Mitla Pass (37 page)

“Suppose I want someone with more spirit,” Leah retorted.

“The bigger the spirit, the bigger the trouble, take my word.”‘

“So you want I should marry a
nebish.”

“A kind, gentle person who makes a living. Am I a criminal?”

The water pan on the wood stove came to a boil. Hannah took it to the water pump and mixed some cold water in to temper it. She placed the pan on the floor and added Epsom salts. Leah inched her feet into it and groaned with pleasure.

“What is it with Jewish men, Momma? What is it that makes our race produce so many miserly family abusers?”

“What is it?
Nu,
I’ll tell you what it is. For two thousand years Jewish men have suffered nothing but humiliations and defeats. They must live through pogroms and massacres and watch helpless to even defend their families. And when there is no pogrom, the
goyim
never stop spitting down on them, not for a minute. In the old country it was impossible for a Jewish man to make a normal living. What they got was the
dreck
left over that the
goyim
didn’t want. What does this do to a man, to his sense of manliness? It crushes it. So the Jewish man hides inside of his religion. He has no means to fight back, so he prays and justifies his cowardice from wisdoms in the Talmud. And when the world crashes down on his head, who can he strike out at? Where can he get rid of his frustrations? Only on his family. If you have no country to fight for, you have no heroes to copy. All you have is wife beaters.”

Hannah sighed and contemplated for a moment to gather in her wisdoms. “In all conquered, beaten, subjugated people, the men behave the same way to their women and children. Look at the
shvartzers,
they are like animals to their women. And the Irishmen make ten babies and then flee the country.”

“But this is America, Momma.”

“It will take time, a generation, another generation, to shake off the shackles and mentality of the ghettos and the pogroms. It will take time before Jewish men, even in America, feel like full, real men. Meanwhile, Leah, my child, you must be extremely clever in the selection of a husband. That is why the proposition that came to me has some merit.”

“Who is it already, Momma?”

“Here, let me dry your feet,” Hannah said with obvious hesitation.

“Nu?”
Leah asked after a time.

“A distant relative. You’ve seen him on numerous occasions, usually on holidays when they come to Baltimore to go to
shul.
In fact, he was in your very chair last Rosh Hashonah. You don’t remember?”

“No, I can’t think with you playing games. Is that why you went out of town last week like a spy on a secret mission? To look things over?”

“Yes,” Hannah admitted.

“So tell me already.”

“The one and only son of my second cousin ... who, incidentally, owns a huge general merchandising store in Salisbury—”

“You mean Richard Schneider!”

“Listen for one minute, Leah, listen.”

“Richard Schneider, oh my God!”

“Morris Schneider has one child, Richard, his only son. Richard will be twenty-five next year and Morris is not a well man. He longs to see his only son have a wife and children and take over the business. Entirely, take it over, lock, stock, and barrel, one hundred percent. Richard will be a wealthy man.”

Leah came to her feet, slipped in the pan, grabbed the table for support as water spilled out of the basin.
“Oy vay iss mir.
Richard with the pimples! A pale nothing. He’s as attractive as a boil about to be lanced.”

“That was a year ago. Today, believe me, I saw him, he’s taller, more sociable. His face is completely cleared up. He’s always had a special crush on you. Leah, this is a very gentle person. You can train him like an animal. And let me tell you, their home is a mansion—”

“But Salisbury is on the Eastern Shore. Momma, it’s worse than Havre de Grace.”

“You wouldn’t believe the size yard they have. As big as downtown Baltimore. And the silverware, and the carpets. Would you believe, an automobile, a Ford Model T. Who ever heard of such things?”

Leah clamped her hands over her ears.

“So what do you want!” Hannah cried. “We toil our fingers to the bone from birth to death, for what? You want a tailor? You want some hotsy-totsy street-corner agitator? Your cousin Morris is a generous man.”

Leah put her hands to her face and wept, stepping carefully out of the pan, while Hannah dried her feet. Leah continued weeping at the table as Hannah busied herself sweeping up crumbs from around the cookie plate and removing the teacups. “Sorry I mentioned it,” she said. “This is America. Nobody will force you.”

At that, Hannah dropped into a chair and stared at the patterns on the wallpaper. “I was to go with you to Salisbury this Sabbath,” Hannah mumbled after a time. “I’ll tell them we aren’t interested.”

