Job (14 page)

It was summer. The vermin in Mendel Singer's apartment multiplied unstoppably, even though the little brass wheels on the feet of the bed stood day and night in bowls full of petroleum and Deborah, with a soft chicken feather dipped in turpentine, brushed all the cracks in the furniture. The bedbugs crawled in long orderly rows down the walls, along the ceiling, waited in bloodthirsty malice for nightfall and fell onto the beds of the sleeping. The fleas jumped out of the black gaps between the floorboards into the clothes, onto the pillows, onto the blankets. The nights were hot and heavy. Through the open window came from time to time the distant roar of unknown trains, the brief regular thunder of a busy world stretching for miles and the murky haze from the neighbors' houses, dung heaps and open sewers. The cats made noise, the stray dogs howled, infants screamed through the night, and over Mendel Singer's head shuffled the footsteps of the sleepless, resounded the sneezes of those who had caught cold, meowed
the weary in agonizing yawns. Mendel Singer lit the candle in the green bottle next to the bed and went to the window. There he saw the reddish reflection of the living American night, which was taking place somewhere, and the regular silver shadow of a searchlight that seemed to be desperately searching the night sky for God. Yes, and Mendel saw a few stars too, a few miserable stars, mutilated constellations. Mendel remembered the bright starry nights at home, the deep blue of the widely spanning sky, the gently curved sickle of the moon, the dark rustle of the pines in the forest, the voices of the crickets and frogs. It seemed to him that it would be easy now, as he was, to leave the house and wander on foot, the whole night, until he was again under the open sky and could hear the frogs and the crickets and Menuchim's whimper. Here, in America, that whimper joined the many voices in which the old country sang and spoke, along with the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs. Between them lay the ocean, thought Mendel. One had to board a ship, another ship, journey another twenty days and nights. Then he would be at home, with Menuchim.

The children urged him to finally leave the neighborhood. He was afraid. He didn't want to be rash. Now, when everything was beginning to go well, one didn't want to provoke God's wrath. When had things ever gone better for him? Why move to other areas? What good did that do? The few years in which he still intended to live he could spend in the company of the vermin.

He turned around. There slept Deborah. Once she had slept
here in the room with Miriam. Now Miriam lived with her brother. Or with Mac, thought Mendel, quickly and furtively. Deborah slept quietly, half covered, a broad smile on her broad face. What does she have to do with me? thought Mendel. Why are we still living together? Our desire is over, our children are grown and provided for, why am I with her? To eat what she has cooked! It is written that it's not good for a person to be alone. So we live together. For a very long time they had been living together, now it was a matter of who would die first. Probably I, thought Mendel. She is healthy and has few worries. She still hides money under some floorboard. She doesn't know that it's a sin. Let her hide it!

The candle in the bottleneck has burned to its end. The night has passed. One already hears the first sounds of the morning, even before one sees the sun. Somewhere someone is opening creaking doors, thumping footsteps can be heard on the stairs, the sky is pale gray, and from the earth a yellowish haze rises, dust and sulfur from the sewers.

Deborah awakes, sighs and says: “It's going to rain! The sewer stinks, close the windows!”

Thus begin the summer days. In the afternoon Mendel can't sleep at home. He goes to the children's playground. He takes pleasure in the song of the rare blackbirds, sits for a long time on a bench, draws jumbled lines in the sand with his umbrella. The sound of the water sprayed by a long rubber hose over the small lawn cools Mendel Singer's face, he believes he feels the water,
and he falls asleep. He dreams of the theater, of acrobats in red and gold, of the White House, of the President of the United States, of the billionaire Vanderbilt and of Menuchim.

One day Mac comes. He says (Miriam accompanies him and translates) that he's going to Russia at the end of July or in August to fetch Menuchim.

Mendel suspects why Mac wants to go. He would probably like to marry Miriam. He's doing everything he can for the Singer family.

If I died, thinks Mendel, Mac would marry Miriam. Both of them are waiting for my death. I have time. I'm waiting for Menuchim.

