Last Night of the World

by Joyce Wayne

  I was among those who accompanied the protesters to the Minsk on High Holy Days during my first year in the Party. At first I hung back, not touching the pork sausage. Not in front of the synagogue, but soon I joined in. Worshippers standing on the steps outside the front door shouted down to us, calling us bad names. “Momzers, bastards,” they cursed, shaking their fists at us. The comrades shouted back, promising the day would come when the workers revolted and the temples would be boarded up forever. It was mayhem. Everyone was screaming at each other, until a comrade in a black cape pulled the trigger on his pistol. “Religion is the opiate of the people,” he declared as the excited comrades sang “The Internationale,” raising the red flag high above our heads, while throwing pigs’ feet at the Orthodox Jews.

  Two policemen were sitting on enormous horses, watching us, doing nothing. “Leave the Yids alone,” I heard one shout to the other. “Let them murder each other.” They were snickering at us. This dispute was a joke to them. It was supposed to be better in Canada. Tall men riding horses were meant to protect everyone, even immigrants, even Jews. But it wasn’t better. The excitement back in Russia about the new society the people were building felt tangible to me. The comrades described it in detail. In Canada only the Party took our side and made us feel equal.

  The early days in the Party were thrilling. More like a rollicking costume ball than a political movement. After my sheltered upbringing, I was startled by the absence of rules concerning modesty and proper feminine behaviour. At the Canadian National Exhibition fairground, I watched a girl, no older than me, being shot out of cannon and landing on a net beside the grandstand. The audience gasped in disbelief and then applauded loudly when she stood up to take her bow. I believed, at that moment, that I, too, could get away with anything, even though I was only fifteen.

  Vine was more cautious. On Labour Day, I convinced him to return to the CNE with me, but he wasn’t about to pay the five-cent admission to ride the Ferris wheel.

  “Come on, let’s try,” I was speaking English more often.

  “Communists have no time for silly things,” he said sternly when a comrade from Mrs. Meretsky’s cell group sidled up next to me.

  “I’ll go with you, Freda,” he offered.

  “Come, you too, Vine. I can’t go without you.” I reached out my hand but he pushed it away.

  Vine held his ground, standing beside the giant wheel as I waved to him from the top. The young man next to me had wavy black hair and spoke without an accent. His face was clean shaven and he wore black and white shoes, not boots. His name was Leonard, but he insisted I call him Lenny. As we rose and fell with the movement of the Ferris wheel, he placed his arm around me, holding me tighter each revolution. He was the second man to touch me.

  When the ride was nearing an end, he turned to me and asked, “Would you let me take you out? We all meet at a speakeasy on King Street not far from the exhibition grounds. Just on the other side of the tracks.”

  I had no idea what a speakeasy was.

  “It opens after hours,” he explained. “The police turn a blind eye. Nothing bad will happen to you, trust me. I could pick you up at Mrs. Meretsky’s around ten tonight.”

  The Ferris wheel was slowing down. We were about to disembark when I agreed. “Sure, ten o’clock.”

  I discovered that the Canadian-born comrades were not as serious as those of us who’d come over by boat to start a new life. They took having fun as a given, not as a transgression of the rules. Mrs. Merestsky encouraged me to spend evenings with Leonard whenever he called.

  “Don’t you like Vine?” I asked her.

  “He’s not for you,” was all she said.

  I took to dancing the Charleston in a short, flimsy dress at a speakeasy down along a back alley off Spadina Avenue below King Street. It was Prohibition in Canada, and I felt like a fairgrounds’ daredevil, dancing long after midnight with comrades older than me. I quickly lost interest in Lenny, finding men who were more prominent in the Party, and offered to buy my drinks.

  Usually Vine eschewed the speakeasies, but from time to time, he’d rush in, sit down at the bar and order a shot of rye whisky. He never offered to buy me a drink. I asked him if he thought our brothers and sisters back home in the Pale were having as much fun as we were.

  “Don’t joke. It’s been over a year since anyone has seen my brother Yitzhak,” he replied. “Mama says the Red Army colonel took Yitzhak into the cavalry and she doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive.”

  I danced away from him, wiggling my hips in time with the piano player, crossing the speakeasy’s rough-hewn floor to grab another soda. The floor was littered with empty cigarette packages and chewing gum wrappers. No one cared if I was underage. I was young, unattached and beautiful. A comrade from the Central Committee pushed a drink toward me. It was the first time I tasted their Canadian whisky, and I spat it out. A woman from the Party looked at me disapprovingly.

  “Meydele, listen to me young girl,” she said. “Time to grow up. You must learn to drink like a man if you want to be a good Party member.” She shoved another glass of the golden liquid before me. “Try again,” she coaxed.

  Over time, I came to relish my new-found liberties. I was free of the Talmudic rules that my family and all others in Nesvicz imposed upon me. What surprised me was how easy it was to forget who I once was, and where I came from. All the ancient observances began to appear pathetic, like a discarded teddy bear after a child has matured to adolescence.

