From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  Americans, a woman screams, why have you come to save us now, you did not come before my Yakov was killed now let us die. Americans, pressing candy bars and cigarettes into her bony hands, desperate to be rid of such gifts.

  “Did you find it?” the American asks.

  “No,” I whisper in Hebrew. I move to shut the door between us, but she is standing in the way.

  “Are you sure? I saw it right therefrom my balcony,” she says in her feather-light, smoke-light Hebrew. “Maybe I can come in and have a look?” She smiles at me with a great and patient understanding, a smile for an animal one does not wish to frighten. “Perhaps,” she says, “we can talk.”

  Halina, don’t ever leave me again. Will you promise?

  I am so very tired, now. “Go away,” I say. “It’s not there.”

  “Oh.” The American looks at me. Then she nods, the vigorous nod they make when they are willing to be lied to. “It must have blown down to the ground, then. I’ll go look. Sorry for bothering you.” She backs away, a brief smile. She is gone.

  I close the door with trembling hands that do not want to obey me. They want to fling the door wide, these hands. They want to follow the American to her apartment, flutter at her feet, pull on her sleeve.

  I slide the latch. The apartment is quiet, as after some great intrusion.

  The heat on the porch hits like a wall but I square my shoulders. I move on, stealthy, toward the railing. Peering over, I wait. Soon the American appears. The alley is full of garbage, plastic bottles and dented metal cans. She walks unsteadily along a sagging board laid across cinder blocks; she balances with hand against the side of the building. Once she looks up at my porch, but I have pressed myself to the drainpipe and she cannot see me. She trips over a can and says soft swears to herself in English. Before she turns to go she even looks under the board she stands on. She rakes the dirt beneath and lets bits of dried palm frond fall between her fingers.

  That evening when I lie down to bed I cannot sleep. The cats have quieted for the night and by the garden path the palm tree beckons rain once again. With each rise of breeze my eyes fill with tears of gratitude.

  The American startled me, she caught me by surprise and I was undeserving. I sent her away, I turned her back. But now I lie with new hope. I reach under my pillow. The cloth is thick and wrinkled, and when I touch it I think of soft waves of hair.

  The American has left me this gift: a second sign.

  Soon. Soon she will hear my story, she will vanquish the past. Soon, to this burning life the American will bring cool water.

  And I have been unworthy but I will prove worthy. I have been ungrateful but now I will bring my offerings to her feet, my gold and copper, my sandalwood and cedar and wine. All that I have I will bring to her, three offerings in thanks for the three signs that will prophesy her glory.

  And then, her light will shine.

  Yes, Her light will shine.

  In the morning I rise, and begin.

  11

  Dear Maya,

  This is the way the fog sits in Brooklyn, before the daylight is sure of itself. . . .

  Dear Maya,

  This is the way the children drag stubs of chalk across cracked schoolyard pavement, scrape their knuckles bloody. . . .

  So much needs describing—the latest program at the Center, the latest rally, the latest political outrage. My mother’s handwriting is loose with hurry. Often there is nothing in my mailbox for days; then two or three envelopes arrive at once, reports from a distant battlefield.

  The morning after I lose Gil’s cloth, I find a small ragged bundle at the door.

  “What’s this junk?” His satchel over one shoulder, Gil steps, yawning, into the stairwell. He kicks at the tattered newspaper wrapping.

  As I follow the motion of his foot with my eyes, I am positive that the bundle is from the woman downstairs. I respond with reflexes I didn’t know I possessed. In an instant I’m in front of him. “Garbage,” I say, and hug him so hard he laughs and loosens my arms.

  Only after he leaves do I stoop to gather the parcel. It is misshapen, and has an unbalanced heft.

  I set it on the living room sofa, then go to the kitchen. I drain my glass of grapefruit juice, wash it, and set it on the rack. As if some suspense is required, I forbid myself to rush a single motion. I’m strangely excited to see what is inside the newspaper—a welcome from someone in this neighborhood, at last? Perhaps, I tell myself, my spying neighbor has simply been shy about her accented Hebrew. She’s wanted to befriend me all along, now she’s chosen to make this first overture without words.

  Finally I’ve waited long enough. I lock the front door like someone about to handle stolen merchandise, then take a knife from the kitchen drawer.

