“We didn’t get very much done today, did we?” Donna’s voice brought me back to the reality of the office.
I tried to apologize, but she stopped me and invited me to have a drink with her. We went into one of the only places in town that could be called, if even barely, a pub. Tom was the bartender and also the owner. Even though it was still light out, it was dark inside. We sat across from one another and Tom came over and cheerfully asked us what we would like to drink. Donna answered for the both of us and ordered vodka with orange juice. “But it’s only afternoon!” I tried to protest, but she ignored me completely and nodded to Tom, assuring him that this was indeed our order.
“I’m not going to ask you what happened today,” she said. “It must be one of your moods regarding your parents or something else, God knows what. In any case, I want to know how we can continue looking for this woman.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then I remembered that I had promised she could be part of the search team.
“The truth is that I don’t know,” I answered. I hoped that answer would mollify her for now, or at least postpone the conversation on the subject to another time. But Donna said, “There’s no way you’re going to put me off with your nonsense. I want us to think together how we can continue what you both started. Now tell me everything you know about this woman. Don’t leave out any details, even if you think they’re insignificant… Everything.”
I told her about the bracelet I found at home, about the phone conversation from the detective agency, about my and Roy’s visit to hospitals in Chicago, about the conversation I had with the priest, about the advertisement we placed that hadn’t generated a thing, and about our visit to the city library. I emphasized that everywhere we went, we reached a dead end.
“I think it’s just a waste of time,” I said.
“Have you told me everything? Think hard. There’s nothing else? I don’t know—anything.” Donna was unquestionably blessed with determination.
When I told Donna about the check that came to the house, she wisely suggested that we try to locate the store that sent the check to see if they could dig up details that would help us locate Sonia Schwartz.
When Tom arrived with the drinks, Donna gave me the narrow glass and ordered me to drink it down all in one gulp.
“But it’s too strong for me,” I complained.
“All at once,” she insisted.
I tipped my head back and tossed the drink down my throat in one gulp. I immediately felt the warmth radiating throughout my entire body. My throat burned, but a pleasant feeling had taken over. I said, “OK, let’s go for it. We’ll tell Roy that you’re joining us and together we’ll devise our adventure.”
“Oh, my God, what one glass of vodka can do,” Donna said with a smile. “I wonder what would happen after a few more of those.”
12
We met two days later—Donna, Roy and me. We sat in the wicker chairs on the porch and began to plan our next steps. Roy tried to object to Donna’s suggestion that we find the store where the check was sent from, claiming we should wait for results from the priest and the librarian first. He said he would prefer to check at home rather than travel somewhere far away.
It seemed to me that Roy was quieter than usual. Most of the time he listened to the conversation between Donna and me and almost never intervened. Every once in a while, he would throw in a word, but did not really contribute ideas. I was a bit surprised but didn’t say anything. Donna was against his idea of waiting and insisted we check things simultaneously. She won, of course. I brought the envelope with the check and together we examined its details. The letter was signed by somebody named Shlomo Cohen, and it gave a telephone number and exact address. We tried to call the number, but a recording answered saying that the number had been disconnected. The only other possibility would be to go the address on the letterhead.
We drove to Chicago the following day. The name of the company was Cohen and Sons. The address on the letter was located in the center of the city. We found the address fairly easily. Cars passed by us in a constant buzz, horns honked, and people crossed in front of us, caught up in their own lives. I felt slightly uncomfortable. Big cities made me shrink. I felt lost in them. The fast pace, the blasting car horns, the smoke, smog, and people hurrying about. All of these things exacerbated my feelings of loneliness, of not belonging. I let Donna and Roy lead the way. They were holding a map that they used to navigate. Above our heads, there was a sign with its lights turned off. It read, “Cohen and Sons Ltd.” Underneath the sign, there was another one that read, “Unsurpassed Quality and Attention Since 1947.” Both signs looked very old. Underneath those were two glass doors locked with a large iron padlock. We knocked on the glass doors but didn’t get an answer. We tried to look through the glass. It was dark inside, but we could see that the place was empty and abandoned. There were a few boards, some lying on the floor and others leaning against the wall. Papers were strewn all over.
“I’m going to look around back,” said Roy. Several minutes later he came back and asked us to join him. We arrived at the back of the store, which faced a narrow alley lined with huge dumpsters.
“Where are you taking us?” Donna asked, obviously irritated.
Roy didn’t answer, but suddenly opened a door and invited us to go in. It was a small room, not more than two hundred square feet. In the middle of the room was a table, and sitting on a chair next to it was a man in his early thirties. When we walked in, he stood up and his face was pleasant and inviting. He held out his hand and said, “Michael—Mickey. Nice to meet you, Eva.”
Mickey was a very handsome guy. His body was slim and long and he had a healthy head of brown hair. His clothes were fashionable and suited his figure. When he introduced himself, he had a warm smile, despite the air of sorrow that touched his eyes like a thin, almost imperceptible thread.
