by Chaim Potok
“That is all I can tell you, Ilana. That is the closest to Chandal that I am able to find.” Chandala. Chandal. I told my mother.
“No,” she said. “It can’t have any connection to that. How could it?”
It seemed strange not to know the meaning of your own name, even if it was a name you were no longer using.
“What does our name mean?” I asked my new father one Shabbos that August on our way back from the little synagogue where we prayed—the synagogue to which I had once followed David and his uncle. “Din means law in Hebrew, doesn’t it?” I added.
He smiled. “I don’t think it’s connected to that, Ilana. Dinn is a town in southern Germany.” “What does it mean?” “I don’t know,” he said.
One Sunday afternoon my mother and I went swimming together while David and his father sat on the porch studying Talmud. We came dripping out of the water and lightly toweled ourselves and lay on our blanket with our faces to the sun. I began to tell my mother of the dreams I had been having that summer.
“No more dreams about Baba Yaga?” she asked when I was done.
“No.”
“Good-bye to Baba Yaga. I’m glad. Only dreams about birds falling into the ocean and a gray horse chasing you through the school and Jakob Daw coming to America and David jabbing you with his fountain pen. That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“How busy you are at night, Ilana.” She raised herself on one elbow and gazed at me, squinting in the sunlight. Over her face seemed to come a sudden startling realization. “Your body has begun to change,” she said very softly. “Perhaps soon you will begin to menstruate.”
I sat up and looked at her and heard the beating of my heart. I knew that word from school. Menstruate. Unwell. Got your period.
“Come with me, Ilana. I want to show you something.”
She took me to the wet sand along the edge of the sea. There she drew with her finger the outline of a female body. “Listen to me, darling. Let me explain this to you.” And she gave me a dictionary lecture about the word menstruate, its origin and meaning, and a biology lecture on what would soon be happening inside my body. She went on for what seemed to me to be a very long time. I listened to her and heard also the thumping of my heart. “When it starts,” my mother said, “you will have become biologically a woman. I’ll show you how to take care of yourself.”
She fell silent. I stared at the figure in the sand. The surf rolled in from the sea, licking at the drawing as it had once licked at my castles.
“Does it still happen to you, Mama?”
“Of course. It stops when you become pregnant.”
I looked at her and saw the color rise in her cheeks. She shook her head with a smile. “No, darling, I am not pregnant. Shall we go back in for another swim? It’s very hot today.”
I marveled at my mother. She seemed so easily to have become once again an observant Jew. She still read the New Masses—for the fine writers it published. She remained a fervent advocate of the working class and an opponent, as she put it, of the greed and rot of capitalist exploiters. When she spoke of Stalinist communism her voice shook with anger and bitterness, with her sense of having been used and duped and betrayed. She had been brought up well by her mother and grandfather and was familiar with the details of those parts of the Commandments a woman needed to observe. She lit candles on Friday evenings and was scrupulous with regard to the laws of kashruth. Her household was neat, clean, orderly. She had two pasts now. On occasion I saw returning to her eyes the old dark brooding look. During her years with my father she had thought often about her religious past; now she reflected upon her Communist past. She seemed unable to bring together those two parts of herself. And that haunted her.
I realized, as we sat together week after week in the little synagogue in Sea Gate, that she never prayed. One Shabbos during the service I quietly asked her about that.
“A woman is not required to pray,” she said.
“What do you mean?” All around us women were praying.
“A woman may pray if she wishes. But she is not required to pray. That’s the law. Ask your father. I don’t wish to pray. I prefer to read the Bible instead.”
The women’s section in that little synagogue was even more confining than the one in the yeshiva synagogue. A heavy muslin curtain had been drawn across the last few rows from wall to wall, forming a space that resembled a large cage. We could hear the service and see nothing. I found no holes or tears in that curtain. My new father was leading the service. I enjoyed hearing his deep baritone voice and wished I could see him.
Two days later he brought back with him from the city a letter from Jakob Daw. A brief note inside the envelope told us that someone had carried the letter from Marseilles to Dakar and had mailed it to us from Mexico.
We sat around the kitchen table in the cottage and waited as my mother read the letter. She read very slowly, then looked up.
“Is Uncle Jakob all right?” I asked.
“He’s been in the hospital again.”
“Can he leave Marseilles?”
“He’s trying very hard.”
One night soon after they were married I had heard my mother and new father talking about Jakob Daw. Now I imagined him in his flat in Marseilles. A small, dark, bug-ridden room on a narrow, dirty street.
“Papa, can’t you get Uncle Jakob to America?”
My new father looked down at the table and slowly shook his head.
“The Fascists in the government won’t give him a visa?” “Ilana,” my mother said.
“They’re not Fascists,” my new father said. “Don’t throw that word around so easily, Ilana.”
“Papa,” David said quietly. “You can’t do anything?”
“All the doors are closed. When I knock no one answers.”
There was a brief silence. Through the open windows came the sounds of the ocean and the warm evening wind.
My mother stood up, folded the letter carefully, and put it into a pocket of her apron. “I’ll wash my face and we’ll have supper. All right? Whose turn is it to set the table?”