Momma’s stone face told Leah that there was something else, more to it. They fenced in silence.

The mantel clock struck six. Hannah grunted about the room, cleaning away dust that wasn’t there.

“What is it you’re not telling me, Momma?”

“What possibly wouldn’t I tell you?”

“Maybe something about Morris Schneider’s generosity?” Leah suggested.

Hannah set down the feather duster and sighed, not once, but four times. “Morris offered me a settlement. One thousand dollars.”

Leah swooned across the room and gripped the lace curtains and stared down on the pushcarts and bustle of the intersection. Women were lined up to get into the bakery to get at the day-old counter. A thousand dollars! It was beyond a fortune, staggering to the mind, so much money. Momma could lease the finest wedding gown shop in all of Baltimore. She’d get business from all the uptown German Jews with such a place. Her poverty would be over. Leah looked up to see Lazar standing in the bathroom doorway, staring at them curiously.

I
T WAS TOUCH
and go, but with a super effort Richard Schneider managed to carry Leah over the threshold of the bridal suite. Morris and his wife, Erma, applauded their son’s feat as a pair of bellboys assaulted the stack of luggage in the hallway.

“These five pieces go down the hall to our suite,” Erma pointed out.

The assistant manager, a fawning Austrian, drew the lead-weighted velvet drapes open to the view of the ocean and waited for the
ohs
and
ahs
that followed appropriately from Richard and his parents. The Austrian then pirouetted his way around the suite pointing out the cornucopia of amenities.

The bellboys were rewarded with twenty-five cents each, and the Austrian with a silver dollar, as he backed out bowing and closed the door behind the four of them.

“Well,
kinder,
” Erma said, “you wouldn’t have need for us until dinner. Shall we meet in the dining room at eight, sharp?”

Richard glanced nervously at Leah as his mother awaited a reply. “Eight will be fine, Mother,” he said.

Silence. Terrible, stone silence.

“I think I’m coming down with one of my migraines,” Leah said.

Erma stiffened. “We didn’t intend to be a bother,” she said. “Elberon is like a second home to us, isn’t it, Morris? I’ve been coming here since I was a child.”

“Maybe the children would like to be alone,” Morris ventured meekly.

“Alone? Why, of course,” Erma retorted.

“So, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Leah said; “after breakfast,” she added for good measure and opened the door to show them out. “We’ll find you on the boardwalk or the beach, maybe.”

When they left, Richard was about to say “You shouldn’t have” to Leah, but didn’t. She had already gone into the dressing room adjoining the bedroom and was busy opening four new alligator Gladstone bags holding her elegant new wardrobe, which had been part of the marriage contract.

Leah had closed the drapes separating her from her husband and for the next hour tried on one dress after another, before a full-length three-way mirror.

Leah seated herself at the vanity table and leaned close to the mirror and touched her clear soft cheeks with the tips of her fingers. She looked deeply into her big, penetrating brown eyes, then felt her hair sensuously and ran her fingernails over the shapes of her ears. She puffed some perfume from the atomizer on her wrist, sniffed it, then applied some to the cleavage of her bosom.

Leah was totally entranced with her own beauty. Ethereal! Beyond beauty! Leah blew a kiss to herself, crossed her arms over her bosom, and touched her own naked shoulders, thrilled at the feel of her own flesh.

“God, you’re ravishing,” she said to her image, below her breath.

A light from the outside broke up Leah’s narcissistic flight as Richard entered and came up behind her. She rose from her seat and faced him. Richard tried to speak, but was tongue-tied. Suddenly! He flung his arms about her and lunged clumsily to kiss her, only to find her cheek turned away.

“Leah,” he croaked.

“Please, you’re suffocating me,” she said. “Everything in its own good time.”

After the same awkward spell he’d experienced all his life, Richard backed up, mumbling that he needed some fresh air, and left the hotel. He crossed over the boardwalk and took the steps to the beach, removed his shoes, rolled up his trouser legs, and sat in the sand close to the water’s edge, watching the bathers squealing in the breakers, glancing up time and again to the hotel suite. The shades remained drawn.

At teatime, Richard found a table alone in the outdoor courtyard. The hotel orchestra played a medley of Victor Herbert, the king of Broadway. Spotting his mother and father enter, he slipped away quickly and walked aimlessly up and down the boardwalk until daylight faded.

