The Tribe

by Bari Wood

Hawkins’s mother interrupted. “She’s wet and hungry.”­

  Rachel brought her tote bag and Hawkins’s mother took it from her. “I kin handle her,” she said. Her fingers were swollen and crooked from arthritis, her elbows were big knobs. Leah was quieting down and she picked her up and carried her into another room. Rachel saw a Naugahyde sofa and a TV set through the door. The old lady shoved the door shut with her foot and Hawkins grabbed her arm.

  “In Brooklyn it was for Adam. What was it this time?” he asked.

  “Luria’s grandson. Some black and white kids had a fight in the high school and Luria’s grandson was killed.”

  “The Garners were black?” His grip on her arm tightened.

  “Yes,” she said. She felt guilty, but didn’t know why.

  “One of the Garners killed the boy?”

  “No . . . Tom Junior wouldn’t kill anyone. It was an accident. They were all fighting in the cafeteria”—she remembered what Tom Junior had said—“and Michael fell or got pushed and hit his head. No one meant it.”

  “Then why?”

  She looked at Hawkins. “I don’t know. Michael had a knife . . . that’s what Tom told me. And I wanted to tell Jacob. I almost did. But I looked at him and I knew it wouldn’t matter. Michael was dead . . . one of our own. One of their own,” she corrected herself. “That was all that mattered.” She stopped, then said, “I don’t know why they killed Willa and Eric. Maybe it was an accident too.” She wiped tears out of her eyes. “I don’t understand why they killed the boys in Brooklyn. I loved Adam. But I swear to you I wouldn’t’ve killed them.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” he asked softly, looking at her.

  She was going to say no, but all at once she couldn’t get the word out.

  “Wouldn’t you really?” he asked again.

  She still couldn’t answer.

  Another program came on TV. She heard music and voices through the door, and Leah laughed. Hawkins picked up the phone.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  “The Laurel police . . . the chief.”

  Someone answered the phone and Hawkins identified himself. Then he waited and the Laurel police chief came on the line. He was shouting and Hawkins had to hold the phone away from his ear.

  “I’ve seen murder,” the chief shouted; “even out here people get murdered. But nothing like this. One wasn’t bad. It was like when some guy loses it and hits his wife with a baseball bat and it’s a lucky hit. You’ve seen those. One clop and she’s dead, and he just meant to scare her, to teach her a lesson. That’s how it was with the little one. They threw him against a wall or something, broke his neck, and bang, the kid’s dead. But the others . . . oh shit.” The man coughed and Hawkins wondered if he was crying. “They beat them and beat them.” The chief raved on. “They twisted parts of them . . . we were slipping in blood.”

  “And clay,” Hawkins said.

  The chief stopped, then said, “How’d you know about the clay?”

  Hawkins looked at Rachel. “I have a friend who lives on Sutter Lane,” he said.

  “We don’t know what to make of the clay. There wasn’t enough to smother them or anything, but it was everywhere the bodies were. It was on the bodies . . .” The chief stopped. “I never saw such a thing. It wasn’t enough to kill them, to beat them up like that, but to throw mud on them . . . oh my . . .”

  “Where did it come from?” Hawkins asked.

  “Wading River, Swan Pond, Linus Pond.”

  “Any way to tell which?” Hawkins asked.

  “No. There’s clay all over here. Riverbanks, streams, swamps.”

  “Any weapons?”

  “We didn’t find any. But there must’ve been.”

  Hawkins didn’t answer.

  “They couldn’t do that with their bare hands.”

  Hawkins asked, “Is there any chance the husband did it?”

  “No,” the chief answered. “We found him at a meeting in St. Louis. He’s on his way home.” The chief stopped again. “Oh my God,” he said, “that poor bastard. That poor, poor bastard.” The chief choked again and this time Hawkins knew he was crying. Hawkins waited, but the man couldn’t talk anymore and after a moment Hawkins hung up.

  “Where did the clay come from?” Rachel asked.

  “They don’t know.”

  “Why was it there?”

  He shook his head.

