A Blessing on the Moon

by Joseph Skibell

  “About what?” I say. “Know what?”

  “Chaim,” sighs Pavel, “forgive us—”

  Marek interrupts him. “It’s just that some of us aren’t content like you to follow a grackle halfway across Europe without even so much as asking where we’re going!”

  “A grackle?” I say. The word is unfamiliar to me.

  “Jackdaw, grackle, whatever.”

  “But the Rebbe isn’t a grackle,” I say. “He’s a crow.”

  “Exactly my point!”

  “Marek,” warns Markus.

  “Papa Chaim,” says Pavel, “he doesn’t mean any disrespect.”

  But Marek snorts disdainfully and crosses his long arms against his slender chest. “Don’t I?”

  They are modern young men, these three. Zionists, Bundists, freethinkers for all I know.

  “If it were up to him,” sneers Marek, “we’d all be traipsing after crows.”

  Marek, I’m told, was even once a member of the Communist Party, although Miriam refused to confirm or deny this when I confronted her.

  “Marek, leave it alone,” Hadassah calls from their side of the table, listening in and standing up for her father. She’s not afraid of an elder brother-in-law. At times, I worried she was much too attached to me and that was what kept her from marrying.

  “He may be a crow, Marek,” I say, “but at least he survived!”

  “So he survived? So what?”

  “Did being a man help you when it came to that?”

  “Marek, Chaim,” says Pavel. “All we want to know is where we are and what will happen to us here.”

  “Then you’ll have to bribe people to find out,” bellows the rotund Markus.

  “Markus, for God’s sake, keep your voice down!” Marek hisses. “People are listening!”

  “But isn’t it clear?” Lepke pipes up in his weak and quavering voice. We can barely hear him.

  “What’s clear?” his brothers-in-law ask, smirking with their heads together, like conspirators.

  So shy, he cannot look them in the face, Lepke pinches at his chin, taps his thumb against his teeth and then dries his wet nail across his lower lip.

  “That we’re in the World to Come,” he says. “Isn’t it clear?”

  46

  It’s strange. He’s a sweet boy, our Lepke, but if you didn’t pay close attention, you might forget that he is here. Because his mind is vague and he isn’t a sharp businessman like the others, no one credits what he says. Also, he cannot meet their gazes or stand against their thundering retorts. He’s too polite to contradict them. And so, instead, he folds up into himself and disappears.

  “Spare me your fairy tales!” cries Marek.

  “What’s so fantastic about it?” says Lepke.

  “All this nonsense they cooked up to enslave us, these rabbis!”

  “But is it so far-fetched,” says Pavel, “given our situation.”

  “Look,” booms Markus. “If there is a Paradise, do you actually think they’d let Jews into it?”

  47

  My sons-in-law blather on, lost in the thickening cloud of their cigar smoke. It floats about their heads in grey and fuzzy plumes.

  I sit back and freshen my mouth with water. Of course, if this were the World to Come, wouldn’t all the dead be here and not just the recently murdered? As I say, I had hoped to see my mother. And I had heard, for instance, that one encounters Adam and Abraham and, very usually, the prophet Elijah, none of whom are here. Otherwise, surely, they would have been called upon for speeches.

  Perhaps Marek is right and all the promises were not promises, but lies. The memory of my murder is so distant that I have to remind myself that it happened at all. Still, I died, of this I’m sure. But somehow I survived and my body has been restored to me, as good as new, or very nearly. How can Marek explain this?

  “An electromagnetic malfunction of our brain stems, perhaps,” he says, tamping his cigar. “I couldn’t really say.”

  Preposterous!

  Still, it doesn’t explain the absence of my mother, or of Ida and our child.

  “Papa, does it matter where we are?” this from Hadassah. “At least we’re together.”

  “That Marek,” I say to her, under my breath. “What do you think? Was he truly a Communist?”

  “Papa, don’t,” she says, looking away and refusing to answer. Has her sister sworn her to secrecy?

  “You can tell your father,” I say.

  “No, Papa,” Mirki cuts in. “He was never a Communist. Now are you satisfied?”

  “Then why must he think like one!”

  Our daughters and their husbands decide to stay up and move to the bar for late-night drinks.