It's June, a hot and especially long month. When will July finally come?

At the end of July Mac orders a ship ticket. They write to the Billes family. Mendel goes to the Skovronneks' shop to tell his friends that his youngest son is coming to America too.

In the Skovronnek family's shop, many more people are gathered than usual. Everyone has a newspaper in his hand. In Europe war has broken out.

Mac will no longer be able to go to Russia. Menuchim will not come to America. War has broken out.

Hadn't the worries just left Mendel Singer? They left, and war broke out.

Jonas was in the war and Menuchim in Russia.

Twice a week, in the evening, Sam and Miriam, Vega and Mac
came to visit Mendel Singer. And they sought to hide from the old man Jonas's certain death and Menuchim's endangered life. It was as if they believed they could divert Mendel's gaze, directed at Europe, onto their own successful achievement and their own security. They placed themselves, so to speak, between Mendel Singer and the war. And while he seemed to listen to their talk, agreed with their speculations that Jonas was employed in an office and Menuchim safe in a Petersburg hospital due to his special illness, he saw his son Jonas fall from his horse and get caught in some of that barbed wire that was so vividly described by the war correspondents. And his little house in Zuchnow was burning – Menuchim lay in the corner and was consumed by flames. Occasionally he ventured to say a short sentence: “A year ago, when the letter came,” said Mendel, “I should have gone to Menuchim myself.”

No one knew what to reply to that. A few times already Mendel had said that sentence, and always the same silence had ensued. It was as if the old man, with that one sentence, had extinguished the light in the room, it grew dark, and no one could see where to point a finger. And after they had been silent for a long time, they rose and left.

Mendel Singer, however, closed the door behind them, sent Deborah to sleep, lit a candle and began to sing one psalm after another. In good hours he sang them and in bad. He sang them when he thanked heaven and when he feared it. Mendel's swaying movements were always the same. And only by his voice might an
attentive listener have recognized whether Mendel, the righteous, was thankful or filled with anxieties. On those nights fear shook him as the wind a weak tree. And worry lent him its voice, with a strange voice he sang the psalms. He was finished. He closed the book, lifted it to his lips, kissed it and snuffed out the flame. But he didn't grow calm. Too little, too little – he said to himself – I have done. Sometimes he was frightened by the realization that his only means, the singing of the psalms, could be powerless in the great storm in which Jonas and Menuchim were going down. The cannons, he thought, are loud, the flames are mighty, my children are burning, it's my fault, my fault! And I sing psalms. It's not enough! It's not enough!

All the people who had wagered, on Skovronnek's political afternoons, that America would remain neutral lost the bet.

It was autumn. At seven in the morning Mendel Singer awoke. At eight he already stood in the street outside the house. The snow was still white and hard, as at home, in Zuchnow. But here it would melt soon. In America it didn't last longer than one night. In the early morning the nimble feet of the newsboys already kneaded it. Mendel Singer waited until one of them passed. He bought a newspaper and went back in the house. The blue petroleum lamp
was burning. It illuminated the morning, which was as dark as the night. Mendel Singer unfolded the newspaper, it was greasy, sticky and wet, it smelled like the lamp. He read the reports from the front twice, three times, four times. He noted that fifteen thousand Germans had been taken prisoner at once and that the Russians had resumed their offensive in Bukovina.

That alone did not satisfy him. He took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on and read the war reports again. His eyes sifted the lines. Wouldn't the names Sam Singer, Menuchim, Jonas fall out of them? “What's new in the paper?” asked Deborah, as she did every morning. “Nothing at all!” replied Mendel. “The Russians are winning and the Germans are being taken prisoner.” It grew quiet. On the spirit stove the tea was boiling. It sang almost like the samovar at home. Only the tea tasted different, it was rancid, American tea, even though the little packages were wrapped in Chinese paper. “You can't even drink tea!” said Mendel, and was surprised himself that he was speaking of such trivialities. Perhaps he wanted to say something else? There were so many important things in the world, and Mendel was complaining about the tea. The Russians were winning, and the Germans were being taken prisoner. Only from Sam one heard nothing at all, and nothing from Menuchim. Two weeks before Mendel had written. And the Red Cross had informed them that Jonas was missing. He's probably dead, Deborah thought inwardly. Mendel thought the same. But they spoke for a long time about the meaning of the word “missing,” and as if it completely ruled out the possibility
of death, they agreed again and again that “missing” could only mean taken prisoner, deserted or wounded in captivity.

