Dinele to the palace, where he clung to her like a child. Max looked on befuddled while Dinele blushed like a schoolgirl.
Ignatz shoved his parents together roughly. “Well, kiss and make up!” he growled, as if issuing an order to a corporal. “Enough feuding already!” And he beamed with pride over his accomplishment.
The swarthy woman clapped her hands. “Bravo! Bravo!” she cried, laughing insanely.
The parents assumed at those times that their son had changed, that he was now ready to settle down, take up a decent existence and provide them some pleasure for all the past grief he had brought them.
But he quickly reverted to his wild, sullen ways, went to Warsaw for days at a time without letting anyone know where he was, and returned in a foul mood. One day he announced that he could no longer remain in the city that stuck like a bone in his craw. He left with his woman and his things right then and there. A week later a curt telegram arrived, informing Max that he was back in Paris and requesting money to be forwarded to his hotel.
Max telephoned Dinele to tell her about the telegram, knowing how she worried about their son. “At least we know he’s alive, the bargain …” he reassured her.
There was no hope for Ignatz, he knew. He would never amount to anything. He, Max, had wanted an heir to perpetuate the House of Ashkenazi, but this wasn’t to be. His only fear now was that his son would convert, if he hadn’t already done so, God forbid.…
“What did I do to deserve this?” Max wondered. He had worked like a horse all his life, abjured all pleasures. For whom had he worked, after all? Certainly not for himself. He had never needed anything then, and he didn’t need anything now. His entire daily food intake amounted to a few groschen. For whose sake had he begun everything anew? Only for them, his children. And what was the result? His daughter avoided him; his son was a wastrel who despised him.…
Following the days of worry and heartache at the factory, he had nothing to come home to but his gnawing loneliness and his sickly wife’s groaning. At work he could still achieve a measure of forgetfulness, but the nights were long and unbearable. All kinds of brooding thoughts came to the surface. Hidden ailments of all sorts erupted. His bones ached; he suffered heartburn, stitches in the side. There was pressure on his heart. He had suffered these complaints even before the war, but he had never bothered to consult a doctor—there simply had been no time for it. His work had kept him too busy to think about such things. Doctors had warned him to guard his health, but he had ignored them. He had no patience with illness. He had even neglected his teeth, unwilling to spare the time for the dentist’s chair. He would swallow bicarbonate of soda to still the burning in his chest and apply hot-water bottles to ease the pains in his sides and back. He had refused to go to the spas to which the doctors had directed him. Now the ailments came back all together. His wasted body was racked with cramps, aches, pains. His wife urged him to see doctors, brought in the biggest specialists to examine him, but he refused their services. He knew beforehand what they would tell him—to get plenty of rest, to go to resorts, to cease all worry, to get plenty of sleep, and generally to take care of himself.
He wasn’t able to follow a single one of these advices. His plant was in terrible trouble. His wife was sick. His house was like a mausoleum. His daughter was estranged; Ignatz wrote or wired only when one of his checks was late. Nor could Max stop thinking about his brother. He still pictured him as he had seen him last—his body stretched out on the ground, with the trickle of blood running down into his beard and coagulating there. As much as he tried to chase this image, it wouldn’t go away. He took all kinds of sleeping pills and potions, but to no avail. His system grew quickly accustomed to each one so that they had no effect upon him.
He had failed miserably in his attempt to rebuild the shattered House of Ashkenazi. The shards lay irrevocably scattered, and as he padded through the dark palace in his bathrobe and slippers, the bronze Mephistopheles bared his teeth at him in a malicious, sinister smile.
Seventy-One
THE PAPER CHAIN holding Lodz together burst into a million pieces. The poorly printed marks were taken out of circulation to be replaced by silver guilders complete with the inevitable reliefs of Poland’s saviors. Along with the worthless marks also vanished all the work in the city, all hustle and bustle, all trade, the whole paper existence.
