Fishbein’s deepest fear was that she discover her mother’s business at the worst possible moment, when she was at puberty, and this event fast approached. For the moment, she was a good child, and what’s more, a good Jewish child, Fishbein’s hopeful response to the Divine who had severely challenged her mother from the time she was three when she arrived, naked and bathed in blood, in a stranger’s doorway. However corrupt Minerva had become, Fishbein forgave her on account of that moment thirty years before. With such a beginning, how could even Ha-Shem expect her to turn out any differently? But Golde. Golde was another story. Of fragile health from the start, beautiful, delicate, quick, and bright, the child filled his heart daily with a melting affection and terror both.
On days when fear for her innocence consumed him, the fool Fishbein found himself longing for the fulfillment of Magnus Bailey’s promises. Yet for all that man chased after every dime he could squirrel away, the times were mean, and after these two years his purse was not half large enough. It was likely Minerva didn’t care. Fishbein suspected that her support of her lover’s efforts was whimsical. It seemed to him that in her heart she did not believe Bailey would ever have enough of a stake to carry out his plans. He certainly didn’t see any signs that she would soon give up her livelihood in favor of dependence on him. Like every human before her engaged in a disaster about to happen, Minerva deluded herself, thinking she could protect Golde from the truth forever.
That Friday night while her mother put the child to bed, Bailey and Fishbein drank a digestif and mused together.
I can puts up this house, wreck though it is, Fishbein said. Maybe that will get us sooner to the promised land.
It would help, Bailey said. As he looked up at his friend, his eyes softened in gratitude.
Fishbein pounced upon his sentiment.
You know, I am thinking even so that Paree is exactly the wrong place to go. Maybe you have heard of this German Bund? It is a harbinger, I tell you. Things are not so good for Jews wherever the Bund blinks its eyes. I know, I know, they are German not French, but, my friend, you cannots know how Europe is, how an idea spreads from one place to another like a fire that comes wild to a dry forest.
Minerva came down the stairs just then. With his head turned toward her in delirious devotion, Bailey ceased to listen to him.
Nu, thought Fishbein as he kissed the mezuzah of the Baron Hirsch Synagogue, if we are doomed, we are doomed. It is the way our people have always been, living with hatred outside the door, in the backyard, down the street, but, baruch Ha-Shem, living, and so we get used to things the way they are. What was it Minerva said to him the last time he tried to talk her away from Europe? When he warned her of the animus he feared would rise up there and also here, in America?
Papa, she said, so people hate Jews. This is new?
She laughed in a sad but resolute manner, and then she shrugged.
Oy, oy, oy, he repeated, shaking his head. I have never been able to affect her behavior. Why do I think I can now?
He pulled open the heavy door of the synagogue and commended himself not into the hands of Minerva and Magnus Bailey but into the hands of God.
As always, he was early, arriving before the beginning of services. To his surprise, the shul was bustling. The patriarchs Loeb and Goldsmith were on the bimah, pacing to the wings and back, carrying papers of some importance it would seem for the way they cradled them tenderly as Torahs in their arms. The leaders of the congregation milled about in an excited cluster just beyond them. Their voices were steady and rushed, like an ocean tide, rising, crashing, receding, rising yet again. Behind them lesser lights pushed and shoved to be closest to whatever it was that animated them. Anshel, the gabbai, rushed by. Fishbein touched his elbow and asked, What is goings on? To which Anshel, a plain man not given to detailed response, said, We have a guest speaker.