He returned to the empty parlor, then tiptoed into the bedroom, where Leah was asleep in shaded light on the chaise longue. Richard stood over her, adoring her beauty. His heart both throbbed and ached.

Soon all the uneasiness would be gone. She’d learn to love Mother. Mother would teach her proper taste and etiquette. Mother was widely traveled in Europe. She came from a fine old German family. The family home was near Central Park in New York. A mansion. Wait till Leah saw it. When Mother eloped to marry Father, there were a few years of ruckus. It was that damnable business of the German Jews looking down their noses at the Russian Jews. However, when Mother became pregnant, the family relented and established Morris in the mercantile business in Salisbury. At first they thought it an exile, but when he became very successful, the family let him in, inch by inch. Elberon was filled with wealthy German Jews, their answer to Newport. Oh, Leah, how lucky I am! We’ll show them our marriage will be as good as Mother and Father’s.

Leah stirred on the chaise longue.

“Leah,” Richard said softly.

She blinked her eyes open.

“I’ll order dinner,” he said. “The first courses should be up in half an hour or so.”

He left shyly for the parlor, rang for the butler, and ordered a magnificent banquet. Mother had taught him how: a cultivation he enjoyed. He adored ordering for his mother.

When he returned to the bedroom, Leah was dressed in a revealing petticoat and quickly held the lap quilt in front of her with modesty befitting an ante-bellum belle.

“We are married, you know,” he said.

“Of course we are, Richard. I’ve just got to get used to—” She stopped. “Why don’t I take a soak in the tub until the food arrives.”

“Very well.”

The table was set in a softly candlelit rounded alcove, which overlooked the courtyard. The butler lifted one silver cover after another and, to his own delight, described the dishes in French, a litany of gourmet appetizers.

“If this is a Jewish resort, he should learn to speak Yiddish,” Leah said. “Who understands what he’s saying?”

“Here,” Richard said, filling a cracker with an unknown substance.

“What is it?” Leah asked.

“Caviar. We should have it with a pinch of dry sherry. Actually, I prefer iced vodka,” he said to the butler.

“Caviar. I’ve heard of it,” Leah said and nibbled. She grimaced. “My God, it’s salty. What is it made out of?”

“Fish eggs. Sturgeon, imported from Iran.”

“Sturgeon. From sturgeon we know,” Leah said. “Momma used sturgeon sometimes to make gefilte fish, when we can’t find carp. Sturgeon eggs? Well, no accounting for some people’s taste.”

Richard grinned sicklily. “To us,” he proposed, handing her a thimble glass of sherry. She sipped and set it down quickly.

“I’m rather delicate. Too much alcohol makes me giddy. Oh, look, lox and liver.”

“The liver is actually, well, a pâté. A very special blend called pâté de foie gras and truffle ... goose liver with very rare mushrooms ... and, er, the lox is salmon ... from Scotland. ...”

“Oh, my, my, my, fancy-shmancy.”

As Richard went on and on about his mother, Leah’s jaw clenched tighter and tighter. Successful they were, but not successful enough to find their precious son a high-class German Jewess for a wife, she thought. Who would want to go to Salisbury on the Eastern Shore but a poor Yiddish girl from the slums. That’s why they settled on me. Look at him!

A few moments later, the butler revealed a pair of cold stuffed lobsters and uncorked the champagne.

“Nu,
what is it now?”

“Why ... why, it’s lobster ... uh ...”

“Shellfish!”

“Yes ... but ...”

“So, what kind of a Jew are you, Richard Schneider? This is
traif,
forbidden food. Momma would have an apoplexy if she could see this.”

“I’m sorry, Leah, but we don’t keep a kosher home. It is impossible in Salisbury.”

“That’s not the half of it. You go to synagogues that have organs and mixed chorus and the men sit with the women and they don’t even cover their heads. And you call yourself Jews. It was also impossible for Momma to keep kosher in Havre de Grace, but we’d never eat filth from the bay. Do you have any idea what these creatures feed on? They eat sewage and human you know what. It’s very, very dangerous food.
Oy,
I can’t even look at them. I’ll have to talk to Erma about how we are going to share the kitchen.”