COMMUNIST FORCES AT WORK
There are some advantages and many disadvantages in being born a Ruthenian Jew, but it was to be a long time before Lubji Hoch discovered any of the advantages.
Lubji was born in a small stone cottage on the outskirts of Douski, a town that nestled on the Czech, Romanian and Polish borders. He could never be certain of the exact date of his birth, as the family kept no records, but he was roughly a year older than his brother and a year younger than his sister.
As his mother held the child in her arms she smiled. He was perfect, right down to the bright red birthmark below his right shoulderblade—just like his father’s.
The tiny cottage in which they lived was owned by his great-uncle, a rabbi. The rabbi had repeatedly begged Zelta not to marry Sergei Hoch, the son of a local cattle trader. The young girl had been too ashamed to admit to her uncle that she was pregnant with Sergei’s child. Although she went against his wishes, the rabbi gave the newly married couple the little cottage as a wedding gift.
When Lubji entered the world the four rooms were already overcrowded; by the time he could walk, he had been joined by another brother and a second sister.
His father, of whom the family saw little, left the house soon after the sun had risen every morning and did not return until nightfall.
Lubji’s mother explained that he was going about his work.
“And what is that work?” asked Lubji.
“He is tending the cattle left to him by your grandfather.” His mother made no pretense that a few cows and their calves constituted a herd.
“And where does Father work?” asked Lubji.
“In the fields on the other side of town.”
“What is a town?” asked Lubji.
Zelta went on answering his questions until the child finally fell asleep in her arms.
The rabbi never spoke to Lubji about his father, but he did tell him on many occasions that in her youth his mother had been courted by numerous admirers, as she was considered not only the most beautiful, but also the brightest girl in the town. With such a start in life she should have become a teacher in the local school, the rabbi told him, but now she had to be satisfied with passing on her knowledge to her ever-increasing family.
But of all her children, only Lubji responded to her efforts, sitting at his mother’s feet, devouring her every word and the answers to any question he posed. As the years passed, the rabbi began to show interest in Lubji’s progress—and to worry about which side of the family would gain dominance in the boy’s character.
His fears had first been aroused when Lubji began to crawl, and had discovered the front door: from that moment his attention had been diverted from his mother, chained to the stove, and had focused on his father and on where he went when he left the house every morning.
Once Lubji could stand up, he turned the door handle, and the moment he could walk he stepped out onto the path and into the larger world occupied by his father. For a few weeks he was quite content to hold his hand as they walked through the cobbled streets of the sleeping town until they reached the fields where Papa tended the cattle.
But Lubji quickly became bored by the cows that just stood around, waiting first to be milked and later to give birth. He wanted to find out what went on in the town that was just waking as they passed through it every morning.
To describe Douski as a town might in truth be to exaggerate its importance, for it consisted of only a few rows of stone houses, half a dozen shops, an inn, a small synagogue—where Lubji’s mother took the whole family every Saturday—and a town hall he had never once entered. But for Lubji it was the most exciting place on earth.
One morning, without explanation, his father tied up two cows and began to lead them back toward the town. Lubji trotted happily by his side, firing off question after question about what he intended to do with the cattle. But unlike the questions he asked his mother, answers were not always forthcoming, and were rarely illuminating.
Lubji gave up asking any more questions, as the answer was always “Wait and see.” When they reached the outskirts of Douski the cattle were coaxed through the streets toward the market.
Suddenly his father stopped at a less than crowded corner. Lubji decided that there was no purpose in asking him why he had chosen that particular spot, because he knew he was unlikely to get an answer. Father and son stood in silence. It was some time before anyone showed any interest in the two cows.
Lubji watched with fascination as people began to circle the cattle, some prodding them, others simply offering opinions as to their worth, in tongues he had never heard before. He became aware of the disadvantage his father labored under in speaking only one language in a town on the borders of three countries. He looked vacantly at most of those who offered an opinion after examining the scrawny beasts.
When his father finally received an offer in the one tongue he understood, he immediately accepted it without attempting to bargain. Several pieces of colored paper changed hands, the cows were handed to their new owner, and his father marched off into the market, where he purchased a sack of grain, a box of potatoes, some gefilte fish, various items of clothing, a pair of secondhand shoes which badly needed repairing and a few other items, including a sleigh and a large brass buckle that he must have felt someone in the family needed. It struck Lubji as strange that while others bargained with the stallholders, Papa always handed over the sum demanded without question.
On the way home his father dropped into the town’s only inn, leaving Lubji sitting on the ground outside, guarding their purchases. It was not until the sun had disappeared behind the town hall that his father, having downed several bottles of slivovice, emerged swaying from the inn, happy to allow Lubji to struggle with the sleigh full of goods with one hand and to guide him with the other.
When his mother opened the front door, Papa staggered past her and collapsed onto the mattress. Within moments he was snoring.
Lubji helped his mother drag their purchases into the cottage. But however warmly her eldest son spoke about them, she didn’t seem at all pleased with the results of a year’s labor. She shook her head as she decided what needed to be done with each of the items.