  The paper, on closer inspection, is not only tattered but speckled with age. The twine is easy to cut. Inside the wrapping are several daisies, their crushed stems staining the newsprint a faint green. Shrouded in newspaper beside the flowers is a small tin. Faded Hebrew print on its label identifies it as Moshe’s Asparagus Soup Wonder Mix. “Just add water,” the label boasts. I examine the tin. It could be ten years old, even twenty. I pry the lid open: the contents are dry and hard as stone, a petrified block of dull green.

  I turn the objects over, lift the bunched flowers in my fist and nudge the stems that droop almost double. I scratch the brick of soup powder with the nail of my little finger and taste the grains of powder. A sickeningly salty glob forms in my mouth and I rush to the toilet to spit.

  The taste in my mouth is bitter; the woman downstairs has left me her garbage, a spiteful joke.

  I don’t know what I expected.

  I walk, aimless, to the balcony, and squint against the brightness for several minutes before admitting to myself what it was I had hoped for. I wanted some gift to fulfill the promise of that arresting stare. Some powerful wisdom to break the tight rhythm of my days in this incomprehensible city.

  Advice.

  Weary, I make my way back to the sofa to dispose of the package. Out of curiosity I check the newspaper for a date. March 3, 1951. Ha’Patp’tan—Your Hebrew-Language Weekly. On one side of the paper, in dense columns, are listings, presumably of jobs or community events. I scan these columns without reading, then flip to the other side. Here I read an advertisement for truck parts and irrigation piping, and a headline: “Farmer breeds two-headed calf, Rabbis in tumult. ‘Is it kosher?’ asks religious court.” I laugh despite myself. Even in 1951, I see, Israel had rags—gossip parading in the awkward triumphal Hebrew of the new state. “Ashkenazic agricultural leader walks out of Sephardic debate in protest,” a sub-heading informs.

  The noon heat is heavy on the rooftops. A car drives through the neighborhood, its loudspeaker blaring “Prepare.” The word drains away down the street. The blacks have stepped up their campaign with the summer heat: perhaps their amplified words might coax redemption out of the midday sky arcing above like a shell of beaten copper.

  I sit, fingering the newsprint. I recall the flat-planed face of my neighbor, and the peculiar gesture she made on the street. Then I imagine that instead of simply holding out a hand to me, she beckons me up the stairs to her dark apartment. I can almost see her thin sloping shoulders, the piercing eyes that blink at me in expectant silence.

  I turn the newspaper over on my bare knees and read the first column of listings. The small, mottled print is difficult to decipher, but with patience I make my way through it. Manya Probman, of Lodz, arrived in Jaffa this month, seeks any family or friends. Itzik Simion, age twelve, of Krakow I. L. Peretz School, lost parents Rachmil and Klara in Birkenau, seeks sister Rosa, last known of in Warsaw. The listings go on and on, giving ages and nicknames, home villages and school graduation dates. At the top of each column the instructions are repeated: Those who find the name of a loved one can contact the Program for Family Reunification in Tel Aviv at the address listed here. In the help of God we will place our trust.

  Near th
e bottom of one column, a single name is underlined in muddy pencil: Feliks Rotstein. Seeks sister Lilka, last known in Dachau, or any person with information on her whereabouts.

  I stare at the newsprint, waiting for it to reveal more. It doesn’t. In the quarter-hour that I sit on this balcony, the only revelation I’m privy to is that the sun can give me a ferocious headache. When at last I retreat to the living room, the sweat is rolling down my back.

  Laughter from the outside. A key turns in the Shachars’ apartment door, and Nachum and a slight dark-haired man all but fall into the entry. The smaller man says something indistinct, then the two double over, gleeful as children, hooting until they have to grip each other’s wrists for support.

  Seated across the table from me, Fanya eyes them with amusement. “And what have you two fools done now?”

  Tami, who has said almost nothing in the ten minutes since I arrived, rises and takes down another two coffee cups from the cabinet.

  Nachum is wagging his head at his companion; tears vanish in the stubble of his jaw. “Unbelievable. It was all I could do not to laugh aloud and give him away. Those poor Frenchmen, I’ve never had much sympathy for the French before, but now . . .”

