Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  My father never forgot an incident he witnessed from his window one day. ‘A boy of about five was standing in front of the gate holding a willow switch in his hand. Whenever a Jew walked past, the boy hit him with his stick. People crossed the road to avoid him, but no-one dared to punish him, scared of provoking a pogrom.

  ‘They feared it wouldn’t take much for the father, who was watching from the other side of the gate, to shout that the Jews were killing a Catholic child to use his blood for matzoh. When one passer-by found the courage to scold the child, his father ran outside and made excuses. “After all, prosze pana, he’s only a child!”’

  If at the end of the week my father had a few zloty left, he spent them on a ticket at the very back of the opera house. In the foyer he was dazzled by unattainable young women with bobbed hair and dropped waistlines who glided around on the arms of supercilious men in stiff white collars and well-polished shoes. But when the lights went out and the conductor struck up the overture, the passion and pathos of the music would help him forget his crippled leg and abject poverty. For the rest of his life my father used to whistle tunes from his favourite operas, and to this day I never hear a well-known aria without recalling how his eyes would close with pleasure while his hand moved in time to the music.

  My father was too proud to complain to his parents about his plight, and my grandparents would never have known how bad things were if not for a friend of my father’s who happened to be visiting Krakow and dropped in to see Lieba. ‘Hesiu would kill me if he knew I told you this, Pani Baldinger, but I’m sure you’d want to know how hard it is for him to study. He can’t afford to buy books, and there are days when he only eats dry bread,’ he said.

  Shocked, Lieba took the train to Warsaw and astonished her son by turning up on his grimy doorstep. It was even worse than she’d imagined. Hesiu was living in a freezing, slummy room, wearing threadbare clothes and, although he wouldn’t admit it, she was sure he hadn’t eaten all day. Taking a wad of zlotys out of her well-worn wallet, she insisted he rent a better room and send all his laundry home. Many years later in Tel-Aviv, Aunty Andzia recalled mending his shirts and trousers and folding them into a parcel ready to send back to Warsaw.

  After obtaining his dental degree in 1926, my father decided to have another operation on his stiff knee. According to Aunty Lunia, he had the operation in Berlin where he was doing a postgraduate course. His mother wept and pleaded with him not to have more surgery. ‘I’ll never speak to you again if you insist on going ahead with this,’ she said. ‘You said yourself that the surgeon warned you there was no guarantee of success. You’ll go through all that pain and expense for nothing.’ But Hesiu wouldn’t listen. Once my father decided to do something, there was no stopping him.

  He had the operation, lay with his leg in traction for four long weeks, refusing to be discouraged by what anyone said. But at the end of it all, his leg remained as stiff as ever. And that disability, according to Lunia, was why he refused to marry. He was a handsome young man, with thick brown hair brushed back from his forehead, eyes that shone with intelligence, and regular features. Looking at her handsome, educated, and kind-hearted son whose strong character she admired, Lieba’s heart ached for him. She kept suggesting eligible girls until he became furious with her. ‘Mama, if you don’t stop driving me crazy with these girls, I’ll stop coming to see you,’ he fumed. ‘I don’t intend to get married, and that’s that.’

  CHAPTER 7

  The noises from the street had died down, the last of the worshippers in their fur streimls and long coats had vanished from the street, and peace had descended on Kazimierz as families gathered around the table to observe the annual festival of Passover. Inside the Baldingers’ flat in Sebastiana Street, ten-year-old Matus was clean and uncomfortable in his new corduroy suit. ‘This one he won’t tear in a hurry, this is the thickest material I have!’ the wizened tailor had cackled, wagging a thimbled finger at him.

  Sitting at the festive table beside his brothers and sisters, Matus watched his father, impressive as a Roman emperor in his snowy white kitl, its high neck embroidered with a broad band of silver, reclining on his side while he went through the Passover prayers. It was like a fancy dress party where Father was Melech, or King, and at the other end of the table, Mother was Malka, the Queen.

