Ellis Island & Other Stories (18 page)

“We can’t,” they answered, “and you shouldn’t, either.”

I shook my head. “I have a dispensation,” I said. This interested them, and they came closer.

“What kind of a dispensation?”

“From the Saromsker Rabbi.”

“From who?”

“The Saromsker Rabbi.”

They were baffled, but still interested.

“You never heard of Saromsk?”

“No,” they said, moving closer to the beef.

“Saromsk,” I went on, eating passionately, “is a great center of our people, in Central Asia. All the Geonim wanted to go to Saromsk.”

“They did?”

“Yes.”

“But did they?”

“No.”

“So?”

“So, Saromsk is that much holier. Even the Geonim couldn’t get there.”

“All right,” one of them said. “What kind of dispensation did the Saromsker Rabbi give you?”

“The Saromsker Rabbi,” I answered, “told me himself that when one is with devils in hell, in the bottom parts of purgatory, on a ship at sea, in prison, or in a starving country, one can eat anything that is proffered, as long as it isn’t
traif
and as long as one makes up for it in the two following years—by remaining
completely celibate.”

I could see that they were thinking. “Did he really say that?” they asked.

“Yes he did,” I said, knowing as well as they that there was no Saromsk, and no Saromsker Rabbi.

“Can you share the dispensation?” (They had not eaten for several days.)

“Certainly.”

How they grunted and groaned as they ate, singing to themselves, almost davening.

The next morning, we were gathered together and brought to an examining room in which were judges of a sort, on a platform, sitting at tables covered with green felt. I finally got my turn and was about to say in mellifluous English that I had mistakenly been labeled an anarchist. My words were to have been: “I am, sir, a devout constitutionalist, an advocate of democracy, and a believer in the processes of social order.” I had practiced half the night.

I was surprised yet again, for when I approached the bench I came under a thunderous barrage of questioning, designed, it seemed, to convince anyone that he was either mad or in a dream. My interrogator did not ask my name and did not pause one instant between questions.

“Are you a moron? Are you dumb? Do you have tuberculosis? Do you sing in your sleep? Why did Garibaldi wear a red shirt? Have you been in the army? What was your mother’s Christian name? Why have you come here? Do you believe in God? How much money do you have? Where is your sister? Who was Abraham Lincoln? Can you speak English? What is truth?”

At the end of all this, dumbfounded and throbbing, I said, “I am
not
an anarchist.”

“Anarchist?”

“Not anarchist.”

“Why did you bring up anarchism?”

“They wrote it on my coat,” I said, turning to show him the letter. Then I realized that the chalk had worn off. But he had already written “Anarchist.”

“What is your name?” he asked.

I swallowed hard. My chest almost imploded, but, as calmly as I could, I said, “Guido da Montefeltro.”

“How do you spell that?”

I told him. He wrote it down—very carefully.

For the next two days, we repeated the examinations. At each one, I stated that I was an anarchist, put my finger in my ear, like a pistol, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. “What is your name?” they would ask, not needing to be convinced further of my political leanings.

“Gui ! do, da Monte fel ! tro!” I would reply. “The world belongs to the ants!”

Soon they came to know me, but not long after they did, their places would be taken by other judges. However, Guido da Montefeltro, anarchist, was securely recorded in their enormous ledgers. I didn’t mind, thinking that when the time came to put the Italian anarchists on the Mediterranean boat they would search for Guido da Montefeltro. Meanwhile, I would wander about the hallways, babbling in Yiddish, and someone would return me to the great room, where I could go through the tests again, say that I was a tailor, and get on the ferry. That was my strategy. To me it seemed straightforward, simple, and direct, and I could see no reason in the world why it would not work.

It snowed for almost a week, and when there was no snow there was fog. I dreamed expansively about my Norwegian woman, and reached a state in which I was oblivious of the fact that I had become an Italian anarchist. Then, earlier than usual one morning, some bluecoats came to our dormitory and read off a list of Italian names, including that of Guido da Montefeltro. All the Italians assembled. This, I assumed, was the moment of reckoning; a steamer was bound for Genoa. The bluecoats counted the names on the list, and counted the Italians. One was missing.

