A Day of Small Beginnings Read online

  Almighty God, I prayed. What have I done? The boy came to me. Did You want me to refuse him? Show me an opening. Show me how I am to regain my place among the dead. I beg you, do not condemn me to roam the earth forever. But He gave me no sign, just Itzik.

  The boy crept into the shadows of the birch trees that lined the road back to town. Several times he stumbled in the rutted dirt. He made little grunting noises like a frightened pup, and looked over his shoulder constantly. I watched him, not knowing what to do, until I realized God had tied our fate.

  I quieted myself as best I could. What did I have to fear? I was already dead. I told myself it was God’s will that I listen, that I understand what He expected of me, what He wanted me to do for Itzik. The boy had reached the outskirts of town. I flew to him. Pay attention, Freidl, I told myself. He is in danger.

  From the stables, Itzik wound his way in the direction of the main square. He kept away from the open sewer on the one side of that muddy street and stayed close to the houses. Houses? Rats shouldn’t have to live in such places. Decayed wooden hovels, halfway to falling down, shutters broken with Jewish poverty and gashed by Yudel the Teacher’s hammer. Six days a week Yudel would bang at those shutters until the mothers gave up their reluctant boys for a day of study at his miserable cheder.

  Passing Chaim the Baker’s shop, Itzik ran his fingers along the ledge on the half door where Chaim stacked bread for sale during the day.

  A dog barked. Itzik jumped for the shadows of Velvl the Water Carrier’s lopsided shed, its roof nearly collapsed. I hoped maybe he’d stop there at Velvl’s. Velvl was as pious and wise as he was poor. But Itzik circled back to the main square under the shadows of the walls. He tripped on a stone doorstep and cried out in pain when it split open his right boot. I could see the bare toes. The night air had gotten cold, and he shivered. Please, God, he whispered.

  Please, God, I prayed also.

  A few doors off the main square, he stopped in front of the two-story brick house of his employer, Avrum the Flour Merchant. Now, Avrum Kollek was one of the richest men in town, but he was the kind of man who acted from the heart only when it concerned his immediate family, a man who gave to charity because it is written that he had to, who made a big show when he gave the shul a new prayer book. Not a bad man, understand. But not a man to count on.

  Itzik hesitated on the stairs. I could see he had his concerns about Avrum too. But he lifted his head, took a short breath, and stepped up to the doorway. For a long time he knocked softly on the thick wooden door, as if he knew Avrum wouldn’t welcome the sight of him. Receiving no answer, he knocked louder.

  “Who’s there?” Avrum called.

  “Itzik Leiber,” the boy answered, digging his fingers into the palms of his hands.

  Avrum opened the door and stuck out his bushy head. “What’s going on?”

  “Please, let me in,” Itzik whispered.

  A goose honked somewhere behind the house. It startled them both. Avrum patted his yarmulke, a habit that gave him time to compose himself. “What do you want from me at this hour?” He tugged at the great leather truss with the brass clasps that his wife, Gitl, may she rest in peace, said he always wore. “The ache from the truss lets him ignore the sorrows of others,” Gitl always said. “I’ve got pains of my own,” he would tell the beggars.

  “It was an accident, Avrum Kollek,” Itzik began. “It was the Pole who sells you wheat, Jan with the broken teeth, the one who laughs.”

  I came close as a breath between them. An accident with Jan Nowak was no small thing. The peasant was a born troublemaker, but no one could cross him. His father, Karol, was famous in our parts. He claimed he’d seen the Virgin Mary over the Tatra Mountains, and his people believed him. Why not? Every town needs a hero. Of course, if I drank as much as Karol Nowak, I’d have seen Moses crossing the Vistula.

  Avrum looked like a horse that had been reined in hard. His eyes went a bit wild too, as if he was about to rear. “Come inside.” He checked the street over Itzik’s shoulder and pulled the boy across the threshold.

  Itzik stood in the corner of the salon, his cap in hand. When Avrum lit a kerosene lamp, Itzik barely moved. He sneaked looks from the sides of his eyes at the patterned carpet and the framed photographs on the fleur-de-lis wallpaper that was once Gitl’s pride.

  “Shuli, come quick!” Avrum called.

