Come Pour the Wine

by Cynthia Freeman

  Fayge held her close. Sweet little girl, she seemed so lost. “You’ll come Friday night for dinner? You’ll have a good Shabbes meal. Oy vay, you don’t even know what Shabbes is. It means sabbath. It’s like your day of rest. You be here at five.”

  In the subway, Fayge’s words haunted Janet. You don’t even know what Shabbes is … Unfortunately, that was very true. She should have known, should have been taught that part of her legacy. Had her great-grandfather’s decision been different, she might have belonged to these people. Janet recalled having heard bits and pieces of his life. Now she longed to know how she had evolved into a Christian … part of her roots came out of the land of Canaan. Now there was a burning curiosity that would refuse to be stilled….

  Janet knocked on Fayge’s door precisely at five on Friday evening and when Fayge released the door with a lever at the top of the stairs Janet walked into the stairwell, carrying a basket of fruit.

  Fayge called down happily, “I thought maybe you could have forgot.”

  “I couldn’t wait for tonight,” Janet responded, smiling.

  “Good, good. Come now, dahlink.”

  Janet went upstairs and embraced Fayge and then found herself being led down the hall to the front room. It was so different from the first time she’d been here. The table was set with a snow-white cloth, and there were two candlesticks placed at the head of the table, a bottle of wine and a tray of homemade challah, braided and baked to a shiny, delicate brown so artfully that it was hard to believe that it was merely a loaf of bread. There were pieces of gefilte fish adorned with slices of carrot and a sprig of parsley, and small ruby red glasses completed the setting. But even more impressive was Fayge. Her curly black hair had been shampooed and fell in small ringlets around her really lovely full face, and her eyes, the color of soft ripe olives, sparkled. The rosy plump cheeks needed no rouge and her lips were natural red. Gone was the ill-fitting dirty cotton dress. Tonight she wore a beautiful black silk, with a cameo pinned in the center of the white lace collar. Small diamond earrings shone in the dimly lit room. As Janet handed her the basket of fresh fruit, she said, “You look so beautiful, Mrs. Kowalski.”

  Almost shyly, Fayge answered, “Well, on Shabbes you wear your best. It’s a very special night to sit with God. Every woman should look like a queen.” Looking at the basket Janet had just handed her, she said, “This is very nice, but so many presents you don’t have to bring. It’s enough you brought yourself. Now sit down, dahlink.”

  As Fayge went back to the kitchen to baste the chicken, Janet seated herself on the sofa, trying to avoid the sharp springs that stuck through the worn fabric. She had just settled herself comfortably when she looked up and saw a man with the most extraordinary flaming red hair and beard she’d ever seen. His blue eyes, though, seemed sad. He was emaciated and bent. In that fleeting moment Janet knew this was Fayge’s husband and that he was very ill. Janet smiled tentatively and was about to introduce herself, but just then Fayge bustled back into the front room.

  “Nu, Mendele, you had a good rest?”

  He nodded. “I had a good rest.”

  “Sit, Mendele, sit,” Fayge said, helping him into the wooden chair. Like a loving mother she said, “Mendele, let me introduce you to—” She broke off, suddenly realizing she had invited the girl to dinner but had never thought to ask her name. Flushing in embarrassment, she said, “You should excuse me, but I don’t know your name.”

  Janet had been called “dahlink” so many times, she hadn’t even noticed. Nor was she offended now. “It’s Janet Stevens,” she said simply.

  “Very nice name. And this is my Mendele,” Fayge said. “Mendele, this is the nice little—” She was about to say shiksa but she caught herself just in time. “This is the nice sweet girl I told you about who gave us the cake. And now she brought a basket of fruit.”

  Mendel said, “Very happy to meet you.”

  Janet smiled. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

  Before another word could be spoken an old lady hobbled into the room with the aid of a cane. The resemblance to Fayge was unmistakable. The old lady was Fayge’s mother, Rivke. Her shoulders were bent, her face was etched with deep furrows. Her hands were arthritic and her legs swollen. Fayge hurried over to help her, saying, “You couldn’t have waited, momma? I was just going to get you.”

