Nate Rosen Investigates

by Ron Levitsky

  “Grandma came over as a little girl from Russia. One day, not long after she got here, she was walking in the street, and a vendor gave her a red rose. She’d never seen anything so beautiful, so perfect. She said she saw God in that flower.”

  Lucila said, “You must’ve been very close to your grandmother.”

  “She died before I was born, but Daddy’s told so many stories about her, she was with me all the time I was growing up.”

  “Sort of a guardian angel.”

  Rosen stood, spanking the dirt from his knee. “Let’s sit down, like we used to do.”

  They walked to the concrete bench and sat down, Sarah in the middle. Rosen took her hand.

  “I’m glad you remember what I’ve told you about my mother.”

  “So many stories,” she said dreamily. “Like when her family was running from the Cossacks in Russia. It got so cold, she had to tie her father’s books around her legs to keep warm. Or the time when the two of you were cooking latkes, the grease splattered and she burned her arm covering yours.”

  “There’s another story,” Rosen said. “One I’ve never told you. Would you like to hear it?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “I was five years old. My mother had taken me shopping, and we were on our way home, our arms filled with grocery bags. It was a spring day like this, damp and foggy—late in the afternoon. I had to walk fast to keep up with her, when she suddenly stopped. I remember bumping into her and almost spilling a bag of oranges.

  “We were on the sidewalk where an alley snaked between two old buildings. I didn’t notice him at first, but following my mother into the alley, I finally saw a rough-looking man—a bum, I guess. He was staring at the ground, wheezing, with a liquor bottle in his hand. I couldn’t imagine why we were going toward him.

  “My mother put down one of her bags, reached into her purse and took out some money. When she touched the man’s shoulder, his arm jerked up and struck her in the face. I don’t think he did it on purpose—when he looked at my mother, he was just as surprised as she was. I was scared and kept tugging on her sleeve, but she just stood there. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw the look on his. It was a look I’d never seen before, and I started crying. Finally, my mother gave the man the money, picked up her bag, and led me back to the sidewalk. A block from our house she stopped and bent down beside me. I thought she’d wipe my tears away, but she only dabbed the blood from her mouth where the man had struck her.

  “‘Are you all right?’ she asked me.

  “Still crying, I nodded.

  “‘What did you see in that man’s face?’

  “I said, ‘He’s evil.’ You see, I’d been taught by my father that evil was real—just as there were angels, so too were there demons. I thought the man was a demon.

  “But taking my hand, my mother said, ‘Evil is like a mask. You have to look behind it. I looked behind that man’s mask, into his eyes, and you know what I found? He was hurt and afraid, more afraid than you were, little one. That’s what makes evil—not demons, but pain and fear. Go ahead and cry, but cry for that poor man, for his pain and fear. For the pain and fear in all of us.’”

  Leaning back in the bench, Rosen closed his eyes for a moment and saw his mother bend close to kiss him. His small hand trembled in hers. Then he realized it was the small hand he held that trembled. Sarah’s hand trembling, and tears running down her cheeks. The crying came softly, as if very far away, and he thought again of himself as a little boy sobbing in his mother’s arms. But now Sarah was sobbing, her shoulders heaving, and he held her tightly while his own eyes grew hot and wet.

  Sarah cried for a long time, and when she finally stopped, Rosen gave her his handkerchief. She wiped her face and sat quietly, every other breath catching in her throat.

  Finally she said, “Maybe w . . . we should be going.”

  “There’s still time before my plane leaves. You know, I’ll be back in a few weeks to see you.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll be all right.”

  “I know you will, but I’d like to see you.” He glanced at Lucila. “Besides, I still have some unfinished business here.” Stifling a smile, Lucila stroked Sarah’s hair. “It’s cold just sitting here. Would you like to walk around?”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, you could show me who else in your family’s buried here. If there’s anybody else.”

  Sarah nodded and pointed to her right. “Great-Grandma and Grandpa over there. And I think there’re some cousins and neighbors from where Daddy used to live.”

  “That’s right,” Rosen said and led them deeper into the cemetery.

  “My grandparents.” He pointed to another double plot, with the name KAPLAN engraved on the old granite headstone. The photos showed them as Rosen had always remembered—she shy and dignified, while he smiled as if the photographer were offering a glass of wine.

  “Your mother’s parents?” Lucila asked.

  “Yes. My father’s died in Russia.”

  Sarah touched the headstone. “Daddy says that Great-Grandpa was quite a character. He was a jeweler but not a very good one. He’d say, ‘As a jeweler, I make a good challah.’ But he could sing. Right?”

  Rosen put his arm around her. “Yes, he could sing. He had a deep baritone voice that rattled the synagogue windows. People wouldn’t let him sing near the cemetery for fear he’d wake the dead. He could dance too, singing his praises to God while kicking his big legs like a draft horse.”

  “What about Great-Grandma’s friend Dvora?”

  Pointing to the graves of relatives and family friends from the old neighborhood, he reminisced through the eyes of a boy. About Dvora, who lay “dying” in bed for over thirty years, outliving her eight children. And Mayer, who had the only kosher ice cream truck in the city. And Chana, who pestered Shmuel their entire married life, writing notes like “Close the ice box, Stupid!” but who died of grief a week after his death. And Yussel, Avrum, little Yudel, and all the others who peopled the few square blocks that were his world for sixteen years.

  So long ago, yet Rosen saw them once again. Not as ghosts, rising stiffly through the gray morning mist, but as flesh and blood. He inhaled too the smells of the neighborhood—the warm sweetness of challah fresh from the oven, the strong iron smell of liver as it went through the grinder before the schmaltz was added, the odor of sewing-machine oil from his father’s tailor shop. Smelling the oil, he even saw his father walking toward him. Yet something was wrong. How could his father be such an old man?

  Rosen blinked, then his heart closed like a fist.

  His father came down the cemetery path, accompanied by Aaron. Rosen hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years, but he knew his father. The man was old, his beard gray, and the black hat and caftan engulfed him as if he were a little boy playing dress-up. Like a little boy, he gazed steadily at the ground. He walked very slowly, each step deliberate, while muttering to Aaron, who occasionally nodded a reply.

  The wind whispered in Rosen’s ear, “Honor your father and your mother.”

  Lucila asked, “Shouldn’t we be going?” She didn’t know who the men were, and Sarah hadn’t noticed her uncle.

  Rosen nodded. When Lucila turned toward the path, he said, “No, keep going this way. The old graves are in this area—very interesting.”

  Again the whispering, only harsher; the voice of a tyrant. “Honor your father!”

  He followed Sarah a few steps, then his gaze locked upon his brother’s. Eyes widening, Aaron smiled, about to tap his father’s shoulder. Rosen shook his head once, then a second time. Aaron winced and looked away.

  Rosen felt the wind cut through his coat. He held tightly to his daughter, as a drowning man clings to flotsam, and through the cold gray mist they drifted back to Lucila’s car.

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