Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  “We’re three guys, Dad. Everyone expects us to go tom-catting in the city.”

  Mr. Paradissis grumbled something in Greek.

  “You can’t stop me, Dad,” said Yorgos.

  Mr. Paradissis slapped Yorgos across the face. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Noah got in touch with Mr. Morrow to find out where his group was meeting in Union Square. Yorgos said there was no way that Sierra would be there if the communist clubs were coming. When my father heard the rumor about Tresca speaking, he decided to go over that day for his bi-weekly visit to HIAS. “You’ll come too,” he informed me. “Dress nice, okay?”

  “But Dad,” I complained. I did not have heart to stand on that line again and hear all those sad stories. So many lost souls felt unbearable. Who knew that the worst unbearable was yet to come?

  “You already got plans that day?” he asked playfully.

  The barge trip to Brooklyn went better than usual. Not even the stench of rotting garbage got in the way of a cooling breeze. The boys pounded their rat sticks in unison. Joey, whose voice had already changed from a boy’s voice to a tenor, began scat singing to the beat.

  “What’s that he’s singing?” asked my father.

  “It’s ‘scat,’” said Noah.

  “As in The rats better scat?”

  “As in Louis Armstrong. Ella Fitzgerald. As in jazz!”

  “Which you know from what?”

  “From the radio, man!” Noah drummed the syllables on his thighs.

  “Man, schman. Just keep banging those sticks and leave the jazz-mattazz to the radio. What happened to this being an important day when you hear your big hero Tresca?”

  “If he shows,” said Yorgos. Joey was still singing who-knows-what and Noah was dancing with just his feet.

  “If I can’t dance, I’m not going to the revolution,” Noah crooned.

  “Says who?” asked Yorgos. He banged his stick near Noah’s feet.

  “Says Emma Goldman, that’s who.”

  “You boys think politics is some kind of party?” asked my father. “People are getting beaten to death, thrown in jail, thrown out of the country.”

  “You still think misery’s at the heart of everything,” said Noah. “I think it’s joy.”

  Rumor had it that Tresca would be speaking at 5:00 p.m. Dad worked it out with the boys to meet up on the southern end of Union Square at 6:00 p.m. in front of Klein’s Department Store.

  We split up at the subway at Astor Place. My father and I walked the half block to HIAS, where the line was snaking out the door. People looked angry or anxious or empty, as if standing there, hoping to come to someone’s rescue, was more exposure of their humanity than they could stand. My father found the man who sold numbers, exchanged his receipt, and got a stub that moved us ahead in the line. We stepped inside.

  A man in the lobby was lecturing a small group of people who, unwilling to risk their places in line, had no choice but to listen. “...the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Hapsburgs, the Herero and the Namaqua, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, the upheavals in Macedonia and Serbia....”

  I tugged at my father’s sleeve. “What’s he talking about?”

  “What does she teach you in that school?”

  “...Genghis Khan, King Leopold of Belgium, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabelle,....”

  The man was getting louder and people across the room were looking around to see what was going on.

  “...Russian Civil War! The Fall of Rome! The Thirty Years War! Russia’s Time of Troubles! Napoleonic Wars! French Wars of Religion!”

  Two men in shirtsleeves came out of an office and grabbed the man, who by now was yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “THE AN LUSHAN REVOLT, THE FALL OF THE MING DYNASTY, THE TAIPING REBELLION, THE AMERICAN INDIANS, THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE, THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE, THE GREAT WAR....”

  He struggled to throw them off. A third man approached and spoke to him as he yelled.

  “THERE ARE DATES, THEY HAVE NAMES; THE MASSACRES, THE PEOPLE, THEY HAVE NAMES!!”

  It could have happened to anyone in that room. Anyone could have gone nuts waiting in line, but not my father. He did not look one bit bothered. Perhaps anyone who lived with my mother could do the same. Including me.

  The man was still yelling when my father’s number was called and the wooden floor boards creaked under our shoes and we were seated in swivel chairs in front of a man named Schwartzbart, on whose desk my father spread a piece of paper with the names and addresses, neatly printed, of the brothers and sisters and parents still living in Zyrmuny. We had been in line for barely thirty minutes. Make that two years and thirty minutes.