Hoo-hee, thought Fishbein, must be some special guest. He stood on his tiptoes to look above the crowd, but he could not see through the throng to someone new. He might have done better had he joined them, but he determined that if the guest was as honored as it appeared, either that rich or that learned or that holy, the father of the most infamous member of the Jewish community of Memphis, Tennessee, was the last person anyone wanted him to meet. Fishbein was a pitiable pariah of sorts at Baron Hirsch Synagogue. Though once a respected newcomer at the shul, feted and celebrated as a pious man as well as a man of means, when Minerva fell from grace, so did he in the eyes of his fellow congregants. Why he did not disown her, rip his sleeve, declare her as one dead confounded them. In their view, Fishbein was weak, culpable, enslaved by love for his daughter, and so, unable to rebuke her. He forgave them their harsh judgment. They’d never known the bloody child who’d cried out, terrified at his door, her yawning need for order, the way she’d perched, since childhood, like a trembling bird on a high wire, her balance ever precarious, fighting for a slim chance at happiness, and in the end undone by a gale of wind that took the name of Magnus Bailey.
Taking his usual spot in the back of the synagogue, Fishbein uttered the blessing before putting on a talis, swung the garment over his shoulders, its fringes fluttering, and steeped himself in prayer and meditation. As always, the more he prayed, the sadder he became, thinking of his long lost ones: his mother, his father, his beloved wife, and the child she’d carried, the entire Jewish quarter of his city in the old country, Minerva, of course, who was as lost as any of them, no matter what Magnus Bailey planned, and George McCallum, too. As he davened, he sighed and moaned. When the congregational service began, he was unaware at first, too busy with his sways and dips, with repeating the phrases of Kaddish over and over. No one looked at him, wondering who had died of his people. Everyone knew this was his habit and vow, to perpetually pray for his dead both during yarhzeit and every day that was not yarhzeit besides.
The parsha that day was Ki-Tisa, which makes mention of God’s instructions to Moses on taking a census of the people with him in the desert. It relates also the story of the Golden Calf and the destruction of the first tablets of the law. Fishbein closely followed the reader as he recited the text. Not only was the parsha the cornerstone of every service, a sacred obligation to fulfill, but the honored guest was surely a speaker coming to exhort the congregation for some purpose or other and would just as surely use the parsha as an inspiration for his talk.
After the service, Anshel announced in his large, plain voice that everyone should stay to listen to their guest, who had important news. As always after the prayer that more or less concluded every service, the final Kaddish, the mourner’s Kaddish, Fishbein was immersed in sorrow, and it took some time for him to come back to himself. He did not catch the speaker’s name or where he was from, but up on the bimah was a big, broad-shouldered man with a black beard and blacker eyes, ruddy cheeks, and skin darker than Golde’s. He opened his mouth and boomed in a voice that was enormous even in comparison to Anshel’s. It was like thunderclaps resounding between mountaintops, and the census of the parsha was the focus of his words.
Shema-Yisroel! he boomed in the accents of the East. You citizens of Memphis, recall that other Memphis where your fathers were enslaved! Once again, the Lord God commands an accounting of your numbers and a tax that will mean atonement of your sins!
They were close to Pesach. Fishbein assumed they would listen to a jeremiad about bondage to the world of the flesh and redemption from it, which was freedom, freedom to choose another bondage, a better bondage, one to a book of Law and priestly obligation in return for which Ha-Shem would embrace them. It was a pleasant theme, one of renewal. The open windows of the synagogue filled the air with the fresh, budding world outside. For the first time that day, Fishbein inhaled the scent of regeneration and was nearly consoled. Then the orator took a turn he did not expect.
Far from here, the man said, far from this fat land with its pretty snares and stealthy traps that ensl
ave the righteous, lies a world struggling to be reborn! It is Eretz Israel, the land of your fathers, and she calls to you, she calls to you in the morning, she calls to you in the afternoon, she calls to you in the night! You must make ready your souls to receive her! She will save you and hold you at her bosom, for nowhere else in the world will you be safe, and nowhere else in the world will you be free!
