Displaced Persons (30 page)

Fela had left to talk to Larry from the kitchen. Helen had stayed. She had sat on the bed and asked what he wanted. I don’t know, he had said. I don’t know what I want. I can’t make a decision. Helen thought he might be too tired to make a decision; why didn’t he decide when he felt a little better? It wouldn’t be long. He had whispered, Everyone wants for me to decide. And Helen had answered, hands folded in her lap, There’s plenty of time to decide. Plenty of time. No need to rush.

“He saw Hinda. With Mayer.”

“That’s news.”

“Nothing new,” said Pavel. “All the same.”

“What happened?” Helen was looking at Fela, but Fela said nothing. She almost was smiling, making fun, perhaps, but trying to hide it.

Pavel tapped his mug with his fingers. “I took them to the club.”

A pause. “Did you wear that shirt? It looks very good on you.” It was cornflower blue, casual, and he had worn a dark gray tie.

“I told you, Pavel! It’s beautiful!” said Fela. “I bought it for him, Helen. It’s maybe five years old.”

“How did it go?”

“Fine.”

“I mean, how do you feel about it?”

“Okay.” He turned his eyebrows up, lifted his hand to the side.

“Okay?”

“Okay, like nothing.” Pavel smiled. His throat was beginning to hurt again, even after the soup. But what could he do? It was worth it to give some little conversation when his daughter was here.

“What do you mean, nothing?”

Fela interjected. “That’s just what I said. I came home from the store and he was sitting, just in his chair. Nothing, nothing. Like now.” She went on. “‘So how did she look?’ I said. And he said, ‘Like a shriveled-up old woman.’”

“She did,” rasped Pavel. “Like a shriveled-up old woman.”

Helen turned from one to the other. “I guess it’s been a while.”

Fela slanted her eyes. “He saw her on the street once, in Midtown, not so long ago. But from a distance.” Then said, almost sharply, “Do you want some fruit? I have grapes.”

She got up from the table. Pavel watched her back, wide and regal, swathed in a violet cardigan. She banged around the kitchen counter, clapping the plates and bowls together. But nothing would break. She took care with dishes. He sniffed his light tea. He knew he was better, that when they went for his checkups the doctor now told him the same things he told her, that there were no terrible whispers about his health, the way there had been before the surgery, when his lungs would fill up with water in the middle of the night and Fela would hear him gulping and expelling air like a locomotive. He wasn’t
eggshells anymore. She snapped at him and he snapped back. He wasn’t glass.

He was a tough strip of twill. More, he was human, he was Joseph, the slave and prisoner pricked with bad luck and good, and smart enough to keep quiet, at least after he had learned a few lessons. The brother sold down the river, robbed of his beautiful coat. Everyone wanted Joseph dead and Joseph had held out. But Joseph died in the end, as Pavel supposed he himself might too. But not yet. He had something in him still, he was sure. Something in him still.

“I have a big box of letters she sent me when I was in Germany after the war, waiting for the visa. What she said in those letters! I was to her like a king, a prince!” He stopped, his throat aching, and took a sip of tea.

“So what, Pavel?” called Fela, from the counter. “You think she remembers?”

“One day,” he croaked, “one day I’ll take out that box and send her those letters. In one package. Just to remind her.”

“Ha,” said Fela. “And what will she do with them?” She came back to the table and moved into her chair.

“Why would you do that, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” said Pavel, looking at Helen’s lowered chin, at Fela’s tight mouth. “Just to see. Just to see.”

“I think you should keep them.” Helen pulled at a grape.

“You think?”

So maybe he would keep them. Maybe Hinda felt no guilt. Maybe he felt nothing either, no grief, no sorrow, not even, after seven years, humiliation. Maybe no one felt anything. It was all just people, the members of a family, streams of wool thread, separate, hooked into the same loom by coincidence, touching and twisting only when the design required. Maybe no one felt anything for anyone but the missing. Wouldn’t that be a joke! Surviving in order to argue and hate.

His daughter was staring. “You’re laughing,” she said. “Why are you laughing?”

Was he laughing? He supposed that he was. Pavel looked straight at Helen, trying to stop.

“I’m laughing,” he rasped, beginning to grin, his gums dry and exposed. “Why am I laughing? I don’t really know.”