  Itzik’s eyes shot back down to the floor.

  Avrum’s daughter came out from behind the double doors on the other side of the room. Her blue shawl was wrapped tight around her shoulders, from cold or modesty I couldn’t tell. In the year since I’d been gone, she’d become a woman, a beauty with pink cheeks and her mother’s thick dark hair.

  God forgive me, but I’d wished a pox on Avrum Kollek many times because of this girl. Imagine, he sold vodka to peasants so he could buy her fancy dresses. When people told him to stop, that he was endangering the whole community with such dealings, he threw up his hands. As if it had nothing to do with him when those same peasants got drunk and beat up Jews. But to see Avrum now with his daughter, I understood him better. The man was still amazed he’d produced such a lovely child. It blinded him to the dangers.

  “Close all the curtains and light the lamps, my shayna maidel,” Avrum said, with a tenderness I’d never heard in his voice before.

  Shuli did as she was told, but not before her eyes stole wistfully over Itzik. She reminded me of how, as a girl, I’d looked at my beloved Aaron Birnbaum. Better she shouldn’t look, I thought. Longing for a boy who was out of the question as a marriage match could only bring bitterness between a father and his daughter. My love for Aaron had cost me the faith that my father was my truest ally. He knew Aaron Birnbaum had won me with his tunes and his kind, intelligent face. But he chose Berel, a man who, as he put it, had only a taste for Torah but a butcher’s steady income. My father said it was his duty to make me a good match, not a happy one, especially in perilous times. In my father and Avrum Kollek’s eyes, Aaron and Itzik might as well have been Poles.

  Shuli loosened her shawl, let it slip just enough to show a little more of her nightdress. It was a bold move, in front of her father, but a brave one. Sometimes the heart does what it must. I wondered if Itzik had it in him to grasp what had just been offered. But he was staring at his image in the mirrored doors of the enormous mahogany wardrobe, as if he’d never seen himself before. Something about the way the boy stood, with his shoulders hunched inward, made me think that even if he was here on less serious business, this girl would be wasting her time on him. He didn’t know about women yet. Maybe he never would. It was that raw, potato soul of his. Or maybe Yudel the Teacher had done his work on him in cheder, telling the boys if they looked too much at women, they’d hang by their eyebrows in the fires of Gehenna.

  Shuli paled at Itzik’s inattentiveness, and I felt the familiar nick of heart sadness. She offered him a last look, but receiving no encouragement, she just wilted, poor girl, closed her shawl back around her body, and sank into the upholstered green chair by a small table.

  “Nu?” Avrum said.

  Itzik stared at the floor.

  “Well?” Avrum repeated more loudly. He was so impatient with the boy, he didn’t see Itzik’s anger. But even through the veil of my blurred vision, I could see that anger was something this boy knew well, an old companion who gave him strength and comfort, whose smell was as familiar as his father, Mordechai the Ragman.

  Itzik looked up at Avrum. “I stopped him,” he said slowly, defiantly.

  “Stopped who?”

  “Jan Nowak.” He twisted his cap uncomfortably. “It was an accident. The grass was wet. He slipped. The horse pulled the wagon.”

  “Grass? What are you talking about?” Avrum clapped his hand on Itzik’s shoulder. “You’re talking like a meshuggener, boy. What’s happened?”

  Itzik winced. “Please, Avrum Kollek! I was on the Gradowski road tonight. I had to get wool for my mother, from Kolya Ostrowski�
��s farm.” Itzik looked desperate.

  Avrum let go of his shoulder. “And?”

  “I saw Jan Nowak and his wife in their wagon.”

  Now Avrum looked completely confused. “You wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me who you saw on the road?” But I could feel his fear. It pulsed from his temples to the back of his neck and down his back.

  Itzik had his eyes on the floor. “They were out there on the road, on their way home from Yudel the Teacher’s. Tzvi Baer, Chaim Apt, and another one—I didn’t see his face in the dark, but he was maybe three or four years. They had Yudel’s kerosene lantern. It was hitting the ground. They couldn’t carry it without bending their arms, and they were too tired to hold it up.”