They took away the Italians and made the several hundred of us who were left get up and stand in front of our beds. Chinese, Armenians, Russians, Poles, Jews, and Scandinavians, we were a perfect representation of Asia and Eastern Europe. The bluecoats were puzzled. One of them said that Guido da Montefeltro had probably killed himself during the night. His body would turn up in the harbor. “The door was locked,” said another. “Go get Jack. He’s had these peculiars since they came in.” While they were getting Jack, they made us say our names. Everything was in order.

Then Jack arrived. “Guido da Montefeltro,” they said.

He looked up and down the rows. When he saw me, he said, “C’mon, Guido.”

“Who?” I asked. They were already pulling me out.
“Ich bin ah Yid! Ich bin ah Yid!
I am a Jew!” I screamed, to no avail. My scheme seemed to have failed, and now I was going to spend the rest of my life in a jail in Genoa, along with the other Italian anarchists—who weren’t anarchists either, but had not been able to understand the questions. However, I was not going to Italy, and there was no steamer for Genoa. It had merely been decreed that the Italian anarchists were to work in the kitchen. So, I worked in the kitchen. I didn’t care. In fact, I came to enjoy it. I saw every scene as if it were a fine painting. That, I suppose, is one of the benefits of a life of the mind—when you can turn the kitchen from homeliness into a thing of beauty. With patience, all motion becomes dance; all sound, music; all color, painting.

We had a big iron stove, which stood about three feet off the floor and was constructed like a long open crate, with twenty burners on each side. Because it was winter, they were kept burning day and night, in a pavement of flame. The gas jets were always singing in green, yellow, and blue, and when I tended pots the pure warmth made me very happy. Sometimes I washed baking pans; I brought wine, eggs, and vanilla from storerooms; and after a few days, when they had become used to me, they let me peel hard-boiled eggs. I was told without explanation that this was a great honor.

Mist came in through the windows, and the snow turned to sleet and rain. The harbor around us steamed like a lake at dawn. I had been in America for two weeks, but I had not seen the land. How fond I became of the enormous, cheery Slavic women who did the cooking. Every evening, they boarded the ferry and returned to the continent. I asked if it were really there, and they laughed, which led me to believe that perhaps it wasn’t, and that they themselves were not real. Did the ferry take them into the mist and then disappear? Whatever it did, it would return the next morning with several thousand pounds of Slavic grandmothers, who may have lived only in my imagination but who made me taste sample after sample of their cooking. It was atrocious. But I had to say that it was good—which made them blush like maidens. I began to get fat. I didn’t mind this too much, if only because anarchists are always razor thin (a fat anarchist would be absolutely insufferable), with sparkling black eyes. Though I have always wished that they were blue, my eyes are quite brown, and quite soft.

One day, I was ordered to go to the bakery stores and bring back a fifty-pound canister of raspberry filling. I had never been to the sweet room, so I decided to look around—perhaps there would be a few hundred pounds of chocolate, from which I could break off a little piece. The chocolate was in a vault. I put the raspberry filling on my little hand truck, and then realized that something was out of kilter.

There was a little window, through which mist was spilling like a silver waterfall. Directly opposite, across a courtyard in which stood two water towers, was another little window, revealing shelves of bakery stores. To its left was a kitchen just like ours. I had discovered either a twin building or a mirror. I didn’t know which. But I decided for a moment that it
was
a mirror, because as I approached the window and peered out I saw a man who looked just like me, staring back. We faced one another for a long time. Then he closed his eyes. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. He did, too. We ducked down just at the same time, but he came up after I did.

“I thought that was the
goyisha
kitchen,” he said in Yiddish.

“It is,” I answered.

“So what are you doing there?”

“By mistake.”

“You ought to come here.”

“I’d like to,” I answered. “How can I?”

“There’s a door at the end of the hall on your right. It connects.”

“But it’s locked.”

“Rabbi Koukafka has the key. I’ll get him.” He disappeared.

Soon, I saw two heads in the other window. Rabbi Koukafka had a voluminous red beard, which made my heart race because it reminded me of the Norwegian woman’s red-blond hair.

“So,” he said across the gap, “what is a Jew doing in the
goyisha
kitchen?”