But why hadn't Sam written for so long? Well, he was in the midst of a long march, or currently in a “redeployment,” in one of those redeployments the nature and significance of which were more precisely explained in the afternoon at Skovronnek's.

One can't say it aloud, thought Mendel, Sam should not have gone.

Nonetheless, he said the second part of the sentence aloud, Deborah heard it. “You don't understand, Mendel,” said Deborah. All the arguments for Sam's participation in the American war Deborah had gotten from her daughter Miriam. “America isn't Russia. America is a fatherland. Every respectable person is duty-bound to go to war for the fatherland. Mac went, Sam couldn't have stayed. Besides, thank God!, he is on the regimental staff. They don't fall there. Because if they permitted all the high officers to fall, they'd never win. And Sam, thank God!, is with the high officers.”

“I've given one son to the Tsar, it would have been enough!”

“The Tsar is different, and America is different!”

Mendel didn't debate further. He'd already heard it all. He still remembered the day when they'd departed, Mac and Sam. Both had sung an American song, in the middle of the street. In the evening at Skovronnek's they'd said: Sam was, knock on wood, a good-looking soldier.

Perhaps America was a fatherland, war a duty, cowardice a
disgrace, death impossible on the regimental staff! Nonetheless, thought Mendel, I'm the father, I should have said a word. “Stay, Sam!” I should have said. “I've waited long years to see a tiny sliver of good luck. Now Jonas is in the army, who knows what will happen to Menuchim, you have a wife, a child and a business. Stay, Sam!” Perhaps he would have stayed.

Mendel stood, as was his wont, at the window, his back turned to the room. He looked straight at the Lemmels' broken window, boarded up with brown cardboard, across the street on the second floor. Below was the Jewish butcher shop with the Hebrew sign, white dirty letters on a pale blue background. The Lemmels' son too had gone to war. The whole Lemmel family attended night school and learned English. In the evening they went to school with notebooks, like small children. Probably it was right. Perhaps Mendel and Deborah should go to school too. America was a fatherland.

It was still snowing a little, slow, lazy and damp flakes. The Jews, open black umbrellas rocking over their heads, already began to promenade up and down. More and more came, they walked in the middle of the street, the last white remains of the snow melted under their feet, it was as if they had to walk up and down here at the behest of the authorities until the snow was completely obliterated. Mendel couldn't see the sky from his window. But he knew that it was a dark sky. In all the windows across the street he saw the yellowish red reflection of lamps. Dark was the sky. Dark were all the rooms.

Soon a window was opened here and there, the busts of the neighbor women became visible, they hung red and white bedding and naked, yellowish, skinned pillows from the windows. All of a sudden the whole street was cheerful and colorful. The neighbor women called loud greetings to one another. From inside the rooms sounded the rattle of dishes and the shouts of children. One might have believed it was peacetime, if the war marches hadn't been clanging through the street from the gramophones in the Skovronneks' shop. When is Sunday? thought Mendel. Once he had lived from one Saturday to the next, now he lived from one Sunday to the next. On Sunday Miriam, Vega and his grandson came to visit. They brought letters from Sam or at least news of a general nature. They knew everything, they read all the newspapers. Together they now ran the business. It was always going well, they were industrious, they collected money and waited for Sam's return.

Miriam sometimes brought Mr. Glück, the general manager, with her. She went dancing with Glück, she went swimming with Glück. A new Cossack! thought Mendel. But he said nothing.