The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  “Hegel is about relationships,” he was saying. “He tells us how things relate not only to the elements that give them character, like the sugar in a sugar bowl; but also to all the things they are not. A sugar bowl relates to a cream pitcher by not being a cream pitcher. Thus in some sense it incorporates the idea of a cream pitcher. He goes further. . . .” She remembered how Adam’s eyes shone as he explained to them. “He says that the seed of the tree contains all its processes, germination, growth, maturity, death, decay; but he says even more.” He looked right at Rachel then. “That same seed also contains all the things it will never be. That seed, by being the seed of a tree and not of a flower, encompasses the idea of flower. . . . In other words . . .”

  In other words . . .

  “That seed is as much what it’s not as what it is, as much what it will never be as what it will.” Her head rested on the desk sideways. She raised it and looked at the text again with Adam’s words for a guide, and right then she sort of slid into understanding how the explanation came out of what she read. She read it again. It made sense. She jumped and ran around, her feet pounding the floor. Downstairs, Mr. Rubinstein yelled and banged on the ceiling, but she couldn’t stop. She hopped and danced, then she ran back to the desk, terrified suddenly that comprehension was temporary. But she read Hegel’s words again, still understood, and knew absolutely that she would never again not understand what he wrote. She ran to the window, threw it open, and she leaned out over Seventy-­second Street. A brightly lit bus waited forlornly at the corner of Seventy-­second and Central Park West, which was the end of the line. The bus driver stood next to it and she shouted to him.

  “I got it!”

  Beneath her, Mr. Rubinstein shrieked and the bus driver laughed and yelled back up to her, “Never let it go.”

  She told her parents that she’d felt more joy that night than she thought possible. She would feel like that again, she told them, and she had ideas. For instance, what did it mean to perceive objective . . . but she’d lost them. Her father was looking out of the window and her mother said, “Joy, shmoy, she’s doing it for that Adam Levy.”

  Her mother hated Adam. He stayed with his father on the Sabbath, so Rachel never had a date on Friday night, and his father was a rabbi; not like Rabbi Rosten with good dark suits and shiny shoes. Adam’s father was from Brooklyn, leader of some village sect, and he probably wore a beard and side curls.

  Rachel’s mother listed Adam’s flaws at Friday night dinner. His hair was wild, his clothes were shabby, his voice was too soft, he was short and skinny.

  “But he’s got the biggest cock in New York,” Rachel snapped. Her mother gasped and started crying. Danny hiccuped and his girl friend, Madeline, stared.

  “We’ve never met his family,” Rachel’s mother sobbed. It was the only safe thing she could think of to say.

  “His mother’s dead,” Rachel said.

  “He’s an orphan?” Danny asked.

  “No, asshole,” Rachel said, “Jewish boys have fathers, too.”

  At this Rachel’s grandmother laughed out loud, spraying vodka.

  “Then we can meet the father?” her father asked desperately.

  “Yes, but it can’t be on Shabbes, and he won’t eat here, so it has to be some place kosher if we do eat. I mean if he eats,” Rachel said. “We eat anything, don’t we?”

  Rachel’s mother passed her hand across her forehead. “Please, Rachel, please.” Her mother’s hand trembled, Rachel saw it, felt guilty, and started clearing the table to make amends, but on her way into the kitchen she bumped the server and chipped the wall mirror again. Her mother closed her eyes.

  “We’ll go to Alter’s,” her grandmother said, still laughing. “Steak, brains, karnatzlach, all kosher. My party . . .”

  Mr. Alter kissed her grandmother’s hand, brought the white wine, seltzer, pickles, and sour tomatoes himself.

  Rachel sat next to the window looking out on Second Avenue. Rappaport’s was still there. The baths were still on Houston, the gypsies were still on St. Mark’s Place, and the Ukrainians on Eleventh, but the people who moved past the restaurant window like spirits wore beads, sandals, jeans, and looked like they came from Colorado.

