by Lily Brett
Ruth shot him a look that said no.
“They are very nice women,” Edek said to Ruth in the taxi on the way to the cabaret.
“They are very nice,” she said. She was holding her head.
“What is wrong with you?” Edek said.
“I’ve got a headache,” she said.
At the Samson Restaurant, Ruth and Edek were shown to a table near the performance area. Ruth sat down. She was glad that she and Edek would have a good view of the cabaret. The restaurant was crowded. Ruth looked around at the other guests. There was not one Jew among the people who had come to the Samson Restaurant to eat Jewish food and see the T O O M A N Y M E N
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Jewish cabaret. Most of the audience looked like tourists. Tourists from Germany, Spain, France, and a smattering of Poles.
There were two Samson Restaurants in Szeroka Street in the heart of Kazimierz. They were next door to each other. The Polish owners had had a court battle for the name. Ruth and Edek were in the original Samson Restaurant. Samson number two was in the process of changing its name.
Why would anyone open a restaurant and call it by the same name as the restaurant next door? Ruth thought. It seemed so stupid. Both Samsons offered Jewish dinners and cabarets. And Yiddish music. The decor at this Samson Restaurant was made up of the usual Jewish artifacts, aided and abetted by several paintings of Orthodox Jews praying.
Ruth looked at the menu. She was hungry. There was carp, Sephardic style, fish in Jewish jelly, chicken soup, Passover cheese, and a strange assortment of other dishes. A waiter brought two bread rolls and a very pale piece of matzoh in a basket to the table. The matzoh didn’t look right—it was too thick and too pale. Ruth looked around her. Every table had a basket of bread rolls and matzoh.
“Are you hungry?” she said to Edek.
“No,” he said, “I am not so hungry today.” She restrained herself from pointing out that he had hardly stopped eating all day.
“I’ll have some chicken soup,” she said, “and some carp.”
“Mum did make a beautiful carp,” Edek said.
“She was a great cook,” Ruth said. Edek looked sad. “Do you want a bowl of chicken soup?” Ruth said.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m going to order the Passover cheese,” she said. “Have you ever heard of Passover cheese?”
“Never,” Edek said.
The waiter returned. “Can you tell me what Passover cheese is?” Ruth said.
“It is Jewish cheese, madam,” he said.
“But what is it?” she said.
“It is what Jewish people eat,” he said.
“Well, I’m Jewish, so I’ll have some,” Ruth said. She ordered two bowls of chicken soup and one serving of carp.
“I will have a bit of fish too,” Edek said.
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“Make that two carp,” Ruth said. The waiter nodded.
“Is this place owned by Jews?” Ruth said to the waiter.
“No, madam,” the waiter said.
“Ruthie,” Edek said.
“I just want to ask one more question,” she said to Edek. “Are the musicians Jewish?” she said to the waiter.
“No, madam,” the waiter said.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Ruth said. “I thought this might really be a Jewish cabaret.”
She wanted to cry. What was she doing here? How could she have been naive enough to think that there was anything Jewish left in Poland?
There were no Jews singing Yiddish songs anywhere anymore. Why couldn’t she get that into her head? Edek could see her distress. He patted her on the head.
“Don’t worry,” Edek said, “it is always nice to see a show.”
Some klezmer music started up. Edek tapped his fingers in time to the music. Ruth was pleased that he was in good spirits. It would have been a miserable evening if they both felt as bad as she felt. The restaurant was full. Ruth couldn’t see one empty table. It hadn’t been easy to get a booking to the cabaret. They did two shows a night at the Samson Restaurant and both shows were heavily booked. Ruth and Edek were at the early session.
The food arrived. All at once. The soup, the fish, and the cheese. The waiter juggled to fit everything on the table.
“I guess they’ve got to get us fed and out of here before the next session begins,” Ruth said to Edek.
Edek took a mouthful of his soup. “Not bad soup,” he said. Ruth had some.
“You’re right,” Ruth said. “It’s not bad.” She felt better eating the soup.
She looked at Edek. He had already finished his soup. He must have been hungry, she thought. Someone had turned up the volume of the klezmer music. It was now very loud. It was impossible to speak above this music.
