Displaced Persons

by Ghita Schwarz

  And of course Pavel’s reluctance to move the business, to expand, caused more problems. There had been a period in Pavel’s life when any risk, no matter how wild, any successful effort to organize merchandise or food had given him its own reward, a kind of happiness, almost physical, the way he used to feel as an adolescent kicking a soccer ball or even as an adult, hopping off his bicycle at the house in Celle, or in the middle of the night, after lovemaking with Fela. But now he did not feel it. He did not feel anything like it.

  His children were provided for now, and to take out a big loan from a bank that could make it all go bad, he could not see the purpose. Pavel’s family had a clean, bright apartment. His children wore new clothes and went to Hebrew school. Never had they felt the fear that so many did, that if they became poor, or sick, they could be deported back to Poland. Perhaps Kuba wanted to pass down a big business to his children. But Pavel would pass down something more. His son would be something big, a doctor or a lawyer, and his daughter would be elegant and educated, a teacher perhaps, with beautiful children. He would pass down something more.

  PAVEL WOKE UP AGAIN a minute before his alarm clock buzzed, the heat knocking at the radiator. Had he slept more than three hours? He thought so. And then the two before the dream. Not so terrible.

  It was still dark. In the kitchen he took a few quick puffs on his cigarette before wrapping himself in his tefillin. After praying and removing the tefillin, he cut six oranges and squeezed the halves over the juice dish. Helen did not like the pulp. He poured half the juice through a sifter into a glass for her and poured the thicker half into a glass for Larry. Then he came back into the bedroom for his shower.

  He took off his robe and turned the shower on, waited for it to grow warm. Perhaps it was time to discuss a move. A bank officer would again visit, they would show him the merchandise, explain the ideas for branching into finer textiles and handmade suits, the officer would be young and healthy, would call Kuba Jake and Pavel Paul, full of enthusiasm until they began to discuss in earnest, when the grim looks would appear and everything Pavel and Kuba had worked for would be assessed as trifles, pitiful collateral against possible financial disaster.

  Pavel didn’t want it. Right now he didn’t want it. The excitement was lacking. He did not feel an urgency. Perhaps Kuba did not either, only wanted to, trying to recapture the feeling that every action had a grave importance, meant life or death. Moving the business did not mean life or death. But perhaps a move, or if not a move, at least an expansion, would mean greater savings for college for the children, a bigger apartment, perhaps it meant—he did not know what it meant.

  Could Kuba really believe that Pavel owed him something? That he, Pavel, kept the whole family down? It was impossible. The steam seeped into his chest, warming his body. Yes, that was what Kuba thought, that Pavel kept the family down, that Fela kept the family down, that by having this accident and being forced to stay even longer in Europe, by doing all this—all this trading in Europe, even trading that had helped Kuba and Hinda live here when they first came, that this too seemed to make the family illegitimate. Pavel shook in the shower with the outrage of it. His fist made an involuntary movement in the air, into the water, and the shower turned cold.

  He cried out in surprise and almost slipped, grasping the faucet with one hand for balance. Shampoo still in his hair. The water was cold as ice! God in heaven, was there no end to his torments on this earth? Was there no end?

  Pavel? he heard Fela’s voice calling from the bed.

  The water! The water again! That swindler! That thief!

  I’ll call him now.

  Don’t call him! he shouted through the door, shivering as he rinsed off the soap from his body, wrapped his shoulders in a towel. I want to speak to the thief myself!

  Teeth knocking in the cold, he sat on his side of the bed with his robe untied and dialed the number. Nancy answered.

  “Nancy,” said Pavel. “It’s Mr. Mandl. Six-E. I want—”

  “He’s in the shower.”

  “Ah, of course. So! Could you tell your father that I wish to speak with him?”

  “All right.”

  “No, Nancy, wait, not to speak with him, to show him something. He should come up to my apartment. Before I go to work. Please.”

  “All right.”

  “Please.”