  She looked up and saw Adam and his father coming toward them. The father was beautiful, which made her realize that Adam was, too. Their noses were thin and straight, their eyes were dark and wide-­set, they had thin nervous pale faces, with full, chiseled lips. The father had a short thick beard and Adam was clean shaven and had a cleft in his chin.

  At first Rachel’s father worried about drinking in front of a rabbi, but Levy drank, told jokes in Yiddish, and laughed so helplessly that everyone laughed with him, even Rachel who didn’t understand Yiddish. She relaxed in his company, and for once she didn’t spill or break anything.

  Her father got drunk and talked about the old country. He told Levy about the village he came from and about his older brother being killed on the village street. Then he asked Levy where he’d been born and Levy answered, “Poland.”

  “What about Adam?” her father asked. Her grandmother leaned forward.

  “Poland, too.”

  Her father was confused. “When was he born?”

  “Nineteen forty-­one,” Levy said.

  “Nineteen forty-­one in Poland?” her grandmother asked.

  “Yes,” Levy said. “Adam’s mother was transported—I don’t know where—and a Gentile wine merchant who knew us hid him until 1944, then helped get him out of there to Palestine.”

  Danny—it would be Danny, Rachel thought—asked, “Where were you all this time?”

  “Belzec,” Levy answered.

  Suddenly all of Rachel’s concerns and decisions— should she marry Adam, get a Ph.D., teach or write, or get a job—were petty. Something heavy turned in her stomach that wasn’t the food she’d eaten, and she felt awe for this man and a terrible shame that she hadn’t shared his fate. Everyone at the table felt the way she did. They were silent . . . ashamed of how little suffering they’d done, and overwhelmed with respect for the man who’d done so much. He looked at each of them, then started to laugh. He poured wine for everyone, added seltzer, then leaned across the table and kissed Rachel’s father on both cheeks. Rachel’s father blushed purple and Levy went on laughing, his dark eyes reflecting the lights in the restaurant and the lights out in the street that came through the window until his eyes and face looked full of light.

  “You all look so grim,” he cried, “you’d think I’d perished in the ovens after all. I didn’t,” he cried exultantly, “I’m here.” He raised his glass. “To being here,” he said. They all drank.

  Sussman and Allan waited in the living room while Rachel made coffee. She brought in a well-­filled tray and put it on the coffee table. She poured for them and handed them plates of cookies and dried figs. Sussman ate while he talked, crumbs stuck in his mustache, and fig seed was trapped in the corner of his mouth.

  “I’m not an alarmist,” he said, “but you people have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in your homes.”

  “We paid eighty,” Rachel said, and Allan listened.

  Rachel poured more coffee.

  “Eighty, ninety, two hundred thousand,” the fat man said. “It isn’t the amount that matters, but the fact that the money represents your life savings . . . unless, of course, you’re rich.”

  Rachel said quietly, “Get to the point, Mr. Sussman.”

  Sussman put his plate back on the tray and looked hard at them.

  “The Rosses who live half a block from here have just—against our advice—against, I may say, our pleas . . . sold their house to a black family.”

  He paused again and in the silence Rachel laughed. Sussman stared at her; so did Allan. She felt her face get red and that old terrible anger crept up her neck like a flush.

  “
Are you signing people up for fire-­bombing?” she asked.

  “This isn’t about race,” Sussman said, “it’s about property values. . . .”

  Throw him out, Allan, she prayed. Throw this fat mother­fucker out of my house.

  But Allan sat still and Sussman went on. “Right now we’re talking about nice people. He’s a doctor. They’ve got two sons, one fourteen, one seventeen, good boys, good students. Wonderful. If Dr. and Mrs. Garner were all we had to worry about I wouldn’t be here. But what happens when the Cohens want to sell, or the Raskins. Some nice family from Huntington or Hempstead comes out here and sees two black teen-­agers tooling around in their daddy’s Cadillac. Do you think that family’s gonna put out two hundred thousand dollars for a house when their next-­door neighbors are black? Do you?” Neither of them answered. “Would you?” Still no answer.

  “Nu, Mr. Siegal.” Sussman concentrated on Allan. “What’d you pay for your house?”