Look to Germany, he said, where Leviathan licks his lips and sharpens his teeth! How long shall the children of Moses recline there, sleek and satisfied upon their couches before they find them full of nails and sharpest knives? Look to your own New York, where Germany’s handmaidens gather to set the stage for your condemnation! And here! Even here! Where you are used to riding your river in comfort, holding the hands of gentiles, who pretend not to despise you as you drift along, without purpose, without the guidance of the Lord! Here in the mountains to your east, is the devil William Dudley Pelley and his forgeries, the Benjamin Franklin Prophecy. Ah! You do not know him? He is a brother of the heart to the German Chancellor Hitler and in the mountains of North Carolina, he gathers his army, his Silver Shirts, who long for your blood and, failing that, your expulsion! There he gathers his people around him to teach them the vilest lies and pretend they have come from the mouth of your Franklin. Not since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has such filth been received so lovingly by our neighbors! Hear the alarm, O Israel, hear it!
The orator paused. He wiped his big, shining face with a white handkerchief the size of a dishtowel. For a moment, he seemed to collapse inward. His shoulders caved in toward his chest, his neck bowed ’til his beard touched his belt. Then, as if a tight coil had sprung inside him, he popped himself open, stretching his arms to the heavens. His face tilted upward and his chest filled with air as his conclusion boomed forth.
Come home, O Israel! Today the census of the people in our homeland reaches 350,000, although the tax Ha-Shem levies upon his people is steep in blood and sweat. But the arms of one’s mother are always sweet, even in the most troubled times. In Jerusalem, where yes! our people were slaughtered just five years ago for the great sin of praying at our Wall, we did not abandon her. From days of old they have tried to wipe us out, and yet we stay, and our numbers grow and grow. Come home, O Israel. Make aliyah! We will welcome you with bread and salt, with milk and honey. It is said that when a righteous Jew enters Jerusalem, even the stones dance. Listen to their music and come home!
The assembled applauded. Loeb and Goldsmith rushed over to shake the speaker’s hand. Then Loeb made an appeal for the World Zionist Organization and oral pledges were made. Even Fishbein was moved to pledge twenty dollars he could not spare. He left the synagogue inspired, resolved to present Minerva and Magnus with a new idea. Aliyah.
When he entered his home, he could not determine if the two lovers were flushed and breathing deeply because he had surprised them in an intimate moment or if they’d been arguing. They stood at opposite ends of the living room. What’s more, they looked in opposite directions, as if distracted by petty pursuits, although everything about their postures suggested this attitude was a deception. He heard Golde playing with the cat upstairs.
My darlings, he said to the other two, I have a solution to all our troubles.
They picked their heads up and regarded him with veiled looks. But what did they hide? Sorrow? Anger? No matter, his solution would distract from whatever ailed them.
Eretz Israel! he said. This is where we should go. To Jerusalem, City of Gold!
Blank expressions greeted his revelation. He went to Minerva first, grabbing her hands in his and speaking most passionately to her.
I am sorry, my child, that we did not go there straightaway when you was small. It’s where we belong. It is our home. Of course, if we had gone all those years ago, we would not have dear Magnus and our darling Golde in our lives, so maybe I’m only a little sorry.
He laughed in his strange, ragged manner so that the mirth that issued from him resembled a halting sob. He crossed the room to Magnus. He put his hands on the man’s shoulders and looked him square in the eyes.
I met a man today from Eretz Israel. He was darker than Golde. You know, in the East there are many Jews like him. And Africans who also live and prosper there. You will be as free as in Paree, I am sure.
He turned and stood with arms outstretched, one toward Minerva, the other toward Magnus.
So, what do you think? he asked.
He wiggled his fingers, expecting them to rush into his arms from blissful excitement. Magnus looked at his lover with his eyebrows raised, soliciting her assent before he made a move. When she spoke, her voice was as dry as Sinai sand.
Oh, Papa. You’ve gone meshugga.
Magnus intervened.
I don’t know, Minnie, he said. I wouldn’t mind walkin’ the steps my Lord walked.