  As Daniel intoned a prayer thanking God who led our forefathers out of the land of bondage, Matus remembered that this festival had something to do with Egypt. Why people in Krakow should go to all this trouble on account of something that happened so long ago and far away he couldn’t fathom, but he loved the rituals of Seder night, the evening that ushered in the Passover festival. It was like a party, with special food and singing at the end. Matus liked the part of the service when his father dipped his finger repeatedly in the silver kiddush goblet, and named each of the plagues that Moses brought onto the wicked Pharaoh who made slaves of the Jews. He didn’t know whether to believe that story or not, but there was no point asking anyone about it. They would just tell him not to be stupid.

  Now Daniel was putting salt onto his soup spoon and submerging the spoon in the golden broth because it was forbidden to do work of any kind on holy days, and Matus knew that even shaking salt into the soup could be considered work. It was unthinkable to question his father about any religious matters, while his brothers would only wallop him for being ignorant, so it was better to keep quiet and stay out of trouble. Any minute now his father would look his way and ask him to recite the Manishtana, and his mind tried feverishly to recall the four questions he always had to ask during the Passover meal. He didn’t want to get them wrong and make a fool of himself as usual.

  The best thing about Seder night was the food and wine. As his older brother Izio poured their father’s homemade wine into the silver goblet from which they all were permitted to sip, Matus glanced around the table, his amber-coloured eyes shining in his eager face. Father made the wine out of raisins which he soaked in water, brought to the boil very slowly, and kept in long-necked bottles on top of the mahogany cupboard in the living room.

  As his brother Izio poured the wine out for all the children, Matus was careful not to spill any for fear of getting a clip on the ear. After the bitter herbs had been dipped in the salt water in memory of bitter years of slavery, his mother served the golden-coloured goose broth she always served with matzoh dumplings. Avner used to joke that their mother’s dumplings were like cannonballs, and everyone agreed that Andzia’s were the lightest. Andzia was whispering behind her hand with Lunia, and Karola was joking with Janek. Matus envied the conspiratorial relationship of his older sisters and the bantering of his older brothers and wished that he wasn’t the youngest son.

  After the broth came a succulent turkey stuffed with minced meat. Biting into the piece of matzoh that his father broke off for each of them, Matus tried to remember why they ate this dry flat bread on Passover. ‘The Israelites had to flee for their lives before their bread was baked, so it was flat, and that’s why we eat matzohs on Pesach,’ Lunia said. He looked at his eldest sister admiringly. She knew everything. That’s what it was, the Israelites hadn’t had time to let their bread rise, and that’s why they didn’t have anything with yeast in it for the eight days of Passover. At least he’d know the answer to that one.

  The previous night he’d watched the baker making their matzohs. Staying up late the night before the Seder was a treat. They’d set off to the baker’s at ten o’clock and stayed there until three or four in the morning when all the matzohs were ready. ‘You can’t be certain that a speck of chometz won’t get into the mixture,’ Daniel always cautioned, and to make sure that the matzohs weren’t contaminated by a speck of leavened flour, they used to watch the baker at work. Matus liked to see the way he rolled and shaped the mixture into rounds by hand and ran his little roller along the dough to puncture the small holes that made it easy to break strips off. He would have liked to trace that roller along the dough. The oven door
was like a furnace, making the baker’s red face stream with sweat, and Matus sometimes wondered whether some of the sweat ever ran into the dough. When at three or four in the morning all the matzohs they needed for the next eight days were ready, they piled up a laundry basket as big as a room and lugged it all home. For the next eight days of Pesach, the basket was kept underneath the piano, and day by day the pile became smaller.

  The week before Pesach was Lieba’s busiest time and the household was in a frenzy of cleaning, scouring and washing. It wasn’t just that all the everyday vessels, dishes and utensils had to be put away, but the stove had to be scraped, every drawer, shelf and cupboard had to be scoured, and the dishes, cutlery, pots and pans used only for Pesach were brought out.

  The night before Pesach, when every corner of every room had been swept and scrubbed, there was one more ritual. Just before sunset, Daniel and Lieba hunted for any traces of chometz that might have escaped Lieba’s sharp eyes. Daniel went around with a candle, peering into every nook and cranny, accompanied by Lieba with her feather duster. When they came to the small pile of dust which she had deliberately left for him to find, they swept it up ceremoniously, and with it the last vestiges of yeast and leaven had officially been removed. The house was now clean for Pesach.

