Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (42 page)

Father later asked me whether I’d seen Leybke in the
shul
.

“Of course I saw him. What do you think, I didn’t see him?”

I was desolate as I said this, heart-stricken over having to lie to Father on Yom Kippur.

Toward dusk, for the concluding
ne’ilah
service, I went back to the
shul
. This time, too, Leybke was nowhere to be seen.

I was sorry he wasn’t there, because for
ne’ilah
the rabbi himself took over, without a choir, without musical frills of any kind. He merely recited. But what a recitation! The lions and the deer, the flutes and the fiddles, the drums and the trumpets that were carved on the eastern wall—all stepped down to join the Jews gathered in prayer. Had Leybke seen this, he wouldn’t have said that the service in the Ekaterinoslav synagogue, with its military precision, was better.

I looked around again, but still no Leybke. It wasn’t until we got home from the synagogue to break the fast that I finally saw him. Who knew if he had prayed at all that day, or if he had fasted? He began by eating one prune after another. Who eats prunes on an empty stomach? And after we finished our meal, he again took to the prunes.

This bothered me. Why was he eating so many prunes? Even when guests showed up, he didn’t stop chewing on the prunes. The new arrivals were our sister Beyle and her tall, blond husband, Wolf, and Yarme the coachman and his pregnant wife. Leybke kissed his brother-in-law and embraced his sister, who stroked his shoulder the way one would an animal. He then snatched another prune from the table.

Our brother-in-law and Yarme the coachman were sitting with legs spread apart, listening open-mouthed to Leybke’s tales of the wonders of Ekaterinoslav. They kept asking him whether he’d made any money during his time in the army, but Leybke didn’t respond. Either he felt there wasn’t enough time to talk about it, or maybe he just didn’t want to give away the secret. And what was the point of talking with those simple people when there were now more interesting visitors who had suddenly come knocking, the chief prison guard and his beautiful Russian wife.

Our Gentile neighbors had evidently forgotten that they weren’t speaking to Mother. They showed up uninvited, smiling uncertainly.

“Good evening,” they said, and remained standing at the door.

Mother seemed happier with these visitors, who had been snubbing her, than with her own guests, even Leybke. She welcomed them like beloved in-laws, drew up a pair of chairs, and, with the same embarrassment displayed by the Gentile neighbors, said, as if to herself and to no one in particular, “Well, what do you know? Such a surprise, such welcome guests!”

“
Nichevo
… There’s no need,” said the prison guard, flicking his hand in a gesture to make light of the situation, and sat himself down, legs apart like the others.

The Jewish visitors fell silent. They began to fidget in their chairs.

Leybke sensed that the new arrivals were people of his own sort. In an instant, he forgot all about his own sister, her husband, and Mother, and, speaking now in Russian, launched into his stories, addressed not to us, but to the prison guard and his beautiful wife.

He began afresh to tell about his company commander, who used to call him “Lyovka,” and what a brilliant fellow he was. This prompted the prison guard to recall his own sergeant major, and the general whose wife had run off with a lover.

Then the Russian woman asked Leybke if, perchance, he knew of her native village on the Don River.

“Of course I know it. What do you mean? I was there on maneuvers,” Leybke replied.

“Really?” she said, settling deeper into her chair. “So what’s doing there? Did you ever come across the local priest?”

“Of course I did. How could I have missed him? He’s an old man, that priest.”

“An old man, you say? How could he be old? When I left home he still had a black beard.”

“No, Madam, he’s an old man already and has a white beard now.”

“Maybe it’s not the same one …”

“No, Madam, it’s the same one.”

Yarme the coachman and my brother-in-law Wolf wanted to get in a word of their own. After all, they too had once served in the Russian army. But the prison guard’s wife and Leybke rattled on in Russian, so fast that who could keep up with them? Only Father was finding satisfaction in the exchange. If you provide hay for Russian horses, then you understand some of their language.

He actually sat there with a big smile on his face, and every few minutes gave Mother a look and remarked, “Heh, Frimet? What do you say about my Leybke? Who would have thought?”

Mother said nothing. With the same intensity with which she had welcomed her Gentile neighbors, Mother now remained utterly silent. It wasn’t her nature to let others talk and for her to keep quiet. She liked being noticed, with people listening to what she had to say. Now others were doing all the talking and ignoring her.