I looked around. Aside from the table and chair, there was also a brown chest of drawers, old but in good shape. Pictures were hanging on the walls, most of them black and white. Under the pictures was a shelf that held a number of medals. When I got closer, I read on one of the medals that it was given for excellence in business; another was awarded for huge sales in 1982; and one personal one was awarded by the City of Chicago honoring the generous contribution of Mr. Shlomo Cohen to the city. On the opposite wall were paintings in various shades of turquoise, red, blue and yellow. There was one painting that drew my eye in particular. The brush strokes were circular and soft and the colors blended together in beautiful harmony.
“My father made that painting even before the business was established,” said Mickey. He stood beside me and looked at the painting as if for the first time. I turned to look at him and met a pair of green eyes, deeply recessed in their sockets but full of warmth. I smiled at him and told him that I loved the painting.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, but I feel like in spite of the colors used, there is something sad about it. Some kind of secret. As if underneath the happy circles, there’s something that the painter doesn’t want known or seen and therefore it’s trying very hard to hide it in the vibrant cheerful colors… Too cheerful.”
Mickey looked at me and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I don’t understand art very well. I’m just babbling.”
“You’re not babbling,” he said. “It’s your powerful intuition.”
In answer to my questioning face, he began to talk about his father, who was a young boy when World War II broke out. As soon as they took the Jews to the camps, they separated him from his parents. They were both killed and he was the only one lucky enough to survive.
“And the painting?” I asked.
“The painting covers everything he went through back then.”
“And…” I wanted him to continue talking.
“Mr. Cohen, we wondered if you could help us with something,” Donna said in
a pragmatic voice.
“Yes, of course, how can I help?” His voice became official and the warm and humorous look in his eye turned serious and businesslike.
“We’re looking for a woman named Sonia Schwartz.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know—”
Donna cut him off. “A little while ago, you sent her a check in the amount of thirty dollars…” She continued to lay out the facts before him, explaining how important it was to us to find this woman and pass the money on to her. “We ask that you please check your records and see if this woman is living at another address, so that we can send her the check.”
Mickey asked to see the check and went straight to the task at hand. He sat down in front of the computer and got to work. Every once in a while, he asked a question, but beyond the information we had already given him, we didn’t have any answers.
“Interesting,” he muttered to himself. “I can’t find this name in the computer.”
“That’s impossible,” Donna insisted. “You’re the ones who sent the check to her. Why did you send this check out after such a long time?”
“That’s who we are,” he answered immediately. “My father brought us up to be fair. We never left debts unpaid. If someone is entitled to something from us, he will receive it even after thirty years.” Mickey got up from his chair, went over to an old filing cabinet standing next to the wall across from the table, took out a box and began to go through the papers inside.
“I knew it,” he shouted. “My mother was our bookkeeper. Even after we introduced computers to the business, she refused to use one and continued to do her work by hand. Besides, I see that this was something that was purchased more than ten years ago.”
He put an old, foul-smelling yellow index card in Donna’s hand. Roy and I moved closer and saw the name “Sonia Schwartz” written in blue ink on the card. We saw that on November 10, 1983, she had purchased a single bed made of maple with a matching mattress. On the next line was my home address. We looked at the writing over and over again as if it would tell us something more about the woman.
“What now?” I asked disappointedly. The truth is, as usual, we didn’t think ahead. We didn’t plan what we would do if we received proof that the woman really existed.
“Give me the card,” Roy ordered. Up until now, he had kept his distance and not interfered in the conversation.
Donna held out the card and Roy moved it closer to his eyes. Every so often he turned it over and around and looked at it for a long time.
“What?” asked Donna with obvious impatience.
Roy came over to me and said, “Somebody erased something here.”
Mickey also moved closer and asked to see the card. He also turned it over, moved it under the ceiling light, and turned it around and around. He finally said that it was impossible to read the writing.
“Do you think your mother could have erased something here?” Roy asked Michael.
“Of course not,” he said adamantly. “My mother never did anything like that. If she made a mistake, she would white it out with correction fluid and write over it in clean and clear writing. This was not her work.”
“Strange,” Roy mumbled to himself.
“Do you think we could have this card?”
“I don’t think…” he began. Then, seeing our disappointed faces, he said instead, “You know what, I’ll make a photocopy of the card and let you have it, just for good measure.”
We left the building and took deep breaths. Even though the room was neat and orderly, we felt suffocated inside.
Donna suggested that since we were already in Chicago, we should sightsee for a while and then get a bite to eat. Roy agreed right away. I didn’t answer. They both turned to me with puzzled looks. They were surprised by my silence.
“You both go ahead,” I said finally.
I saw Roy’s questioning glance. Donna nodded her head in agreement.