  Pavel breathed out. He would show Weisenfeld, he would show him, that what Weisenfeld could provide for his own daughter, warm water, Pavel could not provide for his children. The home—what kind of father was he if he did not make his home secure for his children, here in America, of all places? Fela made the apartment beautiful with her cleaning and cooking, and the children made the apartment alive with their games and their studies. Pavel would make sure the home was strong and secure, something the landlord, any landlord, should respect. Pavel would show him, he would be calm, he would explain, he would demand that the problem be fixed. He went into the children’s room to wake them up for breakfast.

  “WHAT WILL IT BE TODAY?”

  “A butterfly,” said Helen.

  Pavel cut a triangle out of an untoasted bagel, then sliced it open to make wings.

  “With cream cheese,” she added.

  “Same for me, please,” said Larry. He still liked the game.

  “Coming right up.” Pavel put two butterflies on the center plate, then cut straight cylinders, giving Larry one, so he could spread the cream cheese on his own.

  “How come he gets the drum first?”

  “I’m older,” said Larry.

  “It’s true,” said Pavel. “But also he knows how to butter. See?” He took his daughter’s wrist, moved it along the bagel.

  “I like it better when you do it,” said Helen.

  “So, Helcha, for this Larry gets his first. There’s extra wait for the service.”

  “What is it called when you cream cheese something?”

  “What?”

  “She means, Dad, you know, is there a word for it—like there is for butter—you know, you put butter on something, you say you are buttering, but you also say it when you put cream—”

  “I know what she means. I was just thinking.”

  “There is no word, Hell-face.”

  “Larry!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do you know what a beautiful name her name is? Her name is after my mother, just like yours is after your—”

  “I know, Dad, I know. Sorry. I said I was sorry.”

  “All right.”

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “All right, Liebl, all right.”

  The doorbell rang. Larry ran to get it. Pavel heard the landlord move his heavy feet through the hall, Larry pattering after him in his socks. Pavel stood as the landlord entered the kitchen, and Larry slid back into his seat, shoved a butter-smeared drum into his mouth.

  “Good morning,” said Weisenfeld.

  “Good morning,” Pavel made himself say. “But actually, Mr. Weisenfeld, it is not a good morning.” He looked Weisenfeld straight in the eye, the landlord’s hair still matted from his shower, his jacket hanging loose around his broad shoulders. “It is not a good morning because I, and my children, are not able to bathe in hot water.”

  “So, is that what you have to show me at this hour? The same complaint?”

  Pavel breathed in. Keep calm. But he felt his words rising inside him. He kept himself speaking in English, so he would be forced to speak slowly and with care. “What I have to show you,” he answered, “what I have to show you is this.” Pavel stretched his arms above Helen’s head and pushed open the window. “It is almost twenty degrees. Fahrenheit.”

  “Ah, so I am responsible for the weather now?”

  “I have never called you responsible,” Pavel said.

  Weisenfeld turned to leave. “I did not come up here to be insulted. If you have some emergency for me to fix, that is one thing, but to be—”

  Don’t you go! called Pavel, his v
oice in Yiddish strong but not loud. I don’t have just the air to show you. I have the water. Come!

  “Daddy, I’m cold.”

  Come, Weisenfeld, come! I want to show you what kind of water we have in this apartment, where I have to shiver with cold as if I am in a hovel in Kazakhstan, and where I cannot trust the water enough to bathe my children in the morning!

  I’ve already told you, Weisenfeld answered in his gutter Yiddish, we’re having the boiler repaired next week. There is nothing that can be done. There’s a few minutes of hot water every morning, you shouldn’t waste!

  Waste! Waste! How you dare! Do you think I don’t know what waste is? Do you think I do not know?

  How I dare? How I dare? You call me up here in the early morning, waking my wife and daughter—

  I wake you because I cannot sleep! I cannot sleep because I throw money at you for nothing, to have my wife, and my son and my daughter, frozen in the morning, to have my own body like ice! If you want waste, that is waste!

