Displaced Persons

by Ghita Schwarz

  Sad, thought Fela. But he wouldn’t be left here, forsaken while everyone traveled to the burial. He would arrive; they would be there together. He was her partner, at least for this life. They wouldn’t abandon each other for long.

  They couldn’t. She waved. Pavel waved back. She waved again. Then—and why not?—she blew him a kiss.

  The Unveiling

  October 2000

  PAVEL AND FELA ARRIVED home from the unveiling in time for their Sunday family meal. Larry had driven them in the rain to the ceremony at the new gravestone, the gravestone belonging to Henry Budnik, who, just before his death the year before at the age of eighty-three, had made Pavel promise to watch over the stonecutting. Budnik’s wife had died just before him, and he didn’t trust his children.

  Pavel was forced to lean halfway on his wife and halfway on Larry, who helped him—a little too rough, Pavel thought—move his stiff leg out of the car. But once at the door of the apartment, Pavel pulled himself away. He could walk easier inside.

  Helen was there already, waiting for them in the kitchen. She was alone, and she had brought rye bread, and a bit of smoked fish, and bagels for Larry, and dietetic cookies for Fela, who had developed high sugar. Everything was prepared.

  Helen was sipping coffee at the table, reading the paper. “Hi, guys,” she said.

  “Oh, Helen,” said Pavel. He grabbed her around the shoulders, pressed her head to his. “But where is my littlest yingele?”

  “Jonathan took him to a birthday party. His first one! And Nathan is at a playdate.”

  “So thank God you are here. At least you are here.” He pressed his arms around her shoulders again.

  “Dad,” said Helen. “Don’t be so shocked. Wasn’t I here on Thursday?” Fela pushed out a big sigh, but Pavel didn’t care. He was lucky to be able to see his daughter, that was what. He was lucky to have his family together, all in one place.

  “All in one place,” he announced. “See how good it is?” He looked at Larry significantly, but Larry had turned, on his way to put the umbrellas in the bathtub to dry.

  “Is everything all right?” Helen looked at Fela.

  “He didn’t sleep last night.” Fela sighed. “And because he didn’t, I didn’t. I heard him from the next room!” Pavel could see her eyeing the white table, making sure there were no smudges from Helen’s newspaper. “Maybe I get a sponge,” said Fela.

  “Ma,” said Larry, coming back in, “sit. Just sit. Sit.”

  “Why didn’t you sleep, Dad?”

  “He had a nightmare,” said Fela, to Larry and to Helen. “He was mumbling, moaning.”

  “Not a nightmare,” muttered Pavel. “A bad dream.” He gave his wife a glare. Why should the children worry? He had dreamed about the gravestone for Budnik, and then about the gravestone for his own mother, which wasn’t in the right place at all. It bothered him, the place of the gravestone for his mother. He rubbed his lips with a cube of sugar; he didn’t like it mixed with his coffee.

  “It was my mother,” said Pavel. In the dream, the gravestone of his mother was in the wrong place. But how could it be? They had made sure, Pavel and his cousin Mayer, and with Larry as a witness, that the thing was in the right place. There had been a map and there had been a guide when they went back to Poland, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, to visit the graveyard where Pavel’s mother had been buried several years before the start of the war. She had died in childbirth for their youngest brother, a premature death but a normal death, a death that had come with a funeral, and prayers, and a stone to be unveiled a year after the burial.

  “It was my mother,” Pavel repeated, but how could he explain? He couldn’t, not to his son, who had observed the restoration of the gravestone with his doctor’s detachment, and not to his wife, that was too painful for both of them, and not even to his daughter, who usually knew how to listen. She understood, Pavel thought, what he was saying—he believed that she did—though sometimes he doubted even this. She never said too much, just asked a question or two. But could she understand? No one could. And part of him did not want her to understand. They had made a pact, Fela and he, when the children were born, not to let them be affected by the whole thing, all the suffering, and possibly they had done a satisfactory job of it! One had to be careful with one’s children, not to let it affect them. But it was true, Pavel was lonely sometimes to talk.