Later I walked alone on the beach, watching the eastern horizon slowly pale and darken in the aftermath of a lovely sunset. I walked along the edge of the sea and saw, farther down the beach, a man in rumpled trousers and a creased shirt. I came up to him and he turned to me with a sad half-smile and said, “You see what people will do to you when they do not like your stories?” I stared at him, my heart thundering. But of course he had not said that; all he had really said was, “It’s a pretty night, ain’t it?”
I had never seen him before and wondered who he was and how he had got through the guards onto the beach.
“You live here?” he asked in a very quiet voice. His face looked blurred in the fading light. He was thin and pale and had straight dark hair and dark glittering eyes.
“Yes. In that house.”
“A pretty house. Would you like to take a walk with me?” I looked at him.
“We could take a walk and I could buy you an ice cream. Would you like that?” His voice had risen slightly. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“No,” I said, and felt myself shiver.
“I could buy you a pretty doll. And we could see a nice movie. Wouldn’t you like that? There’s a Charlie Chaplin movie playing in Coney Island. That’s not far. What do you say?”
I turned and walked quickly away from him up the beach toward the house. The wind blew suddenly hard and the ocean seemed very loud and my heart beat so fast I thought it would burst. Was he following me? On the dunes outside the cottage I turned and looked back. He was gone. Had I imagined it? For a long moment I felt a swooning sense of weakness, a blurring of lines between real and imagined worlds. The feeling was still with me as I climbed the stairs to the screened-in porch where David sat chanting a passage of Talmud.
Two days later my new father brought back with him a second letter from Jakob Daw. It had been mailed to an add
ress in Casablanca, where the letter in its original envelope had been placed in a fresh envelope and mailed to an address in Rio de Janeiro. There the letter in its two envelopes had been put in a third envelope and mailed to our apartment.
The letter was addressed to me. I read it in the strong light of the late afternoon sun while sitting on the dunes and facing the sea and a warm east wind.
“Dear Ilana Davita. Are you well? I am quite ill. I lie in bed and remember the stories I told you. Do you remember them? I am never certain what happens to my stories. Your new father—your mother’s letter reached me after a few weeks of wandering—is a good man. I thought to cross Spain to Lisbon and go from there to South America. But it appears that I am too ill. The doctors here do not look directly into my eyes when they speak to me. Do you wear your glasses when you read and write? Always remember to do that so you can see the world sharply and truthfully. Truth is often very painful, but it alone will save us. How is our little bird? Does it still nest peacefully in our harp? Ilana Davita, sooner or later birds grow weary and close their eyes. Some fall from the heavens while in flight, dropping like stones to the earth, others run into a mountain, a house, a tree. Still others are caught in the talons of a bird of prey. And still others simply fall asleep, and sleep on and on and on. Care for our bird and do not let it close its eyes. It is wrong to face this world with one’s eyes closed, no matter how deep the weariness. It is a world of mountain-dwelling black horses. Keep your eyes open, wide open, Ilana Davita. Of what use is a bird with its eyes shut—save to be cooked and eaten? Are you on the beach this summer? I remember your castles as dreams in the sunlight, each with its own story. Now I think I will rest again. Try to remember the stories of your Uncle Jakob.”
In the kitchen my mother and new father were talking quietly together. David was somewhere in the cottage. I walked along the dunes, holding the letter in my hands and listening to it jerk and snap in the wind as if it were alive.
Later I showed the letter to my mother. She read it and began to cry. I let David and my new father read it.
“I admire that man,” my new father said. “But he should have let me fight for him. He might still be here.”
My mother said nothing.
That evening I walked on the beach for a long time. At a distant jetty I saw a solitary figure standing barefoot in the surf, gazing out across the sea. He wore baggy trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. Gulls wheeled overhead in wide circles, screaming. I saw the man begin to walk slowly into the surf. I watched as the water lapped at his knees and thighs. Waves broke against him. And then, as I watched, he disappeared: the bobbing light that was his face winked out, vanished. I stood very still, looking for the man, but saw no one. I ran back to the cottage and told my parents what I had seen.
My mother stood at the sink, staring at me. My father called the police.
I walked with my father across the beach to the edge of the surf where I had seen the man enter the water. The waves rolled and crashed in the hot wind.
Two policemen came across the sand, burly men, walking steadily and deliberately toward me and my father.
One of them said, “You the party that called?”
“Yes,” said my father.
The other took out a pad and asked for my father’s name. “My daughter saw it happen.”
“What’s your name?” “Ilana Davita Dinn.”
He wanted to know my age and where I lived. He wanted to know what I had seen and if I could describe the man. He put away his pad.
The four of us stood there, staring out at the sea.
“We’ll call it in,” one of the policemen said.
They walked off, going back across the sand to the street where they had left their car.
My father and I stood there a moment longer.
“Was that what he really looked like?” my father asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?” “Yes.”
He sighed. “All right. Let’s go back. It’s late.”
My mother said to me later that night, “Are you well, Ilana?” She put her hand on my forehead. “You’re running a fever.”