  Mr. Schwartzbart reached for a stack of printed forms from shelf behind him. Carefully, with a kindness I had never witnessed before in the lettering of a word, he wrote the names of each person.

  “Occupations?” he asked.

  “Children?” he asked.

  “Health status?” he asked.

  Two of my mother’s sisters had been diagnosed with tuberculosis but had survived, depending on your definition of survival. In their letters they each described the other as being chronically thin, chronically tired, chronically weary, and chronically pale.

  “Tuber...” my father started to say.

  “Shssh,” Mr. Schwartzbart interrupted. He looked over the top of his eyeglasses and tapped his pen to his lips. “Garden variety illnesses from which everyone recovered?”

  My father nodded.

  A drop of ink had leaked onto Mr. Schwartzbart’s lower lip and dried there. Neither of us mentioned it.

  “How many will you sponsor?” asked Mr. Schwartzbart.

  “That list,” said my father, touching his fingertips to the official piece of paper.

  “You’re talking ten people here,” said Mr. Schwartzbart, “not counting the grandparents.”

  “My family, sir,” said my father. “We’re talking about my family.”

  “How are you going to put up twelve people, only two of whom have had jobs? How will you feed them?”

  “Mr. Schwartzbart, with respect: I thought that’s what you do. Find a place to live, find a job.”

  “Yes, Mr. Eisenstein, we try. But tell me: did we help you or did you manage?”

  “No, my brother-in-law helped,” my father answered. He lowered his eyes.

  I can still see him pondering, wondering if there was only one right answer that he had already gotten wrong.

  “So, tell me: how many can you sponsor. Your wife’s parents, yes? They’ll live with you, the grandparents to your children, always room.

  “Two for you then and ten for us,” Mr. Schwartzbart said with a sigh. He smoothed out the completed form that was not even wrinkled and slid it to the side of his desk.

  “Please,” said my father. “Do the best you can.”

  Mr. Schwartzbart stood; the conversation was over. He extended his hand to my father, who clasped it and held on. “We always do the best we can,” said Mr. Schwartzbart. “What else can we do?” He used his free hand to cover my father’s hand and left it there for a somehow comforting moment.

  CHAPTER 14

  We walked up Astor Place to Broadway, passing stores selling hats, selling shirts, selling shoes. There were other stores selling nuts and dried fruits; dried mushrooms were looped on strings, like the dried fig necklaces that the Paradissises wore on the boat from Greece. It was easy to believe—at least on a brief walk up Broadway—that we were living in abundance. It was certainly nicer than thinking about scavengers and barges, or the fact that we were seven years into The Great Depression without a sign of it ending, or that the only promise Mr. Schwartzbart could make was to try.

  HIAS, it turned out, was six easy blocks from Union Square. The closer we got, the better we could hear the din rising from the park. Soon we could see the backs of people who were facing a simple, unadorned platform that had been set up above th
e crowd. Hundreds, maybe thousands were already gathered. Lots of them were carrying placards: In Unity Is Our Strength or We Demand 8 Hour Work Days. Others were wearing buttons for the I.W.W. or the A.F. of L. Most of the signs were in English, but plenty were in Yiddish or Italian or Chinese. People disagreed about religion and politics, but not about full employment. Who wants to starve? The Depression had circled the globe, Spain was on the eve of a civil war, and those stupid Italians had embraced Mussolini, who changed from a socialist to a fascist because it suited him. Jews and anti-fascists were being gunned down at will in Germany and Austria. We read about it in the newspapers; we heard about it on the radio. Japanese troops were slaughtering Manchurians and raping Nanking on the other side of the world. Must people suffer so that life can have meaning or to prove it has none?

  My father assessed the scene, his hand salute-like on his brow to block the sun. A few policemen on horseback were circling the square. Others walked through the crowd, twirling their nightsticks. Party members were selling political pamphlets and The Daily Worker. Vendors were selling soft pretzels, hot dogs, and apples.