  For the rest of his life Uncle Marcel felt a pang of nostalgia whenever he thought of the Seder night celebration at his parents’ home. Pesach would have been perfect if he hadn’t had to recite the Manishtana, the traditional four questions asked by the youngest child in the family on Seder night. Matus’s only reprieve would have been if his mama had another son, but his youngest sister Fridzia was already seven, so it didn’t look as if any more children were coming.

  When he was little, everyone laughed indulgently when the round-faced toddler lisped and stuttered his way through the questions, but by now he was expected to be able to read Hebrew and remember the prayers. He felt ashamed that he couldn’t. He hated cheder, especially the bad-tempered melamed who lashed out at his pupils with a stick whenever they didn’t know the answer. The strange squiggles that ran back to front on the page made no sense to him, and even if he managed to read a word correctly, he had no idea what it meant, so he didn’t remember it next time. One day he ran home crying because the teacher had hit him harder than usual. To his delight, for once Daniel took his side and denounced the melamed’s behaviour at the next synagogue meeting. My grandfather must have mellowed with time.

  Munching on a crisp piece of matzoh piled with his mother’s delicious haroset, a mixture of grated apple, ground walnuts, raisin wine and cinnamon that represented the mortar the Hebrew slaves used for building the pyramids, he tried not to think about the coming ordeal because it made his tummy feel as if it was being squeezed tight with ropes. He knew he’d never remember all the questions. His father would be disappointed, his mother would complain, and his brothers would make fun of him. He’d learned the words at cheder, but when it came to saying them out loud in front of everyone, he panicked and his mind went blank.

  He could feel Daniel’s quiet gaze rest on him. Not yet, he thought, not yet. ‘Now it’s time for Matus to say the Manishtana,’ his father said with a smile. Matus put down his fork, which clattered to the floor, and shuffled his feet, but he couldn’t move his chair back and his hands felt clammy. Nervously, he glanced at his father. ‘Manish—’ he whispered. ‘Manishta…’

  ‘I can’t hear him,’ his older brother Jerzy was saying. ‘What’s wrong with him? Speak up, Matus.’

  The boy cleared his throat and began again in a strange piping voice. ‘Manishtana, halilah…halilah…’ He stopped, looked down at the table.

  ‘Hazeh,’ Karola prompted. She winked at him and he looked gratefully at his lovely sister. By now everyone was staring, thinking what a dunce he was, as usual. Matus went bright red and stammered, ‘I can’t remember the rest.’

  ‘What’s the matter with that boy? Hasn’t he learned anything at cheder? I’ll have to take him in hand,’ Jerzy threatened. Matus winced. He knew what Jerzy had in mind.

  Then Izio chimed in, ‘How come after all this time you don’t know the Manishtana? A three-year-old would know it.’ He turned to his mother and said in a grim tone, ‘Mama, leave him to me, I’ll make a mensch out of him if it’s the last thing I do!’ In Paris, seventy-five years later, Uncle Marcel could still remember the exact words his older brother had used.

  Tears splashed down Matus’s plump cheeks. His brothers were always taking him in hand, as if they were his parents, bashing him whenever they pleased. His brother Jerzy once broke a stick on his back, and no-one said anything.

  Maybe Izio was right and he was a dunce. A few days earlier, he’d gone outside to see Daniel in his overalls, doing something in the workshop at the back of the yard. Happy to have a few moments alone with his father, he stood and watched for a time before asking what he was doing.

  ‘I’m making a copper pot for the washing,’ Daniel said. ‘The one we have is made of iron and when they fill it up with water, it’s too heavy for the women to lift. Copper is much lighter,’ he explained. Happy to be inducted into the mysteries of the workshop, Matus watched his father’s dexterous fingers weld the metal. Daniel bent down to pick up a small piece of metal off the floor. ‘Can you guess what this bit is for?’ he asked his son.

