A Day of Small Beginnings (17 page)

Nathan was taken aback by the man’s coldness, by his suspicion. But then, he had never spoken to a religious Jew before. He’d
always assumed such men—other than the violent zealots who lived in Israel’s West Bank settlements—were docile because they
kept to themselves, because they never looked up to meet the eyes of strangers. He took this as a sign of weakness, that they
must live in fear of the next assault.

“Nu?” the Jew said impatiently.

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand? I asked a simple question. Why have you come here?” The old man glared at him like an angry teacher
who had been given the wrong response and resented having to repeat the question.

Nathan’s chest contracted in alarm at the man’s tone, and at his own inability to articulate his thoughts or the seriousness
of his purpose, much less to impress the man with his credentials. He gave it another shot. “I thought I’d try to get some
feeling of my roots.”

“Feeling? Gottenu! What’s wrong with you? What does feeling got to do with it? Feel you’re a Jew? You’re a Jew or you’re not
a Jew. That’s that.”

The old man spoke with such force, Nathan was afraid to question him further. He waited a moment, hoping the man’s anger would
abate.

“I suppose I also came to see my father’s birthplace,” he offered.

“Who is your father?”

“Isaac Leiber.”

The old man seemed to take offense. “
Isaac?
What is
Isaac?
Itzik!”

“Yes,” Nathan said, recalling the name his mother used when her husband displeased her. “My grandfather was a rag peddler,”
he added, frustrated that he didn’t know his own grandfather’s name.

But the old man showed no sign of recognizing the name Leiber, which gave Nathan the numb, disorienting sense that he was
an orphan, that his lineage began in Brooklyn. “Maybe they were here and you just didn’t know them,” he suggested hopefully.
“My father left in 1906, when he was fourteen years old.”

A few crows cawed from a distance. The old man seemed to sag a little. He looked down at his feet and took a deep breath.
“I know who was your father. You been to the cemetery?”

Nathan shook his head, no longer knowing what to expect from this man.

“A Jewish grave is a sacred trust,” the old man said. “‘Generation to generation,’ it is written in the holy books. You must
honor our cemetery. Come with me.” Stepping from the doorsill, he grabbed Nathan roughly by the forearm and began to lead
him out of the alley.

“Where are we going?”

“To visit the graves. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

Nathan wrested his arm from the old man’s tight grip. He resented being made to feel like a truant schoolboy, and he hated
cemeteries. He’d never even been back to his father’s grave after the funeral. “Look, I’d rather meet the living than the
dead. I’d rather see a bit of the town,” he said.

The old man scowled. “Living? Who’s left living here? They’re all gone. Who’s left is in the cemetery.” He pulled again at
Nathan’s arm, but Nathan resisted so much he had to let go.

“Why are you here?” the man demanded. “You want to collect the names of the last Jews of Zokof to give to the government?
That’s what they asked you to do?”

“Why would they ask me to do that?”

The old man was simply furious. “To erase us from the ledger, like they erased three million. Don’t you know, Leiber? The
Poles are worse than the Germans. They’ve never settled their accounts with us.” He shot Nathan a piercing look and raised
his hand to his beard.

Stunned, Nathan watched the fingers, curled and thickened with age and arthritis, disappear into the smoky strands.

“You want to see your roots, Leiber? I’ll show you roots. Come with me,” the old man commanded.

A farm truck rumbled past at the far end of the alley.

“Come with me,” he repeated, his voice stern, authoritative.

Nathan hesitated. “I don’t understand this. With all due respect, I don’t care to see the cemetery. Why do you insist?”

“I am Rafael Bergson, the head of the
Chevra Kaddisha
of Zokof. The Burial Society, you say in English. There is no other position for me. We don’t have a shul. I am the leader
of a community of one.”

“You’re the last Jew in Zokof?” Nathan couldn’t believe it.

The old man nodded slowly. “Before the war, we were five thousand souls. Five thousand of us and five thousand Poles. Now
it’s their town, like we were never here. Even in the cemetery.” His voice trailed off. “Ach!” he burst out, waving his hand
against the still air as if to push aside an annoying pest. “Come, I will show you.”

Nathan, sensing that Rafael Bergson would not relent in this matter, bent his head in submission. “It’s far to walk,” Rafael
said. “Where is your driver?”

That’s all he needed, Nathan thought, to walk up to Tadeusz and have to explain why he wanted to go to a Jewish cemetery.
His teeth ground familiarly against one another, producing an ache that could not distract him from the debacle that was about
to take place. “The car’s in the town square, but the driver isn’t there. I told him to get some lunch.” He was frantic.

“We’ll go first to Jerzy.”

“I thought you said you were the last Jew?”

“Yeh. Jerzy’s a Pole. A good man, a mensch. If he’s at home, he’ll take us in his car.”

Relieved beyond all reason, Nathan allowed himself to be led a block from the main square, into a cement apartment building
whose ground floor and balconies were painted a faded yellow. Every balcony had a different type of railing, and each of them
had been woven with a different colored material, presumably to give their owners more privacy. But instead of lending a measure
of gaiety, as they might in a Latin country, Nathan thought the colors here merely added to the aura of dirt and decay that
seemed the hallmark of modern Polish architecture.

A woman wearing a blue-flowered smock over her housedress hung her wash over the balcony railing on the second floor. She
stared down at the two men, taking in every detail about them. But she said nothing. Didn’t even nod.