  Nachum’s companion straightens and attempts a solemn look. “See here, Nachum. The non-Jews”—he drops a hand through the air, a dismissive gesture that proclaims his precise opinion of non-Jews—“either they want to kill us, or else they want to kiss our Jewish behinds. Look, the tourists can’t get over their love affair with the Promised Land. ‘Isn’t it romantic, Jews living at last, despite all difficulties, in their own country.’ They want to see some brave Jews firsthand, surviving by their wits. So Nachum, it’s not so terrible. All we did was show some French tourists a little Jewish wit.”

  “Nachum!” Fanya’s voice cuts through the men’s talk; I see that her music students must not only admire her, but also fear her slightest reprimand. “Tell,” she says.

  Nachum turns to the kitchen table, where Tami, Fanya, and I sit, and his eyes shine with warmth. “Ach, Fanya, we’ve been bad at the shop today. Yoni worst of all, but Moti here and I, we weren’t much better. We had more visitors from the university’s beginner Hebrew-language course today, this time two Frenchmen. Came with their list of items to find and questions to ask storekeepers. Don’t ask me how the teachers dream up these assignments, sending students who don’t speak a word of Hebrew all around town. These two were straight out of a cartoon. Thick accents, one even had a big mustache. ‘Good afternoon,’ they said. Very polite. Yoni behind the register and Moti at the door of the back room, and I sitting on a rung of a stock ladder with my arms crossed like so, we all said, ‘Good afternoon.’ Good afternoon, good afternoon. Then the taller one opened his mouth and read off his sheet of paper, and you must believe me, he laid down each word like a trowelful of concrete. All the while the other one is smiling beside him and ready to copy down our answers on his homework paper. ‘Where is the merchandise from?’ the tall one asked.

  “And Yoni blinked and answered them just as slowly. ‘The merchandise is from my asshole.’

  “The short one started thumbing through his dictionary. Shaking his head, conferring with the tall one. They had Yoni repeat it, too, and when they couldn’t find the word, they looked at their sheet and moved on to the next question. ‘Where is the transistor radio from?’ the tall one asked. ‘The transistor radio is from Moti’s asshole,’ Yoni said, and pointed to Moti. They looked at Moti, they smiled, they waited. Moti started choking, he went to the back of the shop, where he laughed so hard”—Nachum jabs his companion, who nods weakly—“you laughed so hard, Moti, I heard the tool rack rattling.”

  Tami pours two cups of coffee and nudges them to the center of the table. She reaches for the newspaper and rolls it, tight.

  “The students, so polite, they went back to their vocabulary sheets and found a question that suited them better. ‘How much costs the telephone answering machine?’ they wanted to know.

  “‘Aaaah.’ Yoni lit up and held his arms out to them: now at last he understood. ‘The telephone answering machine. The telephone answering machine is from both of your assholes and it costs fifty shekels.’ ‘That’s very cheap,’ the tall one said. He was quite enthusiastic, and made sure the other one wrote down the price correctly. I swear it, he beamed his gratitude at Yoni. Yoni said, ‘Yes, considering where it comes from, it’s a very good price.’

  “And they thanked him and walked out.” Nachum sighs, then turns a wondering expression to the ceiling. “God help me, I felt sorry for them and I followed them into the street, I told them give me their pencil and I will answer their questions. But they were very proud and said they did not want to cheat, they would do the whole assignment themselves. And then, God help them, they went next door to Yoel’s shop.”

  “Yoel the Mohel!” Moti crows.

  “Oy, Moti, watch your manners around the women.” Nachum smacks the crown of Moti’s head, then looks at me apologetically.

  “A mohel is someone who performs circumcisions,” Fanya explains for my benefit.

  “We call the shopkeeper next door by that name because he’s likely to . . .” Nachum pauses; I even think I see him blush. It appears he has a firm, if unusual, definition of the limits of crudeness. “If you don’t watch Yoel carefully, he’s likely to undercut . . . that is, to be so dishonest you feel you’ve been—”

  “Nachum, we get the idea.” Fanya turns to me, and her expression sweeps an invisible curtain between these juvenile men and us women. Then she smiles at Nachum and Moti, wrapping all of us in one mischievous conspiracy.

