by Lily Brett
“This dog is perfectly fine,” Tadeusz said.
“Go away, dog,” Ruth said to the dog. The dog rubbed its head against her. “What does he want?” Ruth said to Tadeusz. Tadeusz laughed, and bent down and patted the dog again. The dog brushed off Tadeusz’s pat.
“Go away, dog,” Ruth said to the dog again. The dog wagged its tail furiously and looked up at Ruth. Ruth glared at the dog. The dog nudged her with his snout. She looked at her coat. She hoped he hadn’t marked it with saliva or whatever it was that came out of dogs’ snouts and mouths.
“Go away,” she said, sternly.
“It’s a beautiful dog,” Tadeusz said.
“A beautiful dog?” Ruth said. She decided, after a few seconds, that this was not the time to disagree with him. This was not the moment for Tadeusz to think she was a cold, merciless dog hater. She needed Tadeusz on her side. “I guess it is quite a beautiful dog,” she said. She didn’t think this amendment sounded very convincing. “I usually like dogs,” she said.
She was sure she sounded even more fraudulent.
She tried again. “She is a really nice dog,” she said.
“She is a he,” Tadeusz said.
“Oh, I’m not familiar enough with dogs to be able to detect their gender,” Ruth said.
“With many dogs, it is obvious,” Tadeusz said. Ruth looked at the brown dog. He was facing away from her. Large, black testicles were dan-gling between the dog’s legs.
“I see what you mean,” Ruth said.
They went inside. The dog followed them in, but stayed in the vestibule. Tadeusz and Ruth walked up the stairs. The air outside the front door of the apartment felt bereft and empty. Ruth thought that even the presence of a dog would give this atmosphere a lift. She had never wished T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 7 9 ]
for a dog before. She felt sick. She took a deep breath. She knocked loudly on the door.
The old man opened the door. He looked at Ruth, and then at Tadeusz. Tadeusz introduced himself. The old man smiled. He looked at Ruth again. “My wife said she would be back,” he said. Ruth was taken aback. What did he mean his wife said Ruth would be back? “My wife said,” the old man said, gesturing at Ruth, “that this woman’s old father was not interested, but this one was. ‘The daughter will be back,’ my wife said.”
Ruth was shocked. So much for her theory about the old couple’s for-getfulness or absentmindedness. They were expecting her. The silver dish and the teapot were bait to lure her. And it had worked. She was here. They would know she was desperate to purchase the items. At the very least, they would know she was keen. What did the old man mean, calling her father an old man? Ruth thought. Edek looked like a teenager next to this disintegrating and decomposing mixture of wrinkles and bones.
“Come in, come in,” the old man said. They stepped inside. Tadeusz began to translate what the old man had said, but Ruth cut him off. “I understood exactly what he said,” she said. She tried to put a pleasant expression on her face. She wanted the silver bowl and the china, even if it meant paying a bit more. Even if it meant paying whatever this revolting old man was asking. She had to stop thinking like this. She was sure her thoughts were showing. She tried smiling. She was sure she merely looked nauseous.
Ruth, Tadeusz, and the old man were standing in the living room. The old man’s wife was nowhere to be seen. She must have left this dirty work to her husband, Ruth thought. The wife had probably been right to do this.
Of the two of them, her husband was definitely the more charming.
“My wife said she would be back,” the old man said again. He beamed and rubbed his hands together in what seemed like a gesture of heady anticipation, to Ruth. Tadeusz nodded.
“Tell him I am pleased that he is glad to see me,” Ruth said. Tadeusz relayed the greeting.
“I am most happy to see you,” the old man said to Ruth.
“Tell him that I admired a couple of his possessions when I was last here,” Ruth said. “And then say that I wondered if there was any possibil-
[ 2 8 0 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
ity that he would allow me to buy them as a souvenir of my visit.” Tadeusz and the old man seemed to converse for longer than was needed. Ruth couldn’t quite catch the gist of what the old man was saying. “He says that he understands how important souvenirs are,” Tadeusz said.