  “It means something,” she said desperately. “Some ritual.”

  Hawkins shook his head. “Ableson asked his mother’s­­­­ rabbi. He never heard of a ritual with clay. But he said that some village sects had their own rituals, handed down for two or three hundred years, that he wouldn’t know about.”

  “Who would know?”

  “They would know. Or someone else from the same village.” He looked at her. “Who else is from there?”

  “No one,” she said. “The Nazis killed them.”

  “All of them?”

  “I think so.”

  She said it so calmly he realized that she was used to the idea.

  “Who would know for sure?”

  “Golda might.”

  “Call her,” Hawkins said.

  Golda sounded scared. “Rachel, where are you? The cops want to see you, there’re reporters everywhere. My God, Rachel. Where are you?”

  “Golda, you’ve got to help me.”

  “How?”

  “Tell me who else is from Dabrowa.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean who doesn’t live with us. Who’s not a”— Rachel searched for the right word—“a member.”

  Golda knew what she meant. “There’s one man I know about. Two, but one’s in Israel, I think. The one who lives here came to Adam’s funeral.”

  “Did I see him?”

  “No. They had you in the back when he came.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “Relkin. Joseph Relkin, an importer of some kind.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Northern suburbs, Connecticut or Westchester. I’m not sure.”

  Hawkins called Sam Hunt in Manhattan and a few minutes later Hunt called him back. There was only one J. Relkin, he reported. Importer who had an office on Thirty-­second and Fifth and a house in Larchmont. Three cars were registered to him, a Mercedes 300, a pimp­mobile, and a Pontiac station wagon. “To go to the station, I guess,” Hunt said. He had two speeding tickets from the sixties, both paid without protest. No arrests, no convictions. “He’s clean,” Hunt told Hawkins, “clean and rich.”

  Rachel called J. Relkin in Larchmont. He had a husky voice that reminded her of Walinsky’s. When she told him who she was he was quiet for a moment, then he asked how Jacob was.

  “He’s fine,” she answered.

  “Good,” he said, “I thought maybe it was another funeral.” She asked if they could see him and he said he wouldn’t be back until three. Then he asked who “they” were. She told him and he asked softly, “Trouble?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  He was quiet again, then he said, “Sure, wife of Adam. Beloved of Jacob. I’ll see you.”

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Relkin led them into the living room and they sat in front of the dying fire and talked about the weather, about Temple Emmanuel where Mrs. Relkin ran Hadassah and Mr. Relkin embarrassed her by never showing up. She asked about Leah, and about Golda. She answered her own questions. Rachel leaned back and listened to logs cracking in the fireplace, to the wind outside the big picture window that looked over the back acreage across the empty swimming pool to the trees. Aqua paint was peeling, the pool sides were dotted with dead leaves. Hawkins reached for his teacup and she saw the pale inside of his hand.

  Mrs. Relkin raised the diamond-­studded cover
of her wristwatch. “He should have been here before now,” she said. “I’m supposed to play bridge; I wouldn’t mind, but they’re counting on me.”

  “Go anyway,” Rachel offered, “Mr. Relkin expects us.”

  Mrs. Relkin looked at Hawkins uncertainly.

  “I could . . .” she said.

  Rachel realized that she was afraid of leaving the black man alone in her house, as if he’d steal or break something.

  She said, “We won’t hurt anything.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . of course you wouldn’t . . .” She retreated out to the hall to get her coat. Then she came back, wrapped in mink. “I’m sorry the tea’s cold. I don’t have time . . .”

  She left them alone.

  Hawkins drank the cold tea.

  “Are most people afraid of having you in their houses?” Rachel asked.

  “Only white people.”

  She blushed and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. It started to rain, and it was getting dark.

  “Does it happen often with white people?” she asked.

  “Not so much anymore.”

  “Why ‘anymore’?”

  “The gray in my hair. I even thought of growing a beard once, to make me look even older. No one’s scared of an old nigger. But it itched and took too long.”

  The front door slammed, and Joseph Relkin came into the living room.