I lay in bed gazing up at the ceiling and wishing I had not left the door harp in the apartment.
I was in bed four days. David came into my room on the morning of the first day and stood at the foot of the bed. He looked shy and would not gaze at me directly.
“How are you feeling, Ilana?”
“Sick. I wish I could read, but my eyes hurt.”
“Did the man on the beach really look like that?”
“Yes.”
“They haven’t found anybody yet. They’re looking as far as Brighton.” I said nothing.
“Please get well soon, Ilana.” He went quietly from the room.
I lay in my bed and watched dust motes dancing and whirling in the beams of light from the diminished sun that daily witnessed the blood of Europe. I fell asleep and dreamed of sand castles on the beach.
We returned to the apartment at the end of August. Two months later, a few days after Simchas Torah, the festival in which men dance joyously with scrolls of the Torah to mark the end of the annual Torah reading cycle, we received word that Jakob Daw was dead.
The news reached us in a strange way. From the hospital in Marseilles where he died of pneumonia it made the brief trip to a local newspaper, then the longer journey to Paris by an underground courier, and then to London by illegal radio. In London it was picked up by the wire services. Aunt Sarah heard it on an early morning news broadcast as she was preparing herself for her daily trek from Newton Centre to Boston. She called my mother. She was so sorry, she said. So deeply sorry.
Sorry about what? my mother asked.
Hadn’t my mother heard the news?
What news?
And she told her.
We were all in the kitchen having breakfast. The phone stood on a polished dark-wood stand in the hallway between the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom. We heard clearly my mother’s gasp. My father rose quickly from his chair and went from the kitchen.
I heard them talking in the hallway about Jakob Daw and heard myself say to David, “Uncle Jakob is dead.” A tremor went through me. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.
My mother came back into the kitchen, her arm supported by my father, and sat down. Her face was waxen.
“Shall I get you a cup of coffee, Channah?”
“Please.” Her voice trembled.
“Is it Uncle Jakob?” I asked. “Is Uncle Jakob dead?” “Yes,” my father said. “Your Aunt Sarah heard it on the radio.”
“Blessed is the righteous Judge,” David said in Hebrew. “Shall I turn it on?” I asked.
“Please,” my mother said. Her voice still trembled and she was taking small deep breaths.
I switched on the radio. My father brought over a cup of coffee and put it on the table in front of my mother.
We sat there listening to the news of the war in Europe and heard nothing about Jakob Daw.
My father turned off the radio.
“Maybe it was a mistake,” I said.
“I think you and David should start your day,” my mother said. “You have school and I don’t want you to be late.”
On the way out of my room I whispered to the two little birds in my harp, “Uncle Jakob may be dead. Don’t close your eyes. We have to keep our eyes open.”
It was not a mistake. His obituary, as well as articles about him, appeared in all the afternoon newspapers. We heard about it again on the evening news. My mother wept. My father comforted her. They were together in their room a long time.
Two days later my mother began to go to the very early morning service in our synagogue to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw.
There had been a brief discussion over the supper table about my mother reciting Kaddish for Jakob Daw. We were done eating and were sitting at the table, listening to the news: German aircraft bombing England; 16 million American men registered
for the draft; Jews beginning to be deported from Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland; Hitler and Franco meeting at the French town of Hendaye on the Spanish border. After the news my mother turned off the radio and announced that for the next eleven months she intended to get up very early in the morning to go to synagogue to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw, and did we think we could make our own breakfasts?
We all looked at her in a long moment of silence.
“Why?” my father asked quietly.
“No one else will say it.”
“Ask one of the men to do it.” “I want to say it.”
“You’re not part of his family, Channah. You were not related to him.”
“I want to say it anyway.”
“But you don’t have to. You shouldn’t. It falls into the category of a Commandment that doesn’t need to be performed. It has no meaning in the eyes of God.”
“It has meaning in my eyes, Ezra.”
David and I sat quietly, glancing at one another.
“A woman is not supposed to say Kaddish,” my father said very quietly to my mother. “You’ll upset the shul. Especially if you go to the daily minyan.”
“Should I go to a Conservative or Reform synagogue?”
He gave that no consideration at all and shook his head.
“Then I’ll go to our shul.”
He shrugged. “All right. It will be awkward. There will be a fuss about it, that I can promise you. But if that’s what you want, go ahead. We’ll manage with breakfast. This family will manage, Channah. If that’s what you really want.”
She would leave the apartment before David and I woke and return after David and I had left for school. Weeks went by that way. I saw my mother only at night. The weather turned cold. Leaves fell. Roosevelt was elected president for a third term. Winter came and with it snow and sleet. Still my mother continued to leave the apartment every weekday early in the morning for the morning service and before sunset for the afternoon and evening service. She said Kaddish on Shabbos as well, and all around her women responded.
On our way back from the synagogue one Shabbos I asked her why she was saying Kaddish for Jakob Daw.
“I was really a child when I met him,” she said. “He opened my eyes to the world. I owe him a great deal. And I loved him. Are those enough reasons, Ilana?”