Ruth was about to describe the silver bowl when she noticed that the teapot, bowl, the milk jug, the sugar container, and the plate were already set out on top of the small sideboard. “He really was expecting me,” she said to Tadeusz. “He said so,” said Tadeusz. “Ask him how much he wants for all of those items,” Ruth said, pointing to the small collection that had been assembled in preparation for her visit.
“Name a price,” the old man said.
“He wants you to make a suggestion,” Tadeusz said. Dozens of suggestions flew through Ruth’s head. In most of them the old man wound up dead. She didn’t think it would be wise to voice any of them.
“I’ll pay you in U.S. dollars,” Ruth said. Tadeusz relayed this to the old man.
“He says that is what he expects,” Tadeusz said to Ruth.
Ruth was startled. The old man had obviously thought this through.
“Ask him, again, how much?” Ruth said. Tadeusz asked. The old man refused to name a price. Ruth decided she had to make a move.
“Fifty dollars for the silver bowl and fifty dollars for the tea set,” Ruth said to Tadeusz. The old man opened his mouth and laughed heartily at Ruth’s offer.
The view inside his mouth made Ruth retch. Brown and yellow rotting stumps were wedged into very discolored gums. She put her hand to her stomach. She really didn’t want to throw up, although the thought of being sick all over their carpet was quite appealing.
“Tell him I’m not interested in playing games,” Ruth said to Tadeusz.
“Tell him I’ll give him two hundred and fifty for the lot. If he doesn’t agree to that, I’m leaving.” She wasn’t lying. She was telling the truth. She was fed up. She wanted to leave. This wasn’t what she had expected. She hadn’t expected such a blatant setup and such blatant exploitation. She was ready to go. She wished she hadn’t come.
The old man must have read her expression. He clapped his hands together, and pronounced it a done deal. “A good business arrangement for both of us at this price,” he said. Ruth didn’t need Tadeusz to translate T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 8 1 ]
the old man’s pleasure. The old man had brought in a box and some scraps of paper.
“Pack the things up for me as fast as you can,” Ruth said to Tadeusz.
“I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll give him the money as soon as everything is packed.” Tadeusz packed the silver and the china. He wrapped each piece, carefully. Ruth was grateful for the care he was taking.
Ruth wondered if she could give the old man a shove as she handed him the money. She decided against it. She didn’t want to touch him. Ruth took the money from a zippered compartment in her bag. She handed it to Tadeusz and asked him to give it to the old man. She shut her bag. She had several bundles of American currency in different parts of her bag. She had been to a Kantor yesterday. She had cashed two thousand dollars’ worth of traveler’s checks. She had known she would have to pay Stefan quite a bit for the trip to Kraków. She wasn’t sure how much. And she had wanted to make sure that she had enough for the china, and the interpreter, and the taxi driver, and the doorman. She knew that the doorman would be charg-ing her for the boxes. “I will get very special boxes for you,” he had said.
Ruth knew that “very special” was a euphemism. A way of letting her know that the boxes would not be free.
The old man fondled his American currency before counting it. Ruth felt sick. She tried to calm down. At least this had cost her less than she had expected. Tadeusz was carrying the box. “Good-bye,” she said to the old man. Ruth turned to leave. She needn’t have said good-by
e, she realized.
There was no point in pretending politeness anymore.
“Does she want to see more?” the old man said to Tadeusz. Ruth wheeled around. She was shocked. What was the old man talking about?
She could feel her legs trembling. “Ask him what else he’s got,” she said.
The old man beckoned for them to follow him. He led them into a small dirty kitchen. A pitted and dented kitchen table was covered in china. The same china as the plate Ruth had seen. Ruth could hardly breathe. She had forgotten about the dinner plate. She had meant to ask the old man about it. She looked at the plates and bowls and cups and saucers in front of her.