  This was how it was for the boys in our town. The men insisted on the tradition of sending them to cheder when they were three years old, but what a pitiful thing to see these little ones, barely awake on their baby legs, traipsing home down dark roads at ten at night after a day of sitting on hard benches, reciting Hebrew without understanding, taking blows from Yudel for every mistake they made, suffering his constant spitting. It was a miracle if they learned to love the holy Torah in spite of Yudel.

  “You know what Yudel the Teacher does if a boy breaks a lantern,” Itzik said. The words ran together, as if he was afraid he’d be cut off.

  Avrum sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the boy with growing alarm.

  Itzik angrily snapped at imaginary reins in his hands. “It’s a beating for sure. But then, Jan Nowak came. He brought his wagon up next to the children. He said, ‘Who’d you steal that lantern from, you dogs? Give it here.’ The little one whose face I couldn’t see, he had the lantern.” Itzik looked off, as if remembering. “Then Jan stood up and got him with the tail.”

  “What tail?”

  “The whip.” Itzik’s head dropped. The room was silent except for a clock ticking on the far wall.

  “The little one dropped the lantern,” Itzik whispered. “Tzvi tried to get it, but Jan beat him hard. Hard. In the face. All over. Laughing that laugh he has. You know it. Then Jan’s wife started screaming, ‘Make them hop. Make them dance.’ Jan hollered, ‘Hop, you devils, hop!’ He made those circles on the ground with his whip. When they tried to get out, he lashed them, hard. There was blood pouring from their faces. The horse was jumping around too, from the sound of the whip and the children.” Itzik’s jaw quivered.

  “I ran to the wagon. I tried to grab his arm to stop him from hitting. I yelled to the kids, ‘Go home.’ Jan said, ‘Who’s jabbering like a Jew?’ He grabbed the lantern, but the fire went out. I couldn’t see. Jan was whipping and whipping at me in the dark, but he missed me. I grabbed his wrist to stop him from using the whip. Then his horse bolted, and Jan fell from the wagon. I put my arms up to break his fall, but I couldn’t. He fell by the wheels. I tried to pull him out in time, but all I got was a handful of grass.”

  Silence again. Avrum’s eyes were bulging. He was figuring what he had to do now. I felt for him. He knew what was what here. “How bad is Jan?” he said slowly, as if speaking to an idiot.

  Itzik paused. “He’s dead. The wagon’s wheel rolled over his head.”

  Avrum sat in his chair, dumb with shock; then I could see the terror come to his face. “Does anyone know?”

  “His wife. She told them. The Poles already came after me.”

  “Where did they come after you?”

  “At the cemetery. I hid there, behind Berel Alterman’s wife’s grave.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No, something scared them away.”

  Some thing? Is he not saying or doesn’t he know about me? And the grass. Was this what he was still holding at my grave, grass from Jan Nowak? Ptuh! Ptuh! Ptuh! No wonder he kicked it away.

  Avrum wasn’t interested in what scared the Poles away from my grave. “What do you want now from me?”

  Itzik didn’t answer. The strain of having to ask for anything was all over his face. “My mother, can you make sure nothing happens to her and the children?” He said it so softly, you could barely hear.

  “Wait here,” Avrum said, and left the room.

  Shuli looked at Itzik as though it wouldn’t take much for hope to bloom on her face. But he didn’t return her gaze.

  “You did a brave thing. It’s a mitzvah, what you did,” she said softly.

  He just shook his head.

  Avrum returned with his coat and a small money bag. “I’m going for the Russian magistrate. Pray that he’ll send a detachment of soldiers to keep the peace. God knows what trouble we’ll have now with the Poles for hiding behind Russian skirts.” He rubbed his forehead worriedly. “I’ll get the droshky. Take this money,” he said. “Give it to your mother. Tell her it’s wages.” Itzik grabbed the pouch and bolted out the door.

  4

  SARAH LEIBER’S HOME WAS MORE SHED THAN HOUSE, ONE OF the worst of its kind on that narrow alleyway of mud and stench. Itzik opened the door that hung crooked on its hinges and slipped inside without kissing the mezuzah on the doorpost as a Jew should. Itzik the Faith less one, I clucked at him, my heart full of new maternal feeling that was mine to savor only a moment more. His real mother was waiting up past midnight for her eldest son, the man of her house.