  As the lawyer from Minsk promised, I started to believe that I could be somebody in Canada and that the comrades were the only ones who could turn me into the intoxicating woman I now wished to be. There were young women in the Party who I came to emulate. They spoke up at meetings, letting their strong opinions be heard. Soon I would have the nerve to speak up too, and to argue for what I believed. Until then, what I desired most was to speak without an accent and to dress without one, too. If I could look like an independent woman, I believed I could be one.

  Before long, I depended on the comrades for everything. If they decreed that I should eat pork in front of the synagogue, I did. If they said I should dress in shorter skirts and remove my shawl, I did that too. If they said, I should apply pink rouge to my cheeks and cherry lipstick to my mouth, I did as I was told and repeated the revolutionary slogans I knew they wanted to hear. They became my family, when I had no other.

  It was only in the early hours of the morning, alone in my room that I yearned to retain a little of myself apart from the Party. After a night of dancing and drinking, I found I couldn’t settle down. When I thought about Mama and Papa, I cried silent tears. How disappointed Papa would be if he knew how I’d spent the night drinking and dancing. And Mama. She would weep and ask me why I was turning out to be a bad girl, not at all like the child she’d raised to be an obedient, modest wife and a good example to my children.

  In truth, I was a little shocked at how loose the Party women were. One night they went home with one comrade, and the next night, with another man. Some lived in large houses that they called communes where couples were together for only one night. I wasn’t certain I could be like them, no matter how politically educated I became. I wasn’t even certain I wanted to be like them, although taking risks felt wonderful.

  Vine, on the other hand, was unconcerned about Party romances. He was worried about whether his brother could survive riding with the Cossacks, and even admitted that his father’s letters were not nearly as flattering to the new order as the Canadians comrades’ proclamations. Why wouldn’t the Red Cavalry officer, the one who’d let us escape, who’d practically ordered us to leave Nesvicz, not allow Yitzhak to return home after completing his service? Was it up to the colonel’s discretion to release the boy, or was it an edict of the politburo to keep young men from the Pale in the military once they’d trapped them? I didn’t wish to exchange one brutal regime for another, but I kept quiet, not willing to take the chance of antagonizing the
comrades with my doubts or putting my new-found life in jeopardy.

  Chapter Five

  1923–38

  Toronto

  When I joined the Party, it was busy sanctioning free love and open marriage. Monogamy was considered bourgeois, and the Party leaders encouraged me to lead my own private life and not to be unduly attached to Vine. They said they had plans for both of us that didn’t include marriage, at least for now.

  On weekends, we went up north of the city to a camp called Naivelt. The comrades pitched tents next to the Credit River. Single girls like me in one large tent, and single men in the other. The tents were made of tan-coloured canvas with sticks in the earth for mooring their high ceilings. Each of us was assigned a cot, also covered in tan burlap. Early in the summer, one of the men came by to light the wood stove so we’d wouldn’t freeze.

  I’d met some of the unattached girls in my tent at the speakeasy in Toronto. A few bleached their hair with peroxide to become blondes. It looked fake, and I vowed never to change my hair colour. During the day, the women with young children waded in the river, their chubby arms flapping against the water, a babushka tied around their heads. They couldn’t swim, but they were adamant that their girls and boys would learn. They hired a lad from a farmhouse near the camp to be the swimming instructor and watched intently as he entreated the children to hold their breath and put their head under the swirling water.

  The older women set up card tables to play mahjongg while the men played poker or debated the issues of the day. They often argued so loudly that their wives reprimanded them. “Sha, sha!” they cried and then returned to their own game.

  I preferred to walk along the perimeter of the camp enjoying sightings of the graceful deer who roamed through the bush or listening to the birds who chirped and twittered with abandon. The cardinals were my favourite. Elegant red birds with their haunting call. After a lengthy walk, I’d hole up on a rocky ledge next to the river and watch the rushing brown water cut through the landscape. The giant maple and birch trees loomed over the water creating a cool, shady spot. Sometimes I took a book with me.

  The camp reminded me of the forest surrounding Nesvicz, and being alone outside in the clear air gave me room to reminisce about Mama and Papa and Simcha. I could do without Masha, but I missed the others terribly. I wondered if Simcha had settled down or if Papa was still beating him, or if Masha had won Papa over so much so that he’d forgotten all about me. I worried about them. Even Masha. I told myself I would do anything to return to them, even give up my membership in the Party, and time at the summer camp.

  “Why are you crying?” Vine asked me on the day he found me sitting beside the river with my head in my heads.

  “None of your business.” I was learning to talk like a Canadian girl.

  “Tell me,” he coaxed gently.

  I was surprised he was bothering with me. The other girls were sunning themselves near the gazebo when I’d left the breakfast table, and Vine was admiring them.

  “What do you care?”

  “Don’t be childish,” His voice sounded sincere.

  “Could we bring our parents over, sponsor them? The comrades talk about how wonderful conditions are back home, but I’m not so sure.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Vine enjoyed correcting me. “We don’t have our papers yet. We’re not even citizens. How are we going to sponsor them?”

  “We will be citizens. Only a few more years. Surely you miss your family. Don’t you want to bring them over?

  “My father is not like yours. He would never allow it. He’d never adjust to Canada. He’d never leave the shul behind and his old ways praying from the moment he wakes in the morning until he goes to bed at night.”