The next morning, when Leybke was away, Mother several times remarked that he talked and talked about Ekaterinoslav as if he’d come back from across an ocean. And what was the big deal about his commander calling him “Lyovka”?

“Don’t be foolish,” Father replied. “Isn’t what he has to tell interesting?”

“Once maybe. But over and over? My regiment this, my regiment that. You can get tired even of too much of a good thing.”

“I never get tired of listening to him,” Father replied, smiling into his beard.

“Then good for you. Whoever doesn’t begrudge you this pleasure shouldn’t know from pleasure.”

Mother was out of sorts. She felt Leybke’s presence pressing on her. He wasn’t her son. He never called her
Mumeshi
, Auntie, the way Toybe did, but simply
Mume
, Aunt. He never tried to endear himself to her, like Toybe had. That must have been the reason why she complained about his snoring at night and his not coming home on time for meals. After all, she wasn’t obliged to keep his supper warm.

However, all that was totally set aside when a postcard arrived from Warsaw, informing us that Tsipe, Mother’s one and only daughter, from her first husband, was coming to visit for the Sukkoth holiday. From the card one couldn’t make out whether she was coming by herself or with her intended groom, the brush-maker. Altogether, Mother didn’t know what had become of Tsipe’s engagement. But, whatever the case, one had to prepare, and prepare some more.

Mother set to work, even though the house had been thoroughly gone over for the High Holidays. As if starting fresh, she cleaned and she polished. The hands that once had grasped brass door handles were now scouring the floors.

When Father left her the money for the holiday provisions, Mother complained without even counting the amount.

“How much are you leaving me?”

“How much should I leave?”

“You forget that Leybke is here, too.”

“I didn’t forget anything. I actually left you more than usual.”

Mother quickly counted the copper coins that had been knotted in a kerchief, and, before Father even managed to pull on his kapote, she threw the unwrapped clump at him, scattering the coins.

“What are you leaving me? What am I to buy first?”

“Why are you getting so worked up? How much do you want me to leave you?”

“What do you mean? Don’t you know that everything for the holiday is very expensive? Your Leybke likes to eat the best, and my Tsipe, God bless her, is also coming for the holiday.”

“Your Tsipe?” Father asked, as if he hadn’t heard properly. “What’s this?”

“Why not? She’s not my child?”

“I’m not, God forbid, taking her away from you. Let her come. Why not? But where will you put her up?”

“Where, you say? You think there won’t be room for her in her mother’s house?”

“I’m not saying no. Nevertheless, we have to think about where she’ll sleep.”

“I’ve already thought about it. She’ll sleep in Mendl’s bed.”

“And what about Mendl?”

“He’ll sleep with you.”

Father was silent for a moment. He looked down at the scattered coins and asked through a clenched mouth, “And what about Leybke?”

“Leybke can sleep at your sister’s, at Naomi’s.”

“Why at Naomi’s? Hasn’t he got a father? Why can’t your Tsipe sleep at your sister Miriam’s?”

“Are you driving her out? She’s not even here yet, and already you’re driving her out?”

“I’m not driving her out, but my Leybke is as dear to me as your Tsipe is to you.”

“Leybke is a man. He can sleep wherever he wants. And my Tsipe is not your Toybe.”

Father’s hand missed its way into the sleeve of his kapote. As he stood there, tall and broad-shouldered, it was clear that Mother’s words had struck home. He asked no more questions. Groaning wearily, he slipped on his
kapote
, drew another wrapped clump of coins from deep inside his trouser pocket, left half of it on the table, and went out, stooped, heavy-footed, a deep silence burdening his sagging shoulders.

After he left, Mother resumed her cleaning, working even more furiously and in an embittered mood. She blew her nose often and noisily. Her head was buried in the objects she was polishing. She wept.

In the end, it turned out that all the squabbling had been for nothing. Leybke himself suggested that a bed be made up for him in the kitchen on benches, and that Tsipe be given his bed.