Maybe that was the point, Ruth thought. If the customers couldn’t talk, they would finish their meals faster.
“The fish is shocking,” Edek suddenly shouted. “Do not eat it.” He had pushed his fish away. Ruth tried a mouthful. It was disgusting. The carp T O O M A N Y M E N
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was flat and tepid. It tasted of mud. Some limp strands of white cabbage floated next to the fish.
“What is Jewish about this?” she shouted to Edek.
“Nothing,” he shouted back.
Ruth pushed the fish dish away, “Let’s try the Passover cheese,” she shouted.
Four perfectly round scoops of what was supposed to be Passover cheese were sitting in the middle of the plate, ungarnished and unaccompanied. Ruth prodded one of the scoops with her fork. She had never seen a dish like this before. Raisins and lemon peel had been mixed into a blend of cream cheese and cottage cheese. A wedge of orange had been pushed into the center of each scoop. No Passover seder meal she had ever been to had had this cheese.
“What is this?” Edek shouted to Ruth.
“Passover cheese,” she shouted back. Edek started laughing.
“It is very funny,” he shouted.
Ruth wished she could see the humor in the food, in the restaurant, in the evening.
She was hungry. She ate one scoop of the cheese. It wasn’t too bad. “It’s not too bad,” she shouted to Edek.
Suddenly the lights dimmed. Someone came out and lit the candles of a menorah, the candleholder used for the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, which was sitting on a sideboard near the performance area. The audience grew hushed. From a side door four men and a woman, all playing instruments, ran onto the small stage area at the front of the restaurant. They were dressed as Jews. In black hats, black jackets, and beards. Ruth was appalled.
“They look like Ukrainians to me,” Ruth said to Edek. Edek raised his eyebrows and nodded. He knew, too, that these performers weren’t Jews.
He didn’t seem bothered. Ruth noticed that the largest musician was wearing a false nose. A large, hooked plastic nose. She felt furious.
“He’s wearing a false nose,” she said to Edek.
“Shsh,” Edek said.
“Why should he wear a false nose in order to imitate a Jew?” Ruth said.
“Jews have big noses,” Edek said.
“Can’t you see how wrong it is?” Ruth said.
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“Shsh,” said Edek. “People will hear you.”
The musicians played loudly and boisterously. Ruth recognized none of the songs.
“Do you know any of these songs, Dad?” she said.
“No,” he said. There was no subtlety in the music. It was workmanlike.
Uninspired. The piano-accordionist pounded the keys of the accordion.
The guitarist’s playing was basic, the clarinetist and violinist had no tenderness, and the drummer smashed away at the drums. The audience was enjoying the show. They clapped enthusiastically at the end of each number. Now and then the musicians acted out a joke. It was always lewd. The audience roared at each crude skit.
Finally the band broke into a Jewis
h number, Hava Nagilah, the joyful music Jews dance to in a circle at weddings and other celebrations. The Ukrainians, dressed as Jews, played Hava Nagilah at a funereal pace. Hava Nagilah, Ruth decided, was this band’s attempt at a token moment of Jewish sadness. The audience understood. It remained quiet.
Ruth felt hysterical. “They have no idea what they’re playing,” she said to Edek. How dare they turn being Jewish into a profit-based circus. Her head hurt. She wanted to go home. She wasn’t sure where her home was.
Was it in New York? In Australia? In the cemetery in Lódz? She contemplated standing up and shouting. She wanted to grab the menorah, remove the yarmulkes, and punch the musicians. Edek was tapping his feet in time to the music. “It is not a bad show,” he said.
Chapter Fourteen
R uth woke up disoriented. She had dreamed about legs. Zofia’s legs. Stable, durable, hardy legs. Well-constructed legs. Legs with shiny skin and smooth calves. The legs had been walking along a beach next to another pair of legs. Legs that belonged to Edek, Ruth realized, when she got a closer look at the slight, white, threaded with fine blue veins legs, with their oddly delicate ankles. In the dream, she had been trying to catch up to the legs. But her own legs ached. She couldn’t make them move fast. They were sluggish and slow. Ruth was sure there was plenty of material in that dream for an analyst to delve into. It seemed to contain quite a few murky propositions and suppositions.