  “You could persuade him to come. Help him.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I have other priorities.”

  “For instance?” I asked.

  “Union organizing. That takes precedence over personal affairs.”

  I thought he was going a little crazy but I kept my mouth shut. I believed I would never sacrifice my family for a cause. Never.

  In Chernobyl I think about how Vine and I once were on the boat crossing the Atlantic and how we are now, separate but together. We followed each other across the water twice, from Russia to Canada and back. We understood too much about each other, but the distance between us was too far to breach.

  At Naivelt, everyone ate together under the shelter of a huge gazebo. Supplies were brought in by truck from the market in Kensington, and men and women alike participated in preparing the elaborate, tasty dinners. The older women wore colourful housedresses with aprons atop. They rolled their heavy stockings over their oxfords. They were hard workers. The men wore short pants with socks and sandals and talked more than they chopped the vegetables or peeled the potatoes. The mosquitoes were vicious and we were all covered in oozing red bites by the end of the night.

  The Leader of the Party, Tim Buck, showed up on Saturday night to deliver a speech about the grand progress the Soviet Union was making and how working people and farmers were no longer going hungry as they had under the czar. Afterward, musicians carrying guitars made their way to the open fire pit to lead the campers in one labour song after another. We sang in Yiddish or Russian.

  I met more men who were interested in me and I noticed that some of the girls ran off with their boyfriends to the forest at night, or stayed behind in the tents when everyone else was gathered around the fire.

  That never happened with Vine. I tested him to see how far he’d let me go, but there turned out to be no limit. He was spending less and less time with me. At Naivelt, after our discussion about bringing our families to Canada, he tried to ignore me and only came near to me if I approached him first.

  Vine agreed with the Party leaders that he and I should keep our distance. He was always more willing to fall into line than I was, first as the most devoted Talmudic student in Nesvicz and then as the most ardent young Communist in Toronto. Tim Buck and labour leader Sam Carr were his idols. The more engrossed he became with the Party, the less he mentioned his missing brother back home. And he barely touched me after Buck took us aside at camp to emphasize that marriage was not in the cards for us. Still we continued to share the rooms on Beaconsfield.

  In the city, Vine purchased a used phonograph player from a junk shop on Baldwin Street and a new 78 recording of An American in Paris. He played it over and over again, lifting the arm on the phonograph when the record was done and placing it back at the edge of the black shiny surface to begin again.

  “Gershwin is a Jew, like us,” Vine said, his eyes glistening with optimism. “He came from nothing, and now he’s met all the bigwig composers in Paris—Ravel, Prokofiev, Poulenc—and they like him, think he’s terrific, that his music is the best.” He pulled the arm of the player back to the beginning once again. Vine lit up. “Listen, listen. It’s Paris. I’ll take you to the Eiffel Tower one day,” he promised. We waltzed around the room and I felt myself sinking into his chest.

  “Couples get married there,” I said, but Vine pretended he didn’t hear me.

  I often think about the first time Vine played Gershwin for me, and how the magic of the composer’s enthusiasm made him imagine he, too, could change the world. We’d only been in Canada for a short time, and anything seemed possible. As I watched Vine dancing, I understood that like most immigrants, he was forced to make a choice. The music was so fresh that I believe he felt free from the past, if only for a moment. What if he threw away the burden he carried with him, the need to believe in something bigger than himself? What if he truly believed in himself, as Gershwin must to write music of this kind.

  But Vine, more than me, or Zabotin for that matter, couldn’t stop himself from being a true believer. Communism became his new religion, as demanding as Judaism had been for him in the old country. Once he joined the Party and spent his summer weekends at Naivelt, he forced himself to become a re-invented man, and on the surface
it worked. After that day, I never heard him play Gershwin again.

  There were other young women who attracted Vine, ones who spoke English better than I and who pitched their own tents at camp. When we were alone late at night, I asked him in Yiddish about the other girls in the Party. “Do you think Betty is prettier than I am?”

  “Speak English!”

  Betty attended the evening cell meetings, and not just the ones in Mrs. Meretsky’s parlour. She was at Camp Naivelt for most of the summer. If the topic was more sensitive, top secret, the group met in a musty basement in the city on Cecil Street. I’d never been invited to those gatherings, but once I arrived afterward to walk Vine home. The proceedings hadn’t ended, and Betty was singing “The Internationale” in a rich contralto voice.

  Arise ye pris’ners of starvation

  Arise ye wretched of the earth

  For justice thunders condemnation

  A better world’s in birth!

  No more tradition’s chains shall bind us

  Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;

  The earth shall rise on new foundations

  We have been naught we shall be all.

  Everyone in the room quieted down to listen to her performance and agreed that Betty belonged in the opera. When she concluded, Betty raised her arm and made a fist in the universal sign of solidarity.

  I concluded that I’d need to work harder on my English. After watching Betty perform for the comrades, I stopped pinning up my hair and allowed it to flow over my shoulders, even on the street in broad daylight.

  After the next cell meeting, I asked Vine again: “Do you think Betty is prettier than me?”