Tsipe arrived the morning of Sukkoth eve, a young woman with a rosy complexion, unfamiliar scents, and a foreign, big-city bustle. The whole house suddenly filled up with her presence. She set down her boxes and baskets and strewed her scarves, gloves, and purses on the beds. She fluttered around the room like a startled hen, carried on about everything, and on the very first day complained to Mother that the mirror was hung too high, which made her face look blue.

Mother’s wig slid to one side. She was at a total loss.

“Tsipeshi,” she said, as she went about busying herself, “how are things with you? How’s your health? I heard you had a cough, poor child.”

“I’m fine, Mother,” Tsipe hastened to reply. “I didn’t have a cough.”

“You don’t look that well to me. Is anything, God forbid, troubling you?”

“No, Mother, what should be troubling me?”

“I don’t know. You’re all alone in Warsaw …”

Mother screwed up her face. She probably would have preferred for Tsipe to look unwell.

But Tsipe’s cheeks glowed pink, blood-red mixed with milk-white. Blond down covered her pretty chin, in which a tiny dimple, smack in the center, smiled of its own accord. And when Tsipe opened her small, fresh lips, two more dimples smiled out on each side of her face.

Toybe, now married to Little Shoemaker, had small teeth, white and glistening like Father’s. Tsipe’s teeth were long and wide. If not for those teeth, people would have followed her in the street.

As it happened, though, people ran after her all the same. Her figure alone, with its proud carriage, long legs, and narrow hips, moving with a life of their own, attracted young and old. Apart from that, Tsipe had a head of thick, shining, dark-brown hair, like chestnuts about to burst from their casings.

Leybke couldn’t take his small, black eyes off her, nor could he stop smiling sheepishly at her.

In honor of Tsipe, Leybke had acquired a new pair of holiday shoes, varnished leather, with big, flat toes. He wore his black hat at an angle. In the mornings he washed himself with scented soap and sprinkled himself with a liquid that tickled the nose. He parted his hair in the middle, and was continually flicking feathers off his new suit of clothes.

He spoke Russian with Tsipe. She knew Russian, too, otherwise she could never have worked as a salesgirl in the largest ladies’ wear shop in Warsaw.

She said that in her shop people spoke either Russian or Polish all day long, and sometimes even French. Who the people speaking French were, Tsipe didn’t say, but presumably she was one of them. The customers were the wives of generals and gentry, dancers from the Great Theater, and other high-toned beings.

Tsipe also told us that the Governor-General of Warsaw had a
lyubovitsa
, a mistress, who was the most beautiful woman in all of Poland. Tsipe knew her as well as, say, her own mother, maybe even better. She went to all the operas and plays without paying a groshen. But she had grown tired of all this theatergoing, and, moreover, she had to rise early in the mornings to get to the shop to supervise things and make ready for the day. After all, she was the
starshe panna
, the senior salesgirl.

This explained why Tsipe, on her visit to us, slept well into the day. The door to the main room was kept closed, and we walked around on tiptoe. Father had to say his morning prayers in the kitchen. Leybke, dressed all in black, wandered about stiffly, like a temporary visitor. Mother boiled milk with cocoa for Tsipe and served it to her in bed, along with slices of cake. Tsipe didn’t wash in the kitchen, like the rest of us, over the large slop bucket, but in a blue bowl, which Mother borrowed every day from the chief prison guard’s wife.

Tsipe took a long time getting up and an even longer time dressing. She owned a variety of small mirrors and combs. Hairpins, brooches, and all sorts of tiny bottles lay scattered on the table and the windowsill, giving off a sweetish, suffocating smell that even permeated our food.

All morning long Tsipe sang songs in Polish and Russian, not like the one Ite sang, about the lad who went home to Vienna, but about someone called “beautiful Helena,” and another about someone who was thought to have been a priest’s daughter but who turned out to be Jewish.
Tsipe said that the song was from an opera called The Jewess, which was now being performed in Warsaw, at the Great Theater.
She also told us that she knew one of the singers, Battistine, who sang better than anyone else in the world. Not even angels sang like he did.

“
Da, da
,” Leybke nodded. “That same Battistine was also in Moscow.”

“I would imagine,” Tsipe said. “He sings everywhere, even before the Tsar.”

“Is he Jewish?” Mother asked in a very respectful tone, not so much because of Battistine but out of awe of her one and only, pretty daughter.