Both alarm clocks in Ruth’s room started ringing. Ruth thought she had set them to go off two minutes apart. She and Edek were going to Auschwitz today. She hadn’t wanted to sleep in. Going to Auschwitz. The sentence had a strange ring to it. An ominous lilt. She switched both alarm clocks off. The wake-up call she had ordered arrived. “Cancel my second call, please,” she said to the operator. She got out of bed. A fax from Max was on the floor under the door. The hotel didn’t bother to fold the faxes.
Ruth could see Max’s distinctive handwriting from where she was standing.
She walked over and picked up the fax. “John Sharp wants three hundred and twenty-seven individual letters to accompany invitations to his daughter’s wedding,” the fax said. Oh, shit, Ruth thought. Three hundred
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and twenty-seven different letters was going to be an organizational nightmare. She knew that this job was worth tens of thousands of dollars. But she was tired. She couldn’t imagine what she could say on John Sharp’s or Sandra Sharp’s behalf, to any of their guests.
Ruth turned on the shower. The water came through in a strong spray.
Thank God this shower had good water pressure, Ruth thought. She turned up the hot water. She felt like a very hot shower. She took off her nightie and stepped in. She soaped her body, and savored the heat and the steam. She washed herself. She washed and washed. She soaped and lath-ered and scrubbed. Why was she washing herself so vigorously? she wondered. By the time she got out of the shower her skin was pale and wrinkled.
When Ruth arrived downstairs for breakfast, Edek was already there.
He looked good. Rested and chipper. He was eating a large bowl of cornflakes.
“You’re eating cornflakes in Poland,” Ruth said. Cornflakes were such an Australian breakfast. “Are you homesick?” Ruth said. Edek laughed.
“To tell you the truth I did miss a bit my cornflakes,” he said. He looked at Ruth. “You look much better this morning, Ruthie,” he said. Ruth got herself a bowl of stewed fruit. She sprinkled a few cornflakes on top of the fruit. She was glad Edek thought that she looked better. She knew she had been looking pretty wrung out.
Suddenly in a flurry of perfumed air, air scented with what seemed to be a blend of soap and perfume and body lotions, Walentyna and Zofia appeared. Ruth hadn’t noticed them arrive. The two women looked flushed. As though they had been rushing. “Good morning, good morning,” Zofia called out. Edek stood up. He went to shake hands with Walentyna, who looked very pretty this morning, in a close-fitting, plain black dress.
Zofia elbowed Walentyna out of the way. She thrust her bust forward and pushed herself toward Edek. “It is very nice to see you this morning, Edek,” she said. She leaned forward and gave Edek a hug. “Walentyna and I did enjoy very much our afternoon with you.”
“I did enjoy it very much myself,” Edek said.
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“Was the cabaret last night good?” Zofia asked.
“It was not bad,” Edek said.
“Did you like the cabaret?” Walentyna said to Ruth.
“I thought it was terrible,” Ruth said. Both of the women looked at Ruth perplexed.
“There were some not so good points to it,” Edek said. Ruth was glad for Edek’s solidarity. She hadn’t wanted to appear a killjoy to Zofia and Walentyna.
Zofia asked if she and Walentyna could join them for breakfast. Edek was about to say yes, when he noticed Ruth’s disagreeable expression. He paused. Ruth used this window of opportunity to reply to Zofia’s question.
“Normally we would love to have you join us,” Ruth said. “But we are going to Auschwitz today, so I think it would be better for us to have a quiet breakfast.” Zofia looked solemn, but her disappointment showed through her solemnity.
“My daughter is right,” Edek said.
“Of course your daughter is right,” Walentyna said.
“Of course,” Zofia said. She turned to Edek. “You will need a little comfort after such a terrible experience,” she said to him.
“The thing what was most terrible did already happen,” Edek said.
“Of course,” Walentyna said.
“You will need to be cheered up when you get back,” Zofia said to Edek in Polish. Ruth felt irritated. Zofia was so pushy. “What time will you be back?” Zofia said to Edek.
“We don’t know,” Ruth said. “We don’t know how long we’ll spend there.”
Zofia looked at Edek. “Walentyna and I will be waiting for you when you get back.”