But really he did. He patted her hand. He laughed, he thought, because it was funny.

September 1999

T
HE FUNERAL OF
T
SIPORA
Sheinbaum, once married to the leader of the Belsen refugees, was to begin at nine o’clock in the morning, promptly. Rush hour. But Fela was not nervous. Now that Pavel had been forbidden by the doctors to drive, they would get a ride from Rego Park to the memorial chapel in Manhattan. They would arrive on time, relaxed, their stomachs calm. Pavel would sit in the front to stretch out his bad leg, and she would sit in the back, staring out the window, her lower back resting against a cushion, with time for herself, not worrying. No responsibilities except to sit. Serene.

Pavel’s oldest friend, Fishl, picked them up in front of the house. He was three years older than Pavel, but he drove more stably, and without the twenty-mile-an-hour caution, not to mention the bravery against motorcycles and sports cars, that had made Pavel’s driving notorious among his friends. Fishl drove an Oldsmobile, the kind with
the long fronts that protected people in case of accident. With such a big vehicle, parking would be a problem in Manhattan, but it was worth it. Fela liked Fishl’s car, its unused lighters in the backseat, the windows that came down at the push of a button. The front had room for Pavel to stretch out his bad leg. She knew he was relieved not to drive, despite his protests to the contrary.

They would see everyone; with Dincja so sick, Fishl was excited to be out. These were not his close friends, although he knew one or two of them as long as Pavel had, and he wondered aloud, all across the Triborough Bridge and through Central Park, who would be there, who would be missing. There had been a feud between Tsipora and Gershom, now a prominent donor to charity, a feud that had started five years ago, about this project or that museum, some board that one or another was on, a big to-do. Pavel had trouble keeping up with this kind of detail—he never liked the politics, and they didn’t have the money to participate anyway—but he knew, from his head to his feet, that Tsipora was in the right. And even if she wasn’t, Gershom was in the wrong. They had been somewhere recently, Pavel and Fela, and Gershom had come up to them and greeted them warmly, all the while ignoring Tsipora, who stood next to Fela. It was a terrible humiliation for Tsipora, one that implicated Fela and that made her feel ashamed to this day. So what if he was prominent! Did that mean they all had to bow down to him? To the point of abandoning a friend?

Tsipora was the last link that bound them all together. No nickname, although there must have been something as a girl. Fela could not imagine it. She was a very grand lady. To Fela and to everyone else living she was always Tsipora, and the name, three syllables, biblical yet modern, elegant and large, evoked exactly the story it came from: Tsipora, wife of Moses, traveling with him, a partner. Yet the Moses of Tsipora’s life, her husband Yehuda, Yidl, was long dead. Twenty-five years now. And what had happened to the first Tsipora, the one from the Torah? No one knew. Not worth mentioning, the life of the wife. Ha. So, times had not changed too much.

Tsipora had deteriorated. Yidl had passed away when his natural force was still unabated. But Tsipora, a strong woman for at least two decades after his sudden departure, had not made it whole to her death. It had been a relief for her friends, it tempered the sadness, that the suffering of her last days was over. Even at the last she had struggled to attend the card game, sitting in the backseat of the car of the Budniks or the Krakowskis, traveling through Queens and inner Long Island and even, twice, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Chaim and Sima had unfolded their pretty mahogany card tables and fed them all with smoked fish from the local shops. The women played separately from the men, and Sima, toward the end, was the only one who would take Tsipora as a partner. Much younger than the rest, Sima, and so less angry about the money. When Vladka Budnik lost! It was a scandal, the way Vladka screamed. Her husband was afraid of her, afraid of losing among the men, which he did often. But Tsipora, that was the tragic thing. Couldn’t remember what happened from one hand to the next, and started in on a terrible speech in the middle of everything. This was one of Fela’s oldest friends in all the world, a friend to whom she and the others owed plenty. But in the last few years, women moved to the side of the room, bent toward the dried fruit when they weren’t hungry, began talking loudly of something important, anything, to avoid being Tsipora’s partner. And really, did Fela have the right to judge? She herself liked to win.