Fishbein started. Here was a new kettle of fish, he thought. His Lord. When did Magnus become a Jesus man? Well, they were all raised that way, he knew, but never in all the years he’d known him had Magnus Bailey ever uttered anything like this ‘my Lord’ that just rolled from his lips as if that phrase of devotion was common to the core of him.
Minerva spoke up before he could follow his thoughts on where the complication of Magnus Bailey’s beliefs, should they prove just and deep, might take them all. She held out her arms much as her father did and lifted her shoulders.
Papa. Magnus. Do I look like a pioneer to you?
The men stared at her. Her shoulders dropped.
I didn’t think so.
Golde came down the stairs, the orange cat under her arm with its neck stretched out, its feet dangling. Why the cat didn’t struggle for release was a mystery. When she achieved the foyer, she put the creature down. It ran and hid somewhere. The child saw her grandfather and went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He bent his head to kiss her cheek.
Zaydee, she whispered in an available ear, is it safe yet?
Whats you mean, mine shepsele?
Her long green eyes narrowed and directed themselves toward her mother, whose hands were on her hips, whose mouth was pinched.
Oh, nothing, Zaydee! she said with her gaze yet on her mother. Her grip on her grandfather tightened.
Then Magnus came and took her from him, scooped her high up in his arms, which pleased her so that she laughed and put her head on his neck to kiss him in three wet little smacks.
Come, little brat, he said, and I’ll read with you. We’ll take the Good Book and act out parts. You can choose the chapter and verse.
She chose David’s escape from Saul’s wrath. They settled in a corner of the room with Golde perched on top of a couch, her hand shielding her eyes as she made believe she was at a tower window peering out over the realm of Israel. At first, Magnus was on all fours pretending he was a sheep in a rocky field under her gaze, then he used a thin, reedy voice and was Michal lying to her father. By the time Golde pretended to descend the tower wall by a rope of twisted bed sheets, they were all laughing, including the child who made her laughter a part of the play as an exultant cry of freedom from David’s mouth.
Fishbein had collapsed in a chair, entirely distracted and charmed by the tableau. Not until everyone settled down and Minerva went to the kitchen to lay out their lunch with Golde behind her wanting to help, dragging Magnus along with her small hand around his large one as she did not want to be separated from either of them even for a moment, did Fishbein consider the child’s whisper to him, its odd urgency, the look that passed between mother and child. He pondered the mood of the room when he’d returned from shul and regretted he’d been so enthused with the idea of aliyah that he’d brushed his observations aside. A moment lost, he thought, too late to decipher it now, but one I should not forget. Then Golde called him to the dining room for lunch.
After lunch, Fishbein took a long nap as was his habit. When he a
woke, he found himself tangled in blankets and in a sweat. Snatches of a nightmare came to him. He tried to put the pieces he could recall together. The dream had started out benignly enough. He was on a ship, a sailing ship soon to arrive at port. Golde was with him and he held her up high in his arms. Her legs wrapped around his bony hips. Their hearts were light, joyous. Although it made no sense since Jerusalem is a landlocked place, with no coastline, he felt he was showing her the shining city of gold as he had once held Minerva to show her Lady Liberty. That part of the dream he found reasonable, given the day he’d had. But then he remembered there’d been a chain of iron attached to his waist. When he looked backward to see where the chain led, he saw Minerva fastened to the other end. She was bent over the reclining form of Magnus Bailey, who looked to have something very wrong with him. Whatever it was, the sight caused Fishbein to gasp within his dream and clutch the child closer to his vest. He’d opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out. After digesting these details, ones both startling and vague as the elements of dreams often are, Fishbein shook himself, washed his hands, and quickly said a blessing of protection.
He went downstairs and the four had dinner together. Minerva returned as usual to her business, but at the latest possible hour. She could not abandon her livelihood on a Saturday night no matter how Magnus and Golde begged her to stay a little longer. The child went to bed on her own, and Magnus left also, back to that life of his they knew so little about.
Marching to Zion Page 19