  Moti, a brown-skinned man with jug ears, looks at Nachum with the undisguised admiration of a younger brother. He speaks, and as he does Nachum grants approval, looping an arm around his neck. The two of them are a picture of contentment. “You should have seen what happened when the Frenchmen got next door,” Moti says. “We were watching from the stoop. Yoel thought they looked too old to be students. He thought they were government tax people sent to check his inventory, and he chased them from his shop with a broom. And you can believe me, what he shouted after them in the street made Yoni sound like a saint.” As they hum with laughter, Nachum disengages his arm and cuffs Moti on the shoulder. “Ach,” he sighs, drawing a cup to him and slurping from its rim.

  “Ach,” Moti agrees.

  There is a strange noise from Tami, a pained release of air that might be a cough or the clearing of her throat. Pivoting to the kitchen table, she throws down her newspaper with such force that it bounces to the floor. Her face is clenched. “You could at least say thank you for the entire afternoon I spent picking up after everyone in this house.” She spits the words at Nachum.

  Moti looks at the floor; I concentrate on my folded hands. Out of the corner of my eye I see that Fanya maintains a clear and steady gaze at Tami, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

  Nachum speaks up. I’ve never heard such a cautious tone in his voice, yet clearly it is not new, he has recited this apology until it is a route he walks blindly, a path worn into stone. “But honey, I didn’t mean to be rude. I haven’t even looked around yet to notice.” He swivels in his seat and sweeps the kitchen and living room with a glance. The rooms are bright with dust motes, clean, and—in spite of simple furniture and occasional wall hangings—barren. “It looks terrific in here,” he says.

  Tami lifts a hand in anguish, but her fury is already losing momentum and she roams among her own words as if lost. “Don’t try to make up for it now. Don’t bother pretending you care. You do what you like.”

  Nachum raises heavy lids to watch Tami. He has forgotten his friend and the doings at the shop; he is alert only to his wife, and he searches her expression as if he may yet find the thing that will please her. “Is there something I should do to help?”

  “No. There’s nothing.” The words are a mumble. Tami’s gaze wanders, homeless. “Do whatever suits you.”

  �
�If there’s something I can do . . .” Nachum’s voice trails off into silence.

  Moti, his ears a hot red, wears the confused expression of an abandoned playmate. His eyes flicker across mine, I see he is looking for a neutral topic. His glance falls on the newspaper lying flat on the floor. “So they say there may be some chance of progress,” Moti says. When no one responds, he reads aloud from the headline: “‘Talks focus on hopes for peace—work begun in Madrid is affirmed.’”

  Tami opens the faucet and scrubs at a plate. Nachum twirls a spoon between his fingers and stares at nothing.

  Moti leans forward. He seems to physically will the vigor into his voice. “What did you think of Madrid, Mrs. Gutman?”

  “Madrid? Good heavens,” Fanya says. But I see from the set of her chin that she will help Moti. “The food is good, I suppose. And of course they do have a reasonable art museum.”

  “I mean the peace conference.”

  Fanya twists her mouth into a pretty bow. “Like I said, Madrid. Food and art. If some Jews and Arabs want to go and have a peace negotiation there, I wish them well. They only shouldn’t miss the Prado.”

  Nachum nudges the newspaper closer with his foot, and his face brightens. “Some progress would be nice, what do you say?”

  Moti grins. “Progress would be nice.”

  “What do they say in America?” Nachum asks me.

  “America is a great country,” Moti breathes.

  “They say there should be peace,” I chime in usefully.

  Nachum starts in his chair, a playful imitation of surprise. “What do you know? America is very smart, then. There should be peace. We can all agree to that.”

  Moti pulls away from the table. His expression takes on a dreamy solemnity; he speaks with his eyes half closed. “Peace. We need peace.” He hesitates. “Only I worry. For my kids, if we bargain wrong. What if we agree to a peace and it turns out it’s still not safe? Will there be more terror for the next generation, and worse?” He opens his eyes and looks self-consciously around the table, as though he does not recognize this meditative tone in his own voice. Hastily he reaches for the familiar; his speech accelerates, and his words are too loud for the small kitchen. “What I mean is, maybe we need to ask what kind of peace are we looking for. What I mean is, if we’re not careful, if we’re not very careful, we’ll end up with a kind of peace . . . we’ll have a peace from Arafat’s asshole. Or worse, from Kahane’s.” In the quiet sunlight of the kitchen Moti guffaws; then his face registers alarm. “Beg pardon for my language.” He waves uneasily in Tami’s direction.