A Day of Small Beginnings Read online

  “No, I’m from łód.”

  Mendel nodded. “So,” he said, turning to Itzik. “What brings you to Warsaw? Your father knows you’re here?”

  “No,” Itzik answered, lowering his eyes.

  Mendel looked hard from one young man to the other. “Do you think I don’t know what’s what here, boy? Your father gave you a good thrashing and you took off, right?” He eyed Hillel’s clean-shaven face suspiciously. “From the look of things, he caught you reading trayf books, right?”

  Incredulous, Itzik denied it.

  “Ach.” Mendel spat disgustedly. “You’re all the same. A worthless generation. I’ve seen your kind before. You boys from the provinces, with your heads puffed up with socialist nonsense, come here to make trouble.” He swatted impatiently in Itzik’s direction. “What do you think, I’m going to put a roof over your head and feed you while you laze around? Go to America if you want to live in a godless place.”

  “See here,” Hillel interjected. “We only met at the train station. I was just helping him find you.” Since Hillel knew nothing about Itzik or why he’d come to Warsaw, he turned to him for support. But Itzik remained speechless, which Mendel seemed to take as proof of his assessment of the situation.

  “Your father is a pious man,” Mendel said evenly. “I won’t play any part in your game, boy. Go back home. Ask his forgiveness and study Torah like a Jew.”

  With that he pushed past the two boys, opened his door, and went inside. The sharp smell of pickled cabbage escaped briefly from within. I thought to try to go after him, make him reconsider, but something about the man put me off. A man who doesn’t listen, who jumps to conclusions, can be a danger. I didn’t trust him to take care of Itzik. After all, this was the cousin of a man who’d abandoned his family. I didn’t see a wife or children. The situation didn’t look good. Not safe. Itzik was better off with Hillel.

  Itzik stood motionless, his ears burning dark crimson for all the world to see. Hillel fidgeted with a string on his guitar and began to gather his things again. In an instant, I was at his ear, humming. He had to take Itzik with him. I had to make sure of that.

  Hillel’s head jerked up at the sound of my voice. He looked quizzically at Itzik, who was too lost in his shame to notice. “Come, Itzik,” Hillel said softly, putting his hand around the boy’s shoulder. “What do you need with him, anyway? You can stay with me, if you want. We can go to my friend Piotr’s house.”

  Itzik ran his fingertips across Mendel’s closed door but stopped when he reached the bronze mezuzah on the doorpost. He considered it for a moment, then with a quick hoist of his bundle, turned away. “Are you really a socialist, like Mendel said?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Hillel answered, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

  “What’s a socialist?” Itzik’s little face was more animated than I’d seen it. This boy whom I could not reach, whose soul had bolted itself into a prison of anger and resentment, was coming alive before my eyes. And why? Because of a man I’d brought to him, Hillel the Socialist. Dear God, I called to the heavens, do not let this child of mine go.

  Hillel smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. “A socialist is a person who believes that everyone has equal worth and a right to an equal chance in life, no matter if their father was a prince or a peddler.”

  “Do they have rabbis?”

  “No. We believe in mankind, not in God, not in any religion at all.”

  Itzik’s eyes opened so wide you’d think he’d just seen the Messiah.

  “Do socialists ask for money from poor people?”

  “We share what we have to fight against capitalists who exploit poor people.”

  That was it for Itzik. With a grin so wide it changed the whole contour of his face, he said, “I’m a socialist too.”

  “I’m sure you are,” said Hillel, laughing, and clapped Itzik on the back. “I’m sure you are.”

  I’m sure you are a fool, Hillel, I said, if you socialists think you can drop four thousand years of wisdom into a slop bucket and say that God and Torah are a figment of our imagination. With dread growing in my soul, I watched helplessly as Itzik and Hillel left Mendel’s courtyard and sauntered past the skeletal remains of the day’s market in Plac Grzybowski. Near Twarda Street, Itzik ventured a tentative pat on Hillel’s shoulder.

