Part II
Synopsis: The writer visits her widower father-in-law nightly
and exhausts channels of conversation very quickly. Suddenly
she hits upon an idea: getting him to speak about the alte
heim. This ignites interest in the old man. He begins
telling about his problems with the army draft.
*
"I knew that in the big cities, people bought army exemption
cards with money.
"The only problem was that money we didn't have.
"My sister Henna sold the down quilts that she'd put away for
her dowry. With the money, she bought me a forged passport.
Once I had that, I was free. But I still wasn't safe. At the
train station, a suspicious officer called me over. My heart
was pounding in my ears. So long as I kept my mouth shut, my
foreign passport looked O.K. But once I'd be questioned, I
was a goner.
"But Hashem had pity on me. Some shikses came over and
started to flirt with the officer. But because I was there,
he couldn't respond.
"`What are you standing here for?' he yelled at me in anger.
`Make it fast and move on before I arrest you for
loitering!'
"I was always a pachdon by nature," he said to me. "I
knew that I wouldn't be able to live in constant fear. Until
the war ended sixteen months later, I hid in the sub-cellar
of a shul in Crakow."
"Is that when you came to Canada?" I asked.
"Not yet, not so fast." Pa didn't like to be rushed.
"So, when the war ended, you went back to the shtetl?"
I prompted.
"No, no!" Pa exclaimed, annoyed at my impatience.
He leaned back in his arm chair and stroked his beard.
"Crakow was a big city, teeming with life, abundant with
wares. Once my father had taken me along to spend the Yomim
Noroim there with his Rebbe. For three days and three nights
we traveled by horse and wagon. Who could afford to take the
train? I was only a child, maybe eight at the time, but I
will never forget that feeling of exhiliration when we got to
Crakow.
"The city was full of food, goods, boots, bolts of cloth.
People wore fancy clothing, the streets were wide, lined with
mansions. I trembled with excitement with each step that I
took. I couldn't sate myself on all the sights and smells.
Even now, I can remember the moment that I decided that the
first chance I got, I'd escape the shtetl and the
poverty-stricken existence that had stripped its people of
all hope. So when the war ended and I could come out of
hiding, I stayed on in Cracow and continued to study together
with R' Duvid Meilech, the rabbi who had hidden me, and ten
other draft dodgers, for sixteen months in the sub- cellar of
his shul."
Pa straightened his back and sat up tall.
"Reb Duvid Meilech had three children. The youngest, Moshe
Shea, was frail and always sick. The Rebbetzin's sister often
came to help out with the child. We were introduced."
A deep groan shook his whole body. His voice turned
staccato.
"We were married on a Friday morning in my father-in- law's
lumberyard. It was Rosh Chodesh Nissan. A fresh snow had
fallen. All the guests wore the new boots they had ordered
for Pesach. At night, I was accorded the honor of leading the
Shabbos prayers. Afterwards, the whole shtetl joined
us for the wedding feast. Everyone brought something along to
eat: a jar of jellied galle, a spiced honey cake, a
kugel, shnaps...
"Everyone in Bobov loved my father-in-law. Reb Itchele. He
was a tzaddik with the voice of an angel. When he
prayed before the omud, he could melt the most
stubborn heart. Though poor himself, it was to him that the
townfolk went in time of sorrow and need. Strangers also knew
that if they were in need of a kind word, a caring heart, a
warm meal and a place to sleep, the man to go to was Reb
Itchele.
"Although I could boast no famous lineage like Reb Duvid
Meilech who had arranged the match, I was considered a
`catch.' Most young men at the time were an unsteady lot.
Emancipation was the slogan. Theories of evolution and
Zionism went hand in hand. The shuls were full of
apikorsim who by day studied gemora and at
night, the treife philosophies of Plato and Kant. Even those
who studied in great Lithuanian yeshivos were not immune to
the Haskalah that was spreading through the Jewish streets
like a contagious epidemic. So when Reb Duvid Meilech found
someone who still lived with a simple faith, it was like a
breath of fresh air in an atmosphere already polluted with
heresy and I was a welcome suitor.