Fishl let Fela and Pavel off in front of the memorial chapel and went to park the car in the garage himself, waving Pavel off. They would save Fishl a place. A crowd was gathering outside already, though they were maybe twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Sima and Chaim stood on the line to sign the book of the mourners. Pavel became nervous when he saw a line, but someone would let him cut in front. Fela watched him pull himself over to Sima and Chaim, eager to chat.

Pavele, Pavele. Fela! Where are you? Come here. Sima gave Pavel
a hug and a kiss, then rubbed Fela’s shoulder.
Mazel tov, mazel tov.
Fela told us last week! When is Helen due?

Fela blocked the sound out. She turned this way and that, looking for the family. There was a separate room the funeral home had, a room where one spoke to the family in private. A guard watched the room, so mere acquaintances, strangers, couldn’t push their way through. Should she try to go in? She decided against it. From behind the guard she thought she could see Tsipora’s son and daughter, even the grandchildren, tall and grim, the girls in short black suits.

The people on the line to sign the book filed into the chapel. Someone had told them to. Fela and Pavel took seats in the third row. The first row, of course they couldn’t; but any farther back, it almost would have disrespected the friendship. Sima and Chaim sat just behind them. Very appropriate. Fela looked around. She didn’t see Gershom. She shouldn’t be surprised, but still. A young woman, perhaps forty, in a bright yellow dress—like a traffic light!—trotted past. Fela squinted. Her glasses were not for public use, even at a funeral, where one needed to look only dignified, not beautiful. Yes, the Kalmans’ daughter. A professor of some kind, still unmarried. Even she was here. Fela nudged at her husband with an elbow, then shook her head in the direction of the yellow dress. Pavel nodded. Fela faced toward the front again. Tsipora had a big following. It was nice that people’s children came. Still, to dress so flashy. Little kings and little queens, they had all raised their children to be. To do what they wanted. Little kings and little queens. The Kalmans were not the worst in spoiling, either. Even her own children, and no doubt their children after them, if Larry ever remarried—but Fela stopped the thought in its tracks. Wasn’t this what everyone wanted, children so carefree?

It was one of Tsipora’s qualities, a quality that Fela envied, that she truly did not begrudge anyone a bit of cheer and joy. They had been wealthy, splashy, for some years after the war. An enormous apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with artworks and
sculpture, expensive furniture. Parties not to be believed. The food enough for a banquet, and two dozen or more people, some refugees, some Americans, everyone mixed together, important and not important, rich people and people with nothing. Beautiful, and very giving, both Tsipora and Yidl had been. Against everything, they believed in their own happiness. That was what made the parties strange, the terrible effort they and everyone, all the guests, even the ones who knew better, exerted to make it joyful. It was strange, two people, each of whom had lost a child during the war, before they knew each other, making a new world, a golden calf, even, out of money made—well, who knew where.

Fela and Pavel had been at a party maybe two years after their arrival in the United States; Tsipora and Yidl had already been here some seven years. A Passover seder, but one that bore no resemblance to the noisy but orderly routines that Fela had been used to in her childhood home of nine brothers and sisters and many more cousins, nephews, nieces. The flowers in the apartment! Huge arrangements, that was what Fela had noticed first. Arrangements like sculptures themselves. Tsipora and Yidl’s possessions had not yet attained the heights that they would in the decade to come, before Yidl died and everything, all the money owed here and borrowed there, had come crashing into Tsipora’s well-kept home. Not the heights, but nonetheless impressive.

In that time they all were still very careful about the rituals; they couldn’t begin eating until the opening blessings and ceremonies were done. Time was passing, because a guest was late. Tsipora had invited an orphan to the seder. A woman who had grown up in the DP camp, gone to the schools Tsipora and Yidl had helped build, and moved to Israel on a children’s convoy Tsipora and Yidl had helped organize. Then she had come here, on a scholarship, to study opera. Opera! She knew two names in all of New York, and those names were Tsipora and Yehuda Sheinbaum. Tsipora had taken her under her wing.

But the girl had not arrived. How long would they have to wait? The guests were hungry. Fela had managed; she knew how to keep her hunger to herself; she prided herself on her ability to stand it. Pavel, too, he was very controlled. It made them a good pair. But some of the others! One wondered how they could have made it through all the deprivation, the way they peered anxiously at the parsley and shank bone on the seder plate, the way they sniffed in the air for the boiled chicken.