The warehouses were saturated with goods for which there were no buyers. The stores no longer sold a groschen’s worth of merchandise. The jammed sidewalks grew deserted. In the cafés and restaurants waiters stood around swatting idly at flies. The agents, brokers, moneychangers, commission men, and traveling salesmen sat at tables, scribbling away, but they didn’t order so much as a cup of coffee. They only chain-smoked, lighting their cigarettes with million-mark notes.
Lodz had come full circle. The speculators, profiteers, idlers, and various dreamers and hangers-on had managed to land on their feet, while solid businessmen, shrewd investors, insiders, and so-called experts ended up stuck with mounds of the worthless marks.
Just as Max had predicted, representatives of foreign wool and cotton suppliers came to demand payment for their raw goods. But all their customers had to offer were excuses. A rash of bankruptcies erupted. The courts and lawyers worked overtime. The musty, dim offices of notaries filled with husbands putting all their worldly goods in their wives’ names.
All factories stood idle. Not a wisp of smoke rose from the sooty chimneys. Workers by the thousands milled in the streets. Huge mobs lined up before labor exchanges, waiting for announcement of jobs that never materialized. Help was needed in France to dig coal, and the men surged forward to sign up. Agents of shipping lines tantalized the people with tales of life in the Americas and urged them to buy tickets and emigrate. Elegant flimflam artists posed as foreign consuls and issued counterfeit visas and passports on the spot. Anti-Semitic agitators vilified Jews for conspiring to ship good Christians out of the country in order to take over Poland for themselves. Priests and monks took up collections for the construction of a new church in the city. Revolutionaries issued proclamations urging a revolt of the oppressed. Secret agents, policemen, patriotic housewives, and students set upon these agitators and hustled them off, beaten and bloody, to the police stations.
“Hang the Trotskyites!” they bellowed. “Send them back to Palestine!”
In Balut, malnourished children peered out from behind grimy windows at the deserted streets. Secondhand clothes dealers walked about with empty sacks, their gloomy eyes cast heavenward but bereft of all hope. Real and pretend cripples crawled and slithered through courtyards, parroting beggars’ laments.
The people of Balut had nothing more to hope for. The mills had already destroyed their livelihoods even before the collapse. The Polish and German workers wouldn’t allow them into the factories, not even into those owned by Jews. They couldn’t collect workmen’s compensation since Magistrate Panczewski bent the law so that only employees of large factories were eligible for such payment.
Young and healthy Jewish youths applied at the labor exchanges for the filthiest jobs—digging sewers and building roads—but even this the gentiles denied them. “Beat it, Moshes!” they hooted. “Starve to death!”
All that was left them was charity and the soup kitchens set up by the Jewish community. The storekeepers dozed the days away without taking in so much as a groschen.
All the activity now centered on the railroad stations. M
en, women, and children carrying bundles of bedding and Sabbath candelabra filled all the wagons as Jewish Lodz raced to escape. Wives went to their husbands in America, fathers to their children, children to their parents. Farmers anxious to go back to the land emigrated to Argentina.
Jewish boys and girls carrying military knapsacks and blue and white flags set out to colonize Palestine. They sang their Hebrew songs and danced their horas. Those who came to see them off shouted, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
Affluent Jews, accompanied by their bejeweled wives and daughters, took trains to Italian ports; from there they would sail on luxury liners to Palestine. They weren’t going there to till the soil and dry the marshes like the pioneers, but to buy and develop real estate, build plants and factories, and restore their fortunes.
Lodz was in a crisis. You couldn’t earn a groschen in a city glutted with goods for years to come. Like hyenas, tax collectors descended upon the city to grab what they could for the national treasury. The only people seen in the deserted streets were soldiers and civilian officials in gorgeous uniforms replete with braid and insignia. They confiscated machinery from cellars, stripped bedding from beds, removed food from shops, and took everything away to be sold for taxes. Jewish housewives trailed after the wagons, lamenting as if hearses were removing their loved ones to their final rest.
Business establishments were sealed; jewelry was plucked from women’s necks and wrists; men’s watches and wallets were seized. The wealthier Jews fled the city, salvaging whatever they could in order to resettle in the Land of Israel and build a new Poland, a new Piotrkow Street in the Land of the Ancestors, in North or South America.