Rafael walked slowly to the end of the apartment’s dark entry corridor. A baby babbled. A television announcer’s voice boomed
through a closed door. The hall was dusty, the walls a patchwork of rutted cracks. He tapped on a door at the back, softly,
as if not to alarm the residents within. When no response came he slowly turned, and to Nathan’s great discomfort announced,
“We’ll use your driver.”

15

T
ADEUSZ HAD LEFT
Z
OKOF’S MAIN SQUARE, BUT
N
ATHAN’S RELIEF
was short-lived. Almost everyone he and Rafael encountered stared at them with disturbing intensity. Some returned his nods,
but not one of them responded to his smiles, modest as they were. He checked his watch ceremoniously, as much for the time
as to publicly indicate that his presence would, by necessity, be brief. “It’s eleven thirty. I have no way to find my driver
for another half hour,” he said. “We should wait for your friend to return home.”

Rafael shrugged, not with resignation, Nathan thought, but like a man who knew he had the upper hand. “It’s not such a big
town. If he’s a Pole, he’s at an inn,” he said. “Come. We will find him.” The subtle lift of his brow seemed to suggest amusement
at Nathan’s discomfort.

Nathan had never been less charmed by the singsong cadences of a Yiddish accent, which he had always found coarse and embarrassingly
overfamiliar.

“Come,” Rafael repeated. He pointed to the far side of the square and suggested they cut across. At the war memorial in the
center, wreaths of fresh flowers had been laid before the bronze soldier holding a cross.

Just off the square, Rafael stopped in front of a rough cement building. Three or four bicycles leaned against the outside
wall. “In here.” He pulled Nathan by the sleeve into a filthy, undecorated room. Shouting drunken men careened into one another
across the open floor, dull-eyed, faces red with the bloom of intoxication. The place stank of sweat, cigarettes, and beer.

Nathan’s fear at the sight of so many men unleashed by alcohol was magnified by what Rafael’s religious garb might provoke
in them. He was as frantic and ashamed as a man being made to walk naked in public. He felt certain the men would surround
him and Rafael. He saw himself on the floor, crawling to the door, the innkeeper turning his back. The disgrace of it, the
indignity. His skin was on fire, as if he were being horsewhipped.

Pop!
he cried inwardly.
I came back. God, why?
Instinctively, he retreated to the wall, terrified of impending violence.

Rafael stood a few steps inside the door, patiently waiting for Nathan to identify his driver. Despite his fear, Nathan took
a look at the old man. He had to admit, there was something almost noble about the way Rafael met the gaze of every person
who approached him. Since meeting Rafael, Nathan had regarded him merely as an unenlightened version of secular Jews like
Pop, who had outgrown the superstitious religion of the shtetl. But Pop had never been as strong a presence as this man.

From across the room, a heavyset Pole, his features stretched across his face as if someone were pulling at his cheeks, swerved
toward Nathan. “My driver’s not here,” Nathan said. He seized Rafael by the arm and rushed them both out the door before the
man could accost them.

Outside, Rafael calmly turned to Nathan. “Then we try the other inn, Leiber.”

Nathan couldn’t tell if Rafael meant this as a test or a taunt. He only knew the man, a complete stranger, had seen how frenzied
fear made him. “Look, I’m sure my driver will be back soon. I suggest we go to the square and wait for him,” he said quickly.

Again, Rafael shrugged. They returned to the square and waited against the car’s locked doors.

Minutes later, Tadeusz sauntered over. He barely glanced at Rafael. “Found what you were looking for?” he asked evenly.

Nathan thought to make introductions, but then remembered the old man’s paranoia. Besides, what could he say? What possible
professional reason could he give for keeping company with an Orthodox Jew? Worse, how could he explain why the old man addressed
him as “Leiber”?

When Rafael had first called him this, Nathan had been too embarrassed to correct him, hadn’t wanted to expose himself to
scorn for having Anglicized his name. But he’d begun to feel an odd camaraderie the name conferred on him in Rafael’s eyes.
Leiber,
not
Linden,
gave him legitimacy, like a password to Pop’s world. He held on to it now, like a talisman. “Please take us to the place
this man will direct you,” he said, deciding not to explain anything.

Tadeusz nodded perfunctorily, as if he and Nathan had not spoken during their ride to Zokof.

Slowly, heavily, Rafael folded himself into the left backseat of the tiny Peugeot and pulled his long coat in with him. Nathan
followed. When they were both settled, Tadeusz gave Nathan a quick glance in the rearview mirror and lit a cigarette. He squinted
into his outdoor rearview mirror, raced the motor, and sent the car lurching off the curb. No apology was offered.

Nathan wondered if Tadeusz was acting out of embarrassment at what he’d said, or if he was angry at Nathan for letting him
go on about Jews. The young man kept working at his cigarette with quick, aggressive drags, apparently trying for an appearance
of indifference about Rafael. For his part, Rafael seemed equally intent on ignoring Tadeusz.

Despite his uneasiness, Nathan saw something childish, almost comical, about two grown men refusing to look each other in
the face, as if afraid of what they might say. He settled nervously into his seat. Rafael looked straight ahead, hands on
his knees. They drove on in silence, punctuated only by Rafael’s terse directions in Polish. He led Tadeusz out of town, in
the opposite direction from where Nathan had come. To his right, Nathan saw a maze of vertical lines that were the trunks
of young birch and pine trees. The slender trunks, lit through the lacy canopy above, struck him as somehow delicate, almost
feminine, not at all like an American wilderness.