Tsipora had begun to worry. Where could this girl be? She told the story of their meeting not once but twice, how the girl had made a call from the public telephone of her music school, then met Tsipora for a coffee near Carnegie Hall. The girl had never been to Tsipora and Yidl’s home; she was in for a jolt. But a half hour passed, an hour, and more, and still she wasn’t here. Yidl opened a bottle of wine. They could start on that, just with the first blessings, he told his wife. Don’t worry, he had said. She’s fine. There’s an explanation. But he had looked concerned too. She lived in a dangerous neighborhood—perhaps—

It couldn’t be stopped. Tsipora had given in and started serving soup and fish. Perhaps with a little in their stomachs, the guests could wait on the main course; they’d do the Passover readings in between. Pavel clucked but kept silent. He liked things in their rightful order. And the fish was difficult, for all the guests, really, because to eat it in a home, one longed for one’s mother’s recipe. This was good, of course it was. But one liked what one had in one’s home, if one still could remember it.

It was maybe two hours from the arrival of the first guests that the room filled with a ringing. Tsipora had stood up and strolled to the little nook where the telephone stood. It was the orphan girl. Was she all right? Was she sick? Was she injured? What? From the dining table Fela had seen Tsipora’s wide face, plump even then, taking in the story over the telephone. Tsipora’s lips were set together, covering
her teeth, and her eyes narrowed downward in concentration. After what must have been a pause in the confession on the other end, Tsipora heaved her shoulders in a shrug and sighed. Then she closed her eyes and opened them again.

Well, my dear, she said into the mouthpiece, switching from Polish to Yiddish, her voice in a lullaby. Did you enjoy yourself?

Tsipora returned to the head of the table, settled herself at her chair, and said to the audience, You will never believe it.

Yidl was shaking his head.

You’ll never believe it. She went to a film. This afternoon.
The Life of Liszt.
She cried, she said, it was so terribly sad. And when it was over, she stayed for the next showing. She couldn’t get up. And when the second one was over, she stayed for the third. She walked all the way home before she remembered us.

What did she say? asked an outraged guest. What did she say?

I told you already, Tsipora said calmly. She went to the movies. It was a very tragic film.

But I don’t understand! The guest couldn’t calm down; the memory of the hunger he had felt made him angry. What did she say?

She said, said Tsipora, that the movie was beautiful. And I think it must have been. Yidl, you know, perhaps we should see it. I told her she makes good recommendations.

Fela remembered this as a lovely gesture, the gesture of a woman elegant inside as well as out. Fela’s own daughter had once done something very embarrassing, years later, after Yidl had died and Tsipora had lost all the luxuries to his debts. They had been at the small apartment to which she had been forced to move. It was a Sunday visit, just Fela and Helen, and Helen had been touching everything there was to touch: ashtrays, doilies, embroidered pillows. These were things that were still valuable in their own way, although not, of course, to be compared with the crystals and textiles of the old apartment. It was all right to touch. Helen was careful, anyway. Fela’s son—she
wouldn’t have let him near anything, even a book. But it was Helen who had gone toward the books. Fela and Tsipora had gone on talking, in Polish and Yiddish, back and forth without thinking, laughing a little. Fela had been totally absorbed, who knew in what. Important at the time. But Tsipora had seen, out of the corner of her eye, what Helen was doing at the bookshelves. She was touching a miniature set of Shakespeare’s plays, tiny, like for a doll, but readable still. Helen had dared, even, to remove one of them from its little white case to squint through the pages. During a pause in the women’s conversation, Tsipora had turned around and said to Helen, “Helinka, what are you reading?”

“Nothing,” Helen had said. She was at the beginning of high school, shy and explosive. She placed the little book back in the case.

“Nothing?” said Tsipora.

“We’re reading
Romeo and Juliet
for school.”

Fela had stood. It’s time to go, perhaps, Tsipora?

Tsipora had hoisted herself up from her armchair and gone to the shelf, patted Helen on the head. Helen bent away from under her hand and went to the closet to get the coats. Tsipora fingered the gilt lettering on the little Shakespeare set herself, gently but unsentimentally. I don’t even know who gave these to me, she said, in Yiddish, to Fela.