  “When I need you, I’ll call you. In the meantime, on my two legs I can still stand.”

  Fayge and her mother spoke in Yiddish, but Janet could tell the old woman resented being fussed over. Still, as though Fayge hadn’t heard, she helped her to a straight-backed wooden chair.

  “Janet, this is my mother.”

  Janet was surprised when the old lady responded in broken English, “You brought the cake? It was very good.”

  Before Janet could answer, the doorbell rang and Fayge went quickly down the hall. Janet could hear profuse greetings from the doorway and when Fayge reappeared it was with her two uncles, Itzik and Yussel. This was Fayge’s entire family; the rest had perished in the Holocaust.

  After the introductions were made, Fayge asked everyone to be seated and she began the ritual of Shabbes which had been performed for centuries. Putting a white lace shawl over her head, she struck a match and lit her candles. They gleamed like jewels in the evening shadows. Fayge put her hands over her eyes and swayed back and forth, silently reciting the prayer. Janet felt herself responding. It was somehow more personal than being in a cathedral. When the prayers were concluded Fayge took off the lace mantle, folded it carefully, then cut the challah, handing each member a piece to be eaten after the motzi, the prayer led by Uncle Itzik, who, being the oldest, was given the honor. Holding the bread in his hand, he blessed it and in Hebrew recited the benediction. “Blessed art Thou, Oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

  The others bit into the bread, and Janet followed their lead. The wine was blessed by the younger brother, Yussel, and then Fayge poured it into the small glasses. The red horseradish was passed and the meal began.

  As Fayge was removing the fish plates Janet said, “Please let me help you, Mrs. Kowalski.”

  “You call me Fayge. And if you feel like, it would be my pleasure.”

  Janet helped Fayge clear the table and then set out the next course—bowls of yellow chicken soup, each containing three succulent matzoh balls. When she and Fayge were seated again, the conversation began, all of it in Yiddish. Itzik inquired how his sister Rivke’s rheumatism was. She answered him with a shrug. “How should it be?”

  The question having been answered with a question, Yussel asked Fayge, who was swallowing her last matzoh ball, “Where did you find the little shiksa?”

  “She came to the store last Sunday.”

  “So every shiksa who comes into the store you invite home? What, you’re so rich you can afford to invite everybody home for dinner?”

  “Never mind. She’s a very lonesome little girl. Goyim get lonesome too. And try to speak English so she shouldn’t feel left out.” Fayge glanced at Janet, taking in the untouched bowl of soup in front of her. “You don’t like it?”

  Janet had been so caught up in all that was going on that she hadn’t even tried the soup, but she said. “It’s very good.”

  “How would you know? You didn’t even taste it.”

  “I’m sorry …” She took a large mouthful, then another, and found that she enjoyed it very much indeed.

  The rest of the meal passed with little conversation, everyone turning their attention to the steaming platter of chicken, the bowl of tsimmes and the compote of stewed fruit that Janet helped Fayge to serve. After the dessert of tea, sponge cake and Janet’s fresh fruit was eaten, Fayge passed a bottle of seltzer water and they all helped themselves.

  Now the questioning began, and Yussel’s frank curiosity about Janet’s background soon had her opening up and feeling at ease. She told him why she had come to New York and they laughed together about her ex
perience in Greenwich Village. She talked about modeling, then about Kansas and her family, and when she mentioned that her father was a doctor Yussel was as impressed as Fayge had been. She told them about the French ancestry on her mother’s side and ended by saying, “And my great-grandfather came from Russia. He was Jewish.” A hush could be heard.

  Narrowing his eyes in disbelief, Yussel asked, “Your zayde, I mean your great-grandfather, was a Jew?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  Immediately Yussel said, “In that case I have a lovely boy for you.”

  His earnestness almost made Janet laugh. Smiling she answered, “I’d be delighted to meet him.”