  I slid through a crack in the wall behind the noodle board, into a room that smelled from the rot of wood, cooked cabbage, dust, and too many children living too close together. The sight of her made my feelings for Itzik seem foolish, a vanity. What was I playing at? To take more from a woman whose eyes were already hollowed out like two halves of an empty walnut?

  Sarah Leiber sat by her fireplace, knitting socks. Her hands were twisted and swollen from work, the knitting and sewing, washing clothes for a few zlotys, buying milk in buckets to sell at market. I used to see her, going out to the goose herds for the feathers or taking the slaughtered birds to pluck and sell the fill for pillows. This is what the poor soul did to feed her children.

  The musty, unclean smell of her home was stronger than that of the barley soup simmering in the pot that hung from an iron bar in Sarah’s brick fireplace. On its back ledge, four children lay sleeping, rolled next to each other like uneven blintzes on a tray, the two longer bodies curled around the shorter ones in the middle.

  “Where have you been?” Sarah’s voice was sharp, cutting. “There’s trouble in the town. Men yelling. All night you expect me to sit up wondering if you’re dead in the street?”

  Fear had transformed her completely from the woman I remembered. It quickened her speech and focused her normally bewildered expression. Under the circumstances, maybe she couldn’t afford tenderness. All right, I thought. I’ll be the one now to teach Itzik with sugar, not salt.

  She looked at him with an anger I would not have expected from her, this woman who all the town thought was docile as a cow. “In a few hours I have to get the milk. What was I going to do without you here to watch the children until the trouble passes? I don’t have enough to worry about, Itzik, without this?” She flung her hand in his direction.

  I felt the wild beat of Itzik’s heart hammering at his shirt. In the dirt between the rough floorboards he tapped nervous circles with the toe of his split-open boot. “I brought you money, Mama,” he said. The voice was soft. He pulled his hand slowly from the folds of his jacket and took a few steps to the room’s only table. Without looking at the money bag in his palm, he laid it down and pushed it across the rough boards as if he wanted to be rid of it.

  She stayed in her chair. “Who gave this to you?” she hissed at him. “What did you do?”

  “It’s for you, Mama. Avrum Kollek gave it to me. To help you. It’s wages. For later, Mama...” His voice trailed off as he looked over to the children. For the first time that night, I saw his eyes sparkle with tears.

  “Itzik! What are you telling me?” She jumped from her chair and grabbed his arm desperately. “Is it for the military service? Is he paying so he can keep you
at the mill?”

  Itzik avoided her eyes. “Jan Nowak whipped the cheder boys again tonight, on the Gradowski road. You remember. He goes after the little ones.” He checked her face, as if waiting for her to understand. Sarah stared back at him. She dug her fingers into the hair under her scarf, as if she would scream. But no sound came.

  “Mama?”

  She didn’t move.

  “I couldn’t leave them there like that. One of them was younger than Hindeleh.” He paused and looked up at one of the small bodies on the fire-place shelf. Hearing her name, a red-haired little girl’s sleepy face rose momentarily from between the warmth of her brothers’ bodies. She puckered her lips as she stretched and lay down again, asleep. Itzik whispered to his mother, “I couldn’t. I had to stop him.”

  “You had to stop him? Why you? You, with a sick mother and four starving brothers and sisters. You had to be a macher—a big shot?” She spat. “Just like your father! What have you done to us? You have killed us.”

  A furious look passed between the boy and his mother. It must have frightened them both because they turned quickly away. Itzik’s face had gone white. His body sagged, as if tottering under the weight of her abuse. What kind of mother blinds herself to her child’s suffering, or lunges at him, blaming him without knowing what’s happened?

  Sarah rubbed her sides angrily. “What now? Has Jan gone to the police? They’ll arrest you, if the hoodlums don’t get you first. Is that what you came here to tell me?” Her eyes darted around the room, fast as her speech. “Squire Milaszewski will side with them. He needs to fix things with the peasants. It’s him that’s stirred them up, raising their rents, taking Schmuel Cohen’s side about those hides.”

  Itzik shook his head. “Jan didn’t tell anyone what happened, Mama. He’s dead.”

  Sarah looked at her son in horror. “Because of you?”