The sack of grain was propped up in a corner of the kitchen, the potatoes left in their wooden box and the fish placed by the window. The clothes were then checked for size before Zelta decided which of her children they should be allocated to. The shoes were left by the door for whoever needed them. Finally, the buckle was deposited in a small cardboard box which Lubji watched his mother hide below a loose floorboard on his father’s side of the bed.
That night, while the rest of the family slept, Lubji decided that he had followed his father into the fields for the last time. The next morning, when Papa rose, Lubji slipped into the shoes left by the door, only to discover that they were too large for him. He followed his father out of the house, but this time he went only as far as the outskirts of the town, where he hid behind a tree. He watched as Papa disappeared out of sight, never once looking back to see if the heir to his kingdom was following.
Lubji turned and ran back toward the market. He spent the rest of the day walking around the stalls, finding out what each of them had to offer. Some sold fruit and vegetables, while others specialized in furniture or household necessities. But most of them were willing to trade anything if they thought they could make a profit. He enjoyed watching the different techniques the traders used when bargaining with their customers: some bullying, some cajoling, almost all lying about the provenance of their wares. What made it more exciting for Lubji was the different languages they conversed in. He quickly discovered that most of the customers, like his father, ended up with a poor bargain. During the afternoon he listened more carefully, and began to pick up a few words in languages other than his own.
By the time he returned home that night, he had a hundred questions to ask his mother, and for the first time he discovered that there were some ev
en she couldn’t answer. Her final comment that night to yet another unanswered question was simply, “It’s time you went to school, little one.” The only problem was that there wasn’t a school in Douski for anyone so young. Zelta resolved to speak to her uncle about the problem as soon as the opportunity arose. After all, with a brain as good as Lubji’s, her son might even end up as a rabbi.
The following morning Lubji rose even before his father had stirred, slipped into the one pair of shoes, and crept out of the house without waking his brothers or sisters. He ran all the way to the market, and once again began to walk around the stalls, watching the traders as they set out their wares in preparation for the day ahead. He listened as they bartered, and he began to understand more and more of what they were saying. He also started to realize what his mother had meant when she had told him that he had a God-given gift for languages. What she couldn’t have known was that he had a genius for bartering.
Lubji stood mesmerized as he watched someone trade a dozen candles for a chicken, while another parted with a chest of drawers in exchange for two sacks of potatoes. He moved on to see a goat being offered in exchange for a worn-out carpet and a cartful of logs being handed over for a mattress. How he wished he could have afforded the mattress, which was wider and thicker than the one his entire family slept on.
Every morning he would return to the marketplace. He learned that a barterer’s skill depended not only on the goods you had to sell, but in your ability to convince the customer of his need for them. It took him only a few days to realize that those who dealt in colored notes were not only better dressed, but unquestionably in a stronger position to strike a good bargain.
* * *
When his father decided the time had come to drag the next two cows to market, the six-year-old boy was more than ready to take over the haggling. That evening the young trader once again guided his father home. But after the drunken man had collapsed on the mattress, his mother just stood staring at the large pile of wares her son placed in front of her.
Lubji spent over an hour helping her distribute the goods among the rest of the family, but didn’t tell her that he still had a piece of colored paper with a “ten” marked on it. He wanted to find out what else he could purchase with it.
The following morning, Lubji did not head straight for the market, but for the first time he ventured into Schull Street to study what was being sold in the shops his great-uncle occasionally visited. He stopped outside a baker, a butcher, a potter, a clothes shop, and finally a jeweler—Mr. Lekski—the only establishment that had a name printed in gold above the door. He stared at a brooch displayed in the center of the window. It was even more beautiful than the one his mother wore once a year at Rosh Hashanah, and which she had once told him was a family heirloom. When he returned home that night, he stood by the fire while his mother prepared their one-course meal. He informed her that shops were nothing more than stationary stalls with windows in front of them, and that when he had pushed his nose up against the pane of glass, he had seen that nearly all of the customers inside traded with pieces of paper, and made no attempt to bargain with the shopkeeper.
The next day, Lubji returned to Schull Street. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and studied it for some time. He still had no idea what anyone would give him in exchange for it. After an hour of staring through windows, he marched confidently into the baker’s shop and handed the note to the man behind the counter. The baker took it and shrugged his shoulders. Lubji pointed hopefully to a loaf of bread on the shelf behind him, which the shopkeeper passed over. Satisfied with the transaction, the boy turned to leave, but the shopkeeper shouted after him, “Don’t forget your change.”
Lubji turned back, unsure what he meant. He then watched as the shopkeeper deposited the note in a tin box and extracted some coins, which he handed across the counter.
Once he was back on the street, the six-year-old studied the coins with great interest. They had numbers stamped on one side, and the head of a man he didn’t recognize on the other.
Encouraged by this transaction, he moved on to the potter’s shop, where he purchased a bowl which he hoped his mother would find some use for in exchange for half his coins.
