The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  “But how do I come to a red coat?”

  “If you’re going to be a fool, it means ... be the right kind. Put strong wheels under your feet. Run out of this Golinsk, to where it’s allowed to touch the world with your finger. Look into books, into . . . ay,” he said with a thinking turn, “I’d like to be drinking with many grandfathers, to love a wife ... to listen to engines, to fart in palaces . . . and it would please me to be crossing over oceans, criticizing peace treaties, turning enemies into friends, to walk followed by children ... ay, eat, drink, laugh, cry . . . but the best pleasure, Laib, is to look under the skirts of the world, and see.”

  I tried to answer. “If the whole trick of these things is only to run out of Russia, why didn’t you?”

  “Why-didn’t-I-yes, why-didn’t-I-no,” he said, very dry, pointing with his cigarette. “And if Grandma had what hangs, she’d be Grandpa.”

  “Uncle, the fiddler I heard from the Squire’s hill ... It was long ago but I can hear him like the first time. Like traveling to places.”

  “So?”

  “Even this minute.”

  “Then let it be,” he said, his eyes looking to the wall. “Let your feet lead you to the place you love.”

  “This summer,” I said eagerly, “I’ll go to the Pukop Fair and glue myself to the wandering musicians and they’ll make me a fiddler.”

  “You’re not such a small fool,” he said, giving me a shove. He sat puffing his cigarette for a minute. “And since it is in your nature to want to give pleasure, go to the Burial Brotherhood and tell them I demand fifteen rubles silence-money in three days or they’ll hear thunders.”

  “For what, silence-money?”

  “They’ll think of something. Let them know you are to take the rubles and give them to me. This is how you’ll get yourself the best fiddle in Minsk.”

  “What?”

  “Your fiddle.” He leaned his back against the wall, making a gentle end. “I’ll send to Minsk for it. We’ll see how big a fool you’ll make of yourself.”

  I should have been happy; I should have exploded. “Ay, but they’re so poor, Uncle. Fifteen rubles!”

  “Poor today, poor tomorrow.”

  Then he gave a sudden angry roar for Lizaveta, his call echoing. “We’ll see what wriggles out. Meanwhile it’s late. Go home. Lizaveta must try again with the liniment.”

  That night at the supper table Reb Maisha looked up from his plate and saw me just sitting. “The soup doesn’t please you?”

  “Soup is soup,” I said.

  “Don’t waste time,” Shim said. “Yeersel sews your confirmation suit. He wants you to come for the fitting tonight.”

  When he was finished eating, Reb Maisha went to his trunk. From

  The Landsmen

  138

  under some old prayer books he took the bundle of rubles and counted off three. “Here, tell Yeersel this is for the suit.”

  “Wait till you see it, Laib,” Shim said like an expert. “The finest twill in the market, here, rub it between your fingers.”

  I rubbed the three rubles in my pocket. They were from the eleven from my father’s goods which Dimitri had sold. For them Uncle Mot- tel had beaten Dimitri and sat four months in prison.

  It took the night. In bed next to Shim, after coming home from the fitting, I parceled the thing out in my mind and before my eyes closed I had my plan. Of the eleven rubles remaining, half was mine and half Shim’s. After paying for the confirmation suit, two and a half were still mine. I decided to take three. No one would know about it until Reb Maisha would give Shim his share to start his own tailoring business. Meanwhile I would let Uncle Mottel think this was all the silence-money I could get. It would not be enough for the best fiddle in Minsk, as he had said . . . but still enough for a fiddle. And when it all came out who could say I had stolen what had been only my own P

  I took the three the next day when Shim was with Yeersel and Reb Maisha went to see how the graves looked now that all the ice was melted. “Quick work,” my uncle said, giving my arm a pleased shake. “But three is all?”

  “All they had.”

  I kept my head down and my behind tight, ashamed and excited.

  It was a real fiddle, and a problem. I didn’t know the first thing about it and I had no place to learn. Uncle Mottel hid it in the loft of the smithy and would rub it with a clean rag each time he handed it to me. I wanted to play so his eyes would shine but all I could create were squeals and bumps. “Ay, it doesn’t go,” I said miserably.