  Ester and I excuse ourselves and take their children up to bed. I hold Pola’s and Sabina’s hands, while Mirki’s twins search through my pockets for hidden treasures.

  “You won’t find any,” I say, but when they open their small, tight fists, each holds a round candy wrapped in a colorful wax paper.

  “Well, well, well,” I say. “I’m full of surprises.”

  “Only one each!” Ester snaps. “It’s your bedtime.”

  She walks with Kubuś and Solek and Izzie. They escort her through the hallways like three gentlemen strolling with a dignitary through the streets of a capital city. They are talking, but quietly, almost formally. Their days of needing a grandmother’s smothering sweetness have passed.

  We arrive at their rooms, and after a thousand hugs and five hundred goodnight kisses, we leave the smaller ones in the charge of their older cousins and their siblings.

  “Kubuś, you’re oldest, remember,” my Ester warns sternly.

  “Goodnight, Zeyde,” they call to me.

  The hall is quiet.

  I take Ester’s arm and lead her to the lift, where the liftboy is drowsing on his stool. We allow him to sleep, his hands folded loosely in his lap, a bead of saliva on his chin.

  Not knowing exactly what I’m doing, I pull the levers myself.

  “Chaim, stop, stop. You’ll get us killed!”

  But after the initial jolt, the box moves fluently, although not to the proper floor.

  “What are you doing?” Ester hisses, afraid to disturb the sleeping boy. “Chaim, you need to wake him!”

  “Hold on, hold on,” I say. How difficult can this be?

  I have no idea which floor we’re on. I look through the meshed door, to orient myself, and there she is. At least I think it’s she.

  Already in motion, my hands slip the levers into place, somewhere electrical connections are made, and our box rises, clanging, through its chutes, before I can get a second look.

  “Ida?” I whisper to myself.

  48

  “I am sorry, Herr Skibelski, but there is no one here by that name.”

  “Then perhaps she is registered under her maiden name.”

  I am jumping from foot to foot before the registration desk, so nervous and excited am I at the prospect of seeing her again.

  “In either case,” the concierge says, closing his book, “I cannot give out the information you desire. Not all our guests wish to have their privacy disturbed. When you said her name was Skibelski,” he digs at the wax in his fleshy ear, “I could at least assume she was a relative of yours, but now …” he hesitates.

  “Kaminski is her maiden name,” I plead.

  “I understand that,” he says, crossing his arms, “but I really cannot help you.”

  Before I can protest, a light is illuminated behind him and a buzzer sounds.

  He turns back to me, looks me in the eye, although not unkindly.

  “Excuse me, Herr Skibelski, I am called away to a staff meeting, where I will be for a goodly half hour.”

  He knocks a curled fist lightly against the registration book, twice.

  “Our guests are registered in a rough alphabetical order,” he says and he straightens his coat, pulling at his shirtcuffs, so that they are even. With a dismissive nod,
he takes his leave.

  “Thank you,” I say, calling at his back.

  “For what?” he turns imperiously.

  “For nothing,” I say, shrugging.

  “Exactly, Herr Skibelski, exactly. For nothing,” and he is gone.

  Casually, I lean my arm against the desk. The lobby is all but empty. Here and there are couples, mostly men, conversing over nightcaps. I think of Markus and his friend Goldstein, talking in Vienna until dawn. A few waiters move sleepily from the bar to the lobby, ferrying drinks. No one is watching me, and so, with a tense nonchalance, I turn the thick registration book, so that it is facing me. Small tabs, embossed with letters of the alphabet, line the edge of its pages. I open the book to K–L and scan with my middle finger through its various entries. Kaufman, Klein, Kalovski.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the voice is so close, I nearly jump, dropping the book from my hand, as though it were on fire.

  A waiter holds his round tray vertically beneath his arm. There are circles of perspiration from sweating glasses dotting its cork surface.

  “May I bring you a drink or some food?” he inquires. “Our kitchen will be closing shortly for the night.”

  “Thank you, no,” I say, feigning insouciance. “I told a friend I’d meet him here.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “This is the registration desk, isn’t it?” I am overdoing it perhaps.

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “I wasn’t sure, you see. I thought perhaps I was at the wrong port.”