  “Was it the gravestone?” Helen asked. “Because, you know, I read an article. Those maps they use in the old graveyards are restored from the originals. They’re very accurate.”

  How did she know what worried him? Had he mentioned it before? But surely this was the first time he had dreamed it. Wasn’t it? Perhaps not. She tried to reassure him, his daughter, in the same way he always had tried with her: by lying. An article here, a television report there. But it was real, his fear.

  “No, no,” said Pavel, unable to hide the swell of hurt in his voice. “It was my mother. It wasn’t the stone, it was the graveyard itself.”

  Fela gave a big sigh, again.

  “What?” said Pavel. “What did I do?”

  “Larry saw the graveyard himself,” said Fela. “Tell him, Larry. Wasn’t everything right?”

  “It was hard to tell,” Larry said, his eyes focused on the chair straight between Pavel and Fela.

  “Aha,” said Pavel, looking pointedly at his wife. Even his son agreed with him, and that was so rare an occurrence that Fela would have to take notice.

  But Larry continued. “It was hard to tell, Dad. It really was. But remember? The men gave us a map. They showed it to us. They researched it very carefully. They wouldn’t want to make anything up. It’s their graveyard too.”

  Pavel said nothing.

  “It was a beautiful stone,” Larry went on. “The new one, I mean. The one you got. Now it’s easy to find.” His son spoke quickly, a rush, always in a rush. But it was true, the stone was beautiful. Plain and perfectly rounded and white. It had stood out from the others in the graveyard, crushed gray stones bent onto one another, stones that had been vandalized by the Germans and the Poles. The remnants of Pavel’s mother’s stone were still there. Others had been taken recently by the Krakow heritage society to make a memorial wall. Pavel hadn’t liked that. A friend of Pavel’s came from a town where soon after the invasion the Jews had been forced to remove the stones from the cemetery with their own hands, then pave them into the road to be stepped on by soldiers and towns people. Was it so different, fifty years later, to make a broken graveyard into a wall for the memory of it? Of course it was different. Memorials were important. But still, the wall had made Pavel’s stomach shrink and fold over when he saw it. He was glad his mother’s original stone, even in its broken and dilapidated condition, had remained on the earth behind the abandoned synagogue. A synagogue that was now a museum, for people to look, not to gather or pray. Not a real synagogue any longer, but still a real graveyard. A graveyard of graves.

  The placement of the new stone bothered him more every year. At the time of the redesign of the stone, Pavel had worried a small bit about the stone’s location. He wasn’t too familiar with the graveyard; Mother had died visiting relatives in Krakow, some hours away from home, and had had to be buried near her death place, so as not to lose time. It would have been risky, taking the body back to Katowice. They might have gone over the limit of one day’s lapse between death and funeral. But if his father had tried hard enough, couldn’t it have been done? Perhaps not with a newborn child to handle. Still, it was a source of resentment, terrible resentment, all the years that Pavel grew up. Why did his mother’s grave have to be so difficult to visit?

  “Pavel,” said Fela. “Do you want the milk?”

  “No,” said Pavel.

  “Then pass it to me.” He moved his arm toward the carton. Larry took the milk from him, shook it, poured for himself before passing to Fela. Ladies first, ladies first, Pavel wanted to say, but he stopped himself. It would upset Fela. Well, La
rry tried. And he was smart, after all. Maybe not the most dutiful son in the world, maybe not the most respectful, but he was smart, and he could observe and remember what his father and Mayer had been doing. He wouldn’t know what was right or not, not for graveyards, but his presence, strangely, had given the task a certain legitimacy. Pavel had been glad that Larry had gone with them. It was Larry’s vacation, and instead of Florida or California or someplace that young people liked to go, he had gone with his father and uncle to Poland, in November. It was good when Larry tried.

  “You were a witness,” Pavel said to his son. “We tried very hard to make sure it was all set in order, her new stone where the old stone would have been. I think we did it right, didn’t we?”

  “I’m sure you did,” said Larry. “Positive.”