"As for me, I was ripe for marriage, already sick of hiding
and longing for the safety and security of a home of my
own.
"When the week of sheva brochos was over, the dowry,
which consisted of my in-laws' old bedroom set and sewing
machine, was tied to a horse and wagon, which transported us
to Cracow where I had rented a flat."
*
Something was happening to Pa as he recalled his younger
years. His eyes sparkled, his voice was alive. In the middle
of a narrative, he would suddenly stop to marvel that after
so many years, he had remembered a trivial detail.
Pa looked at the wall clock. "What?" he exclaimed in
surprise. "It's already eleven!" and he got up to escort me
to the steps.
I stood up reluctantly. I hated to leave, because as Pa
remembered the past, he had again become the vibrant young
man that he described.
I stood across from the Home, waiting for the bus. Pa stood
on the terrace outside his room, waiting to see me get on
safely. As the groan of the bus got louder and it turned into
our street, Pa lifted his arm and went back into his room.
*
The next time I came, Pa was sitting in his chair, with one
leg elevated on a small stool. That was the leg that always
gave him trouble. He didn't talk about it much, only noted
that it had become infected many years before and without a
doctor around, it had never healed properly. He didn't
complain about it and never even showed it to a doctor. He
knew that it was nothing and if he kept his foot up, the pain
would subside.
I pulled over a stool and reminded him, "So you got married
and moved to Cracow and you lived happily ever after."
He looked at me, stared at me, really, shook his head back
and forth as though thinking that I must be pretty stupid to
make such a remark, but what better could you expect from a
girl who'd been born in America and grown up in the Kingdom
of the Child, where suffering was equated with wanting
another ice cream and not getting it...
"Happy?" There was scorn in his voice. " `Happy,' " he
mimicked with a sneer. "Who knew of happiness in those days?
Sure, we were also happy when we had a piece of bread to eat,
when we weren't running for our lives. But today that's
reason to be happy? Today..."
"Oh, Pa, I'm sorry. I was just joking. Please go on. You were
up to taking a flat in Crakow after you got married."
Though Pa was appeased, I was worried. He was never like
that, or rather, the only time he was bitter and irritable
was when he didn't feel well. It must be his foot. I realized
that it was probably killing him and he wouldn't tell anyone.
In the past, Ma would figure out when something hurt him...
I'd better get my husband to look at it. Now that Ma wasn't
around, the only one who Pa might confide in, the only one Pa
might allow to inspect the red angry patch of skin between
his knee and his ankle would be his son, Meyer.
Pa leaned back again.
"The years passed. I was still learning with Duvid Elimelech
and Ma supported us by sewing. Hashem helped. Babies started
coming and Ma's sewing wasn't enough. I took a larger flat
and we ran a little hotel for Jews who came to Cracow on
business. Everything would have been fine, had not a new war
broken out.
"This time I was determined not to go into hiding. It was
more than my not being able to live in constant fear. There
was great unrest in all of Europe. Borders were always
changing and Jews were being forced to swear allegience to
homelands that they neither believed in or were ready to die
for. One's allegience in the morning had to, very often, be
switched to an enemy country by nightfall. Jews, desperate to
escape military service in armies from which few Jews
returned, were leaving Europe by boatloads to seek a better
life across the ocean, where the threat of forced military
service did not exist.
"Ma took all of our savings and bought another passport. In
the middle of a stormy night, I crossed the Polish border. My
plan was to trek across Europe to Italy or France and from
there, sail to America. As soon as things settled down in
Europe, I'd come back home. Everyone knew that a man couldn't
take his family along to America. Though the streets were
paved with gold, the stones were all treife. It was no
place to bring up Jewish children."
(to be continued)