  “This is the registration desk,” he says.

  “Something must be detaining him.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Certainly my friend,” I say.

  “I could have him paged for you.”

  “Paged?”

  “If you wish.”

  “But that’s not necessary.”

  “It’s no trouble, sir. I’d be happy to do it.”

  I can’t tell if he is merely being helpful or if he actually suspects me. I notice that my palms are sweating.

  “Fine,” I say. “Of course. A page. What an excellent idea.”

  At least this will get rid of him or so I think. I cross my arms and fold my hands under, concealing them.

  The waiter removes a small notepad from his hip pocket, and a stubby pencil.

  “His name?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your friend’s name.”

  “You want my friend’s name?”

  “I’ll need it for the page.”

  My mind goes blank. “Of course,” I smile. The only name I can think of at the moment is my own. “Chaim Skibelski.”

  “Skibelski?”

  “My friend’s name is Chaim Skibelski.”

  “Very well.”

  He clicks his heels and bows slightly. Wheeling around, he traces his way through the lobby.

  Quickly, I reopen the book and turn again to the K’s to scour its pages for Ida’s name.

  “CHAIM SKIBELSKI!”

  I cringe to hear my own name sounded through the crackling static of the hotel’s antiquated amplification system.

  “CHAIM SKIBELSKI! PLEASE MEET YOUR PARTY AT THE REGISTRATION DESK.”

  Katz, Kalzki, Kilzinski, Kalinski, Koslowitz. My fingers fly through the listings.

  “CHAIM SKIBELSKI, YOUR PARTY IS WAITING FOR YOU AT THE REGISTRATION DESK.”

  What an idiot I am! This entire enterprise is nothing but foolishness! Kalmanski, Karliner, Koslowitz. To have slipped away from Ester with an excuse so lame I’m embarrassed to even mention it here—I told her that I wanted to inquire after the ingredients of a rum toddy I supposedly drank earlier in the bar, raving about the concoction at such length that I’m sure she either suspected my sincerity or thought me a complete ignoramus—only to be standing now at the registration desk, publicly sneaking through a forbidden book, while my name is blasted all about me in the air!

  But Ida always had this effect on me.

  I was a fool for her. I longed to marry her, at any cost. Of course, she hardly noticed me the day we were introduced, but from that day on, I couldn’t get her from my mind. I was only seventeen, Ida fifteen. What was I doing, thinking about marriage? Still, I couldn’t help it. Her father did business with mine, and there were many opportunities for me to see her, opportunities to impress her, although nothing I did seemed to catch her attention in the least.

  My sisters whispered to me that Ida was desperately in love with Oldak, a poet who also gave her violin lessons. If her father knew, or even her mother, my sisters told me, they would certainly disapprove, and there was no hope for the match. Despite his reputation, to Ida’s prosperous parents, Oldak was a wastrel, a luftmensch. His passions were too fiery, his pocketbook too thin.

  I myself wrote poems to her. Or at least I tried. Each morning I tore them to bits. There was nothing dashing or romantic about me. To her, I’m sure, I seemed less interesting than a clod of dirt, nothing more than the gawky brother of her friends.

  Ida was seventeen when Oldak disappeared. It wasn’t clear whether he had been arrested or whether he had fled to avoid such an arrest. No one knew, although we all suspected he was guilty of treasonable activities against the Czar’s regime. Whatever the case, his disappearance had a disastrous effect on Ida. She ceased to eat. Her already pale face turned paler. Her high cheekbones became more prominent as her face grew thin. Her black eyes lost all their shining mischief.

  Her parents were distraught and did not know what to do. Finally they decided that what their lovesick daughter needed was a husband. Surely it was time, none of us were getting any younger. A marriage would take her mind off politics and romance and the other useless pastimes with which they had unthinkingly indulged her.

  Searching for a suitable groom, her father asked my father to inquire of me if I would consider marrying her. Taking me aside one day, on our way to a mill, my father explained to me about Ida’s hypersensitivity, her sadness, the difficulties of a poetic soul. A large dowry was being offered, he told me, so there would be at least some compensation.

  “It’s as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, nu?” my Papa said.