  Pavel looked at the calm smile on his son’s face. His son, a grown man, who took care of others, who saw pain and sickness every day, but who still remained naive, innocent. A wind rose in Pavel’s chest. “Then why do I feel this worry?” he suddenly cried, hand slamming the table. Larry’s cup rattled against the plate.

  “Pavel,” said Fela, face softened. “Pavel.”

  Helen’s hand had flown over his, had stopped it from jumping up again. “Dad,” she said. “Dad, it’s fine. It’s a normal thing to worry about. But it’s in the right place. You saw, Mayer saw, the graveyard men saw, Larry saw. How could all of you be wrong?”

  “The dream was terrible,” said Pavel, shaking his head, quieter now. Helen had spooned a serving of herring onto his plate; she never remembered he did not like the cream. But he did not want to waste. He picked up a piece of fish with his fork, brought it to his mouth, then put it down again without eating it. His throat was beginning to hurt from all the speaking, and when he got nervous, excited, it hurt worse. But the words were fighting him to get out. “The stone, the new stone,” he rasped. “It was in the wrong place. It was standing in the plot of a complete stranger, a stranger who wanted his own gravestone. He wanted it the same way. He wanted it restored and returned.”

  Pavel’s children listened to him, Larry’s face blank, Helen’s attentive. Pavel turned from one to the other, then looked straight at Fela. “He was screaming, in pain! With no air to breathe, because our new stone was blocking him. And my mother, all I could hear was her voice, lost somewhere else in the cemetery, looking for us.”

  Pavel took in a breath, pushed the breath out.

  “Really?” said Fela, swallowing a corner of her bread. “The way I heard you in the middle of the night, your mother was calling out to you, saying that you too much focus on her gravestone in the first place.” She squinted her eyes. “There’s only so much one person can do, Pavel. If she’s upset, probably it’s because she’s stuck still in Poland. Most Jews prefer hell.”

  PAVEL RINSED HIS MOUTH with mouthwash, patted his lips with a small white towel. It was after nine o’clock, and no one was home. The children had taken their mother to a movie; Pavel hadn’t wanted to go. No attention for it, no patience. But now he wondered what kept them so late. They had left at seven. How long was a movie? They could stop afterward for coffee, but why, with him waiting alone?

  It was hot, and Pavel hated the air-conditioning that Fela had insisted on using when they still shared the bed, before she took over the old room of their son. If he turned on the air, he would be cold; but now he was warm, sweating. He went to the chest of drawers under his night table and opened the bottom drawer. He had short-sleeved pajamas and long-sleeved pajamas, everything in different shades of blue, except for the newer plaid ones, in red and black, that Fela had bought him two years ago from the Gap. They were the only American kind he liked. He looked at the short sleeves of his pale cotton pajamas, the shorts that folded under them. He took them out, laid them flat on the bed, fingered the white piping that slanted into a V at the collar.

  He had not worn summer pajamas since the bypass operation. Ashamed of the new scars on his leg. Stupid. Who looked at an old man’s legs? And anyway, he had worn shorts in the summertime, even outside, with the injuries on his right leg, the injuries from the accident, visible for all the world to see, when he was young. But these, the surgery scars, where they had cut open and taken out the veins to attach to his heart, these marked up the good leg. And they came not from accidents, not from outside force, but from sickness and age. All his life he had been a strong man, not big but strong, tough. Nothing could break him. Everyone said so, all his friends. And now, this sickness, this smoke-covered heart, had broken him. He was ashamed, and he could feel his friends’ shame for him.

  Fela thought this crazy. They’re sick too! she would say to him, impatient. We go to a funeral every month! I’m not so healthy either! Do you see me blaming myself? We’re old, Pavel, we’re old. Then she would laugh at him, touch his arm.

  He would shake her off. In good moments he could laugh at his vanity, but he didn’t think it so funny when she said it aloud, only when he thought it himself in his head. He was old. He never thought he would become so old. When he was twenty-five, starving, the idea that he would live to thirty seemed stupid and sentimental, a dark joke. But once he was liberated, he became invincible. Pavel had lived past the deaths of most of his best friends, and he had lived past the deaths of all his worst enemies. He had gone to the funeral of his brother-in-law, the man who had betrayed him for money, and he had cared for the cousin whose dead husband had helped him come finally to America. He had suffered through his son’s divorce, and he had woken up one night three years before to the telephone call with the news that his daughter had given birth to a second son. He had lived a long time.