  What a tenant I have! No one is like you, no one complains like you, no one rages like you—

  Maybe the others are too afraid, but Mr. Weisenfeld, I am not! What do you want? That I should tremble before you? That I should be a refugee in my own house? That my wife should be a refugee? My children, refugees?

  Ah, now you blackmail me with your guilt!

  Blackmail? Pavel’s voice ripped through his throat at the word. Blackmail? I? It is you who blackmail us! You are a thief! The worst kind of thief, who steals heat from women and children!

  And you, a rager! You let your children see you—

  Don’t bring my children into it! Don’t bring my children into it! You so much as mention their names, I—I—! You are here because I want to know, Weisenfeld, I want to know, what do we need to do to get hot water from you? Beg? Steal? Scream in the middle of the night?

  Already you scream in the middle of the night! Everyone hears you!

  Pavel felt the cold wind behind Helen’s head push at his cheek. His heart was burning, his face was bitter cold. I will bury you, Weisenfeld. I will have you under the earth. I will bury you, bury you, bury you!

  “Stop screaming! Stop!” A noise was filtering through the fog around Pavel’s head, it was his son, his mouth open and red, his small arms grasping his sister, holding her head to his chest, a tiny adult with a tinier child clasped to him, protecting her, and shouting his little boy’s voice at the landlord. “Please stop screaming!”

  Or was Larry shouting at him?

  Both men stopped. The room was quiet. Pavel saw that Fela stood in the doorway, her body wrapped in a bathrobe, her face a stone. But he could read the stone. It was wrong to scream in front of the children. You have mercy on everyone, she would say to him, mercy on everyone, how about for your family?

  Weisenfeld said, Enough.

  So, answered Pavel, his jaw still forward. Enough. And what else?

  I will call your wife. He motioned to Fela, who followed him out of the kitchen into the hallway in silence.

  The door closed, not loud. Pavel stood at the kitchen counter, watching his son and daughter, Larry’s hair combed straight, a napkin hanging over Helen’s neck to protect her shirt from stains.

  Helen looked at him. “Will he scream at Ma too?”

  No, he answered, still in Yiddish. Your mother doesn’t scream.

  Larry carried his plate to the sink.

  “What,” Pavel said. “Don’t you finish your food?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Me neither.” Helen picked up her plate too.

  Pavel looked at the two of them, Larry scooping Helen’s plate from her hands, the little one pale, only a bite or two eaten. On an ordinary morning, Pavel would have insisted, he would have told them eat, kindlech, eat, a person’s breath when he doesn’t eat is a terrible thing, not even brushing your teeth will cover it, eat, how will you concentrate in the day, eat, you are growing, eat, eat. He thought he saw Larry wait a moment for the speech to begin, but at this moment Pavel didn’t have the strength to beg them to put something in their bellies. He turned his back so as not to see his son push the uneaten bread into the garbage.

  “We’re late for school, Dad.”

  I can drive you, Larry. You won’t be late if I drive.

  “Then you’ll be late for work. We’ll just go now, okay?” Helen took off her napkin, then went to collect her schoolbag.

  Pavel looked at his son, now quickly rinsing the plates with a spatter of water.

  “Okay, Dad, okay?”

  Pavel thought he saw his son’s nose turn pink, almost red. Was he about to cry? But Larry was looking away, putting the milk and cream cheese back in the refrigerator.

  “Dad, I’m talking to you.”

  “Okay,” Pavel answered. “Everything’s okay.” He reached out his hand to touch his son’s shoulder. Larry shrugged from under his touch, then hurried to the coat closet for his jacket and scarf.

  The Suit

  August 1965

  BEREL WANTED A SUIT. He mentioned it to his son-in-law one Sunday morning. He mentioned it while standing at the back door of the apartment, watching Chaim polish his shoes. Chaim, who sat on the third step of the building’s rear stairway, responded without looking up: A suit. I know a place.

  Yes, said Berel, I’d like to buy a suit like the suit you wear. Something like that.