We agreed to meet in two hours. I went back to the alley and walked into the room. Mickey smiled at me. “I knew you’d be back,” he said. He pointed to a chair at the end of the room and asked me to move it closer. He took a photo out of a drawer in the table, held it out to me, and said, “This is my grandfather, Yakov.”
In the picture, faded with age, was a man about forty years old, with the same warmth in his eyes possessed by his grandson. He had a black beard whose ends were rounded and every hair was tucked into place. His image was of a man who commanded respect. His dark suit afforded him the look of a wise and self-confident man. Mickey took the photo from my hand and looked at it for a long moment. “My father says that he was a very wise man,” he muttered to himself. “There was not a soul who didn’t respect and love him.”
“He looks like it,” I agreed.
He began to talk. “My grandfather and grandmother were born in Ukraine, in a city called Yelizavetgrad. During the early 1920s, riots broke out in the city. My father told me that most of the Jews in the city were killed in a pogrom, and that his parents survived by luck. Many of the women were raped and injured, and many people lost all of their property. They escaped from there and arrived in Poland. When Hitler took over, my grandfather was already a wealthy man. He was in the coal mining business, and the company he founded employed dozens of people. Hitler’s being elected didn’t raise any special concern for him. Nobody imagined that Hitler’s rise to power would be the first step toward the atrocities that would take place in the future. My grandfather continued to work at the company. They lived in the city of Katowice, southwest of Warsaw. There were Jews, Germans, Poles, and Silesians living in the city, and my grandfather lived in peace with all of them. My father told me that even though my grandfather was a very busy man, he always found time for my father. Grandfather would tell him that the company was Father’s, that Grandfather was only taking care of it until my father decided he was ready to manage it on his own. My father always said that he aimed to be admired the way his father was.” Mickey stopped talking. For a minute I thought he had fallen asleep, but suddenly I heard him mumble, “They had a special bond…”
His monologue began to make me feel uncomfortable, as if someone was loading especially heavy bricks upon my shoulders. Mickey seemed to have completely forgotten I was there. I cleared my throat in order to get his attention, but he continued talking, ignoring me entirely, sitting on his chair and staring into space. I decided to get out of there. I took a piece of paper from the table and wrote down my phone number. He didn’t notice me leave. Even as I closed the door behind me, I could still hear the sound of his voice.
The light outside blinded me—it was less than half an hour until my meeting with Roy and Donna. Walking toward the busy street, I felt confused. Something undefinable was stirring inside me. Mickey was a complete stranger to me—we had never met before, I had never been in his store or on this street. The story he told me had nothing to do with me at all. It was the story of a family I don’t even know. But still inside my stomach, deep inside, something bounced like a small ball, and every bounce shook its sides. I had to hear the whole story—clearly, there was a lot more to it. I decided to wait two weeks and then call Mickey, if he didn’t call me first.
Donna was very cheerful and satisfied when we met up with them. Roy was restrained. I could feel him looking at me and I avoided his eyes. He was quiet the entire way back. Donna filled the void of the car with cheerful chatter, and I murmured every once in a while in response.
13
The house wasn’t calm that night. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard noises. The window in the bedroom was creaking; a popping sound rose up from the television in the guest room; the coffee maker in the kitchen made noise. Each time I got up and went to check the source of the noise, silence filled the house. But as soon as I got back into bed, the noises returned. Sleep was fitful, and at five a.m., it fled for good. I sat in the living room and turned on the television. I flipped through the stations but couldn’t find anything inte
resting on any of the programs.
Suddenly, as I was changing stations, I heard a familiar name and went back to the previous channel. Filling the entire screen was a figure whom I had only learned about several hours earlier: Mickey’s grandfather, with the shortened beard and brown eyes, smiling at me from the screen. The narrator’s voice could be heard in the background:
“This is a story about people who are deeply scarred from the atrocities they suffered and the inhuman situations they were forced to contend with. Those of us who didn’t endure the tragedy grapple with questions that we will probably never be able to answer. Despite this, they raised families, built businesses and contributed a great deal to society. Shlomo Cohen was one of many that experienced and survived one of the greatest abominations in the history of humanity. The determination of these people to continue living, despite the horrors they experienced, is an example for the entire world in general, and the Jewish people in particular.”
The program had finished and the credits were rolling quickly on the screen, accompanied by an unfamiliar melody.
I sat completely rigid. “That can’t be. It just can’t be,” I muttered. “This isn’t a coincidence any more, this is a guiding hand.” It seemed totally absurd that I would get up in the middle of the night, turn on the television, and find Shlomo Cohen on TV.
What to do? Going back to sleep was out of the question. There was no one to talk to—it was way too early. I was alone, and these thoughts were disturbing my peace of mind. And then, completely naturally, I began to speak to my father out loud.
“What do these incidents mean? I know you’re steering me toward something, but I don’t understand the significance of your actions. I miss you; I don’t know how to deal with things like this by myself; I need you to show me the way, to solve all these questions that have arisen throughout the last year for me.”
Life in a Box Page 8