There were so many pieces. They were so beautiful. She thought she was going to pass out. She gripped the side of the table.
The dinner plates and bread and butter plates and bowls and cups and saucers looked like family to her. Each piece was in mint condition. The
[ 2 8 2 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
gold fluting unscratched, the china uncracked. She couldn’t see one chip.
How had all of this been preserved? All of these pieces from another life.
She started to weep. Tears poured down her face. “I knew that she would find these dishes attractive,” the old man said. Ruth wept even harder. A wave of biliousness swept over her. “Please, God, don’t let me be sick,” she said to herself. She needed to think. She wanted to buy this china. This china that had been part of a family life. A family life she had longed for. “Please, God, let me buy this china,” she said. She felt a bit better. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
What a time to turn to God, she thought. She had never prayed to God before. Not even when she was a child. God was verboten in their house.
Well, she could hardly expect God to rush to her aid. Ruth was sure that if there was a God, he would want to see some evidence of a belief in him beforehand. He wouldn’t just dash off to any unexpected request for help.
You couldn’t just call on God, out of the blue. She blew her nose again. She could hardly look at the china. She didn’t want either of these men to know how much it meant to her.
“There are eighteen dinner plates, twenty smaller plates, twenty bowls, twenty cups, and twenty saucers,” the old man said.
“What does he want for them?” Ruth said to Tadeusz. The old man looked tough. All pretense of a civilized exchange was gone. “Based on the previous price we agreed on for the other pieces of china,” he said, “I cal-culate that this is worth three thousand dollars.”
Ruth felt winded. It wasn’t so much the price as the preplanned trap and the supposition that she would return and fall right into it. And they had been right, the old man and his wife. She had done exactly what they had predicted she would. Tadeusz walked over to her and touched her on the arm. She jumped. “What do you want to do?” he said.
“You can take it or leave it,” the old man said.
Ruth felt light-headed. She stumbled. Tadeusz caught her. “You are making a difficult situation more difficult,” Tadeusz said to the old man.
“There is nothing too difficult going on here,” the old man said. “She just has to pay the money and she gets what she wants.” Ruth sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. She put her head between her legs. “Tell him I haven’t got three thousand dollars,” she said.
“She can get it,” the old man said. Ruth was still dizzy. “Let’s go,” she T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 8 3 ]
said to Tadeusz. The old man looked at her. “She won’t go,” he said to Tadeusz. “She can’t bear to separate herself from this stuff. My wife always said we should keep it. She said, someone will come looking for it, one day.
It took fifty-nine years, but my wife was right.”
“We thought that she was going to buy it last time she was here,” the old man said. “But my wife said she could see the girl was not ready to buy. My wife said to wait. We waited. And look what we got. The same girl. She is a little older and she has brought the money with her this time.”
Ruth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She remembered, vaguely, that the old man had offered her a cup of tea, all those years ago. Had he brought out the tea service then? He must have. But it had been no use.
She hadn’t known what she was looking at. She felt exhausted.
“I’ll have to give you a mixture of dollars and zlotys,” she said to the old man.
Tadeusz translated for her. “That is perfectly acceptable to me,” the old man said with a bow. He smiled at Ruth. The success of the transaction had obviously improved the old man’s humor and his manners. His mood looked decidedly lighter. Ruth fished around in her bag, for the various places she had put her money. “Could you pack all of this, please?” she said to Tadeusz. The old man had had two cardboard boxes ready under the table. “Of course,” Tadeusz said. Ruth counted her money.
She gave the cash to Tadeusz. She needed as much distance between her and this dirty old man as it was possible to have in this cramped kitchen.
She looked away while he caressed and fondled each note as he counted the money.
“I’ll carry one of the boxes,” she said to Tadeusz.
“They are heavy,” he said.
“I’m strong,” she said. She wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. If they walked out with only one box, she was sure the other would disappear.