  “Look over there,” Hillel said, pointing to a grand white building. “That’s the new shul built by the Noyk Family so they could put their name on something. Do you really think this city needs another shul? Think of what they could have done with that money. Given it to striking workers or hungry mothers.”

  Itzik looked up happily at his new rebbe. “In Zokof, I used to say the rabbis were all thieves. You should see how they came after my mother when my father left. I had to throw them out of the house.”

  “So your father didn’t throw you out, like Mendel said?”

  Itzik shook his head.

  “Ha! Mendel was talking to the wrong man. My father’s last words to me were, ‘Never enter this door again, you Bolshevik!’ He didn’t care that my mother was screaming for me. I was her favorite, got all the meat she could save up special, and he knew it, the old bastard. Where did he go, your father?”

  “He just left. The day before Shavuos, two years ago. Said he’d got us through the winter and that’s all we were going to get from him.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She cried. Same as always. And my brother Gershom went running to the shul. Same as always.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to work at the mill.”

  “How was the pay?”

  “Terrible.”

  “The hours?”

  “From eight in the morning to ten at night, six days a week.”

  “You know what that is? That’s slavery.”

  Itzik’s face brightened at being understood. “I had no choice,” he explained eagerly. “There was no one else to feed the family.”

  “That’s why it’s slavery. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the rabbis. Instead of fighting slavery, fighting for the rights of the workers, for people like you who have no choice, they tell us to pray. They’re all cowards. Noyk’s shul over there is just a shell where weak men run to hide like snails.”

  Itzik’s eyes were shining unnaturally bright. His head bobbed up and down as if he’d just received the revelation from Mount Sinai. His voice grew stronger as he struggled to tell Hillel who he was. Even though I sensed he was shocked at his own candor, he was desperate to nestle under Hillel’s warm wings.

  I was sick to my core. What had I done? My Itzik was being pulled in by a man who had no respect for a house of God. A man whose philosophy could land him in prison, and Itzik along with him.

  They passed Noyk’s shul, contempt written across both their faces. This confidence that Judaism could be taken for granted, insulted even, made me afraid.

  A growing wave of anxiety for Itzik overtook me. He was like the Wicked Son they tell of at the Passover Seder. The one who knows the Four Questions he’s supposed to ask, about why this night is different from all other nights, but who doesn’t want to hear the answers because he wants to keep his distance from Jewishness. My father used to say that the child of the Wicked Son is the Simple Son. He barely understands what’s happening at the Seder because his father didn’t teach him the tradition and his grandfather, the Wise Son, is gone. By the fourth generation, all that’s left is the Son Who Doesn’t Even Know There Is a Question. That will be Itzik’s grandchild. If Hillel doesn’t get him shot first.

  7

  IT WAS A SLOW BUSINESS TO REACH HILLEL’S FRIEND PIOTR’S apartment. The winter had not let go its hold on Warsaw, and the pavements were muddy and gray with slush. There was ice still in some places, and Itzik took a tumble when he slid in front of a porter carrying a load of fabric. The city was filled with such men, carrying their goods on their backs, in their arms, pushing and pulling with
carts, but mostly just with their bodies, like beasts. God may live closest among the humble, as my poppa used to say, but better one should suffer from a little pride and have a better life.

  I took my chance then, to look around the city. I guessed we were near the Saxon Garden, because I saw with my own eyes, even such as they were, the Zamoyski Palace, the Blue Palace, places I’d read about in a Jewish book of stories from Warsaw. Such a pity that I could not go inside and see those paintings and books and sculptured things I’d read about. This was something I had a hard time imagining, because we never had such things at home. But I was afraid to lose Itzik.

  Hillel’s Piotr lived in an old tenement near the Saxon Garden. Itzik hung back on the staircase, making like he’d take off if something wasn’t right. Hillel went up ahead to the third floor and knocked at the door. It wobbled on its hinges when the man on the other side opened it.

  He was a big fellow, with hair that shot out in all directions like a field of mowed hay, and one of those Polish faces, where the nose starts low and shallow and ends in two upturned nostrils, dark as tunnels. This face was worn for someone still in his twenties. “Come in, my brother!” he said to Hillel, and pulled him into the room, where the walls were dirty and cracked. “There’s vodka on the table and not enough drunken men in here to fill a privy.”