  “Nu, so next time you come I’ll introduce you.” …

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE COMPANIONSHIP AND PLEASURE of that evening rushed into Janet’s mind at almost every idle moment during the following weeks. Now her Sundays were complete. She spent the day with Fayge and Mendel and Fridays were a standing invitation. Somehow the young man Yussel had promised never materialized, but Janet was so pleased to be in their company that she never even noticed.

  The only disruption to this pattern came when Janet decided to go home for a week.

  When she told Fayge of her plans, the older woman had brushed aside her apology for missing their usual weekend gathering. “Go and enjoy, Janet. Nothing in the world is more important than a mother and father.”

  True, Janet thought. She had missed them more than she’d ever thought she would. And they might hold a key that would help her understand more of who she was, make her feel more at home with herself in the frighteningly impersonal world she’d entered the day she set foot in New York.

  Janet sat in the library across from her father. “Dad, how much do you know about your grandfather?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “About my grandfather? A great deal. Why do you ask?”

  “I wrote to you about meeting the Kowalskis. Ever since I’ve known them I’ve had a deep curiosity about us. I mean, we’re part Jewish but we seem to have ignored it, and that part of me feels … well, deprived. I’ve heard so much about mom’s side of the family but we’ve talked very little over the years about your origins … I have to know who I am, dad. Tell me all you can.”

  “That would take quite a while, Janet.”

  “Well, it’s little enough time to find out about … my heritage … who I am …”

  James Stevens looked out the window and saw the lovely garden, but his mind went beyond as he began to tell his daughter about things he remembered having been told in his youth …

  His grandfather, Yankel Stevensky, was born in a remote part of Russia. But remote as it was, the men of his village were scholars, and from the time he could speak he had grown up with the idea that he would become a rabbi like his father before him. But the tentacles of Jewish persecution reached out and destroyed both his dreams and his isolated home. When the fires of the pogrom died, Yankel found his father sick and wounded. “You must leave, Yankel,” and so, painful though it was, he left his village, his parents and his roots. Knowing that he would never see them again was the most painful of all….

  When he arrived on the shores of America two years later it was with few worldly possessions. His pockets were bare, his clothing worn and the strain of the ordeals he had suffered was evident in his appearance, but he still had his tefillin, his tallis, Bible and Talmud and he reasoned that he was rather a rich man to have been blessed with the spiritual assets that a man could feed his soul on. Like so many others, he went to the Lower East Side but he discovered it was not the place for him. He couldn’t stand the crowds, the bantering, the hollering. If there was a sky, you couldn’t see it … not a tree, not a flower. At least his little village in Russia had been pretty, everyone polite enough to greet each other. Here he was just a faceless person in the crowd. Who invited Yankel to a Shabbes? No one. No, this was not for him. So with his little vending case filled with pins, ribbons and thread, he decided to take the advice of someone who mentioned a place called California where giant redwoods grew. That was for Yankel.

  Yankel soon found himself in the backwoods and byways of America, safely away from the noise and uncaring crowds of the city. He slept contentedly in a meadow, a forest and an occasional hayloft, wherever was handy as he moved west. And no matter where he was, whether at the side of a stream or deep in a glade, a morning never graced the sky that Yankel didn’t commune with his God. The ritual started by putting the tallis around his shoulders and placing the yarmulkah on his curly black hair. Then he took out the phylacteries containing the sacred text, slipped the thong of one of the small square boxes around his forehead, wrapped the thin leather strip attached to the other around his left arm and began to recite from Exodus 13:9. “And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth.” He ended with a similar commandment in Deuteronomy 6:8.

  After he had finished his morning prayers, Yankel lifted his eyes toward heaven and sighed contentedly. “Good morning, God, I slept very well last night. I’ll have my breakfast and then we’ll move on.” Yankel fried the fish he’d caught and as he sat on the ground with his back against a tree, he said, “So, God, where do you think we should go now? Just walk, you say? That’s a good idea. We’ll walk.” Yankel rolled up his bedding, put the tin pans into his knapsack while whistling an old Hebrew song he’d been taught sitting on his mother’s knee, and was again on the road west.

