The Belief in Angels (23 page)

About two years after our move to Brookline, Rose and Mocher decided the time had come for me to move into my own place. As I could not cook for myself and possessed only meager home management skills, Rose decided marriage is the most convenient and efficient solution. Rose met with a
shadchen
who found a woman for me to marry and procured a marriage contract for us. The
shadchen
arranged for me to move into the apartment this woman, my wife-to-be, had formerly shared with her now-deceased parents. The whole plan is hatched, agreed upon, and finalized in a matter of two weeks.

Yetta, this woman who lived two floors above us, had recently lost the parents she’d spent most of her life caring for. I had barely noticed her presence in the building before the night we met, except to note that she seemed exceptionally short. She is a formless shape passing on her way up and down the stairs. I’m not sure we had exchanged a single word in the two years I’d shared the apartment with Rose and Mocher.

I am a single man, nearing forty, who had never courted a girlfriend. This fact my sister and her husband are unaware of. They assumed that along the way—from camp to war, from town to city—I had found at least some women. They assumed I had done what most men do without a wife. But they are wrong. There had never been a time, never been a moment, where I found myself wanting sex with a woman. I had been curious, yes, and often aroused, especially when I am a young man. But the early time in my life had also been spent in a place with no normal outlet for expressions of those sorts.

Sometimes I overheard conversations between men about the women they bedded. But in my travels I always avoided discussions of women, of anything
leading to the merest threat of my great secret. The secret that would reveal the fact that I am a Jew. I worried about this constantly in those years. The secret about my body terrified me in the men’s urinal.

It is a miracle that, upon my arrival in the camp, the German guards did not examine me more carefully. They took me for a Russian soldier—a Catholic Russian soldier. I would have been murdered as a Jew if anyone had found the truth out. I never fully undressed after the first day’s purification process.

For me, there are no pissing contests, no drunken size comparisons. Most importantly, there is never any sex. No women. Discovery could equal death. When I had those feelings, I took care of things and told myself I would save myself for marriage and live a pure life. I never dreamed it would take me this long to find a wife.

This night, I am seated at a table waiting for a woman I don’t know—a woman who has already sat with the
shadchen
to determine what assets she will bring into the marriage. Our contract has been drawn and signed already. This night is a mere formality for this woman, a romantic gesture pushed forward by Rose and the
shadchen
so she will have an event to point to as her formal engagement date.

For me, it seems a good business arrangement.

I am a man with a business now. Rose, Mocher, and I owned our own tailoring shop. We ran a brisk business in a storefront off of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. The building is cramped and drafty, however, and we shared a back room with a cobbler, so we had recently begun hunting for a new building with more space and light. Mocher and I worked directly with the customers at the cash register. Rose sewed in the back. We made money hand over fist.

Life had become a better prospect for me. I kept a new secret: I saved the profits from my paychecks and had become an
anlegen,
an investor. It felt like gambling to me. Gambling is a sin, I know, but this is different in its actual design. It is accepted and encouraged, even. Oizer, now married, had become a successful banker. When we wrote to one another, which we frequently did, he gave me tips for buying shares. I started out buying nickel shares in well-known, established businesses. Small investments in safe, conservative businesses that offer small gains and minor risks. But then I began to ask Oizer questions about bigger ventures. I felt confident, and with a low overhead on our business, free rent on Rose’s couch, and no other financial responsibilities, I grew riskier.

With Oizer’s guidance, I branched out into investments in the new utility companies and heavy machinery manufacturers. Electricity companies and the
farming industry are growing at rapid rates. I found two small companies I liked, Eastern Bell Telephone and John Deere. I began with nickel shares, but gradually increased my monthly contributions as I watched my shares grow. Oizer said the market would take a long time to recover from the fall in 1929, but he could foresee a time when it would make many millionaires again. I want to be one of those
milyon
merchants. Oizer had already gotten close to achieving this goal, no surprise to any of us. He had always been the financial brains in the family, and now he made sure we all possessed everything we needed.

“It’s time for you to start a new life, Samuel,” Rose says, as we head toward the living room to wait. “We love you and love having you near us, but I want to see you happy. You need a wife, and maybe children?”

“Oy, Rose, please. A wife? Children? How could I do this? I have nothing to offer a wife. I am a ghost of a man.”

“Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik.
You are a fine man, Sam. You are a strong,
gezunt
man with a good mind and a stable job. You’ve suffered enough. Now is your time for joy. Your eyes have been dim with tears and now it is time to open them and see. You are free. You are a free man now, Samuel Trautman.”

I begin to laugh. Rose stares at me in shock. I can’t resist.

“Rose, if I’m a free man, why am I being forced into marriage? I won’t be a free man with a nagging wife.”

Now Rose laughs.

“I don’t think she’s a nagging woman. I don’t think she’s a woman with much of a voice at all. I’ve never heard more than a peep out of her mouth, and she stayed with her parents even after the rest of her sisters left for marriages.”

“Maybe no one wanted to marry her?”

“Sayhak mir nisht keyn tshaynik!
She’s a good woman, I’m sure. You don’t want a looker, a
shaina maedel,
that kind of woman will give you a nervous condition. No, this is a woman who will make a good wife and a good mother. But, best news of all, when you move into the flat in 4C, this will be the woman who will get you off our couch and give us privacy,
mirtseshem”

We are laughing as we hear a timid knocking.

“I’ll answer it, you sit and behave yourself,” Rose instructs me.

“
Oy,
yes, I’ll sit and behave and ask the
miaskite
upstairs to marry me, yes.”

As I remember it, the evening is brief. Yetta shyly answered me when I spoke to her. Good, I thought, she’ll be a quiet wife. A wife with nothing to say is a perfect companion. I thought all I needed from this woman is cooking, cleaning, ironing,
and someone to run the errands. Children are not necessary. Children are expensive and noisy.

Yetta seemed older than the
shadchen
told us. We are told she is only a few years older than me, but she looked at least ten years older. Her face is marked with deep wrinkles like the folds of a fine, ancient linen. A black hairnet held a thick bundle of dark, graying hair at the back of her head. I thought she might be close to fifty. She might be too old to bear children. Less to worry about. I would be closer to my
milyon
goals with no children to feed and clothe and send to school.

We finish the dinner Rose prepared and Mocher ushers us into the living room. Mocher goes into the kitchen to wash the dishes with Rose. This is when Yetta speaks—her first pronouncement since the answer she gave to my scripted engagement question earlier in the evening. She casts her eyes into her lap and blushes.

“What time do you go to sleep?”

I can’t help laughing. “What time do I go to sleep?”

She nodded.

“I sleep at 8:30, why do you ask me this?”

She blushes and explains, “I want to know how long I might have in the evening for chores before you go to sleep. I don’t want to be noisy.”

She looks directly into my eyes. I notice for the first time they are a deep cocoa brown with tiny, barley speckles. Like the leather buttons on a man’s tweed coat.

I nod. “I see. You should feel free to make your own schedule for the household. You will find I’m not a demanding husband.”

Yetta gives a tiny smile and glances away.

The evening wraps itself up like its own small engagement present—simple and practical. No frills and bows, simply useful information and straightforward discussion.