  Hillel laughed. “Piotr, this is my friend Itzik. He came in on the train today from the east. Go slow. His Polish isn’t as good as mine.” Hillel pulled Itzik inside. The boy was nervous as a street cat. “I’ll join you in a drink, but he could use a crust of bread, if you have any.”

  Piotr grabbed Itzik’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Pan Itzik,” he said, bowing to him like an aristocrat. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Any friend of Hillel’s is a friend of mine.”

  Itzik stared at his own hand, buried in Piotr’s grip.

  I understood how he felt. I never could make up from down at Polish manners, the hand-kissing, the bowing, the fawning way they call you Pan or Pani, Mister or Missus, if you please. Of course, only a fool believes any of it. Next thing you know, they give you that sideward glance that says what they really think, that you’re one of the “cursed race.”

  “To the People,” Hillel said, dropping his bedroll to the floor and grabbing the open bottle of vodka by the neck. He took a gulp and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “To the People of the Republic of Poland!”

  “To the Republic of Poland,” Piotr echoed, accepting the bottle from Hillel. He motioned in Itzik’s direction. “Will he eat our bread?”

  “He’s a socialist,” Hillel answered. He winked at Itzik. “He’ll eat whatever you eat. Right, Itzik?”

  Itzik nodded agreeably.

  “Good,” said Piotr. “There’s kielbasa and bread on the shelf. Help yourselves. I’ll light the lamp.”

  What could I do? With my blurred double vision, I circled the un-kosher meat and bread. I tried to knock them away from Itzik’s hands. But he grabbed them both and shoved them into his mouth. He was hungry, yes. But hungrier still for Hillel’s approval.

  It was evening already. Within the hour, the tiny apartment filled with people. A lumpen collection of stragglers, if I ever saw one. There was only one chair and a table in that place, so they sat on the floor or leaned against the white-tiled stove. They laughed. They joked. They got louder after they’d finished Piotr’s bottle of vodka and started passing around their own flasks. For this they called themselves socialists?

  Itzik hid his extra bit of bread, but he pulled out his mother’s bottle of kvass and passed it around, to the approval of all. “Na zdrowie,” to the health, he toasted. But his hands shook, and it seemed clear to everyone that Polish did not roll easily off his tongue.

  “Sing to us, Hillel,” Piotr said. “Yes,” the group called out. “Sing! Sing!”

  I prayed to the Almighty that Hillel not defile Aaron’s tune by singing it. I was so grateful when he sang a Polish ballad about a girl in love with a dying soldier, I almost missed someone whispering to Piotr, “As if this Yid knows anything about being a soldier.”

  Piotr cut the man off with a scowl. “Hillel’s one of us,” he said confidentially. “Don’t you forget the Jews fought at our fathers’ sides against the Russians in the ’63 uprising.”

  The chastened socialist leaned back against the wall and waved his flask as he recited Adam Asnyk’s verse: “‘The heroic Maccabees, If circumstances demanded it, Would fearlessly give up their souls, For their god—capital.’”

  The room grew still. Hillel was not so carefree in the way he moved anymore. Itzik curled against the wall, looking from one face to the next, desperate to know what had just been said.

  Poppa had been right, I thought. The intoxicating days of ’63, when Pole and Jew had their one moment of brotherhood, were just an accident of history. Nowadays, when you heard a Jew referred to as a “Pole of the Mosaic persuasion,” it was with a smirk, not a smile. Better a Jew should stick to his own kind and study.

  Piotr spoke up. “You can’t blame the Jews for raising money to fight for the cause. When circumstances demand it, don’t we do the same? And call ourselves heroes for it?” He clapped Itzik on the leg and offered him a small flask of vodka. “Have some, little brother,” he said grandly.

  Hillel winked at Piotr.

  I watched helplessly as Itzik poured the swill down his throat like water. When he coughed half of it back up, everyone laughed, including Itzik. Good humor was restored. “To the People,” he cried triumphantly, and drank some more. Hillel strummed his guitar and nodded approvingly.