“It is not necessary,” Edek said. Thank God, Edek was deflecting them, Ruth thought. The prospect of dealing with Zofia and Walentyna immediately after Auschwitz seemed exhausting. She felt relieved that at least Zofia and Walentyna weren’t joining them for breakfast. She really wanted to have a quiet breakfast. It was going to be a big day.
Zofia patted Edek on the back. “Take care,” she said. “Walentyna and I will be here whatever time you will be back.”
“We will be here,” Walentyna said quietly.
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“Thank you,” Edek said.
Ruth felt sorry for Walentyna. She was so overshadowed by Zofia and Zofia’s bust.
“They are nice women,” Edek said after Zofia and Walentyna had left.
“They’re okay,” she said. Edek looked deflated. She felt mean. There had been no need to puncture such a small, harmless piece of pleasure.
“No, they are very nice,” she said to Edek. “I think little Walentyna gets bossed around a bit by Zofia.”
“I don’t think so,” Edek said. “Walentyna is such a quiet type. Zofia is not so quiet.” Ruth looked across the room. The two women were talking animatedly. Maybe Edek was right. Maybe there was no need to feel sorry for Walentyna.
Ruth was hungry. She ate all of her stewed fruit and went back for more.
Edek had followed the cornflakes with pickled herring, scrambled eggs, and fried bratwurst and onions. He was finishing off his breakfast with a piece of bread and jam.
“Are you nervous about going to Auschwitz, Dad?” she said.
“No,” he said. “Why should I be nervous? Nothing is going to happen to me there, now.” He finished the bread and jam and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He pushed his plate and several pieces of cutlery away in a decisive gesture that signaled that he was finished with the meal. “That is it,” he said.
Ruth had seen this movement many times. It was an announcement that h
e was having nothing more to eat. Ruth thought it was more of an announcement to himself than to anyone else. He always said “that is it” as he pushed his eating implements away. The speed and decisiveness of the push, Ruth thought, was an affirmation that Edek had had enough. That he was someone who could curtail his eating. That he was not a pig. “That is it,” Edek said again.
The Mercedes that was waiting for them was a medium-size Mercedes.
“This is not such a big one what the other one,” Edek said. “That’s true,”
Ruth said. She felt she was becoming a connoisseur of Mercedes.
“Do you want to sit in front with the driver?” Ruth said.
“No,” Edek said. “This time I will sit with you.” They got into the car.
There was something soothing about the plush comfort of a Mercedes, Ruth thought.
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“You are going to the Auschwitz Museum?” the driver said.
“No,” Ruth said. The driver turned around. “We are going to the Auschwitz death camp,” she said to him. “Could you remember that?” The driver nodded. Edek looked uncomfortable. “What is it such a big deal what he calls the camp?” he said. “It is still the same what happened there.” Ruth didn’t answer. She wished she wasn’t so bothered by what anybody called it. It seemed so petty next to anything else connected with the camp.
“I’ve brought some water with me in case we get thirsty,” she said to Edek. She showed him the water she had packed in a bag, together with some bananas and pears. Edek looked at the bananas and pears.
“What for did you bring so much fruit?” he said.
“It’s only four pears and four bananas,” she said.
“You are not going to be hungry in Auschwitz,” Edek said. “You do not eat in the hotel where there is such a good buffet. You think that you are going to eat in Auschwitz?” He shook his head.
“I brought some chocolate for you, too,” she said. She took out a block of Wedel’s semibitter dark chocolate.
“Thank you,” Edek said. He still looked bewildered.
Ruth understood her father’s bewilderment. After all, they weren’t setting out for a picnic. She had realized when she started to pack the pears and bananas and chocolate that she associated Auschwitz with starvation, and it was hard to separate that association from the present. She didn’t tell Edek about the dried apricots and dates in her backpack. She had felt as though she were packing for a trek through the Himalayas, or somewhere equally difficult to get out of in an emergency. It was a strange thought for her to have, as the Himalayas were as far removed from anything in her life as it was possible to be. She knew that they were mountains. Mountains in Kashmir, Tibet, and Nepal. But that scrap of knowledge was the only thing she knew about the Himalayas.