  He never thought he would become so old, not so much in numbers as in energy. It wasn’t just broken limbs and empty flesh that slowed Pavel now. It was his own soul betraying him, loosening the bones from the inside, shrinking him so he almost was smaller than his daughter. His children shouted at him sometimes; they thought he didn’t hear well. When he looked at bills he had to cover the right eye, because it clouded over and distracted him. There was a thick white surgery line that drove down his chest, splitting it in two. His cardiologist gave him pills not just for his hardened arteries and erratic blood pressure but also for his feelings, to make him less depressed, to help him get up in the morning. Pills for his mind, another bottle in the collection of bottles he brought to each meal.

  He walked to the hallway and looked through the window that faced the street. Rego Park was quiet on Sunday nights. A few cars rolled down the avenue, but none stopped. He could wait for Fela in the armchair by the coat closet, sitting, looking at a magazine, still dressed. He sat down in the chair, glanced at the framed pictures of his mother and father, the photographs Fela had restored and enlarged years ago. Then he pulled himself up again. Why do you wait here? Fela would cry when she came in. You’re making me feel guilty! We asked you to come, didn’t we?

  Pavel limped into the kitchen to make sure he had turned off the lights, to make sure there was no wetness anywhere around the sink. He looked at the time on the clock above the oven. It was an hour behind; they hadn’t changed from daylight savings time almost a year ago. Fela had been gone almost two and a half hours.

  He went back to the bedroom. So what if he wanted to wear the short pajamas, feel young again? Who would see his body, who would make him feel embarrassed? When Fela came home, Pavel would put on a bathrobe, that was what. He straightened his back, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled off his undershirt. Then quickly put the pajama top over his head, so as to cover the chest. Certain parts of himself he did not like to see.

  Already, sitting on the bed, in the short-sleeved pajama top and the pants he had worn in the day, Pavel felt better. His arms still had muscle; they were thick above his wrists. He rubbed at the skin on the inner part of his left forearm. The numbers had blurred; it was hard to make them out. Outside the blue tattoo his skin was white as an onion, even in summer, when the top of his head became a little red from the sun.


  He didn’t like to expose his arms, and did it only rarely: too much attention. He had been walking on the boardwalk near Coney Island many years ago. Without the children, just he and Fela, with Sima and Chaim, new arrivals to New York. The women had strolled ahead, talking tentatively; they had never met. Chaim and Pavel chattered quickly behind them, Pavel planning business connections for Chaim, Chaim murmuring polite refusals. Chaim had been tall and joyful, his marriage still young; he had looked away from Pavel’s face every few seconds to glance at the slim, swaying figure of his wife. It had inspired Pavel to look at Fela every few seconds too, her short amber hair and easy walk, her soft hands grasping the purse in front of her.

  A night out in summer, a warm night. Pavel was excited; they had eaten a full meal. And he was among friends, an old friend, a boy he loved. Chaim, used to the casual dress of Tel Aviv, was already in shirtsleeves. Pavel decided to take off his jacket. They were on the beach, after all; where else could one wear short sleeves without feeling too self-conscious? A light summer cap protected his sparsely covered head.

  A man had walked slowly toward the four of them, passed by the ladies and nodded. Pavel had smiled at the stranger: a Jewish face, sandy haired, not too handsome. But the man did not smile back. He was close to Pavel, nearing him, and peering at something strange on Pavel, below Pavel’s eyes. Pavel looked down. Did he have a stain somewhere? Then the man stopped.

  “Listen,” he said, looking at Pavel, then at Chaim, then at Pavel again. “Why the hell don’t you have that removed?” The man’s accent was American.

  Pavel stared. The man gestured at Pavel’s tattoo. “There’s surgery that can do it, without too much pain.”

  Pavel’s jaw jutted forward. “What?” he said, very quietly. Then louder, “What?”