  Allan shrugged. “Two fifty,” he said.

  “If you gotta sell, you want your money back, don’t you? Plus maybe a little profit. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Sussman nodded; he didn’t look at Rachel. “But we get five black families in this whole section and you won’t get your two fifty. And she won’t get her eighty, and the Cohens won’t get their two hundred.”

  “What do you suggest we do?” Rachel asked hoarsely. “Have the black family murdered?” The flush on her face made her eyes sparkle. She looked lovely and they stared at her. Allan had never seen her angry; he didn’t know what to expect. He hoped that she would give up and start crying in a second. But she didn’t. She held the coffeepot in one steady hand.

  “Of course not.” Sussman tried to sound soothing, but Allan realized that he was a little scared of Rachel Levy.

  “The blacks have bought, the Rosses are moving next month. That’s that,” Sussman said.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Rachel said, “what do you suggest?”

  “Sell me your house. That simple. I’ll give you a fair profit.”

  “Where do I and my family go?”

  “I got lots of houses, Mrs. Levy. Some further out, some closer to the water, bigger, nicer. I can give you a terrific house for almost the same dough you get for this.”

  “And what do you do with this house?” she asked. With my tulip tree and the mice in the attic.

  “I’m going to tell you the truth,” Sussman said; “I up the price ten thousand on this place and sell black. I do the same with Mr. Siegal’s house, with the Cohens’ Raskins’, everybody. Turn the whole area over. I make a pile, everybody in the old neighborhood gets better houses; so, by the way, do the blacks. Better houses, better schools, everybody’s happy . . .”

  “Get out,” Rachel said.

  Sussman was stunned. “I’m not talking about race, Mrs. Levy. I swear to God . . .”

  “Get out or I’ll throw this in your face.” The coffeepot steamed.

  “Rachel, for God’s sake,” Allan cried.

  Rachel stood up and tilted the coffeepot so a small stream of hot coffee hit Sussman’s thigh. He jumped up.

  “You’re crazy,” he screamed. “I’ll sue you . . .”

  But he backed away from her, up the steps still going backward and into the foyer. She found his coat with one hand, holding the pot with the other. Allan’s eyes were wide with amazement. Sussman turned to Allan helplessly. Allan shook his head and Sussman said in his most soothing tones, “Mrs. Levy. I know how you feel. I swear to you, I’m no racist.” Rachel drew back the pot to throw and he ran out the door, down the path. She stood at the door with the pot raised until he started his car and drove away.

  When Allan told Jacob what happened, he laughed and shook his head. Rachel ladled out soup.

  “Extra noodles?” she asked. He nodded and they exchanged a look of conspirators while Allan said, “It’s not funny, Jake. Maybe Sussman’s a boor, but that doesn’t mean . . .”

  Levy said, “Allan, a man I love deeply and who once loved me was black. . . .”

  Roger Hawkins. Rachel spilled some of the soup she was ladling out and mopped up the drops.

  “And I’m not going to run away because people of the same color live a block away.”

  “What if you live next door? What if they live all around you?” Allan asked.

  “What if they do?”

  Allan shook his head. “Look, Jake, I don’t mean to sound like this, I swear I don’t. But some of what that guy said made sense.”

  “About the property values?”

  “Yes.”

  What about moral values, she expected Levy to ask. Should my money mean more to me than my conscience? He was one of the few people she’d ever known who could say things like that without sounding pompous. But instead he said quietly, “Allan, I’ve left Poland, Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, and Brooklyn. I’m not going again, and that’s final.”

  It wasn’t final then, but by the end of the evening it was. Levy called a meeting and by eight-­thirty Luria, Dworkin, Alldmann, Fineman, and the rest had gathered in Golda’s finished basement. Outside it was snowing again. They could hear the wind off the Sound; branches and limbs creaked and would break and leave windfalls all over the lawns and roads. They couldn’t help contrasting the outside storm with the warmth of the room they sat in. Golda made sandwiches, sturgeon salad on thin sliced rye, with sliced tomatoes and black wrinkled olives. The men drank tea, ate the sandwiches.