  “She ran out on us, huh?” He had an accent, not as thick as Levy’s, but the same dialect. “Bridge!” He came into the room and shook hands with Hawkins, but he kept looking at Rachel.

  “Shain,§§§” he told her, his hand on Hawkins’s shoulder. “Zare shain. Jacob Levy’s daughter-­in-­law. Adam’s widow.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “How long now?”

  “Two years,” she said.

  “Terrible thing. Terrible.” He went to a cabinet across the room and took out a bottle. “Shitty weather. It’s raining again. We’ll have some brandy.”

  Relkin brought them balloon glasses a third full. He was red-­haired and big, bigger than Hawkins, and Rachel stared at him.

  “Big ’un, right?” He laughed. “Big for a Polack . . . big for a Jew. Some Hun got in there somehow.” More laughing. “Big man . . .” He stared at Rachel, his meaning clear, and for a second she was afraid that he was going to open his fly to show them how big, but he only winked at her, then sat down next to Hawkins so he could go on staring at her.

  “I saw you at the funeral. You didn’t see me, and they wouldn’t introduce me, so we’ve never met. I’m Joe Relkin.” He took her hand, squeezed it, kept smiling. “You were very mysterious on the phone, but I couldn’t turn down Jacob Levy’s daughter-­in-­law, could I?” He finished the brandy, then went back to the cabinet and brought the bottle with him. He raised his glass. “To the great Jacob Levy!” he said without irony, then drank. “Now, what could you . . . daughter of Zion . . . want with a rich outcast importer who hasn’t been to shul for thirty years?”

  Hawkins answered for her.

  “You were at Belzec.”

  Relkin put his glass down.

  Hawkins went on, “With them.”

  Relkin didn’t ask whom Hawkins meant by “them.” “I was at Belzec from 1940 until 1945.”

  He looked like he was in his late forties; he’d been a child in 1940, seven or eight. Rachel couldn’t look at him.

  “And you were from Dabrowa,” Hawkins said.

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not one of them.”

  Relkin looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “You don’t live with them, you don’t dress like them, you don’t talk like them. You’re . . . you’re . . .”

  “An outcast . . .” Relkin helped Hawkins.

  “Yes.” Hawkins sounded sorry for him.

  “Don’t sound like that; I want to be what I am, I don’t have to pretend like that bunch of old momzers.”

  “Pretend what?” Hawkins asked.

  “She knows what I’m talking about. Ask them about Dabrowa, and they’ll make you think that Poland was Paradise!” He laughed harshly. “Paradise, full of Polacks. Now you know that can’t be true. And they aren’t the only ones; all the old farts . . . singing dy de aye di di, hugging each other, dancing together like no one’d ever danced before . . .” Alone in Luria’s finished basement, Rachel thought, just the eight of them at night, dancing while everyone else was asleep.

  “There’re the Westchester matrons, too,” Relkin said, “trying to love it all. To love and believe, the fat actors singing of the joys of being a Jew in a shtetl. To love and believe the artist who paints it with pink cows floating over the clean little houses and delicate brides. They don’t want to remember that the bride had smallpox, and the goyim are waiting just off the canvas to rape her and steal the cow.” Relkin laughed. “Don’t take my word for it. Try to send them back and see what they do.” Relkin took out a cigar and spit the bitten-­off end into the fireplace; then he said, “Belzec’s thirty-­five years ago, who cares?”

  “I do,” Hawkins said.

  “Why?”

  Hawkins told him what had happened on President Street and in Laurel. Rachel looked out of the window trying not to listen. He got to the clay and Relkin paled and took out his handkerchief to wipe his face. But he didn’t say anything.

  Then Hawkins said, “I know they were involved, but I don’t know how. All I know about them is that they come from Poland, that there’s some kind of bond between them and you’re like they are . . . yet not.”

  Relkin said quietly, “Why is this Jew different from all other Jews?”

  “Why?” Hawkins asked.

