A Day of Small Beginnings (7 page)

He’d left for America just before I married Berel. “I have to go,” he’d said. “My parents are crazy from worry they can’t
pay my way out of the army. My mother goes around saying she doesn’t know what’s worse, that they starve the Jewish boys or
that they feed them trayf.” He’d straightened the books he was carrying. I could tell he was getting up courage. “Besides,”
he said, eyes downcast with shyness, “I couldn’t stay here with you being Berel’s wife.”

I’d nodded, unable to speak, but for the rest of my life I sang his tune at my window and pretended I still heard him humming
it back to me. On my deathbed, people thought I cried out for my husband, but it was Aaron and his tune that I was remembering.
My regret followed me even then. That there’d been no child to teach that melody to gave my heart its last anguish.

Itzik sat down on Mendel’s doorsill and hugged his knees to his chest. He stared intently at Aaron’s guitar as if it were
the only thing he could rely on for comfort. Every once in a while, he lifted those great big eyes of his and stole a glance
at Hillel, who returned the look with an encouraging nod.

It was nearly nightfall when Mendel finally returned home, bent over and out of breath from poor lungs and overweight. His
hands I remember most, black with dirt, fingers broken as tree branches and just as gnarled.

“What’s this?” He frowned at Hillel and Itzik, who’d stood up as he’d approached.

“I’m Itzik Leiber, Mordechai the Ragman’s son, from Zokof,” Itzik said, his words muddled together. Mendel turned to Hillel
and raised his bushy brows.

“He’s my friend,” Itzik blurted.

“You’re a Zokofer?” Mendel asked Hillel.

“No, I’m from
łód
.”

Mendel nodded. “So,” he said, turning to Itzik. “What brings you to Warsaw? Your father knows you’re here?”

“No,” Itzik answered, lowering his eyes.

Mendel looked hard from one young man to the other. “Do you think I don’t know what’s what here, boy? Your father gave you
a good thrashing and you took off, right?” He eyed Hillel’s clean-shaven face suspiciously. “From the look of things, he caught
you reading trayf books, right?”

Incredulous, Itzik denied it.

“Ach.”
Mendel spat disgustedly. “You’re all the same. A worthless generation. I’ve seen your kind before. You boys from the provinces,
with your heads puffed up with socialist nonsense, come here to make trouble.” He swatted impatiently in Itzik’s direction.
“What do you think, I’m going to put a roof over your head and feed you while you laze around? Go to America if you want to
live in a godless place.”

“See here,” Hillel interjected. “We only met at the train station. I was just helping him find you.” Since Hillel knew nothing
about Itzik or why he’d come to Warsaw, he turned to him for support. But Itzik remained speechless, which Mendel seemed to
take as proof of his assessment of the situation.

“Your father is a pious man,” Mendel said evenly. “I won’t play any part in your game, boy. Go back home. Ask his forgiveness
and study Torah like a Jew.”

With that he pushed past the two boys, opened his door, and went inside. The sharp smell of pickled cabbage escaped briefly
from within. I thought to try to go after him, make him reconsider, but something about the man put me off. A man who doesn’t
listen, who jumps to conclusions, can be a danger. I didn’t trust him to take care of Itzik. After all, this was the cousin
of a man who’d abandoned his family. I didn’t see a wife or children. The situation didn’t look good. Not safe. Itzik was
better off with Hillel.

Itzik stood motionless, his ears burning dark crimson for all the world to see. Hillel fidgeted with a string on his guitar
and began to gather his things again. In an instant, I was at his ear, humming. He had to take Itzik with him. I had to make
sure of that.

Hillel’s head jerked up at the sound of my voice. He looked quizzically at Itzik, who was too lost in his shame to notice.
“Come, Itzik,” Hillel said softly, putting his hand around the boy’s shoulder. “What do you need with him, anyway? You can
stay with me, if you want. We can go to my friend Piotr’s house.”

Itzik ran his fingertips across Mendel’s closed door but stopped when he reached the bronze
mezuzah
on the doorpost. He considered it for a moment, then with a quick hoist of his bundle, turned away. “Are you really a socialist,
like Mendel said?” he asked.