  As for me, I couldn’t believe my luck and was beside myself with joy, although I managed to conceal it, asking my father blandly for details concerning where we would live, the two of us, and how we would manage. Even if Ida didn’t love me, I thought, she might grow to. And at least now, there was a chance.

  Ida, Ida, Ida Kaminski. Without my realizing it, my finger had stopped upon her name. How long I have left it there, absently tapping, I cannot say. Quickly, I jot down her room number, 519, on the back of an envelope with the Hotel Amfortas’ letterhead printed on it in a raised blue script.

  According to the registrar, she is traveling with her daughter, my daughter, the child we had lost.

  49

  Although Ida was not one for sweets, or so I remember, I purchase a box of chocolates and a dozen pale roses from one of the shops in the hotel’s corridor of stores. For a moment, I consider buying a bottle of champagne, to celebrate, but perhaps it is too presumptuous a gesture. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other, not even taking into account the time that has passed since my death. I don’t want to appear too pushy, too familiar. Neither do I wish to play the suitor, only to be rebuffed. I have remarried, after all, and am on holiday here with my family. Again, perhaps I didn’t hear right or was not paying close enough attention when our Rabbis spoke of it, but I believe they said a righteous woman would be the footstool for her husband in the World to Come, if he were also righteous. But what of two wives? In any case, Ester will not be pleased.

  I reach into the pocket of my nice new coat before realizing I have no money. The shopkeeper’s eyes are tired, his face drawn. An old man in a velvet skullcap, he had been on the point of closing shop when I entered, but has patiently waited behind his stand while I shillyshallied over what to buy and what not, trying to recall Ida’s tast
es and the things that might please or displease her.

  She was so careful about everything, the clothes she wore, the food she ate. No sweets or cakes but only wholesome foods. She wore a handmade dress to our wedding, one she had sewn for herself. And I was touched to see the care she took with it. After all, I was not entirely certain this was as happy a day for her as it was for me. She could have come in rags, for all I knew, carrying weeds.

  “Is it possible to put this on my bill?” I ask the shopkeeper, abashed to find myself penniless.

  “I didn’t mean to rush you,” he says deferentially.

  “I’m new here,” I apologize, “and I’m afraid I have no local currency.”

  “It’s just tonight, you see, I have my appointment for the steam.” This he says with an air of amused embarrassment, as though treating himself to the pampering steam were somehow shameful or unmanly.

  “Of course,” I say, “of course.”

  “It doesn’t come too often.”

  “Forgive me for keeping you.”

  “But you needn’t hurry,” he says, rolling down his sleeves and removing and folding his apron. “We can put the amount on your bill, of course, Reb Skibelski.” And he records my name and my room number into a small accounting pad he keeps next to his cash box, totaling my purchases and recording them there.

  Through the meshed cage door of the lift, I see him turning out his shop lights. He has traded his velvet slippers for hard leather shoes and, holding his jacket over his arm, searches in his pants for the keys to lock his door.

  The lift begins to rise.

  The thought occurs to me that, since arriving here, I may actually have seen my daughter. And a thrilling, slightly disturbing thought it is. I have no idea if she is still an infant, she was only hours old when she died. Or has she grown up since her death? I haven’t been dead long enough to know how these things work. In any case, there are many infants here, as well as many girls and young women, any one of whom could possibly be my daughter. Have we already spoken? Or even caught each other’s eye, never knowing whose face we were looking into? Probably not. Even if she is a young woman, nearly grown, would her mother really let her wander the hotel by herself, unchaperoned? Certainly not! At Ida’s side or, if an infant, in her arms, it’s likely it would be Ida I would have noticed first. After all, I recognized her in the hall, and even then, I saw her only fleetingly, not really for more than a glance. Still, I knew her immediately. If it was actually she. But why else would she be listed in the hotel register? Of course, it doesn’t make sense that she registered under her maiden name. I can’t say now whether she held a baby in her arms when I spied her from the lift. Funny the details one takes in, the things one doesn’t. I’ll invite them to breakfast for tomorrow and, there, introduce them to the others, Ida to Ester, Ester to Ida, my daughter to her half-sisters and half-brother. Marek will certainly have to swallow his words then, the rascal! With Ida’s presence, who can doubt this is the World to Come, that we have, indeed, fallen into Paradise?