  “Because my mother married a communist who wouldn’t kiss the rebbe’s ass. The rebbe, by the way, was Jacob Levy’s father. So, one man won’t kiss, pretty soon somebody else won’t, and before you know it you can’t get anyone to pucker up. Oh, they have reasons . . . the unity of community; safety in solidarity or some such bullshit.”

  “Why was it bullshit?” Rachel asked.

  Relkin looked at her, surprised. “The Nazis sent us to Belzec anyway. Unity and all . . . the Unity only meant that we all went together . . .”

  “They loaded us onto railway cars. . . . I don’t remember too clearly, but I remember looking for my father and thinking he was in the next car. But he wasn’t and I never saw him again.

  “So there I was, alone with thirty-­odd Dabrowa men who survived the trip and two other children; a kid who died the first month whose name I can’t remember, and Danny Walinsky, who was a few months older than me.”

  “What happened to Danny?” Hawkins asked.

  Relkin shrugged. “He lived; he changed his name to Uze Ben Ezra and sells phony antiques in his shop in Haifa. Danny Walinsky is a vontz. . . .”

  “Bedbug,” Rachel translated softly.

  Relkin went on, “For a long time, nothing happened. Then one man, I don’t remember his name, found out his wife was dead, and he screamed and cried the whole night. The others got impatient because he was interrupting their sleep. But Levy cradled him in his arms like a child, kissed, him, crooned to him, rocked him, until the poor man finally fell asleep and had some rest.

  “They took another young man away to the hospital and we never saw him again. Except for that, everything went along evenly. I know that sounds mad, but it’s true. Danny and I learned Talmud. We played, had enough food to stay alive. The seasons changed and I remember standing outside, as cold as it was, and watching the snow melt. I actually felt joy when it did. Joy. It seems incredible to me now, but if I try I can still smell the dirt outside the barracks starting to thaw, even over the other smells. Of course I can’t feel joy anymore . . . too old. Then that spring . . . the third spring we were there . . . two of the Dabrowa men were shot. I don’t know wha
t for. One was my uncle. He was older than the others. Maybe that was why. Maybe he faltered and couldn’t work anymore . . . maybe . . .”

  Relkin stopped and shook his head.

  “Stupid . . . even now, when I know better, I still look for reasons. They shot him, that’s all, along with . . . Abe Dworkin’s brother. Oh God . . . the moaning and crying. It was Levy who did the comforting. I didn’t feel sorry, except for Levy being so upset. But the dead men hadn’t paid much attention to us, they never gave us food, so I didn’t really care. I think if they’d hurt Levy, I’d’ve died. He was everything to me by then, mother, father, teacher. He cried with Dworkin and he helped me say Kaddish for my uncle. The men mourned . . . there weren’t any stools, so they squatted, covered their heads with their shirts, and rocked and chanted.

  “Only Luria didn’t mourn aloud. He sat still on his bunk, legs crossed, and watched the others. Levy tried to get him to join but he wouldn’t. He talked to himself, his lips moving silently. Once he cried aloud and Levy broke the circle to run to him, to comfort him, too. . . . Levy had so much comfort in him . . .

  “The next night two of the guards started beating the man whose wife had died. He was the youngest, the handsomest, of the Dabrowa men. His skin was smooth, like a girl’s, and the others used to tease him about not having to shave. The other men edged me and Danny behind them so we couldn’t see what was happening. Then one of them, Chern I think, forced us to lie on the floor under one of the bunks. We couldn’t see what was happening, but we could hear. The man screamed and groaned. We heard bones breaking and when they let us stand up again the man and the guards were gone.” Then like a litany, Relkin said, “We never saw him again.

  “After that everything changed. No more Talmud, as if it didn’t matter anymore, and no more extra food, as if we weren’t children anymore. After that all the men did was hold meetings. They clumped together in the back of the barracks, whispering or shouting. But all in Hebrew. Still, I understood enough to know that Luria wanted to do something Levy didn’t, and the rest were with Luria. Only Levy was their rabbi’s son. Traditionally they wouldn’t act without his permission and they started hating him for not giving it, and finally they shut him out.”