  Chaim worked in one of New York’s radio stations, where he used his smooth if accented English to fit in easily with the other technicians and engineers, who had bought him a new tie last year for his thirty-third birthday. Chaim wore a different suit every day. He had five. He had ten shirts, all blue or white or pink or yellow, and combined them in different orders with the suits.

  Chaim said, Go to the place I go. Only go there. The tailors speak Yiddish. I know the owner from before. I’ll tell him you’re coming. The ankle of each shoe Chaim polished glimmered at the seams. They were good shoes, solid black leather with a layered black sole.

  Those are good shoes, said Berel.

  They are, said Chaim. Nothing like American, no?

  No, said Berel. Chaim was right. In the dairy where for seven years Berel had scooped out milk curds from metal barrels and for the next seven had operated the machine that sealed shut the plastic milk bags, he had worn heavy brown boots. They had come apart at the soles from too much contact with the cleaning fluids; in fourteen years he had gone through eight pairs, all produced in a kibbutz factory from which the dairy bought supplies. Chaim was right, but he said that phrase, nothing like American, only American, too often. Berel wasn’t emigrating. He had made that clear.

  It was August, three months after Berel’s wife had died of a typhus relapse in a small hospital in Tel Aviv, two weeks into Berel’s grief-trip to America to visit his only daughter. He had been in Tel Aviv or nearby since 1949, sixteen years, longer than he’d lived anywhere since childhood. Yes, his wife had died. His daughter Sima was here. But Berel’s home was there, the home he had made, alive on the stove where his wife had boiled soup out of eggs and water and potatoes, alive in the small freezer where he kept his sharp, homemade seltzer. He had less there, but also more. He could do for himself. Besides, he wasn’t so alone. He had a surviving brother in Jerusalem, and a sister in Rehovot. They were married, but they were older, and Berel was not yet sixty; what would they do without him?

  He wasn’t emigrating, yet he wanted a suit. For no reason. The clothes he had, short-sleeved shirts and plain trousers, were enough. But his nephew could replace him at the dairy for up to three months; his wife had saved the German reparations money they had started to receive; perhaps he would stay in New York for the High Holidays; he would need a suit for synagogue in America. Chaim was lanky, with a flexible, loose-jointed sway to his walk; nothing he had would fit Berel’s round body. But Chaim wasn’t one to ask for reasons. He accepted the stupid occurrences and irrational violences of the world, and he accepted particularly the odd de
sires of others to sell and to buy. He accepted and he advised. He wrote down the address of the tailor and told Berel to take the number five bus from Riverside Drive.

  BEREL WAITED. IT HAD been very humid, and he spent his days with the baby, inside at noon and outside after four, when the air cooled. He walked sometimes a few blocks uptown, to the garden of the church of St. John the Divine. Sometimes he went a kilometer south, to look at the stone memorial to the war, hidden in the bicycle lanes at Riverside Park. The baby was six months old and could crawl on the grass. She could laugh. She pushed the buds of her teeth against stale bagels and rubbed her head at Berel’s shoulder. He talked to her in Yiddish and sang to her in Hebrew. No Polish! He didn’t want her to hear it. She stared up with purpose and seriousness and made noises to his songs. They hummed at each other in the living room and the street and in Riverside Park, where Berel pushed the perambulator Tuesday to Friday afternoons while Sima rung up postcards and art books and little reproductions of classical sculptures at the cash register of the Met’s enormous gift shop. He fed the baby from a bottle, filled with formula, from a grocery; she was weaning.

  He went to the tailor’s, finally, on a Monday, when Sima had her day off and could stay home the whole day. The directions were complicated: bus, long blocks, short blocks, narrow alley. One had to climb a dank staircase, but once inside the shop, Berel thought the place was wider than the building itself. It wasn’t that it was so filled with clothing, although there were several racks on which hung rows of suits in wool and serge and even perhaps cotton. It was the mirrors on the opposite side of the door, mirrors folded in threes and reflecting off each other, that made the place seem large.