  “Let’s go home, Dad,” I said. I was finally at one of Noah’s meetings, but it was crowded with noisy chaos. It looked like anything but fun.

  “Where the heck are they?” my father wondered as he scanned the crush. Union Square was already two-thirds full and people were still coming.

  “Look, Dad: more mounted policemen.” Another half-dozen were crossing into the park.

  “If they’re not here at 6:00, I’ll wring Noah’s neck. I’m not spending all night searching for him.”

  It was only 1:30. The speeches had already begun and a man in overalls stood at the lectern: We gather today from all shades of labor opinion, from the right to the left, but we can agree on this: let the workers’ strength be the answer to Spanish Fascism. Help the democracy of Spain fight the Fascist Party.

  “Noah says England’s already betrayed Spain.”

  “Never mind Spain right now. Let’s get out of here,” said my father.

  He led me out of the park past more shops, some closed for good, some with their lights off but their doors propped open to show that they still had something to sell. No one could afford to leave lights burning when no one was shopping. I think of this as the literal darkness that preceded a greater darkness, the one that had already overtaken Europe and China and Ethiopia.

  We walked back to the subway down a corridor that stank of old air and sewer gas. People on the platform looked busy, and bored, and hot. Some of them were fanning themselves with newspapers. A man eating a hot dog leaned over the tracks. He bowed his legs so that loose strands of sauerkraut dropped on the rails instead of his suit. Watching him was like seeing a car wreck on a highway. He was disgusting; I could not stop looking.

  My father found a subway map and traced one of the lines with his finger. His chin relaxed. He counted the number of stops to the destination he had not yet revealed. His eyes lost their worry. Mr. Schwartzbart’s office and Union Square fell away.

  An express train arrived and more people fanned out wearing buttons and carrying banners. My father motioned me to a seat next to a plump, young woman holding more pillows than she could manage. He stationed himself in front of me, gripped the passenger strap overhead, and steadied himself with an easy sway as the train rocked back and forth. I could feel the press of people from every direction, even the ones nowhere near me. One of the woman’s pillows was soon resting across my lap. The man on my other side cleaned his teeth with a matchstick. Somewhere was a baby in need of a diaper. Barren Shoal was not the only place that smelled awful.

  “This is us,” my father said at 34th Street. He reached for my hand, which I gladly took against the rush. We passed Macy’s, which stayed busy despite The Depression. We passed bars and newsstands, past men loitering, past vendors selling apples, past carts selling shaved ice.

  We walked a few blocks before stopping in front of a glass-plated display case.

  “Well?” he asked, with a satisfied grin. “Tosca!” That is what it said on the poster. Tosca. Hanging inside the case was a plaque with red lettering: TODAY. “Come on,” he said. We joined some people standing in a neat line at the box office window. We inched our way forward. Then we were in the Metropolitan Opera House, the old Met on 39th and Broadway, taking our places with the others holding standing-room tickets. It was that easy.

  Elegantly dressed people passed us on their way to their seats. They looked away from us. I suppose they pitied us just like we pitied the scavengers.

  “Does Mom know?” I asked.

  My father shook his head. He smiled as if to say we are conspirators.

  “And Noah?”

  He shook his head again. “I’d told your mother that I’d bring you if we finished in time at HIAS.”

  “We’re not going back?”

  He draped his arm around my shoulders. “Stop asking so many questions. Look at where you are. Isn’t this something?”

  We settled in against the back wall of the orchestra section, in one of the crowded little spots reserved for standers. The air was heavy with perfume and cologne that I now remember as Chanel and Shalimar, but that is my memory filling in details it could never have known. The audience rustled in their seats until the orchestra members entered the pit. I had heard live music before: klezmer clarinetists and fiddle players and a girl in my aunt and uncle’s building who actually had a piano at home because her mother gave lessons. But never in a concert hall dark with expectation.