  “All beginnings are hard.”

  “Better sell it back,” I said sadly.

  “Remember your Holy Law,” he replied. “Didn’t Reb Maisha ever mention the part that says, ‘A person will have a bad mark against him for everything he sees and refuses to enjoy?’”

  “But all I make is ugly scrapes,” I cried.

  “Well . . . the thing is, the notes. That’s how to learn, by the notes. The Squire has a piano.”

  “Ay,” I said bitterly.

  We sat in a long silence. When my uncle spoke, a new twist showed in his voice. “There is one other piano; in our little Golinsker Heaven.”

  “Where?”

  “In ‘Heaven.’ The house behind the last tavern on the Svutzker side of the road.”

  “Oh . . . where the prostitutes . . .”

  “Profim’s.” He took it for a settled thing. “You’ll learn notes in the afternoon when the girls are sleeping. One of them plays piano not well but at least carefully. She’ll show you the notes and teach you tunes. I have an influence with her.”

  “But didn’t you almost die getting thrown out of one of their windows ? ”

  “Yes, but not Varya’s.”

  “Varya? Is that the one from the Odessa prison?”

  “No, you mean Vavra.”

  “It’s a queer place to play fiddle,” I said.

  “We cannot always cook the way we like. Why treat it like any piece of wood ? Why not grab it by its neck and make it play ? Leave things to me. I’ll tell you when and how.”

  In years to come, jokes used to be made around my house about “Papa’s conservatory.” Sundays in the afternoon we’d be listening to the symphony concert over the radio, my wife Gitel (who liked to be called Trudy) and the two girls Ethel and Marsha with their husbands, and my son Lester if he wasn’t still sleeping; we would put the loudspeaker on the dining-room table and all sit around it. A few times a year somebody would say, “Tell us about your conservatory, Papa.” They’d always laugh in the same places. But I let them. They missed the best parts. I stopped putting them in when I realized they had no ears for the underneath-truth. My “conservatory” in Profim’s brothel lasted only the eight or nine weeks until my confirmation. Varya’s

  piano was strictly amateur; I had no way to practice from one Saturday to the next except by fingering a stick with marks on it where the notes of the C-scale were supposed to be (the fiddle remained in “Heaven”).

  I never had to worry about Shim on Sabbath afternoons because he'd be with Yeersel’s Rochel talking over the week like a little boss (and later, in troubled times, they married). The minute Reb Maisha started his deep snores in the hut I was on my way to the woods, to the house, the hidden way. Varya would be watching for me at the back window and have the door open. She was small and always tired- looking but younger than my mother. Her long face and large mouth and full lips reminded me of red rubber stretching when she smiled; at one time she must have been quite a puzzle to men. She always wore the same blue slippers with pompons and a greenish velvet robe down to her ankles, buttoned with a loop at the neck. She would lead me, with a nod of her head, through a hall with closed doors on both sides like one of those cook-for-yourself summer boardinghouses around Monticello, New York, to the small sitting room in the front where she locked the door and closed the shutters. The summer I had the string ensemble at the Beachcrest Hotel in Arverne there used to be a Mr. Frumkin every night with a request to
play “Just a Song at Twilight.” As I did the solo part, I would think:

  Just a song at twilight, when the light was low,

  Into Profim’s “Heaven” softly I did go.

  (This was a joke to the family.)

  But when Varya handed me the fiddle she kept locked in a chest and then sat down with me standing next to her, to her right, the room became nothing. Fiddle in my hand, it was night all around and I was standing so high up that the sky almost touched my head. Once I said to her, “I’d like to stay longer,” though I knew it was time to go.

  “Soon it will be different. The spittoons will start filling and by nine o'clock we’ll be drunk enough.”

  Varya had a careless way of running her words together. I could understand and speak Russian not too badly but wasn’t always sure I got her meaning. “Is that what’s here, drinking?”

  “Yes, darling one,” she said, her mouth stretching and the tendons of her neck sticking out. “You don’t know what fancy drinkers we have here. Come to me in a few years and what a drink I’ll give you, darling one.” (Big laughs from Ethel and Marsha. Wisecrack from Lester: “Come on, Pop, admit it! You fiddled around a little!”) Then I asked, “Does my Uncle Mottel ever come here?”