“Of course,” Hillel answered, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

“What’s a socialist?” Itzik’s little face was more animated than I’d seen it. This boy whom I could not reach, whose soul
had bolted itself into a prison of anger and resentment, was coming alive before my eyes. And why? Because of a man I’d brought
to him, Hillel the Socialist.
Dear God,
I called to the heavens,
do not let this child of mine go.

Hillel smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. “A socialist is a person who believes that everyone has equal worth and
a right to an equal chance in life, no matter if their father was a prince or a peddler.”

“Do they have rabbis?”

“No. We believe in mankind, not in God, not in any religion at all.”

Itzik’s eyes opened so wide you’d think he’d just seen the Messiah.

“Do socialists ask for money from poor people?”

“We share what we have to fight against capitalists who exploit poor people.”

That was it for Itzik. With a grin so wide it changed the whole contour of his face, he said, “I’m a socialist too.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Hillel, laughing, and clapped Itzik on the back. “I’m sure you are.”

I’m sure you are a fool, Hillel,
I said,
if you socialists think you can drop four thousand years of wisdom into a slop bucket and say that God and Torah are a figment
of our imagination.
With dread growing in my soul, I watched helplessly as Itzik and Hillel left Mendel’s courtyard and sauntered past the skeletal
remains of the day’s market in Plac Grzybowski. Near Twarda Street, Itzik ventured a tentative pat on Hillel’s shoulder.

“Look over there,” Hillel said, pointing to a grand white building. “That’s the new shul built by the No
yk Family so they
could put their name on something. Do you really think this city needs another shul? Think of what they could have done with
that money. Given it to striking workers or hungry mothers.”

Itzik looked up happily at his new rebbe. “In Zokof, I used to say the rabbis were all thieves. You should see how they came
after my mother when my father left. I had to throw them out of the house.”

“So your father didn’t throw you out, like Mendel said?”

Itzik shook his head.

“Ha! Mendel was talking to the wrong man. My father’s last words to me were, ‘Never enter this door again, you Bolshevik!’
He didn’t care that my mother was screaming for me. I was her favorite, got all the meat she could save up special, and he
knew it, the old bastard. Where did he go, your father?”

“He just left. The day before
Shavuos,
two years ago. Said he’d got us through the winter and that’s all we were going to get from him.”

“What about your mother?”

“She cried. Same as always. And my brother Gershom went running to the shul. Same as always.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to work at the mill.”

“How was the pay?”

“Terrible.”

“The hours?”

“From eight in the morning to ten at night, six days a week.”

“You know what that is? That’s slavery.”

Itzik’s face brightened at being understood. “I had no choice,” he explained eagerly. “There was no one else to feed the family.”

“That’s why it’s slavery. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the rabbis. Instead of fighting slavery, fighting for the rights
of the workers, for people like you who have no choice, they tell us to pray. They’re all cowards. No
yk’s shul over there
is just a shell where weak men run to hide like snails.”

Itzik’s eyes were shining unnaturally bright. His head bobbed up and down as if he’d just received the revelation from Mount
Sinai. His voice grew stronger as he struggled to tell Hillel who he was. Even though I sensed he was shocked at his own candor,
he was desperate to nestle under Hillel’s warm wings.

I was sick to my core. What had I done? My Itzik was being pulled in by a man who had no respect for a house of God. A man
whose philosophy could land him in prison, and Itzik along with him.

They passed No
yk’s shul, contempt written across both their faces. This confidence that Judaism could be taken for granted,
insulted even, made me afraid.

A growing wave of anxiety for Itzik overtook me. He was like the Wicked Son they tell of at the Passover Seder. The one who
knows the Four Questions he’s supposed to ask, about why this night is different from all other nights, but who doesn’t want
to hear the answers because he wants to keep his distance from Jewishness. My father used to say that the child of the Wicked
Son is the Simple Son. He barely understands what’s happening at the Seder because his father didn’t teach him the tradition
and his grandfather, the Wise Son, is gone. By the fourth generation, all that’s left is the Son Who Doesn’t Even Know There
Is a Question. That will be Itzik’s grandchild. If Hillel doesn’t get him shot first.