And she wasn’t going to wait, on her own, in this apartment, with the old man, while Tadeusz took the boxes downstairs.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said to Tadeusz. She bent down to pick up the smaller of the boxes.
“I have a few more items you might be interested in,” the old man said.
Ruth felt as though someone had punched her. She tried to straighten herself up. The thump had been palpable. It was right below her chest. It
[ 2 8 4 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
felt as though it had punctured her lungs. Perforated some part of her. She started wheezing. Both men stared at her. “She will be okay in a minute,”
the old man said. Ruth sat back down in the chair. Was she having a heart attack? What was happening to her? She didn’t want to die in this apartment. She realized that every part of her body was clenched. Her teeth, her hands, her head. She tried to relax.
“Can I help you downstairs?” Tadeusz said. “I think we should leave.”
Ruth shook her head. She wasn’t going to leave without the china. “I will run down with the boxes and then return for you,” said Tadeusz. Ruth shook her head again. Her breathing was becoming less labored.
“I haven’t got any more money,” she said to the old man. Tadeusz translated.
“Jews always have a little something put away,” the old man said.
Ruth felt furious. She tried to show the old man her disdain for him, but the wheezing returned and made the demonstration of her contempt impossible. Ruth realized that she had understood every word this disgusting, stained old man had said. Years of not understanding Polish had vanished. Years of incomprehensible Polish phrases and sentences seemed to be over. She could understand every word. Polish verbs and adjectives and nouns and adverbs coalesced into meanings, instead of melting into gibber-ish as they used to do. Why was it that this old man’s words had cleared her blockage? Why had his wretched and repugnant proposals produced a clarity in her?
This was the closest she had come to having something tangible from the past. The past that had destroyed not only those who were murdered, but those who were left alive. The proximity to any part of that past was an enormous incentive, Ruth thought. An incentive to understand the language of the enemy. Her breathing had eased. She still felt as though she might throw up. She had to get out of this apartment. There was nothing left in this apartment, for her, anymore. She knew that she would never come back. She had seen enough.
“What have you got?” she said to the old man. The old man didn’t need Tadeusz to interpret. He had understood t
he gesture Ruth had made with her head. It was a defiant gesture. Ruth had been surprised at the defiance she had managed to muster.
The old man pulled a large brown paper bag out from under the table.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 2 8 5 ]
Ruth looked into the bag. She couldn’t see what was inside. The bag stank of mothballs. The old man leaned down and with a flourish pulled an old overcoat out of the bag.
“Why should she want an old man’s overcoat?” Tadeusz said to the old man.
“We don’t need him,” the old man said, nodding in Tadeusz’s direction.
He held up the coat. Ruth could see that it was an expensive coat. It was dark gray. Probably made out of wool. The plush pale gray satin lining was still intact. And clean. All the seams were double-stitched. And the tailored shape of the collar and subtlety of the line of the body of the coat suggested it had been designed and made by a master tailor.
“Whose coat is it?” Ruth said.
“Your grandfather’s,” the old man said. Ruth thought she must have misheard.
“What did he say?” she said to Tadeusz.
“He said this coat belonged to your grandfather,” Tadeusz said.
“She understood what I said,” the old man said to Tadeusz.
“How do you know this was my grandfather’s coat?” Ruth said. “It could be anyone’s.”
“If it was anyone’s coat I would not be showing it to you,” the old man said. He put his hand into one of the pockets of the coat and pulled out the lining. The initials I. R. were embroidered in dark gray on the top of the lining of the pocket. Ruth looked at the initials and started to weep. Did this coat belong to Israel Rothwax, her father’s father, her grandfather?
How did this sickening old man know her grandfather’s initials?
“It could belong to anyone else with the same initials,” Ruth said. The old man laughed. He turned back the collar of the coat. At the back of the collar, embroidered again, in dark gray, was the name Rothwax. The embroidered letters looked almost human, almost alive, to Ruth. So much more than a series of stitches. She sank back down onto the chair and wept.