  But in the middle of Hillel’s next song, Itzik did what any boy who’d swallowed a quarter of a bottle of vodka would do. He vomited it all over himself and the floor, with the trayf meat he’d eaten. I can’t say I was sorry.

  “Forgive him, Piotr,” Hillel said as he leaped from his seat and slung his guitar over his back.

  “It’s all right. A wash and some air is what he needs,” Piotr said.

  Hillel agreed. “Until later, Piotr.” And with a short farewell salute to the group, Hillel grabbed his and Itzik’s things, hoisted Itzik by the armpits into the hall, and carried him down to the street, where he lowered him onto a wooden crate that had been shoved up next to the building.

  “Why did you drink so much vodka, Itzik? You’re too young for it.”

  Itzik pushed away Hillel’s supporting arm. “I’m not too young. You were drinking.”

  “Not so much. I drink so they think of me as one of them.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I have to.” Hillel squatted in front of the boy and looked him in the face. “Itzik, the truth is, Poland is still their country. Socialism is our only chance for equality.”

  Itzik picked up a dirty cloth from the street and wiped the vomit from his trousers. “My poppa used to say, ‘A Pole is a Pole. You can’t do nothing with them.’”

  “Well, your poppa was wrong,” Hillel told him. “When they see how much they have to gain under socialism, they will change. I promise you.”

  I thought, what a marvelous thing is a young man’s sight. Everything is so clear to him that he cannot even imagine a world clouded and blurred, doubled or darkened by doubt. I pressed myself as best I could against Hillel’s clean-shaven cheek and could only wish him well, this darling young man, who had such faith.

  He stood up.

  I could see he was making himself ready for a speech.

  “The Poles will learn that they can’t just talk about their honor or their freedom. They’ll have to make something of themselves first. They’ll have to understand that this is how you become free. And when that day comes, Itzik, we will be able to call ourselves Poles too. There will be true justice. They’ll stop treating us like foreigners, even though we’ve been here for a thousand years.”

  “You think so?” Itzik asked hopefully. But before Hillel could answer, Itzik’s face darkened. “What’s so great about calling ourse
lves Poles?”

  It was a fair question, but it clearly stopped Hillel cold, the way children’s questions often do.

  “What’s so great about living like a Jew, like your father and that Mendel the Blacksmith back there?” He waved dismissively in the direction of Plac Gryzbowski. “That’s the world you want for the future? You want to continue that golden chain of generations?” He rolled his eyes. “That’s nothing but shtetl Jews living in filth with their ridiculous notions of superiority. No wonder the Jew is a figure of fun! What else do you call someone who thinks memorizing every page of the Talmud is what man was put on earth to do? That’s about as useful as learning to repeat every argument ever made on whether an egg laid on the Sabbath can be eaten. Is that what you believe in? Then go home to them. Go ahead!” He pulled the boy from the crate and gave him a push. “Go back to your momma.”

  Itzik was close to tears. “I can’t.”

  I could feel his body heat up as it did when he clung to my gravestone. His stomach muscles tightened. His breaths shortened with panic, and the focus of his great round eyes became distant, as if he barely could see the Warsaw street at all. He staggered a bit, then braced himself against the wall. A moment later he sank to the ground and put his arms protectively over his head, as if to block out the blows of the world.

  Hillel, I could see, was not prepared for a reaction like this. “Look, boychik,” he said gently. He kneeled at Itzik’s side. “All those people back east in that muddy town you come from, I know them. I grew up with people like that too. I had a father like yours once.”

  “What do you know about my father?” Itzik said thickly.

  Hillel seemed to consider this. “Itzik, listen to me,” he said. “Ever since I came to Warsaw, I’ve been getting myself an education from a man named Pesha Goldman. Pesha Goldman came also from one of our towns in the east. He has made a great change in his life. Before, he spent his days wrapped up in mysticism. But then soldiers raped his wife, Devora, in front of him. He put away the Kabbalah and took her and their son to Warsaw. He says a Jew doesn’t have the luxury to live in the clouds.”