  It was Walinsky who came to the point. “So—we pack and move and have to start over someplace else, or we stay and lose money. Some choice,” he said bitterly.

  Dworkin said, “When do we lose this money, Sam? When we sell the houses in twenty years? You planning to live that long?”

  “Sure not,” Fineman said, “but our kids will. So they get screwed.”

  They all looked at Levy. Levy said, “Sussman wants us to think like that.” He smiled. “You know who he reminds me of?” They waited. “Leo Cohn,” Levy said. Leo Cohn had been a kapo. He’d been fat and sadistic and had oily skin. He took bribes and rarely delivered.

  “What happened to him?” Walinsky asked.

  Alldmann answered, “They shot him when they cleared out.” The men smiled and Dworkin said, “So we should worry because he tells us to? Where does it say that one black family—a doctor, mind you—is gonna cost us money? We cut and run and all we do is have more heartache and put money in that fat bastard’s pocket. Besides, black people can move anywhere. It’s the law, am I right?” Most nodded. “So where does drekkopf guarantee that it won’t happen in Wading River or Riverhead? . . .”

  Levy turned to Luria. “What do you say, Isaac?”

  Luria laughed and shook his head. His laugh was infectious and they all smiled. “I wouldn’t move if Martin Bormann bought the Ross house.”

  “Martin Bormann is white,” Dworkin said. “Blacks bought the Ross house.”

  “I don’t give a shit for blacks one way or the other,” Luria said.

  “Why then did I have the impression that you hated Roger Hawkins?” said Walinsky.

  “Because he was a putz,” Luria said. “Black or white, he had the soul of a putz.”

  “Don’t say that,” Levy said, sharply.

  “Why not?” Luria asked. “After all the years you were friends with him he never came to visit. Did he?” Luria’s eyes sharpened. “Did he?” he asked again.

  Levy stood up and Walinsky said quickly, “He visits, he doesn’t visit, who cares? The question is, what do we do about this.”

  “You hate blacks?” Luria asked. Walinsky shook his head.

  “Any of you hate blacks?” He looked around the room at all of them. One by one they shook their heads.

  “So we stay?” Luria asked. They all looked at Levy, who nodded
.

  “Those old guys’re okay,” Allan said to Rachel. They were at an Italian restaurant in Port Jefferson. “I mean they really put their money where their mouth is.” He drank wine while the waiter cleared the table and they ordered coffee.

  “For principles,” he said. “Shit . . . that’s remarkable.” He shook his head. “I mean what kind of folk in 1980 would actually . . .”

  Rachel wasn’t listening, she was thinking about the men’s decision to stay in Laurel. She knew they didn’t hate blacks or Puerto Ricans or the Yankees from the south side of town. They didn’t like them either. They didn’t care about them. To Luria, Dworkin, Fineman, and the rest (she didn’t include Levy) they were all outsiders. To them you were a Jew from Dabrowa or you didn’t count. The Raskins didn’t count, neither did the Rosses. Allan didn’t either.

  “Rachel,” Allan called her back, “you want rum cake?” She nodded, he ordered, and as soon as the waiter left Allan took a velvet ring box out of his pocket, and put it on the table in front of her. He was smiling and his eyes shone. Rachel felt faint and she put her head down to try and get some blood back into it.

  “Rachel . . . hey, Rache,” he called to her over the roaring of the blood in her ears. “I just want to marry you. You know, home, kids, furniture . . .”

  She opened her eyes. The ring box was still in front of her along with a large slice of rum cake. She sensed disaster and thought of Persephone opening the pomegranate. But she couldn’t stop herself and she opened the box. It was a three-­carat emerald-­cut solitaire in a fine platinum setting. It caught the light, fractured it, reflected the spectrum against the walls in the dim restaurant.

  She put the ring on and stared at it fascinated. It would snag her stockings and sweaters but it was beautiful. He grabbed her hands and kissed the backs, then turned them over and kissed the palms. “When?” he asked, “when?” But she couldn’t say when.