  A restless hush announced the conductor’s arrival. The audience broke into applause, already happy about a thing that had not yet happened. The beautiful house fixtures dimmed; the stage lights came up. I tightened my grip on the ledge. It is hard to convey: we imagine something, and we imagine as well that the very thing we have imagined is impossible. Then, suddenly, it surrounds us. The thing I had thought impossible was now true. I was attending an opera at the old Met. Such a special building should have never been torn down. Nor its neighbor, the old Pennsylvania Station. What is left to say about such reckless destruction?

  The instruments, like perfume and cologne, transformed the air. I was hearing Tosca with my whole body now, not just my ears. When the music trembled, I trembled. When Angelotti rushed into the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, my pulse rushed right along with him. When cannon fire warned of Angelotti’s escape from the fortress, I grabbed my father’s hand in fear. It was damp with sweat. Our own beating hearts had become instruments as well.

  At intermission, my father found a pretzel cart on the street. The vendor asked if I wanted mustard, but this whole street-food business was as new to me as the inside of the Met. My father pulled a loop off the pretzel and handed it to me. The mustard stung my sinuses. I hoped we did not look as disgusting as that man on the subway eating his hot dog.

  “I want to explain this union business of Noah’s,” my father said. “It’s not that I don’t believe in their cause. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “It’s between the boys and the unions,” I said. The pretzel was burnt where it had been sitting on the coals. I flicked off some ash.

  “And between Mr. Paradissis and Mr. Dowd and Yorgos and Joey and DeWitt and every single person who lives on Barren Shoal. And even Miss Finn, who goes back and forth to Brooklyn. It’s between the union bosses and the factory bosses, the planning commission and the mayor. I don’t disagree about the principles. But I don’t want Noah getting hurt. And I don’t want him hurting us.”

  I took another bite of the pretzel. Big grains of salt stuck to my lips, stinging them. Noah was right. My father was right. No matter what they did or did not do, there would be no guarantees.

  “Can we get a drink, please?”

  “There’s a fountain inside by the restrooms,” he said. He cupped his hand under my elbow and we crossed the street. We joined the line inside for water. “People get so wrapped up in things that they can�
��t see the forest for the trees. You understand that saying?”

  I nodded. The line inched forward.

  “Here’s another saying: pick your battles wisely.”

  I nodded again, half-listening. There were now just two people ahead of us.

  “Think about Tosca,” he continued. “People think it’s enough to love opera for the singing, for the spectacle. But don’t let that distract you from the story. You’ve always got to keep an eye on the whole story. You got to at the opera; you got to everywhere.”

  “Sure, Dad,” I mumbled as I leaned over to drink. The first warning chimes for Act II were ringing as I slurped.

  There were empty seats in the orchestra section now, but when I suggested that we take them, my father scowled, as if I was suggesting that we steal them.

  “If you want you can take a look-see at the orchestra pit. And don’t bother the musicians!”

  I was heading down the aisle when I heard familiar voices. There, seated a few rows down, were Lois and Gray. Of course they would have opera tickets; of course they would have orchestra seating; of course their seats would be on the aisle. If they saw me what would I say? That I was standing in back with my father? That we would be standing the whole three hours while Lois and Gray sat comfortably? I felt plenty small enough around them already. I turned back up the aisle before they spotted me.

  My father, surprised to see me, said, “I thought you wanted to—”

  “Changed my mind.” This was not a respectful tone to take with my father, but there it was.

  I leaned against the low wall separating the standers from the sitters and kicked off my shoes, my socks now the only thing between my feet and the thousands of pairs of shoes of the thousands of people who walked through the Met every week. I did not regret, just for that day, how teenage girls then wore socks with dresses. My feet were tired from so much walking. Not even Puccini could stop my toes from hurting. I will not pretend that being uncomfortable did not matter. But, really, it had no meaning compared to the fact that I was standing in the same concert hall where the music was being made. Hearing music is not like reading a book. At least, not for me. I cannot read a score and hear it in my head. Yes, we had a radio, which was wonderful. But the difference between music live and on the radio is like the difference between Michelangelo’s David in person and the postcard. I know because I went to Italy after the war, after we were married. And then I saw it in person. Me, Marta Eisenstein Lane from Barren Shoal, visited Florence.