  Perplexed, Matus studied the flat piece of metal his father had begun to shape. He longed to give the right answer so that his father would think he was smart, but the more he stared at the object, the more blank his mind became. Just then, his little sister skipped into the workshop. ‘Fridziu, can you guess what this is for?’ Daniel asked.

  Fridzia looked at the scrap of metal in his hand for a moment. ‘A handle for the pot,’ she said.

  ‘Good girl!’ Daniel nodded.

  Matus slunk away mortified. To think that his little sister knew the answer and he didn’t. Ten is an unlucky number, he thought to himself, because he was the tenth of a family of eleven and that’s why he didn’t get much attention. All the others had some special talent, but he had nothing at all, not one single quality to be proud of. He wasn’t clever, hardworking, bright or witty, wasn’t as important as the oldest or as lovable as the youngest, and the only attention he got was for running wild. His only toy was a diabolo, a reel which he threw up in the air and then tried to catch on a piece of string attached to two sticks. The trick was to throw the reel up high enough to give you time to twist the string behind your knee or over your shoulder and still catch the reel in it.

  ‘I never had a real ball,’ he reminisces. The walls of his high-ceilinged apartment in a narrow Paris street are lined with beautiful paintings, and there are Persian rugs on the polished floor. Across the road there’s a synagogue, but although my uncle has lived here for over thirty years, he has never been inside. He has found his niche among the Masons in whose rituals, activities and camaraderie he has found acceptance, warmth and personal satisfaction.

  ‘Of course I would have liked a proper ball, what do you think?’ he roars suddenly in answer to my question and I remember how his outbursts of temper used to frighten me when I was a child. ‘You keep asking me if I wanted this or that. I’m telling you, there was no point wanting anything in those days, no point asking. It never occurred to me to ask.’ Uncle Marcel has a short fuse. A Baldinger trait, my mother used to say indulgently.

  ‘I grew up like a wild plant,’ Uncle Marcel tells me in his wistful way. ‘I never washed my hands properly, I didn’t pay attention at school, I was noisy and tore my clothes. No-one taught me anything, no-one saw to it that I learned anything. I was so stupid that I never even learned to read or write properly, and to this day my hand shakes when I have to write something down and that’s why I never write letters. I was scared of Izio and Jerzy because they bashed me. Your father was the only one who never bashed me.’

  Like all his brothers, Matus loathed cheder and hated going to the Chevre Tilem Synagogue with his father on S
aturday mornings, especially as it meant going without breakfast because one always prayed on an empty stomach. Matus longed to run around with his mates, kicking the cloth football in the playing fields of Blonia, but to tell Daniel that was unthinkable. ‘To this day, it’s still unthinkable,’ he muses, his large topaz eyes full of wonder in his fleshy face. ‘Everyone respected him. He didn’t impose his ideas and he wasn’t demanding. He never reproached us. It was a question of respect. That’s how we were brought up. No-one was forced to do anything.’ He inclines his head towards his wife Jako and says, ‘She can’t understand that.’

  Jako is bursting to argue, even her short cropped hair seems to bristle. ‘Oof,’ she says, blowing air out of her pursed lips in that typically Parisian sound of disparagement and flapping her hands so hard it’s a wonder they don’t fly off her wrists. ‘His father dominated the family and his sons couldn’t live up to his expectations. Neither Jean nor Marcel ever did, and from what I’ve heard the others say, I don’t think Avner or the others did either.’

  While his wife airs her views, Marcel shakes his head impatiently. ‘She can’t understand that we respected Father so much that we couldn’t think of disappointing him,’ he says, irritated at her criticism of his father. ‘Some of my brothers had a grievance towards him, but I never did. I loved him. Father didn’t say much, but when he spoke, we listened and never forgot his words.’

  When Matus turned thirteen, his Bar Mitzvah was held at Chevre Tilem, but like everything else in his life, this was another painful reminder of his incompetence. Unlike his older brothers’ Bar Mitzvahs which were big celebrations held on Saturdays, his father arranged his for a week day. Matus had so much trouble learning his portion of the Torah that, to avoid embarrassment, they chose a day when fewer worshippers were present to witness his ineptitude.