Lubji’s next stop was at Mr. Lekski’s, the jeweler, where his eyes settled on the beautiful brooch displayed in the center of the window. He pushed open the door and marched up to the counter, coming face to face with an old man who wore a suit and tie.
“And how can I help you, little one?” Mr. Lekski asked, leaning over to look down at him.
“I want to buy that brooch for my mother,” he said, pointing back toward the window and hoping that he sounded confident. He opened his clenched fist to reveal the three small coins left over from the morning’s bargaining.
The old man didn’t laugh, but gently explained to Lubji that he would need many more coins than that before he could hope to purchase the brooch. Lubji’s cheeks reddened as he curled up his fingers and quickly turned to leave.
“But why don’t you come back tomorrow,” suggested the old man. “Perhaps I’ll be able to find something for you.” Lubji’s face was so red that he ran onto the street without looking back.
Lubji couldn’t sleep that night. He kept repeating over and over to himself the words Mr. Lekski had said. The following morning he was standing outside the shop long before the old man had arrived to open the front door. The first lesson Lubji learned from Mr. Lekski was that people who can afford to buy jewelry don’t rise early in the morning.
Mr. Lekski, an elder of the town, had been so impressed by the sheer chutzpah of the six-year-old child in daring to enter his shop with nothing more than a few worthless coins, that over the next few weeks he indulged the son of the cattle trader by answering his constant stream of questions. It wasn’t long before Lubji began to drop into the shop for a few minutes every afternoon. But he would always wait outside if the old man was serving someone. Only after the customer had left would he march in, stand by the counter and rattle off the questions he’d thought up the previous night.
Mr. Lekski noted with approval that Lubji never asked the same question twice, and that whenever a customer entered the shop he would quickly retreat into the corner and hide behind the old man’s daily newspaper. Although he turned the pages, the jeweler couldn’t be sure if he was reading the words or just looking at the pictures.
One evening, after Mr. Lekski had locked up for the night, he took Lubji round to the back of the shop to show him his motor vehicle. Lubji’s eyes opened wide when he was told that this magnificent object could move on its own without being pulled by a horse. “But it has no legs,” he shouted in disbelief. He opened the car door and climbed in beside Mr. Lekski. When the old man pressed a button to start the engine, Lubji felt both sick and frightened at the same time. But despite the fact that he could only just see over the dashboard, within moments he wanted to change places with Mr. Lekski and sit in the driver’s seat.
Mr. Lekski drove Lubji through the town, and dropped him outside the front door of the cottage. The child immediately ran into the kitchen and shouted to his mother, “One day I will own a motor vehicle.” Zelta smiled at the thought, and didn’t mention that even the rabbi only had a bicycle. She went on feeding her youngest child—swearing once again it would be the last. This new addition had meant that the fast-growing Lubji could no longer squeeze onto the mattress with his sisters and brothers. Lately he had had to be satisfied with copies of the rabbi’s old newspapers laid out in the fireplace.
Almost as soon as it was dusk, the children would fight for a place on the mattress: the Hochs couldn’t afford to waste their small supply of candles on lengthening the day. Night after night, Lubji would lie in the fireplace thinking about Mr. Lekski’s motor car, trying to work out how he could prove his mother wrong. Then he remembered the brooch she only wore at Rosh Hashanah. He began counting on his fingers, and calculated that he would have to wait another six weeks befo
re he could carry out the plan already forming in his mind.
* * *
Lubji lay awake for most of the night before Rosh Hashanah. Once his mother had dressed the following morning, his eyes rarely left her—or, to be more accurate, the brooch she wore. After the service she was surprised that when they left the synagogue he clung to her hand on the way back home, something she couldn’t recall him doing since his third birthday. Once they were inside their little cottage, Lubji sat cross-legged in the corner of the fireplace and watched his mother unclip the tiny piece of jewelry from her dress. For a moment Zelta stared at the heirloom, before kneeling and removing the loose plank from the floor beside the mattress, and putting the brooch carefully in the old cardboard box before replacing the plank.
Lubji remained so still as he watched her that his mother became worried, and asked him if he wasn’t feeling well.
“I’m all right, Mother,” he said. “But as it’s Rosh Hashanah, I was thinking about what I ought to be doing in the new year.” His mother smiled, still nurturing the hope that she had produced one child who might become a rabbi. Lubji didn’t speak again as he considered the problem of the box. He felt no guilt about committing what his mother would have described as a sin, because he had already convinced himself that long before the year was up he would return everything, and no one would be any the wiser.
That night, after the rest of the family had climbed onto the mattress, Lubji huddled up in the corner of the fireplace and pretended to be asleep until he was sure that everyone else was. He knew that for the six restless, cramped bodies, two heads at the top, another two at the bottom, with his mother and father at the ends, sleep was a luxury that rarely lasted more than a few minutes.
Once Lubji was confident that no one else was awake, he began to crawl cautiously round the edge of the room, until he reached the far side of the mattress. His father’s snoring was so thunderous that Lubji feared that at any moment one of his brothers or sisters must surely wake and discover him.
The Fourth Estate Page 3