  After many days and nights trying to defy the elements, Yankel found himself in a place called Wichita, Kansas. The only resemblance between Wichita and Riga was that they both happened to be on the same planet. There the similarity ended, but somehow it looked like a place he might stay for a while on his way west. He didn’t know why. It just felt right to him.

  Yankel stood in front of the white clapboard boardinghouse and looked at the garden with the dahlias and yellow hollyhocks. Wisteria and sweet peas wound around each other as though embracing. The white picket fence reminded him of the one his father had built … nu, so it wasn’t exactly the same. His father had only used wood stakes cut from a tree, but a fence it was. Opening the gate, he walked up the path, up the four wooden stairs and stood before the door admiring the stained glass oval window. He knocked on the door. When it was opened he took a step backward. The young woman before him with soft, taffy-colored hair was not at all what he expected. When he had been told that Pegeen O’Hara had rooms for rent, he had imagined she would be a middle-aged lady. Pegeen was far from that. She was slender, rosy-cheeked and maybe nineteen … twenty at the most. In the purest Irish accent she asked, “And what would you be wantin’?” This was a new English accent to Yankel—from the northern part of Protestant Ireland, as he would later learn—and he didn’t quite understand. How did he answer when he wasn’t even sure what she had asked? But she realized that Yankel was new to these parts from the attire he wore, especially the broad flat beaver hat and dangling earlocks, and looking at his confused face, Pegeen repeated, “Would you be lookin’ for a room?”

  The word room Yankel understood. He nodded, and Pegeen opened the door wider. Yankel found himself standing in the front hall gazing at the golden oak banister which led to the second floor and then looking uncomfortably downward to the hooked rug. He knew he shouldn’t be looking at Pegeen. He remembered his father’s warning—not only was it wrong for a young man of twenty to gaze upon a girl, but it was forbidden to gaze upon one who wasn’t Jewish. His eyes remained steadfastly poised on the carpet. It wasn’t until Pegeen said, “Gentlemen remove their hats,” that he looked up. His eyes focused to the right side of her face as he took off his hat and immediately replaced it with a black yarmulkah. The custom was new to Pegeen but she respected it. She wasn’t quite sure what nationality he was or why he was wearing such peculiar clothes, but that was none of her affair.

  “Now, would you be wantin’ to see a room?” Yankel nodded a
nd followed her up the stairs to a small immaculate bedroom at the far end of the hall. Yankel was pleased. He hadn’t slept in a bed for so long he’d almost forgotten what one looked like. And when he took in the lace curtains, the iron bedstead, the kerosene lamp that stood on the golden oak bedside table and finally the comfortable-looking rocker, he thought that, yes, this could be home until he moved further on. For a long moment Pegeen stood watching. He was the most curious man she had ever seen. But her chores downstairs were waiting, and she couldn’t stand here any longer waiting for him to decide. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Would this be pleasin’ you?”

  She knew from the look on his face that he had not understood her. She rephrased it. “The room … would you be takin’ it?”

  That was a little clearer to Yankel. “How much?” he asked in his accented, minimal English.

  “Two dollars a week, room and board.”

  Yankel knit his eyebrows together. “Room … und vat?”

  “Room and food.”

  That sounded very good to Yankel. He gave Pegeen the two dollars, dollars of which he had very few. But up to now he’d saved the little he had by not paying rent and by traveling across country either on foot, the back of a wagon or an occasional horse.

  Dinner that night was not to his liking. Beans and ham hocks, Yankel wouldn’t eat. He wasn’t crazy about the turnip greens but a man couldn’t live on bread alone, so he ate. When he was passed a corn muffin he refused it also, afraid that it might be trayf, not kosher. He’d never seen bread like that in his life and he wasn’t going to take the chance. When the apple cobbler was served he said to God, “Listen, what could be so bad about a piece of apple strudel? All right, so I’ll only eat the fruit.”

  Pegeen looked across the table at him, then at the other boarders in their shirt sleeves and arm garters. Yankel was aware of her look and of how out of place he must seem sitting among these men and wearing his yarmulkah, but he wouldn’t remove it—not even if he had to give up this haven.