  “Not lately, no. Let it not go further but Mot is a fool. He’ll get himself killed yet. Uh, he’s crazy.”

  “How so?” I said. “Is it true as he says . . . that he has an influence with you?”

  “An influence, yes, to get me killed.” Then she spilled out what made her angry. “I like him once in a while, I’m sorry for him and it’s nice. But he gets crazy; that’s why the Squire’s Buzarov, the boss’s brother, you know, threw him out of the window.” Then she went into a business about “Mot’s” ruining her chances with the Squire himself. “He came around a few times,” she said, nodding her head to show me how important such visits were, “and once the Squire picked me. After that he stayed mine twice a month on the dot. Not too charming but for five rubles a drink, you understand, it was fun. And presents. See this?” She pointed to the robe she wore. “Direct from a fancy place in Petersburg. Expensive. Then Mot jumps in one night swimming in vodka, slaps my face . . . screams the Squire is not to drink from the same bottle as he does! Then Mot yells how no Squire must dirty his own little Vavra, Vavra, Vavra. He’s so drunk he can’t even say my name rightly! I told him to go drink himself to death and warned him to lower his voice with Vassily Buzarov, just then in the next room with Rena. That’s all . . . he went after Vassily and when Vassily heard enough he picked him up and in one toss dropped him out of Rena’s window . . . and now I don’t know where I stand, the Squire’s overlooked me twice and I can’t worm anything out of Vassily.”

  It was all Greek about the “drinking” and this-and-that. But the

  “Vavra” stuck in my mind. Something told me Uncle Mottel knew what he was saying when he called Varya by the name of the girl whose brother Maxim had made a career of blowing up some generals; that Uncle Mottel understood it was impossible to allow the Squire of Golinsk to ‘‘drink” with the girl who opened his memory of the other one for whom he had sat in prison. I didn’t get the entire point, but Varya’s complaint gave me two things. Uncle Mottel didn’t belong with our landsmen, but neither did he belong in the Squire’s corner; he belonged to some corner beyond my imagination but still the one I would belong to myself sometime. (This part of the story I soon left out, with my family. They enjoyed themselves with the “drinking” joke; that’s all. “Let them have pleasure,” I told myself.)

  The next time I saw Uncle Mottel, I said, “She’s very angry with you, Varya.”

  “As long as she does what I say,” he shrugged.

  “She blames you because the Squire doesn’t visit her any more.”

  “She stated that?” he said. “The truth spoken?”

  “The truth spoken.”

  He laughed. “She lies. She’s sent the Squire away three times. It’s the talk of the house. Tell her to stop lying or I’ll put soap in her mouth. Tell her I said that.”

  “Then you do have an influence there?”

  “Tell her one more thing,” he ordered. He wasn’t in a temper, just amusing himself. “She’s to talk to you not with her tongue, but only with her fingers on the piano. Clear?”

  I said, “Clear,” but I was afraid to mention such things to her. As it was we spoke only when my hands were tired. Once she said, “I know where I saw your face . . . how strange.”

  “In the market?”

  “No, in Berlin.”

  “I was never in Berlin.”

  “It’s a face on a picture. In the Berlin Museum.”

  “What’s Berlin like?”

  “It’s as Herr Immen used to say. He was a good friend, a jewelry

  salesman. ‘Varya/ Herr Immen used to say when we were at dinner, ‘Berlin is a very stuffed city/ Well, you’ve rested enough; let’s continue, but with the whole bow.”