“America,” I said, and threw my hands up with a gesture of resignation.

“Do you follow the dietary laws?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, trying to look thin by closing my mouth tightly and crossing my eyes. “I haven’t eaten for days.”

“I’m not supposed to let people through that door,” said Rabbi Koukafka, “unless there’s a fire.”

“By whose authority?”

“The Commissioner’s.”

“Rabbi.”

“What?”

“Did not God command us to observe
Cashrut?”

“Naturally.”

“Whose authority is higher, the Commissioner’s, or God’s?”

“Ah,” he said, about to pull the key from his pocket, “a scholar. But wait a minute. If God wanted the door open, He would open it.”

“Rabbi, did God make the ocean?”

“Who else.”

“Did He cause ships to be made?”

“Yes.”

“And when He wants us to cross the ocean, doesn’t He make us get into the ships?”

“Yes, I suppose so, though He could, of course, do it in a multitude of other ways. For example, it is said—”

“But most of the time that’s how He does it, true?”

“Yes.”

“Now. He caused locks to be made, and He caused keys to be made. And when He wants us to go through locked doors, that means that He wants us to take the key and turn it in the lock. And Rabbi, at the moment, you have the key.”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, “as soon as I wash my hands.”

No Italian anarchists worked in the kosher kitchen, but the people who did wondered how I had come to be in their midst, and how I had come to work in the other kitchen in the first place. The story I told them drove Rabbi Koukafka’s eyes to the back of his head. Not even the Rambam could have untangled that web, and certainly not Rabbi Koukafka—who, despite certain talents, was not a paragon of wisdom. The more I embroidered, the more their mouths hung open. At the end, all work in the kitchen had stopped. Eggs were overboiling, drumming the bottoms of their pots. A pan full of something was sending up smoke. But when I finished they wouldn’t move. I waved my hands in front of their faces, and said,
“Nu?”

Rabbi Koukafka took hold of himself. “Look,” he announced, “it’s too complicated. The fact remains, however, that you’ve been stuck on the Island for several weeks, and for no good reason. I have an appointment with the Assistant Commissioner tomorrow. I will bring you with me, and the matter will be cleared up. In one more night you will be in America. Meanwhile, you can help us here, and sleep on the flour sacks.”

That day, I chopped several million carrots. They were fresh and full of sugar, and I knew by this that there had to be land beyond the mist, although I knew as well that one can dream up a perfect carrot. I began to think of how to search for my Norwegian. Perhaps in New York there were select parts of the forests, or small hamlets on the rivers, where the Norwegians lived. Sure that I would be able to find her during my first hour in the city, I sang for most of the night that I spent on the flour sacks.

On the second day, Rabbi Koukafka and the others came at dawn, and we worked very hard. Dinner that night was pot roast with raisins; my job was to sprinkle the raisins over the pot roast as it cooked. It was exhausting work, but I was not tired. At four o’clock, Rabbi Koukafka and I left the kitchen. I walked behind him through many gray corridors and up many steep stairs, half thinking that I would leave Ellis Island, half thinking that I was bound to stay there forever. We came to the offices of the commissioners, and sat down on a bench that ran the length of a narrow waiting room. In the center of this room was a partition of wavy glass through which one could see only colors and rough shapes. When the bluecoats moved, shimmering, down the translucent bars, it was like a wave sweeping across the sea. While we waited for the Assistant Commissioner, Rabbi Koukafka pulled his own beard.

As it got dark and the mist evolved from white through gray and blue to black, the lights came on and the heat came up. We were quite content to wait—at least I was. Every now and then, beyond the glass, a door would open and bluecoats or petitioners would emerge from it and walk down the hall. It was pleasing to observe this little ballet of rich cloudy colors. And the sounds of shoes on the tile, the latch clicking, and the slight rumbling of the glass were also pleasing. Whenever I heard someone, I looked up. One time, the door opened, but whoever had opened it stayed in place, hesitating. I was curious. A blue-coat came from one of the offices and stood just beyond the partition. He raised his right arm near the glass, and I could see that his finger was extended—pointing down the hall. “You’re welcome,” he said, and moved off to the left. Then the door shut and a cloud of burnished gold and red began to move slowly to the right.