  She dropped other remarks about “the maniac of a sergeant in Hamburg” and “the weight I gained in Riga,” and “the fun we had in the traveling circus.” One time she became so interested in remembering that she added details. The bear they had in the traveling circus, a little dancing bear, broke loose and entered the tent where a Herr Glockmann was delivering a lecture on “The Pitfalls of Paris.” Varya’s rubberlike lips pulled themselves wide as she remembered, and she breathed fast. “Ah well . . . Herr Glockmann completely hated the French and it showed in his lecture which told why many French girls go into houses. Herr Glockmann went to the trouble of having charts made and pinned on the wall, like a medical lecture, you know, .and with these charts he used to prove that the French girls went into houses because so many Frenchmen were only peanuts. At this moment in the lecture the little dancing bear walked in and stretched himself out on his side . . . just a baby one, you know. The people began to yell fearfully and run before Herr Glockmann could make his offer of verified photographs, but Herr Glockmann called out, ‘Don’t be afraid, ladies! Look and see, it is only Monsieur Peanut!’ ”

  When Varya saw me laughing, she stopped. “Wait, that’s silly.” Then she started lecturing me. “And another thing. You’re a boy. In a year or two you’ll start looking. You’ll want girls and you’ll think of going to houses. Very few have your luck, to be told.” She bent down and took my arms. “When you wish to have that kind of fun you must remember to come to me. Otherwise you may be very sorry, understand?”

  “No,” I said, the truth spoken.

  “There is a thing,” she said, “between a girl and a boy. All girls and boys, yes?”

  “Thank you,” I said. She shook my arms again and I smelled her perfume. “Such a smell,” I said, “so sweet.”

  Bending her ear low she said, “Here, take a good sniff.” I did and she

  pulled me to her. “Yes, with a little bit of luck, a little bit, I might have had one like you.” She pushed me back far enough to see me, her lips stretched in her smile. “In my own little house not far from Riga, I could have waked early every morning when the day was beginning . . . and found a baby sleeping in the crook of my arm . . . had the cards fallen differently.” She changed her tone back to an ordering. “Remember, you’re to come to me.”

  When I told this to my uncle he fell back on the bed and shouted, “She’s crazy, also as filthy, believe me, as her competition.” I mentioned how sweet her perfume was. He told me not to go by the smell, women weren’t flowers.

  “But she does remind you of Vavra, Uncle. Isn’t that right?”

  “That could be. However, she’s far from the Queen of Sheba, keep away from her except as your teacher. By the way . . . your confirmation is in two weeks. Take no chance, people will be noticing you more now. Tell her next Saturday is your last for a while.”

  Varya didn’t mind. “I wanted to start you on Chopin. Well, it’ll wait a few weeks. But practice the fingerings on your piece of wood.” At the end of the lesson she kissed me. As sh
e let me go she whispered, “Am I your friend?”

  “Your smell is sweet.”

  “Then wait.” She came back in a minute with a small glass tube in her fingers. “This is so you won’t miss me too much.” I thanked her and took the cork out. It was her perfume. “Careful, keep the cork in,” she said.

  “Well, until later.”

  “Until later, boy.” She pulled my nose a little and smiled almost her whole face away. “Strange,” she said, “that he should be your uncle.”

  All the way back to the hut I held her phial in my fingers. As soon as I could I hid it between the leaves of an old raggy prayer book of my father’s I never used. Going out early in the mornings to wake the landsmen to prayers, I took her phial with me, thinking of her and wondering how soon I could go back to my lessons; but I never saw her again.

  On the Thursday before the Saturday of my confirmation, I went to the smithy with a purpose. I found Uncle Mottel banging an axle on the anvil with short sharp hits of the hammer so as not to hurt his sick shoulder. “Ay, it’s the confirmation-boy,” he said with a grunt, the axle jumping under his hand. Happy he was in a good mood, I blurted, “Are you coming to it?”

  “To the confirmation? To the synagogue?”

  “Are you?”

  “Til think it out.” He banged the hammer down so hard that the cigarette in his mouth twisted quickly with the hurt to his shoulder.

  “Don't you want The Everlasting One to forgive you?” I whispered, worried about him.

  “For what?” (I was afraid to say.) “It's up to Him,” Uncle Mottel went on indifferently, rubbing his shoulder. “If He wants, He’ll forgive even if I don't go to the synagogue. However,” he added, his brows wrinkling in long thin furrows as he spit his cigarette to the black dirt floor, “ask rather — will I forgive Him?”

  For nearly a year I did not see him again, and then it was for the few hours of our permanent good-by.